[center][h3]Vebra

~|Day 2 ATC, 13th hour, Strike Team Base of Operations|~[/h3][/center]

Vebra felt his knee pop as he raised it above his stomach to step up a branch, he was careful to keep his full weight on the branch rather than the dirt right next to it. His goal was to do as much as he could to leave as few tracks as possible. He had half a mind to start carrying a broom with him just to brush away his tracks, but that was a bit over board even for his paranoid self. It was a bit easier for Raj to hide his tracks since his looked like an animals anyways. Three toes, two facing forward and one reverse, they had noticed tracks similar to that when they left the base on their first scouting mission. Vebra was just hoping that they didn't run into what ever had left those tracks.

Vebra's ankle then popped as he finally planted his other foot on the dirt beyond the tree branch. "[i]Blast, I'm getting old.[/i]" Vebra said under his breath, making sure his helmet speakers didn't pick it up. Who would have thought him of all people would get old, that was just ridiculous, some might even say the Force was looking out for him. "Hey Raj, mind slowing down a bit? Not all of us have droid legs." Vebra said with a tone a doting father might use. Raj had gotten quite far ahead of him and was being rather quite for some reason. Vebra pulled up the distance on his visor and found they were only about a hundred meters or so away from the Strike base. Something was off if he wasn't talking Raj likely heard something he hadn't. [i]Raj and his vaping implants[/i] Vebra thought to himself. 

Vebra came up next to Raj was about to chew out his subordinate for not responding when he felt it. Something stalking, he couldn't see it but there was something stalking them. Vebra raised his rifle and so did Raj, something was off. Then suddenly blaster fire rang out ahead, and then another shot. "Let's double time it then Raj." He gave out a quick "yessir" and the pair began running toward where they had heard the blaster fire. Vebra began letting his boots sink heavy into the rich and moist soil since he didn't much care about stealth now. The mud splattered up his legs leaving him even more covered in dirt than he already was.

Just as they were about to crest a small hill to where they had heard the shots come from a pair of small quadrupeds jumped out of the various dense tall shrubbry and attacked them. One went for Raj's torso and one for Vebra's hands, almost like it knew what it was. Luckily his now aging body hadn't lost its reflexes just yet. He squeezed the trigger tight letting a half-dozen bolts loose into the body of the creature as it's claws scrapped on his arm bracers and found no place to hold onto. The creatures momentum continued into Vebra even though it was very much dead and pushed him off his stance. He batted away the now limp corpse with his free left hand. Not wanting to spend another thought on the creature Vebra looked over to Raj who was crushing the creatures skull with his robotic foot, dousing his foot in blood. 

"Well they did get into something." Vebra quipped.

"Yeah and we get to save them like always." Raj said with irritation in his voice.

"Come on we still don't know who fired those shots yet." Vebra said reaffirming his grip on his short barreled blaster rifle.

The pair continued up the hill and through a few bushes where they found another pair of humanoids. A soldier Vebra knew as Eli and Fa, with a few of those dead things at their feet. "Is this seriously what you called me about Fa? Some rodents?" Vebra noticed some rustling to Fa's left and quickly brought his blaster rifle to bear. He dropped to one knee and began burst firing blaster rounds into the forest, leaving scorched leaves and trees in his wake.