[center][h2]Egg Heist[/h2][/center] [center][b]I[/b][/center] Despite everyone involved in the plan being either illiterate or hostile to each other, they had actually managed to draw up a pretty good plan. They’d wait until all the Soul Arms had been forged and then steal them from right under the Daman Clans’ noses in a swift operation set to take place late at night. Even New Dama’s particularly intimidating security forces would not have been an issue at all… That is, if things went according to plan, and they never do as Melena the Bright had quickly learned. Everything had started off great with the Security patrol being taken out by Boot and his goons. It was the moment they forced the Temple of the Bronzed Bloom’s lock that everything went to hell, because an alarm in the form of parrots lining the ceiling started to blare and scream. Their small bodies glowed with the telltale light of soul users, and every squawk and screech that came from their beaks sent shockwaves throughout the Temple’s Hall. One of the three people that formed a part of Melena’s group, a tall and lanky avian mercenary called Pico clad in fancy ambroisen laced leather armour barked out an order that Melena couldn’t quite hear and then him and his two Eunomian brothers (a black furred horned rat-man covered in various gadgets named Deckard and a tawny beige skinned human who went by Jim and was an inconspicuous as they come) darted deeper into the Temple, disappearing behind one of the doors to either side of the altar. Melena had no choice but to follow. [center][b]II[/b][/center] Outside and lined along the edge of the Temple’s ornamental slanted roof crouched a number of raggedy hooded figures. Everyone seemed to twitch every time a parrot screeched its alarm until the leader of the figures, Boot, was called by a short lynx-eared woman. She took her eye off her monocular to grimace at the Rhinokin. “They faster than thought, bos. Too dosen comin’. Even got Otori.” Boot nibbled at the inside of his cheek. This would be an expensive night, he realised as he turned towards the huge cloaked figure sitting on the roof behind everyone else and nodded with a grunt. “Bust out ya thing. Ya know, tha thing.” The hulking figure nodded, reached to his side and picked up an oversized trumpet case and with a click upended it up to reveal a… well trumpet “What you bring the wrong ca-” one of the funkies began to say, before a finger was raised, the instrument extracted and then with a click the trumpet split perfectly in the centre, revealing the insides to be covered in magmatic gems and crystal wiring as the two halves slid appart to become the rails of the condeable launcher. The demon grinned beneath the hood, flipped open a hidden compartment that held the ammo and slipped it into the base of the rails, which gripped it and hung it in the air. The instrument primed, all that was needed was for it to have a focalice of its cacophonous performance. “Dam!” The lynx-girl hissed and pointed at the group of soldiers jogging down the main avenue called Bloom’s Walk, weaving through the empty stalls haphazardly parked all over the place. A single Otori Berserker that towered over everyone else shouted something unintelligible while pointing up at Boot’s unmistakable silhouette. “Shood shood!” She urged the demon, before being picked up by the back of her hood and moved aside by that same Demon. She let out a little hiss as she unceremoniously landed on her butt. “What ya waiting for, Horns?” Huffed Boot. A grunt was Bot’s reply, before the demon casually raised the disk launcher and fed power into them, causing an energetic hum before the explosive frisbee shot along the rails and then down into the approaching troopers. Expert and unhurried professional that he was, the demon had primed the disk near perfect, the projectile detonating in a flash of chaotic red lightning only a blink after it slammed into the Otori Berserker’s skull. In the blink of an eye, what had been Eleanna’s Gate and the beginning of Bloom’s Walk turned into a sea of red flames and crackling lightning. Screams rang out from inside the houses lining the Walk as well as from the surviving members of the rapid response team as they stared at their missing and/or charred limbs. It was chaos. It was also the first time Boot had seen the disc launchers in action. “Dam!” hissed the wild lynx girl. “Holy hell… Not even a fly left…” Muttered a one-eyed frog-man. “Smells like mum’s cooking.” Shared a free silvan with a nostalgic smile on his face. Everyone gave the silvan man a look. “We’re never eating at yours, mate.” Said an owl-man, feathers puffed out so much he looked more like a stuffed toy than a real person. “Keep it ready, Horns. More comin’ fo’ sure.” “Mmmm” the demon replied simply, already rejuicing the batteries of the launcher, a second disk held in hand ready to be loaded in for the next explosive hit. Given the veritable concert worth of spare ammo the case held, and the wicked size of the demon’s horns, there’d be plenty more before the night was done. [center][b]III[/b][/center] Melena had always been told that she was talented. She’d always been told that she’d go far, and she never questioned it. Now, as she struggled to keep up with the swiftness of the foreign Eunomian mercenaries, she realised that talent and experience couldn’t really be compared. She made a mental note to apologise to Sun-Downer if she ever saw him again as she made one last turn and crashed into Jim’s back. As they tumbled to the floor, she saw a large muscular woman with the fins of a shark holding a warhammer squaring off against Pico. A young silvan boy was perched behind her on top of a big shelf, pointing a glinting crossbow at them. “C-Crystallista!” Melena called out, struggling to get back on her feet with Jim trying to do the same. The nondescript man seemed to have a better time of it, stumbling and scrambling almost comically instead of hitting the deck entirely. However, rather than foolishness an expert paying close attention would have noticed how every movement flowed seamlessly into the next, and how the erratic movement threw off the aim of the crossbowman and assessed him as a master of his own body. A layman would have been able to reach the same conclusion based on the fact that Jim managed to draw a pistol from his jacket pocket and fire off a shot while this was all going down, the stone thrower hurling a maeliteian diamond as its projectile. The gemstone slug hit the boy’s crystallista head on. A loud crack followed a flash of light as the boy was thrown from his perch and against an opposite wall. A moment of silence took over the room. Then the gorilla Smith roared and charged, swinging her hammer wildly. Melena rolled out of the way of an overhead strike -the bricks she had just been standing on turned into dust by the force behind the warhammer- and kicked the Smith in the back of her knee, forcing her to buckle with a high-pitched yelp. Jim, his pistol already smoothly reloaded during the moment of silence, helpfully stepped in and pressed the stone-thrower’s muzzle to the smith’s forehead and then cocked an eyebrow at Melena as if to ask her what to do with this one. Melena furrowed her brow, then stood up straight and dusted her trousers. A quick glance at the boy slumped inbetween two barrels in the corner of the room was enough for her to acknowledge that he was still breathing, eliciting a sigh of relief from deep within herself before she turned to the apekin Smith. “C’mon Mus, this kinda crap is exactly why you never made the cut...” Melena half-smiled at the Smith. Mus’ reply was a mere scoff, her eyes locked on the barrel of Jim’s pistol. “D, got the cuffs?” Melena called out to Deckard. “If it will get you lot to quiet down and let me finish working then yes” came a shout from the rat man kneeling by the door to the basement, who rummaged around in his jacket pockets for a moment and then tossed over a contraption that could only be loosely described as cuffs. It was more a central gemstone out of which four tendrils of stone extending from it. These could wrap around the subject’s arms forming a much more snug and tight fit than simple iron manacles. Jim shrugged, indifferent at this show of mercy, and then held the gun in place until the maniciles were in place before smoothly stashing his weapon again. Moments after they were done with the smith there was a quiet click and victorious squeak of “I’m in!” as Deckard finished dealing with the door of the basement, having used a bunch of levitated pebbles as a lockpick. The door swung open and the ratman stepped back and gestured thatricaly to the now open entrance to the underground “Ladies and gentlemen first, genius scoundrels second yes?” to which Jim simply rolled his eyes and casually strolled on into the danger ahead of his longtime partner. Melena huffed and pushed her way past Jim and into the darkness of the basement. “We have no time for casual strolling, Jimbo!” She declared as she rushed all the way down the spiral staircase and fed some of her soul into the lightning system. A series of ceiling lamps lit up in sync after a second, just bright enough to allow one to see, but not so bright that they emitted much heat. “Hmm… Soul Arm Eggs… Maybe if I look under ‘E’... Nope… What about ‘A’ for Arms…? Sticks…!” Melena muttered to herself as she began looking through the alphabetically-sorted dozens of shelves. “Oh no, this is why I always hated picking stuff up from this place…!” She groaned as her search gradually became more and more desperate. There was a cough from down by the oversized S section to which Jim had sauntered while she was panicking. Once he had her attention he held up a hand showed her an unwrapped cloth ball that held a ring within, and then pointed a finger up to where his ratty companion had scrambled all the way to the top of the shelves and was busy stuffing the rest of the rag wrapped rings into his jacket pockets while complaining “Bits of a god and they don’t even have their own box, let alone a vault or something?!” Melena blew a stray strand of hair away from her face, sighed, and placed down a random weapon handle back onto the shelf she’d been busy ruining. “It pisses me off too, it’s like they don’t care about Lady Eleanna at all.” She shook her head and swiped the ring that Jim held, stuffing it into her own pocket. “Let’s g-” BOOM The temple rumbled. Dust fell from the ceiling. A lamp broke. After regaining her footing, Melena’s lion ears caught wind of a pair of people descending down the staircase, just in time for her to turn around and see Pico and a short, hooded lynx-woman appear. “Milleeon sol-deers comin, Mel! Bos had ta run! We run to!” The lynx woman explained quickly and ran back up the stairs. Melena gave a quick glance to the Eunomian mercenaries, and then she followed the lynx woman. The pair shared a glance for a half second, before the rat man cursed, grabbed the last few rings, and then leapt down from the shelf into Jim’s awaiting arms. There was no time for embracing however, and the duo swiftly hurried after the natives. It was time to blow this joint. And blow it up they did. As soon as they came up the stairs, they saw the massive hole in the wall, leading to the back gardens of the Temple and currently guarded by a single massive demon and a pair of panting, dagger-wielding outlaws. A lanky chameleon man immediately shot his tongue at Deckard’s soul-arm stuffed pockets. In the blink of an eye, a hole had been torn into Deckard’s jacket and more than a handful of the soul arms had been taken by the Chameleon man, who spit the soul arm rings back out and stuffed them into the front of his trousers. “What the hell!” Pico yelled. Jim, ever so stoic, pulled out his pistol and shot a diamond shard at the chameleon, who simply stepped to the side and dodged the bullet. “Stewpids.” He hissed and disappeared into thin air. The other outlaw looked between the space where the chameleon man had been and the eunomian merc squad a few times before shakily throwing a dusklander smoke bomb at his feet and vanishing. “Sticks!” Melena cursed, turning to inspect Deckard quickly, with the large demon still observing. “D, you okay?! Those perverts betrayed us!” “Perverts is the right word, who just tongues a guy like that!” Deckard bitterly complained, wiping his ruined jaked clear of residual spit, then accepted a handkerchief from Jim to do a better job of it. The big demon cleared his throat and then jerked his head to the side to indicate they should get moving. “Right right let’s move. I can't believe I’m thankful they didn't have a box for them now!” Deckard said as he made to move, pawing through his jacket to check what they had left while Jims stepped ahead to guard his partner better this time while the Big demon took up the rear of their formation. As dozens of footsteps echoed through the temple and the courtyard and surrounding structures were being consumed by a blazing inferno, Melena spurred into action and led everyone (Jim, Deckard, Pico, the Demon and the Lynxgirl) down to the far end of an unassuming alley and lifted a large iron grating with a grunt, having had to burn some soul to do it. As soon as everyone had jumped into the newly-built sewers, she followed and closed the grating behind them. And just like that, they had escaped the manhunt. And since Melena knew the sewers like the back of her hand thanks to her experience working as a sanitation specialist years ago, she also knew exactly how to lose her ‘companions’ in the sewers as well. She, after all, had plans for the Soul Arm she had snatched from Jim. [hider=Summary] A group of elite mercenaries raid the Temple of the Bronzed Bloom in the centre of New Dama. A small group consisting of Melena (a Daman lion-kin), Deckard (an Eunomian rat-kin), Jim (a dude), and Pico (an Eunomian bird-kin), all break into the Temple and set off an alarm. After quite the fiery start to the raid (a Disc-launching Demon setting fire to the entire city centre) after destroying the Daman rapid response squad, the mercenary group inside the Temple move quickly into the smithy section, take out the Smith and her apprentice and then steal as many Soul Arms as they can. When things start to get hairy outside, the group leaves. They get betrayed by the outlaws that had formed part of their raid, who steal a bunch of the soul arms, and once everyone’s recovered from the surprise, they escape the scene by going into the sewers. There, Melena splits from the Eunomian mercenaries, taking a soul arm with her. [/hider] [hider=Might] Eleanna- 5 Might None spent 5 Might Remaining Xavior- 5 Might None spent 5 Might Remaining [/hider]