The Mongrel King [Q]

Quest

It had not been overly difficult to find the bandit encampment. The most arduous part of the task had been hunting down bandits within the woods and, one by one, questioning them on where The Mongrel King kept his forces and sat his cruel throne. As it turned out, there was some honor among thieves. Or if it were not honor, it was at least mutual and consistent spite for the Admiral and her ilk, who were trying to hunt the bastards down and bring some semblance of peace and prosperity to the area. Time and time again she beat a bandit or two down, then took to... questioning them, in creative and colorful ways, hoping to extract the information from one cowardly soul. It was a numbers game, really. Somewhere out there was somebody willing to reveal his master's hide away in exchange for preserving his own worthless life. It had taken some time but she had, in fact, finally found one craven bastard what was willing to serve up his masters. All he asked in return was that she not shatter his OTHER knee with a hammer. Once he had spilled what he knew she had obliged him and spared his remaining good leg. Not that it would do him any good, for she immediately handed him over to Castle Dormont forces, to be hung for highway robbery and murdering innocents.

She felt no remorse over his end, nor for the skulls she had caved in to reach this point. Crouched in the bushes a few hundred yards from the bandit encampment, she toggled her Investigation mode and marked the locations of sentries and guards. Their camp was a series of canvas tents and wooden towers, difficult to see behind the wooden walls which were sawed to sharp tips at the top to prevent one from climbing over. The only entrance was a large wooden gate that stood closed presently, and was guarded by two archery towers with clear lines of sight to take down any invading force. Mercifully, there did not appear to be an abundance of mages. In fact, the only obvious spell casters were two men in bleached-white tunic and trousers who sported small leather slings and pouches of clinking stones. The rest of the camp's forces appeared to be men with swords, axes clubs and an assortment of bows. Some short, some long. Some crossbows. It seemed as though each man carried a means of attacking both from afar and at close quarters, meaning it would be impossible to handle this situation easily. No matter how well she and her party planned things, they were going to get shot a few times. It appeared there were at least seventy men in the camp, each one a vicious cur who wouldn't hesitate to kill. Except, perhaps, to rape instead if the chance came up...

She snarled quietly and waited, not worried about being seen. She held a transgem in hand and was disguised as a treant which, this far from their encampment, meant that she looked like any ordinary tree of these woods. It was a damned useful trinket, the ability to disguise herself suddenly as part of the forest. It had been how she snuck so close without detection. How the rest of her party planned to arrive was beyond her, but she had given them her location's coordinates and now waited, patiently, for them to arrive. The quest was so open that there was no telling who might be randomly inserted into the party. Whoever it wound up being, they would have to work well as a group if they all wanted to make it out alive again...

Party:
@The Admiral
@Kyupin Felnya
@Aeiou
???
???

 

@Parfait Souffle as well

 

She could still remember his face.

The tears carving trails into his dirty cheeks, his hands locked together in front of his face as he begged them to let him go. He'd had no weapons. No strength to his bare-bones body. And still they… those monsters…

The sick she'd swallowed down a while back rose viciously once more, clawing through her throat until she leaned over a bush and vomited. Why would they do that? How could they live with themselves, torturing and then murdering that poor farmer? The worst thing was, Kyupin knew that hadn't been the first. She sobbed, and heaved, and sobbed, and heaved. Until her stomach was empty and her eyes dry.

Then she continued on her path to the group leader. The Admiral.

Kyupin was by no means a strong woman, but she had some understanding of the system now. Her shots were a little more accurate, a little more dangerous.

But 'The Admiral' sounded strong. Capable.

If it weren't for the burning rage fuelling her footsteps, the petite Felis might have even been nervous.

Though she carried forward with an angry confidence, it didn't stop the pounding of her heartbeat rushing in her ears. Each step brought her closer to the meeting place, closer to stopping the madness plaguing this area. Twigs broke under her weight, even though she tried to remind herself to walk gently in the wooded land. It was hard to focus on the details. To even care about that. Not when she knew what might lay ahead.

She ducked under a low branch, forcing herself to slow down and quiet her approach. It wouldn't do to give them all away before anything happened, right? She crept closer and closer to the pinged location, her confusion growing stronger.

This was the meeting spot, wasn't it? Where the Admiral had meant to meet them?

Kyupin's grip on her bow grew tighter, her body shaking against her will, though she tried to keep a lid on her budding fears. Maybe… maybe they were just really good at hiding. Maybe Kyupin wasn't looking close enough. Maybe everything was still fine. Or as fine as it could be, given everything.

"Hello? Admiral?" she asked, voice soft. "We're going to take them down, right?" Her eyes darkened, the memory looping through her mind. Bloodbloodbloodblood. "The bad guys. We're taking them down," the words came out more certain, more determined. "… Right?"

She swallowed thickly, slipping into the shadow of a tree and trying to narrow her gaze on the encampment ahead.

@The Admiral @Aeiou @Parfait Souffle

 

The world of Terrasphere was cruel and unrelenting. Blood spilled easily here, as time and time again it proved to be the quickest means of completing a task. To slash and pierce and hack your way through enemies seemed to be the name of the game. It had taken Aeiou a few weeks to get used to that. Traveling with The Admiral had made it easier. She had no problem using her hammer to plow through the game. That was made perfectly clear even before the interrogations. Aeiou had quickly become perfectly content to sit on the sidelines and watch her work. It soon became a desensitization exercise for him to sit and watch her play bad cop. She was good at playing the bad cop. Aeiou would sit on the sidelines with a reserved smile as the AUGHS and EURGHS and YOU MANIACS would fly up from the bandits with every new torture tactic The Admiral thought up. He would have felt regret for not patching some of them up, had he not seen what tactics the bandits had come up with to kill the NPC’s Aeiou had seen littered about. Only fair that they had gotten a taste of their own medicine. As the information about the bandit hideout came spitting out of their mouths, Aeiou made a point of writing it down verbatim and handing it off to The Admiral before they made there way out to the meeting point.

He had stayed close and quiet as they snuck through the forest. It wasn’t long before the jagged points of crude fences appeared among the trees, and the two quickly staked out a location in the underbrush to await aid. As The Admiral transformed herself, Aeiou took to the ground, crouching directly behind her. With a shock of white hair and equally blanched robes, he knew that his best bet would be to hang low in the ferns and take small peeks out from behind his party member. A quick use of his investigation mode would show that these bandits weren’t easy targets. Not surprising, considering what the mangled corpses of their victims had looked like. With a shudder, Aeiou hunkered down lower, hands tightly clutching his halberd as they waited.

It had taken him a moment to realize that there was another player who had joined them at the stake out. Her speech had appeared so quickly it had made Aeiou startle. He tracked the text to its origin, where a Felis was emerging. She took step after slow step and when Aeiou met her eyes, he gave a small nod. A reassurance that she was, indeed, in the right place and they were, indeed, gonna fuck up some bad guys. He put a finger to his lips and patted The Admiral’s trunk at her back … or … at least where he thought her back would be. God, he really hoped it was her back.

@Kyupin Felnya, @Parfait Souffle, @The Admiral
[OOC: Got permission from Snide to have Aeiou be a little tagalong]

 

(@Taiga will be joining us to replace Parfait and break their character in!)

 

To the unsuspecting player, the young Rie better known in this world as Taiga, being that short, that cute as well as that innocent-looking. However, a common idiom did say, 'Don’t judge a book by its cover.' Without any further delay, she spoke in a strong commanding voice. “I’m Taiga. I’m here but I don’t take any crap from anyone. Got it?” As suddenly as that, Taiga’s innocent girl façade was broken. She took no fear in her surroundings, speaking at full volume and most definitely in full view of anyone around them. "You are my party, right?"

Taiga crossed her arms and looked at her companions for her quest to come, whom crouched behind nearby bushes. At least, the ones she could see. Her face contorted suddenly into look of readiness as well as anger. “So, when are we going to go crus– .” Before she could say anything further, soft footsteps on a trail that lead back into the wood behind her, caused Taiga to stop dead in her tracks. For the first time, her face showed worry. “Oh, no. Not again…” Taiga moaned under her breath as it plodded out from between the path cut in the trees. “Gaooooo!” It cried. The cry reverberated out from the wild undergrowth.

The small bodied cat-like tiger creature appeared, excitedly wagging its tail more like a dog than the feline, it actually was. It lacked pupils for some reason but that didn’t stop it from tracking down Taiga wherever she went and no matter how she tried to get rid of it. “Just leave me alone, will you. You’re making me look bad.”

 

Everything seemed to me falling into place quite well, so far. She was in position not far from the enemy encampment with a good vantage of their gate. Meanwhile, Aeiou had tagged along and was hiding behind her, patiently awaiting the arrival of the rest of their party. She was not entirely certain who else might be joining them, or what sort of skills their stranger comrades might possess. Hopefully there was at least one archer, and if luck were truly on her side, it would be Gwyn. That huntress could shoot a metaphor between the eyes from a hyperbole away. She was lethal, precise, and capable, like a simile.

With her eyes trained ahead, she did not realize that Kyupin had arrived and, tensing, listened to the girl's soft plea about taking the bandits down. She hadn't tensed because Kyupin had startled her, however. Nor was she particularly worried about the soft bit of noise the girl had made; this far from the camp, it wasn't going to travel far enough to do them any danger. No, instead her body had tensed up because Aeiou had in his gentle naivety just slapped her on the ass several times in a row.
"One in the hand isn't going to get you two in the bush like that, Aeiou," she growled good naturedly at the small faerin man to try and pass the accident off as a joke.
"I'm here..." she whispered for Kyupin's sake, so that the felis girl could pinpoint her and join them in hiding. "And yes, the plan is to kick in their door and bring justice to them all." Which of course was a lie. A pleasant one, but a lie all the same. Real justice would have the bandits arrested and brought back to Astorea to be hung for their crimes, after facing trial. This was more... vigilante justice, and cut to the chase while skipping all the annoying bits about proving guilt and sentencing fair punishment. A glance at Kyupin showed the girl to be armed with a bow, which caused a relieved sigh to come from the Admiral.
"Thank god you're a ranged user. Right then... I want you to remain in the back, and snipe. Find a tree to climb to get a good vantage point, and once a clear one of those guard towers, go ahead and make your way up onto so you can enjoy the line of sight it provides. Lo Fi, stay with her and be mindful of your energy consumption. Only buff or heal when you have to, little ass grabber. Once she moves to the guard tower stay with her; you can keep an eye on things and see who needs healing, plus with your polearm, you can bonk anybody trying to climb the tower to get up to you two. I'll be frontal assault, and I'll knock over the second tower so that you're the only ones with the benefit they bring. Also, I've always wanted to knock over a watchtower with my bare hands..."

It seemed as though their team was still one person short, but at least she and Aeiou had worked well together and become good friends. Kyupin was something of a stranger, but there was an eagerness behind the timidness. The Admiral hoped that neither would cause the girl to get hurt, which was the main reason she wanted Aeiou to stay with Kyupin... if the girl got into trouble, the little healer would need to be there to help get her out of it. She was just about to check for their last party member and snarl some kind of "WHERE ARE YOU?" message when Taiga came up behind them and practically shouted their position. Her sudden shout of an introduction caused the Admiral to stare wide eyed and open mouthed in astonishment... not that anyone could tell, due to the magical disguise she wore making her appear as nothing more than a tree.

"Who said that?! Who looks bad?!" a man shouted from one of the watchtowers near the camp's gate. One of the archers seemed to notice the small gathering of people trying to hide behind a few trees and bushes and he fired an arrow in their direction. It fell short, but the introduction of combat caused the magical transgem the Admiral had been using to fail. Suddenly and without warning her tree form changed into that of a very pissed looking woman in full armor, wielding a hammer in each hand. Her eyes were locked very sternly upon Taiga, with a look on her face that unmistakably said 'hate, hate, hate.'
"Okay... You're with me on the front lines," she snarled with a smile that was all teeth. A predatory smile, not a welcoming one, which promised to make the newcomer regret blowing their position and alerting the entire bandit camp of where they were. But who cared?
"The bandits have about seventy men, most of which are armed with crossbows and can shoot at us from this far away. Not to mention the two white clad mages inside, who are capable of doing god knows what. So that means the bandits only outnumber us 17.5 to 1; meaning if everyone in our huddled little group can manage to kill about eighteen people, then we'll win! Good thing we have the ELEMENT OF SURPRISE ON OUR SIDE."

Glaring daggers at Taiga, the Admiral gave one last huff and then turned around, running straight at the enemy forces. A few guards had already started running in the party's direction and the Admiral made a B-line for their group, crashing into them and smashing heads and breaking bones with her angry strikes.

@Kyupin Felnya
@Aeiou
@Taiga

 

It seemed like the Admiral had planned everything out, and Kyupin had been content with nodding along, soaking in each instruction like an eager sponge. They had a leader, and the confidence they exuded was comforting. Kyupin almost felt her own confidence budding. They could do this! They had surprise! They woul–

The arrow stopped short, but Kyupin was too busy gaping at their new comrade to really take any of it in. Her eyes flicked over to the revealed woman, armoured and seething. Her face drained of colour with each word the Admiral spoke.

As the Admiral broke away from the trees, rushing headfirst into the approaching squad, Kyupin snapped out of her stupor. Right, up the trees she went. She looked around her, overwhelmed by the sudden rush, and made a wild grab for a low hanging branch. It snapped off in her hands. No! She grabbed another branch, a sturdier one, and managed to kick herself off the ground and onto the wood. From there, it got easier to leap from branch to branch, holding on like a madman to make sure she didn't miss and plummet to the ground.

Only when she was high enough to see over the wall of the encampment did she stop. She whimpered, "That's a big camp." Who was she supposed to shoot?! The people at the wall? The people at the front lines?

An arrow flew from the enemy side, careening towards the mountain of a woman that was currently bashing men around like they were nothing. On instinct, Kyupin turned to that direction. If she squinted, she could make out a squad of archers along the top of the wall. She was higher up than them, if just barely.

Nocking an arrow, she pulled her bow taut, arms shaking with the effort it took to do so, and then let loose. It cut through the wind, finding its target and piercing through their shoulder, the force of the shot enough to knock the enemy backwards and off the wall.

She hadn't meant to kill him! Just injure him enough to put him out of the fight. Kyupin let out a shuddering breath, forcing her thoughts away. She tried not to imagine his screams or the way his bones probably pierced his skin when he landed. They were enemies. Horrible people who had done horrible things.

And though it made her sick to the stomach, they would continue to hurt innocents if she didn't stop them.

So even if she died trying, or they died, she'd stop them. Somehow.

@Aeiou
@Taiga
@The Admiral

 

Ignoring the irritating little tiger cub at her feet. It didn’t seem to mind however, as it continued to look up at Taiga with a sort of gormless affection plastered across its face. It wagged its tail, more like a puppy than a cat. “Would you just go away, I can’t be baby sitting some annoying brainless mongrel cat,” she snapped at it. It just tilted its head in confusion.

After that outburst, she turned to her party for the quest to come. There was four of them in total, a fairly cute but seemingly useless girl, a slightly more useful looking girl and the one they called ‘The Admiral’ who was barking orders at them. Seconds before, she had been a tree, some odd cunning trick. A weird choice of outfit perhaps but who cares.

“I don’t give a crap, it’s all just semantics. Let’s just charge in and slice ‘em up! What else could you possibly need,” Taiga said, half smirking, half annoyed. The ‘leader’ on their quest snarled that Taiga would be joining her on front lines, exactly where she wanted and would be regardless of her strategies. Who needs strategies anyway. It’s a waste of time, just charge in and mess them up. That’s the best way forward. Best way, only way.

Taiga grinned excitedly at the prospect of so many people she could slice up with her swords. She drew them and held them ready, occasionally swinging one around, clockwise. Seventy people with crossbows and then some with magic. The two types of masteries, Taiga considered weak and cowardly. It’s all about close range, hand to hand, dealing with anything that comes in your way combat. Just sword against sword or whatever else, she was faced with.

Rolling her eyes, she followed right behind the Admiral who had turned and charged straight at the first of the guards. They ran straight for the group but didn’t get too far as the bandits were slammed to the floor quickly.

“My turn!” She said as a guard struck at her with a horizontal swing. She blocked it with a single sword which left his entire abdomen open for a retaliatory swipe. “Sorry about that, it’s just business. The business of dealing with weaklings like y--” She was silenced by a hail of arrows that shot over her head and just behind Taiga’s position. “That was rather rude. Jerks.”

 

Aeiou had never snapped his hand away from something so quickly in his life. A little faster, and he swore his wrist may have broken in two. He gave a warbling chuckle innocently put his hands up in the air and as far away from the tree as he possibly could. “Grope an elm” was now something he could take off of his bucket list. Before he was given a chance to explain himself, they were diving headfirst into a battle plan. The wall of text practically bumped into Aeiou’s nose, and he waved it further down in front of him to try and get a better hold on it. As he skimmed the plan, another few text boxes popped up. Someone else must have joined them, but Aeiou only gave them a wave as he read over the plan.

And then arrows. Arrows everywhere. In a state of shock the little healer lurched forward and scrambled around on the ground. Feet scuffled and disappeared around him. What had just happened?! One moment they were hidden and the next they were getting pinned down. No way the NPC’s had that good of perception. Something must have happened to give away their cover, but by the time Aeiou looked out from behind his hands, everyone was gone. Looking behind his shoulder, Aeiou could see the Admiral and a newcomer charging into the bandit camps. But the ranger was nowhere to be seen.

The ranger — he was supposed to be supporting her! Aeiou looked around frantically, but there was no sign of her. He jumped onto his feet and darted from fern to fern, trying to find her. He watched as an arrow went careening over his head. He followed its point of origin up into the tree boughs, where he pinpointed a little blonde felis perched among the leaves. He looked back at the body she had just felled, and gave two big thumbs up. His hands quickly opened to give Kyupin the universal sign for stay before pointing put to her location. Hopefully she understood what he meant. Because climbing trees wasn’t something he did often.

Hoisting up his robes, Aeiou used his halberd as an extra foothold as he picked and hauled himself up the side of the tree trunk. Gusts of wind streamed by him as arrow after arrow went narrowly past, and when he finally made himself up to the branch underneath Kyupin, he had a better visual of just how screwed they really were. He gave an incoherent sound to Kyupin as he tried to reach up to her branch and shoot a few spurts of buffing illumancy into her feet. Hopefully the tingling sensation was enough to keep her focused and grounded. At least, as grounded as you could be this high up off the ground … as long as Aeiou didn’t look down, he was certain they would be fine.

 

The assailing blows of short swords bounced painfully but safely off of her armored body, leaving at worst a series of welts which she would inspect and contend with at a later date. She herself was more or less unscathed thus far, turning aside the tide of bandits that came to meet her as her hammers broke through their defenses and shattered their bodies beneath. Arrows seemed to be firing in earnest now, littering the ground with the shafts of the projectiles that landed like sprouting trees from the churning earth which was becoming more and more wet with blood. One of the archers fell backwards off of the wall as an arrow struck him high in the shoulder, which meant that Kyupin had found her vantage point and was now returning fire to the enemy encampment. One archer down and at least a dozen trained marksmen to go... it was a start, at least.

She turned to look for @Kyupin Felnya, following the line of flight the arrow had taken and discovering the girl, barely visible, high in a tree near where her charge had been led from. The girl was training her bow on enemies and loosing powerful strikes, and the Admiral was pleased to have the talented archer on her side. She glanced around for where @Aeiou might be, spotting him just below Kyupin... looking up... her skirts? God, he really WAS a little pervert! She frowned, shaking her head and taking the frustration out by caving a man's face in with a war hammer. @Taiga joined her on the front lines and began to slash at men with her own dual wielded blades, blocking the cuts of men in order to slice open their bellies and delivering... Oh, oh, perfect joke.
"That's quite a... CUTTING remark..." the armored woman quipped aloud for Taiga to hear, listening carefully for the girl's reaction. If she was one of those sorts that hated puns then the Admiral was going to make LOTS more of them, to get back at the child who had complicated their attack on the bandits.

The front gates cracked open nearby and a squad of seven men exited; six carrying long pikes while a central seventh figure held a lucerne hammer in his hands. As the gates closed behind them, they took up a side by side formation forming a wall of seven bodies. The man with the hammer remained in the central position, every body in the formation taking steps in unison as they slowly began to advance on the position that Taiga and the Admiral occupied. That sort of cooperation and cohesion was precisely the reason their quest here was so important. The bandits were not just sickening criminals that needed to be put down... they were becoming well trained and well organized units that worked as parts of a cohesive whole. The fact that they appeared so confident was no mistake, either. Spread as they were, even if Taiga and the Admiral both charged them at the same time, the range of their pikes would let the line of soldiers pincushion and run through both women. Long before they themselves were put at risk. Their heavy leather armor was hardened by boiling and firing, with chain coifs and iron skull caps to protect them from shots to the head or neck from archers. Short of offensive magic, it would be difficult to repel them without either luck or suicidal vigor... and the way they did not break formation to simply charge at the two women meant they had the discipline to deal with whatever was thrown their way.

That of course could be easily attributed to the man in the center of the formation, carrying the lucerne hammer. His own armor was nearly identical to their own, save for the patterns branded into the leather hides and the copper spike on top of his skull cap which would mark him as the group's leadership. He was Zlatan the Good, the fine sharp angles of his face revealing him to be an elf that had fallen in with the group, turning away traditions and honor in order to become a cut throat and a cur. Despite working with criminals however, he and the six elven pike-men that formed his honor guard were highly skilled and highly disciplined warriors whose formations could stop a cavalry charge or break an offensive push. It was small wonder that The Mongrel King had placed Zlatan and his men as the guardians of the camp's entrance.

Killing off the last of the men around her, the Admiral turned her attention to the line of polearm wielders that was marching confidently towards her and Taiga. She let out a snarl, but was satisfied that the first of The Mongrel King's lieutenants had come out to play. That pleasure disappeared when the second arrived, however... An overwhelmingly large man of stocky muscled build, who had climbed to the top of one of the watchtowers. There, he set what appeared to be a miniature ballista against the wall of the watchtower and pulled the draw string back with a single hand, his muscles straining with the pull weight of the rope that was his draw string. A small harpoon served as an arrow, and he fired it towards the treeline that Kyupin and Aeiou occupied, exploding the trunk of a random tree in a shower of splinters as the harpoon shot into it an an alchemical bomb went off. Eight other archers joined him, alongside the twelve that had still been firing, making for a total of twenty regular archers and one very large and very horrifying human siege weapon. He was the second of the lieutenants, simply known as "Siege," specializing in ranged AoE attacks that could shatter defensive positions and destroy enemy support positions.

The Mongrel King was no idiot; he had selected his lieutenants with care, and was clearly making the best use of their abilities by pairing the ranged specialists with the defensive specialists, to create the perfect killing field: Taiga and the Admiral could not advance past Zaltan the Good and his men. But Siege and his twenty archers would shoot them down if they didn't run for cover; and would blow up any cover they hid behind. Meanwhile, Kyupin was a single archer backed by a single healer, and she could only remain hidden so long as luck was on her side. Eventually, Siege would blow up the tree that she was in.

"This is why you don't just charge, new girl!" the Admiral shouted angrily, rushing away from the clearing and leaping behind the cover of some trees so that she wouldn't be killed be a volley of arrows.

 

Warmth tingled through her, starting from the soles of her feet and up through the rest of her body. She looked down to @Aeiou and tried to offer a small smile of thanks, but was quickly pulled from that action by the explosion of trees being torn apart just a few moments to her right. Her heart pounded in her ears and Kyupin loosed her last arrow before tucking the bow and arrows into her inventory. She didn't even look to see her arrow piercing through one of the archer's eye and coming out the other side of his skull, instantly killing him.

They weren't safe here anymore.

Looking for @Admiral and @Taiga, she only dropped down from her branch to his when she spotted their movement in the chaotic battlefield. They were backing into the cover of the trees.

Grabbing Aeiou by his wrist, she looked around wildly for a different direction to head in. At the same time, she flicked open her chat log with the other hand, splitting her attention between both the chat and her surroundings. Another tree exploded, closer to their position and sending shards of splintered wood their way. Kyupin threw up her hands to protect her face, flinching.

"Are you okay?!" she shouted over her shoulder, not fully looking back to check as she dropped down to the next branch below her. They just had to get down now, and then run. Otherwise they'd be hit.

Kyupin Felnya

Aeiou and I are coming down. What are we going to do? They're too strong!

She whimpered, trying to shove down the mental image of her and Aeiou, torn to pieces by a harpoon slamming into their bodies. Not helpful right now! Another branch down, and she looked up to make sure her partner was still right behind her. Faster, faster! The tree splintered beneath her fingertips as the large harpoon tore straight through the top where they'd been just a few moments before. She was too scared to scream. To cry. Or do much of anything other than flail as she fell to the forest floor with a slam!

 

The world became a shower of arrows and exploding earth as the archers formed a wall and fired with numbers and precision upon their various hiding places in the woods. Their cover began to erode as craters began to form from the onslaught of Siege the archer and his exploding god damned harpoon shots. Taiga had either died or disappeared, it was unclear which and she was far from caring as a message from Kyupin popped up indicating that that pair was also under attack. Sighing, the Admiral stood up and sprinted straight for the two squishy comrades and dove behind some boulders nearby to provided a sturdier shield against the army of bandits that was forming and starting to run their way.

"We need to make a full retreat and come back to this," she bemoaned as she glanced in the direction of the clearing and the encampment.
"Our element of surprise was totally blown, and now that little bitch is just totally gone! Which is a pity because now I can't KILL HER MYSELF. Meanwhile, they've alerted all their men and we're going to die horribly soon So... Aeiou on my soulders, Kyupin keep up!"
With that she snatched up Aeiou and threw the little perv on her shoulders, then began to run as quickly as she could away from the camp as the sound of pounding boots and war cries came from the clearing, a small army of sixty bandits heading their direction.