thebastion | Day 182 [OPEN] wanderers in the shadowed land

Entry tags:

Day 182 [OPEN] wanderers in the shadowed land

Who: Sam Gamgee and anyone who wants to deal with him.
Open: Open!
When: The afternoon of Day 182
Where: Jawson Bog
What: Samwise Gamgee awakens with a mouthful of bog-water that most certainly did not come from the last bog he remembers being in... though he can't say it doesn't come close.
Format: Any, I'll match.
Warnings: None that I can think of!

Swamp-water.

This is the first sensation he feels upon waking up; he's sputtering before he's even fully conscious, coughing himself awake. The world is a blur for the tears that well in his eyes. It doesn't take long for him to place the rancid tang in his mouth, and he instantly attributes it to Gollum. He'd not liked their gangly, moon-eyed guide to start with, and it wasn't hard to see that this was a mutual feeling for his part. He'd not known what part he had in the fetid taste in Sam's mouth - deliberate and untoward attempt on his life, some joke, or simply choosing a poor site to set camp - but Sam was more then prepared to give him his share for it.

Sam lifts his head and blearily looks around - there's old Gollum, not far off from him. "Oi--" Sam's first attempt is broken by his continued fits. He sucks the thick mucus running from his nose back with putrid bog air before trying again. "Oi, stinker!"

Gollum doesn't turn around.

In fact, he's not doing much of anything.

Sam swabs the tears from his eyes with what dryness he can find on his shirt sleeve (not much, and his face is still smeared with some mud,) and stands, his bare feet squelching in the mud as he stalks toward Gollum angrily. Sam is in a foul mood already, but setting eyes on Gollum is always enough to bring out the worst of it. He reaches out a hand to grab the creature's shoulder - and, to his great surprise, he touches smooth rock.

The dissonance is enough to knock him back onto the pulpy ground of the bog again with a wet plop. Gollum remains unmoving, facing away from him. He still feels the lifeless rock in his palm, shivering.

Standing quietly, his earlier anger forgotten, he circles around to face the stone Gollum. The sculpture is wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Sam thinks that he was screaming. His knees are bent and he's low to the ground, one hand preparing to run and one clawing his own face. His entire body is tensed, in a way that suggests movement to Sam. He was running, or about to run. Though he has none of the affection that Frodo holds for the creature, the thought chills him.

Frodo.

"M-Mister Frodo?"

A chorus of bullfrogs is the only thing that answers. Sam quickly looks around. His pack is not far away, but no statue of Frodo awaits him, and he's not sure if he should be relieved or more fearful for it. He rushes across the sloshing bog floor and grabs for a strap - it's lighter then he remembers, but he doesn't have much time for that. Last night - where had they slept last night? What had happened last night? He hurriedly shoulders on his pack as he scrambles to recall. The oppressive silence and grey skies of the Dead Marshes were gone. There is life here, Sam hears it. But with the poison he smells, the darkness blanketing everything, he's not sure that's a comfort.

"Mister Frodo?" He tries again, more solidly this time, but with not much more success then that.

He sweeps his grey cloak from his side and rips his short sword from its scabbard - a dagger to most full-grown Men, but for a Hobbit of Sam's stature, the blade is sufficient. He leaves the petrified Gollum to sink in the swampy ground, panic seething in his chest as he dashes through the dark.

"Frodo!"

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Unfortunately for Sam, he's about to get startled yet again, and this time by a thin, calloused hand over his mouth.

The frantic screaming had been enough to get some one to break away from the group that she had ventured out to the Skyway with, and originally she was just going to run to him and some how convince him to come along with her and her friends to somewhere far safer than this. That was how she normally dealt with finding new survivors, and that was going to be the plan this time, too.

Until she noticed two very troubling things - strange flowers sticking up from the ground around them, with tentacle-like protrusions reaching straight up for the sky, and a distant caw of birds that was already getting closer.

Both reasons for Sam to politely shut his hobbit trap and stop drawing attention to himself.

"You need to stop screamin'. Now," the girl spoke, voice hushed and words rough. "If you wanna survive to find that person you're screamin' for, you need to calm down and follow me."

And startled he is. He barely manages another syllable before he's pulled back mmid-stride, a rough hand clapped over his mouth and muffling the rest of his call. In his current panic, it takes him a second to truly digest the stop, but he knows a hand is over his mouth. Sam has no idea who has anchored him in place, but with the Ring and its bearer at stake, he knows that he can't afford to find out. The Enemy, as Gandalf had said, has all form of spies and informants, and his black claws are embedded deep in the land. He curses himself for his earlier carelessness.

His first instinct is to escape. He would find Frodo, and he would do it without help. Sam knows that he doesn't have the strength to fight the grip on him, but that doesn't stop him from making himself very difficult to hold; he's all elbows and knees for a minute, feet splashing down into the wet ground as he fights.

He hears the nearing flock too, and he clearly recalls the bird-flock from the side of Moria. Crebain - they squawked similarly enough from this distance to Sam, anyways. Sharp words are hissed into his pointed ear now, words of caution. In his current state, he's not at all ready to trust them. Sam says nothing in response; he opens his jaws and crunches down quickly on whatever is caught between them, swinging out as hard as he can with his sword arm.

Okay, maybe that was not the best plan, but she was trying to avoid rousing the weird plants that were around them by adding more voices and movement to what Sam had already contributed.

So what's happening now? Not exactly helping matters either.

It's not the first time Rin has had something chew on her (and given the Skyway's propensity to send creatures at her who just loved doing just that probably not the last) but she still lets out a yelp and stumbles, taking that arm right in her lower gut.

Half-demon or not, a full swing to one's lady parts is still painful. A grunt and she's down on one knee, blinking back tears and holding her abdomen while letting a string of swears that would probably make a sailor wince. If Sam gets a good look at her in that state, it probably won't help his paranoia any. Ears pointed like an elf's, but canine teeth also sharp and a tail of all things. Granted the rest of her looks like a normal human (long black hair, pale skin, etc) but those features likely do stand out quite a bit.

All of that aside, though, there's a bigger problem at hand - several of those strange flowers have just vanished.

Because they're burrowing underground with every intent to come up beneath the two of them for a quick meal of hobbit and demon.

Thankfully, the swamp's heavy darkness prevents him from seeing more then Rin's vague silhouette when he whirls around. The shape is a little strange - he notes the mysterious fifth limb, and forces any imaginings that fit the creature's shape out of his mind.

He wheels away once he's free, his bare toes sluicing muddy bog water. Sam tightens his grip around his sword's handle and points the blade at the hunched figure, still oblivious to the true threat. "Who I'm callin' for is no business of yours, an' I'll not be goin' to no place--"

And that's where the ground starts to rumble under his feet. It begins quickly, and it starts violent enough to nearly knock the hobbit off of his balance.

In the space between Sam and the doubled over figure, a spiny, shrieking body bursts up in a spray of mud. The force of the strange plant is enough to knock Sam on his back. He sees the colour of the thing; a verdant green, willowy body, and some bright blossom on its top. It isn't like anything he's seen before now, and he somehow doesn't find himself wanting to know much more.

Sam scrambles to get back to his feet, knees slipping in the mud as he does so, but it's too late. Huge, thorny brambles launch up around him, and he's caged by the thing. He cries out, both in surprise and in pain; the thorns have pierced the thick soles of his feet. The snare is huge around him; bleary-eyed, it's all he can do to swing his sword wildly at the thorny cage.

Luckily Zuko isn't too far behind in following the source of the ruckus, especially when, instead of dying down, the shouting is joined by sounds of a fight. She arrives on the scene to find both Rin and the child-sized stranger knocked off their feet. Luckily for Sam, she assumes the cause is the same: the large and thorny plant that's quickly ensnaring the little person.

"Rin, move," she says, her voice low but still emphatic, hoping Rin can regain her balance quickly enough to back off before the plant snares her as well.

But she assumes (maybe mistakenly) that Rin is in a better position right now to take care of herself than the stranger, and focuses her attention on helping Sam. With the way he's flailing about, she's more confident in the precision of her own blades than in her firebending, so he'll soon find her two swords slicing at the thorny cage from the outside.

She looks more definitely human than Rin, not that Sam is likely to notice amidst all the confusion. Hopefully he'll at least recognize that she's not an enemy.

"Why does no one ever listen to me..." is the groan Zuko will hear when she arrives on the scene. She would have sounded more concerned about poor Sam, if he hadn't been the one to knock the wind out of her. Not that she's going to let him get devoured, because she's not that cruel of a person. She is moving a lot slower than her normal pace, though, and it's Zuko's command that gets her at least to her feet again. Crap that still hurts, but she'll fight through it.

... or she would, if not for the fact that the rest of the Bootlickers have noticed the new arrival of a tasty morsel in the swamp and begin exploding up around them, tossing about mud and disgusting swamp water as they attempt to grab at the girls.

Swearing again, Rin goes for a crouch and a roll to get away from the ones attempting to grab at her, pulling out both her swords when she's a good enough distance away. One is plain, with nothing special about it, but the other pulls out bright blue flames with it, and it's those flames that she starts launching at the wiggling masses of alien plant life.

"I hear Peckers headin' this way! We gotta hurry!"

Welcome to your brother's world, Rin.

Yukio's arrival is accompanied by two loud bangs, and a Bootlicker rising out of the ground behind Zuko thinks better of attacking, instead retreating back into the ground with a significant chunk of its cactus-like body missing. He knows better than to run into the fray. These monsters are best handled from a distance, and who better to fill the role of sharpshooter than the sharpshooter? He lingers a fair distance away where he can keep one eye (and one pistol) on the girls and the other on the approaching flock of Peckers.

"I can see them, Neesan!"

Sam's attempts are woefully inadequate. He feels his sword cutting into the meat of the plant, but he knows that he'll have to do better then that to escape in time. After what he might guess to be the fifth or sixth cut, he wraps his other hand around the handle of his sword, and tries striking the tough thorns with as much force as he can manage.

It isn't long before another shape materializes before him in the dark. His stomach pits as he sees it - for a moment, he assumes that his efforts have been far too little, far too late. Steel flashes against the thorns above him. He's being cut out, but to what end, he can't guess. After a second of hesitation, he continues cutting at the cage around him.

The earth shudders with another of the creatures. Sam is jarred, but the thorns in his feet keep him on his feet this time - he cringes, mouth drying at the sudden pain, and clings to one of the larger thorns briefly to steady himself. Flickering blue light is cast over the mud, and Sam looks over his shoulder as well as he can to see the source. The creatures are spiny, composed of green spheres, with great and colourful blossoms. He doesn't know if they're plant or animal, but he doesn't much care to find out. He sees the thick shadow of the figure earlier, shadowed harshly against a great, blue flame. Startled, he tursn back, renewed in his efforts to escape both the thorny cage and the situation.

The flames have illuminated the figure before him; a human-looking woman, from what little the blue light shows him. He can't see much else from his height. He clenches both hands around his blade and, with a grunt, hacks into the closest thorn in the snare.

Zuko manages to keep her feet through the appearance of several more of the Bootlickers, her high boots splashing in the muck as she finds more stable ground. A glance over her shoulder tells her that Rin and her brother have her back, so she keeps her attention on Sam. A few more slices and she and the little one have hacked a big enough opening in the snare for him to fit through.

She shifts both her swords into her right hand and holds out her left. "Take my hand," she says, her tone commanding in an attempt to break through his apparent panic. "We need to get out of here."

With Zuko focused on the one holding Sam, Rin and Yukio were left to take out the rest, and while their numbers had dwindled somewhat since the start of the fight it was clear this particular patch of land they had the misfortune of stepping on was rife with them.

Rin hurled blue fire about as she bounced from one to the other, cutting them down with blade and flame, sending them to the ground in pieces shrieking in their deaths. A few times she stumbled and wound up back in the muck and gross water, but she was up again in seconds, tearing down the ones her brother didn't hit.

But all of this was taking time, time needed to get away from the other oncoming threat. The grating cries of the flock of peckers grew louder and louder, drowning out the shrieks of the dying monstrous plants. Rin dropped down from her last kill and skidded on the mud in a crouch, head turning towards the dark cloud-like mass approaching.

"Zuko, start runnin' with him! Yukio and I will cover you!"

Yukio kept up his long range intervention, leaving mass destruction to his sister while carefully picking off the strange plants as they made swipes for Rin or Zuko and Sam. Every bullet found its target, often coming uncomfortably close to the people they were meant to protect, with most of the Bootlickers content to retreat after losing only one chunk to the distant gunslinger.

A plant next by Zuko and Sam screeched as a bullet tore through it's flesh, and Yukio finally reached for his second gun, eying the flock of Peckers as he started to quickly edge around their impromptu battleground toward the rest of the group.

The noises of combat and the screeching of the attacking creatures is ringing everywhere around him. He jumps with a yelp at the sudden explosion of a gun, doubles over and covers his ringing ears. The bog has turned into a cacophony, overwhelming not only in sound, but in action as well. He is desperate for an escape.

He looks up to see the woman holding a hand out to him through the cleared thorns. She's speaking, though he can't quite hear her yet through the deafening ring between his ears. He catches the tail end of her last sentence - "... get out of here," spoken calmly and authoritatively. He's not sure that he can quite trust these people, but he knows that he has precious few options at the moment. He would trust this woman for the moment, he decided. His small size could allow him a later escape, if he was careful. For now, however, unless he wants to be eaten (and he doesn't,) he realizes that the best option would probably be to follow the group a fair ways away.

Trembling, Sam grasps the closest thorn and tries to pull his feet free. They're hooked into the leathery soles, but thankfully, he doesn't think they've hooked deeply enough to bleed much. He pulls his feet free as carefully as he's allowed by his chaotic surroundings. It doesn't take long for him to plop both feet free on the bog's muddy floor, ready to get away from the skirmish at his back.

Running from a fight goes against Zuko's instincts, and even if she understands the necessity, it's with some reluctance that she motions to the little person and turns for the clearest avenue of escape. He seems ready to bolt, and as long as he keeps a decent pace for his size, she'll leave him to his own two feet. She does sheathe her swords, though, leaving her hands free in case the need to carry him arises.

"Come on!" She raises her voice louder now to be heard over the gunshots and the cries of the peckers.

Her own orange flames join Rin's as a sweep of her foot strikes down a Bootlicker that springs up to bar their path, and then she's moving. She keeps her eyes mostly on Sam, and her sharper ears straining to pick out more immediate threats from the growing clamor.

Rin isn't too happy about it either, but there's already injuries and she can smell the tang of copper in the air amongst the other smells of the swamp. That's going to take this situation from "worse" to "really, really damn bad" and Rin was not willing a repeat of what had happened with her friend. Not with so many people here. They needed to run, or risk being taken over by the oncoming flock.

She launches blue fire at several of the birds coming their way, knocking them out of the sky with noisy, pained squawks that only added to the cacophony of noise going on around them. She didn't linger, though, crying out for Yukio to get moving as she wheeled around and started to follow Zuko and their newly found companion.

Yukio throws a few more rounds over his shoulder as he moves, dropping a bird with each one before Rin yells and he gives up on his sniping completely, breaking into a run. Those long legs go a good way toward helping him quickly close some of the distance between himself and the rest of the group, but the birds are closing in quickly and he swears he can almost feel the wind coming off of their wings.

He put on a burst of speed, pulling up the rear just behind Rin. Getting pecked to death by birds was not on his list of things to do today, and there's no way he's changing those plans.

Sam starts running as soon as the path's clear.

He doesn't know who's with him, and he doesn't bother to check; he has no such warrior instinct as the others do. This bog is evil. Sam tries to make an effort as he goes to not breathe the air in for it, as fruitless as the effort is. If Gollum was here, even frozen in stone, then there's as likely a chance that Frodo is also here somewhere. His singular thought is him, and recovering him to a safe place by himself. Sam doesn't understand these people, their motives, their weapons, anything. He will break away the first chance he gets to search, he tells himself.

The squawking is loud now, and Sam hears the rustling of feathers as each bird beats its terrible wings. His chest burns as his bare feet splash and stumble through the bog, scattering puddles of stagnant water and catching his foot on some errant aquatic plant on the way. He keeps his eyes on the darkness flashing by as he goes - peering, watching for any familiar movement, listening.

Even running full speed, Sam's short stature makes him easy to keep pace with. At first, Zuko keeps a few strides ahead to make sure they don't run across anything, but it becomes clear enough most of the danger is behind.

She doesn't catch Rin's shout to her brother, but she does notice the gunshots die down and glances back to find her companions running to join them, the flock of peckers still pursuing. She turns on her heel, the motion helping to build up energy which she releases in an arc of fire aimed over their heads at the birds. She isn't sure how much of a deterrent that's likely to be, but it should at least slow them.

She's let Sam get a little ahead in the meantime, but she's sure she can catch him up.

Behind, but still perusing, and not about to let up any time soon. They don't even have a Core and yet those peckers are damned determined to tear these intruding people to bits.

Rin zips past Zuko when she stops, but seeing what she's attempting to do she skids to a halt and wheels around.

"Keep goin', Yukio! Get him to the exit!" she calls out to her brother, stepping next to Zuko and giving her flaming sword a swing upward so her blue flames join the orange one and blast the birds an explosion of fire.

Yukio doesn't argue Rin's command, throwing a quick nod and a "Be careful!" over his shoulder before continuing on. With limited ammunition he won't stand much of a chance against the entire flock, and though doesn't know much about Zuko's fire, he knows that the blue flames can burn anything.

Once he's passed the girls it only takes a few long strides for Yukio to catch up with Sam, but unlike Zuko? He's not content let the little guy continue at his stumbling pace. He'll apologize for the rudeness later, but for now he has every intention of looping an arm around Sam's middle and carting him off toward the exit.

Sam, as most Hobbits, is quite used to walking. This unfortunately doesn't extend as much as he'd wish to running, but he thinks that he's making a good enough clip for his diminutive size. While the change in weight of his bag is somewhat worrying, he's thankful for what the lessened burden allows him in endurance for the moment.

Voices are at his back - some are new, some he thinks he can place to the two he's met. Certainly, they won't have much trouble fending for themselves; they seem a coordinated and capable bunch, anyways. He eyes the darkness at his side; the sloshing mud under his feet has changed to pulpy, wet wood. A walkway, and Sam suspects that this means that his window of escape is a fleeting one. At his size, with his cloaks and pack and his clothing, the water will shortly become too deep to slough through. He either acts now, drowns, or loses his chance completely. He begins diverting his course--

Breath leaves him as he's hoisted up by the straps of his backpack, an arm wedged firmly between his lungs and his stomach. He grunts, coughing as he curls around the arm. Sam briefly kicks and squirms, managing a winded "- 'Ay there!" as he's bounced around, but he doesn't fight as much as he did. Right now, he's a little more keen to this then being eaten.

Rin and Zuko's combined fire takes out the birds at the head of the flock, either dead or too badly burned to fly. Unfortunately, this seems to enrage the rest of them more than it does frighten them off.

Now that she doesn't have to worry about any allies in the way, Zuko draws a long line of fire across the soggy ground, and when she raises herself back up, the fire rises into a high wall between them and the peckers. With the dampness of the place, the flames hold more from the strength of her chi than from any decent fuel. She won't be able to hold it for long, but long enough that they can put a little distance between themselves and most of the flock.

Most, because a few of them got past before the wall came up, and they fly at the girls, clawing up Zuko's exposed arms and making her cry out.

This was certainly starting to look like the losing end of a battle. For everything they took down, ten more was coming at them, past fire and past all the barriers they tried to put up.

Rin gets smacked with a good number of claws and wings and beaks, but she ignores her own injuries to throw herself at the ones going after Zuko. Blades dropped, she starts grabbing at them with her bare hands, lighting them in fire with angered snarls and tossing them away.

That left her exposed, though, and they all turn to gang up on her, actually physically knocking her over with the sheer force of their numbers.

God damn. Worst rescue ever.

Really, guys. Seriously?

Yukio looks back over his shoulder when he hears Zuko's cry, skidding to a halt and spinning back around just in time to see Rin go down. From this distance there isn't much to be done... except for what he does best.

He lifts the gun that's still clutched in his grip, ejecting the empty magazine and letting it sink into the mud with a soft twuck. The custom mounts on his jacket made reloading quick and efficient, and though Sam probably can't tell just what Yukio's doing with his free hand, his intentions are plenty obvious when he extends his weapon again, aiming toward the girls.

"Don't move."

Calculating the distance and adjusting for wind and moving targets takes onlt a moment, and those words are the only warning Sam receives before Yukio opens fire again, carefully picking off one bird at a time to help even the odds. His assistance will probably be... startling for those not used to such intervention, but he didn't earn his meister by sitting around on his bottom.

Edited 2014-05-03 01:39 (UTC)

Not only can he not break away from his captors now, but he now seems to be at a good height for the birds. The birds hadn't taken much interest in him earlier, which he could only attribute to his small stature; being so close to the ground meant that birds as large as these sounded would probably have some trouble. That, Sam assumed, or he had just gone unnoticed.

Now? He can feel the wing-beats against his cheek. Avian shapes flit in, and then out, of his peripheral vision. He swings at one with an open-palmed swing when it soars a little too close for comfort, eliciting a sharp caw as the shape lurches back in the air.

The arm digs into his gut as the man turns, the air leaving Sam in a wheezing, slouching sort of woof. He doesn't understand at all what the man is planning - there aren't many guns to be found at all in the Shire. He hears the command and looks up incredulously, nose screwing. "You've not left me with any more choice, have you?"

If Sam gets an answer beyond that, however, he doesn't hear it - the gunshot cracks, impossibly loud and too close. The noise lashes his ears; he thinks he's made some sort of embarrassing noise of surprise, but between the painful numbness and the ringing in his ears, all that he has is the air that's expelled from his lungs at the sound. He curls over the man's arm, covering his ears and hoping to will the deaf ringing from them.

Zuko has seen guns in action before, but she still isn't remotely used to them. The loud bangs of the first few bullets to pick off birds near her make her tense in anticipation of a new attack, before she recognizes the noise as help.

She manages to fend off the rest of the peckers harrassing her with a quick blast of fire that circles out from her. Then she turns her attention to the greater number ganging up on Rin. She punches the air, producing a stronger fire blast that goes over the other girl to envelop the birds.

She sprints over to give Rin a hand up. "Come on!" There doesn't seem to be any way to hold these things off, so it looks like they'll just have to make a mad dash for it. She won't be able to firebend for too much longer either.

The shots don't bother Rin as much because she's far more used to them, but coming that close is startling. Thankfully they hit their target and not her, knocking several of the birds back in showers of off-colored blood and feathers.

Gross.

Zuko's fire does the rest, and Rin is revealed to have curled up in a crouch with her hands over her head to protect herself from the onslaught, leaving her hands and arms exposed. She's scratched to hell, dripping her own blood on the pathway, but she's not about to slow down because of that.

She snags her sword with one hand and Zuko's with the other, getting to her feet so they can get the hell out of there. Zuko is almost out of bending time, and Rin herself just ended one of her uses of her power by dropping her swords.

"There's no end to these bastards!"

It's time to get back to the Bastion.

Sorry, Sam. He'll feel guilty about assaulting the little hobbit's ears when all is said and done but right now escaping alive is more important that anyone's comfort.

With Rin and Zuko turning tail, Yukio does the same. Whirling back around, he picks up right where they left off, slogging through the quickly through the swampy path and bobbing and weaving as best he can through what few birds that made it through the bullets and flames. They've got a fair lead on the girls, and he's headed straight for the exit, but he won't take the leap until he's sure the others are going to make it.

Sam, unfortunately, has no such inclination to realize that the gunfire is helpful. He's not even sure if these people are help, let alone their weaponry.

For the moment, the fight behind him is a numbed din. He pushes the heels of his palms into his ears, but the ringing gets no better, and he remains deafened to the conflict behind him. Sam realizes that he's still shaking; he can't tell if it's simple fear, the rough gait they're moving at, or the noise trembling behind his eyes is behind it.

The arm jars his stomach uncomfortably again. Swallowing thickly, Sam takes a hand from his ear and braces it against the man's arm, hoping to provide some clearance between it and his middle.

Once Rin is on her feet, Zuko shoots one last wild burst of fire at the peckers before turning and running to catch up with Yukio and Sam. She doesn't hold anything back, knowing that even though running has turned into their only option, the flock can still nearly match that speed.

[Which would be why Rin is chanting "Go, go, go, go!" under her breath as they run.

But the exit is right there, and that gives her all the more incentive to pick up her pace and meet Yukio and Sam there.

Now they just have to get on it and get back to the Bastion.]

Sure that the girls are right behind them, Yukio puts all his focus on making it to the exit. His already uncomfortable grip on Sam shifts again as he draws the hobbit close to his chest, wrapping both arms around him tightly. He can't have the little guy choose now to start struggling now that they're so close, and struggle he might. Yukio certainly did on his first go-round.

Because they're heading right for a drop off.

"Hold on!"

The words come about ten steps before the edge, and two seconds later Yukio's running the both of them right off the edge. Just as it seems like they're about to go tumbling down into who knows what, a disorienting pull sends the both of up in the air, tossing them high into the sky. Whatever force it was that sent them airborne leaves them to freefall from there for a few seconds before returning to catch them once more, drifting them safely back to solid ground.

Their landing is a little rough. Yukio manages to hit the ground on his feet, but his landing quickly turns into a stumble, and he twists his body to be sure his own bottom hits the ground first so as to avoid the possibility of squishing Sam with his much larger frame.

"Hold on!"

He's confused enough as he's lifted up and hugged against the man's chest - he struggles for a moment, grunting at the change - but as those words numbly reach him, so does the rest of the cacophonous noise in the skirmish that has come up around them. Voices behind him, the same from before, with the screeching caw and thick beating of wings, the screech and burrow of the alien plant life.

He's about to ask what else he has to hold on for, when he spots it. The walkway ends. They're running him to a drop-off.

Sam's large feet are instantly paddling against the man's frontside, his small body twisting around as he tries desperately to scrabble his way up and over his shoulder. He screams out the last of his breath as they go over, hands clawing upward in a blind panic for any sort of ascent. The fall is quick, impossibly quick---

- before some force jettisons them back up again.

At once, they're charged upward, with such force and speed that Sam does not have the air or the time to scream out. Before he realizes what's happened, he's rolling on the ground, still cradled safely by the man from before.

He's trembling as he scrambles back, shocked to see his sword in the same white-knuckled grip that he'd seen it in when he'd checked last. He takes in quick, hissing breaths, stomach still twisted and knotting.

Zuko fairly dives for the exit, and her own landing is a far cry from elegant. She hits the ground first not with her feet but with her shoulder, grinding dirt into the gashes the peckers gave her. The momentum of her fall lets her roll over a few times, smacking her head with the hilts of her swords in the process. She comes to a stop lying on her back, and just stays there to let out a groan and catch her breath.

After some moments, she twists and pushes herself up with her less-injured arm. Her first thought is to watch for Rin's arrival, to make sure the other girl makes it back all right, but then she glances over Yukio and their new charge. The little man seems belatedly raring for a fight.

"You can put the knife away," she says dryly.

In the better light, she's still probably not the most reassuring sight. Human, yes, but with her Oriental features and style of dress, she doesn't bear much resemblance to the humans Sam has met. Besides the prominent scar, she's covered in blood, dirt, and no few feathers. The scowl on her face could't be described as friendly either, but at least her body language communicates that moving is not high on her list of things to do, much less attacking.

"AHHH-- OOMFG--!"

Rin's landing is the least graceful of all of them, and not for lack of trying. She's done this enough times that she can usually make it there feet first, but in an effort to get away from the oncoming peckers she had dove at the exit and was tossed about on the winds in the lest comfortable manner possible.

Hence her literally crashing to the ground and rolling several feet before coming to a face-in-grass stop with a groan.

"We... have really... gotta find a better way to travel..." she grumbles in to the ground, voice muffled. She's not exactly keen on moving either. Her wounds are just as fresh as Zuko's and yet they already seem to be healing, blood drying in dark stains on her pale skin but gashes beginning to fade. Her tail thumps once, twice against the ground next to her before going still as well.

Just leave her there. She'll be fine eventually.

They are the epitome of grace, for sure.

Yukio lets Sam scramble away without a fight. Aside from bruises he's likely to develop thanks to the hobbit's panicked kicking, he's uninjured, though rather winded. The little man was deceptively heavy considering his size, and at a full out sprint while being kicked in the gut? Yeah, he's going to need a minute.

Between Yukio and Zuko on their butts and Rin still face first in the dirt? They're not exactly the most threatening trio, and even when Yukio turns his attention to Sam again, he makes no move toward him. In fact, with the lack of blood and strange appendages, along with the addition of a calm expression, it's the largest of the three that's probably looking the least threatening.

"... I'm sorry about that. There wasn't any time to explain. Are you hurt?"

Sam's not exactly brandishing the blade - he's not sure he has the strength to right now even if he wanted - but he's not putting it away, either.

He looks up from it at the voices, and gets a good look at his captors. Two women and a man, all dressed as strangely as his surroundings, covered in dirt and blood. The first woman to speak has a large scar blazed across one side of her face, in varying shades of pink and red and brown, forcing one eye to a squint. The other has a tail. He wonders briefly on which he'd forced off of him earlier. The third - the man - looks both the most familiar and calmest to him. He was the one who had scooped him up. He sucks in a deep breath as he tries to steady himself and quell the shaking, carefully trying to loosen his stiff grip on his sword's handle. Right now, the only reassuring part of any of this is the springy soil and soft grass under his feet. Unlike the bog, this place is not one of venom and evil; Sam feels, strangely, that this is a place of healing.

Nevertheless, this provides him little rest with Frodo still missing. He takes a step back.

"I'll not be hearin' any explaining that don't have to do with gettin' back to that old swamp." He speaks as sternly as he can, but finds himself unable to quell the small tremble in his voice.

"Are you crazy?" is Zuko's immediate reaction to Sam's proposal. Did he miss the part where they just barely made it out of there with their hides? What possible reason could he have for wanting to go back there?

In asking herself that question, she remembers what drew them to him in the first place. He hadn't been shouting for help (though he clearly needed it); he'd been shouting someone's name. He thinks he's left a friend behind. Her expression sobers at the realization, though it doesn't exactly grow softer. She can still remember how desperate she was to find others from her world when she arrived. Of course, she never did, but she's had plenty of opportunity to see what recklessness leads to.

"We're in no position to go back there right now and look for anyone. Especially with that commotion you started"--yes, she is definitely blaming Sam for riling up all those monsters--"it's just going to get someone killed."

She hasn't heard of many people showing up together anyway. It's even possible his friend has already arrived at the Bastion, although the most likely explanation, which isn't likely to calm the little man any, is that his friend is dead and gone along with the rest of his world.

"What she said," Rin chimes in once she's on her feet, still looking a bloody mess on top of having the most inhuman features of the three of them. Tail aside, that is most definitely a nice sharp set of fangs on top and bottom, as well as pointed ears and a faint red dot in the very center of her vivid blue eyes. Like Zuko and Yukio she also shares that vaguely oriental-ish facial structure, though hers resembles Yukio far more than Zuko resembles either of them.

Her hair also looks like those birds tried to nest in it, but that's actually how she normally looks because what is proper styling.

"It's dangerous out there on any given day, but your little fit out there did a damn good job of makin' that area even worse. We're gonna be lucky if we can even try to get back to Jawson's Bog in the neck coupla days without gettin' ambushed."

Sorry, Sam. This is just not your day, what with strange women blaming you for making a mess of their exploration.

Rin let out an exasperated sigh, fiddling with a strange amulet at her neck.

"And I only got like twenty shards, too... no way we've got the fire power to go back out again today."

Yukio gets to his feet while the girls are talking, brushing of the back of his long coat as he does so and frowning at his fellow explorers for a moment. He hasn't exactly been known for his compassion and understanding since he arrived, but it's that recent arrival that forces him to put himself in Sam's shoes. Er-... feet. It wasn't long ago that he was in the same position, dragged over a cliff kicking and screaming for answers.

"Shards aren't the most important thing, Neesan."

He briefly checks his weapon over before thumbing the safety and holstering it, hands empty when he looks to Sam again.

"But they're right. It's too dangerous to go now. Why would you want to go back to that?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Day 182 [OPEN] wanderers in the shadowed land

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