EliteCommander

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

"Right there with ya, city-boy." Lorag added. Just the same as Janius, he went through his transformation as he rushed forward. Once Janius pounced on one of them, he gave his support by grabbing the spear of one of the mercenaries who had his sights on Janius and snapped it in half with one hand. Of course, there were two more looking to attack Lorag from his left, but they were close enough that he was able to lash out at both of them with his free arm. With a backhanded swipe, he managed to knock both of them clean off of their feet. He ended up cutting himself on one of their swords, but it wasn't enough to stop him from swiping his original target to the ground and tearing him apart with his claws.

Meesei activated her lightning form, then took a few steps to the right to clear a path for her to bolt escape straight into the middle of the group of mercenaries. For the ones that Lorag and Janius were not already handling, they found themselves shocked by nonlethal, but still substantial amounts of electricity from both the bolt escape and lightning form. As she materialized in front of the officer, Meesei conjured up a bound sword and swung for her neck, but the officer was a resilient woman. Despite the shock, she raised up her blade to block Meesei's. strike. "I don't think so! I'll not fall so ea-" The officer began to shout, but she was quickly interrupted by a stream of fire from Meesei's free hand suddenly engulfing her head. Almost immediately, she fell on her back screaming in pain and trying desperately to put out the flames. She was resilient, but not nearly quick enough.

---

For as much as he threatened, the noble was more focused on escaping than anything. he grabbed a key from his pouch, reached down, then unlocked one of the chains at Fendros' feet. "Now, once I get these chains unlocked, you better not think of trying anything. You might be a lycan, but my blade is silver, and it will be at your throat the whole time."

Just as the noble finished speaking, the sound of screaming could be heard somewhere from outside the door. It was hard to tell exactly how far away it was, but it sounded like it was in the building. In another attempt to signal their location, Ahnasha let out the loudest howl she could manage.

"Hey, what are you...no! Quiet!" The noble shouted in panic and frustration. His retribution was fierce and violent. He swung his blade towards her as hard as he could with her blade. His target looked to be her neck, but he was clumsy in his rage and missed by just a few inches. Her right hand, however, was right in the blade's path. It scraped just under most of her fingers with superficial cuts, all except for her smallest finger, which it severed entirely. Ahnasha's howl turned into a pained whimper as her hand was coated in her own blood. She wasn't going to bleed out entirely from the injury, but the silver would certainly inhibit her healing.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

I can wait. I'm running out of threats for the noble.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

The mercenary that Janius initially charged scrambled to his feet in time to see his ally's skull split open. He growled in anger, but did not approach near as recklessly as Janius. Instead, he nodded to his other ally, a Khajiit male, then moved to attack at the same time from different angles. Fortunately for Janius, Meesei and Lorag were not far behind in supporting him. After making it through the mercenaries Janius had ran past to protect Kaleeth, Lorag came charging in with his hammer in full swing.

"Not so fast!" Lorag shouted as his hammer struck the Khajiit's blade hard enough to knock it clean from his hands, which forced him to jump back and draw a measly dagger from his belt. At the same time, Meesei bolt escaped through the other mercenary and reformed on the other side, which stunned him for a good few seconds.

"We're here with you, Janius." Meesei said reassuringly as she and Lorag stood on each side of Janius, ready to help defend Kaleeth. The battle as a whole was now spread throughout the settlement, with nothing even resembling a frontline in sight. Mercenaries and cultists alike were scattered around fighting, but there were a few mercenary officers still trying to organize their men. One of them happened to be nearby, and took notice of the trapped werecrocodile that had been slaughtering her men. As the two mercenaries rapidly backed away, she shouted to them to join her squad. In all, there were now seven mercenaries bearing down on them.

---

"How do you think? I'm going to walk right out of here with one of you at the end of my blade." The noble retorted, pressing the tip of his sword to Fendros' chest, allowing the metal to burn his skin. "If your friends actually care about your lives, then they will not stop me. I only need one of you, and she is in a rather inconvenient form for a hostage at the moment." He commented as he moved his blade back to being mere inches from Ahnasha's throat. "I should just kill you now. Make things simple for me."

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

I'm assuming that is good.

The Depths of Deception

"Huh, what? Hostages? I think - Ahhh! What the-" The Human guard shouted. Given the chemicals still flowing through his system, it wasn't certain if he had even registered that he had been stabbed, only that he was in pain. He was dazed and confused, and had only just started to open his eyes. "Ahh! My hand...and my head! Why does my head hurt so much? It's like-"

"Enough." Rareth interrupted. She was not thrilled with Opus injuring him before they even had a chance to ask a question, but it was the situation they were now in. "You have hostages aboard this station. Where can we find them, or information on where they are?"

"Station? Hostages? What are you...oh no...I remember. The data...it's...the center! The center of the station, go there and - ahh! My head!" He shouted, pressing his free hand to his temple.

To say that the rebel was behaving strangely would be an understatement, but he seemed cooperative, so Rareth needed to get as much information from him as possible, as quickly as possible. "Good, now what can you tell me about the defenses you rebels have?"

"I...I don't...rebels? No, it's not like that, it's..." The guard began before screaming once more, then suddenly going completely silent. Rareth wondered if he had fallen unconscious again when she noticed blood running from his mouth and eyes. She did not quite remember how to check a human's heartbeat, but he appeared quite dead.

"That...was not normal." Rareth commented.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Mercenaries across the settlement were now scattering. Some were still desperately trying to fight in the streets, other were trying to flee into the marsh, while some were fleeing into the homes around them, presumably to protect their families. Kaleeth, meanwhile, could not stop herself from chasing them down. She would partially consume one, then move on to the next one which caught her ire. She was not, however, proceeding uninjured. Her beast spirit was aggressive, and none too strategic in its movements. She would simply charge straight at them, perhaps swatting away their weapons first, which left her with bleeding hands. Her scales provided resistance, but she still had shallow gashes on her back and sides, her shoulder, and her left leg. Not nearly as many of the mercenaries in the town bore silver weapons as in the previous battle, but they were still wounds nonetheless. She was covered in blood that was a mix of the mercenaries' and her own. Even so, she did not relent.

Kaleeth spotted two of the mercenaries run into a narrow alley between two buildings, and her beast spirit compelled her to follow. The pair of Argonians had led themselves into a corner; they were attempting to climb over the walls to escape the settlement, but they did not have near enough time to succeed before Kaleeth was upon them. She rushed forward, straight into a spear that one of her foes stabbed into her upper chest, but nevertheless, she crushed him against a wall. As she used her teeth to pull the weapon from her flesh, the other mercenary's silver blade slashed across her back just below her neck. The silver caused a good deal more pain than most of her other wounds, so it enraged her to the point that she immediately lashed out with a shoulder charge, slamming her foe straight through the wall of the nearest building. Unfortunately, woodrot from the swamp's humidity meant that the structure was not entirely stable. One she took out the wall and a few of the supporting columns within, the entire building started to collapse around her. Kaleeth ran in an attempt to escape in time, but she was not quite fast enough. It collapsed on top of her with her head peering out of the remains, but the rest of her body trapped underneath. Her body likely had enough strength to move the weight on top of her, but the position she was in did not give her enough leverage to take advantage of that strength. Instead, all she could do was growl when she saw a group of three mercenaries rushing to finish her off.

---

Ahnasha could hear the fighting above, the screaming, the spellfire. She knew that the pack had arrived, but she was trapped down in this dungeon and unable to help. She had been unable to sleep since her torture, as her mind had been shifting between despair and rage towards the noble. At the moment, her attitude was leaning more towards rage. She was desperate to get out of her shackles, so much so that she transformed into her werewolf form in the hopes that she could break away from her chains. Her normal wrist irons of course broke as she increased in size, but the secondary shackles were large enough and strong enough to keep her trapped. No matter how hard she jerked at the chains, the anchors in the floor and ceiling were strong enough to hold. She howled as loud as she could in the hopes that one of the pack might hear, which was reasonable, given that they could hear the sounds of battle outside.

A few minutes later, the Argonian noble marched into the room with his ornate silver longsword, not even bothering to close the door behind him. "You think you're saved, aren't you? That I'll just roll over and die while those beasts you call friends come to find you? Don't think that form scares me, you mongrel. Those chains will easily hold you. It isn't as if this will matter, anyway. My men are already attacking your xanmeer as we speak. Thanks to the information you so graciously provided, they will know exactly where to go to strike at their heart. And I hope they slit the throat of your mangy little cub!"

Ahnasha growled at the noble, but silenced herself when he pressed the tip of his blade against her throat. "Face it, I have already won. I don't care about these mercenaries, and you...you're going to get me out of here alive. If your friends so much as think about trying anything, I will end you without a second thought. I only need one of you alive to get out of here."

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

"Okay, okay." Kaleeth stammered out in response to Janius. She shook in fear as she quickly unstrapped her armor and let out the beast that was dying to escape from its prison within her mind. Once the transformation completed, she let out a loud and horrifying roar. To say that she was out of control would not be accurate, but neither was she entirely in control. The beast wanted to feed, so Kaleeth was forced to oblige. She stampeded over a few of the undead thralls to reach the prey within her sights. There was a group of four desperately trying to hide behind the shields of the front two, but those flimsy metal barriers were nothing to her. She swatted their spears out of her path and trampled the first two under her gargantuan form before pouncing on a third. The Imperial woman attempted to go for a silver dagger sheathed on her waist, but she was not faster than Kaleeth's ferocious jaws.

The one who escaped Kaleeth's initial charge slashed towards Kaleeth's head, but found her scales tougher to penetrate than he assumed. The cut certainly drew blood, but its greatest effect was to enrage her. She knocked him clean off of his feet with a backhanded strike, then pounced on him to rip him to shreds with her massive claws.

Neesa observed the carnage from the werecrocodile off to her right and gave a slight chuckle. "Hmm, well I cannot be outdone, now can I?" She commented to herself before setting her sights on a group forming around one of the commanders desperately trying to regain control of his men. Suddenly, and quite surprisingly to the archers trying to target her, Neesa erupted into a swarm of bats and reformed in the dead center of the group, right in front of the commander, not as an Argonian, but in her vampire lord form. She still retained many of her Argonian traits, such as her scales, tail, and general body shape, but was now much larger with wings and jewelry with a certain royal appearance. It was her blood magic, Molag Bal's gift to his pure-blooded vampries, that allowed her to take this form, and it was now at its full strength.

A cloud of bats swarmed around Neesa, biting and draining the life essence of those surrounding her, transferring it to herself. They panicked and swatted in vain at the swarm of flying manifestations of her blood magic, allowing her ample opportunity to deal with their commander. Before he could do anything to resist, she reached out and grabbed him telekinetically, lifting him off of the ground and constricting his airway. She held him in the air in front of her and looked him in the eyes for a few moments before sinking her teeth into his neck.

Star Wars - Shadow of Rebellion

Once the governor is available, I'll have Xan head to the palace, I think.

Star Wars - Shadow of Rebellion

Xan-Rhu-Tor was at the spaceport, leaning against his ship next to its loading ramp, twirling his blaster around his finger. He had saw the battle from its beginning, the Empire taking down LAATs, Y-Wings, and other rebel craft one by one. It was almost surprising, really, given how poorly prepared the planet had seemed beforehand. He had been waiting on the governor for a few days, though, so he reasoned it was likely an intentional ambush. In any case, no rebel force would be taking Belona on this day

"You should really listen to yourself, Xan." He muttered to himself. "You had a bad feeling from the start, and now you're on a planet that is likely filled with rebel survivors. There's no way that could ever make things complicated." Xan let out a sigh. "Whatever, you came here for bounties, and that's what you're going to do."

It had been about half an hour since the fight started, and the air was starting to get to Xan. He wasn't wearing his heated vest, and being a cold-blooded individual, the cool air was not exactly comfortable on his bare scales. He stepped back inside and closed up his ship, enjoying the sensation of the warm air within. He returned to the main hold of the vessel and set his blaster down next to the datapad on the table in the center of the room. Technically, he could head over to the Imperial Palace immediately to await the governor's arrival, but with recent events, that would probably not be a good idea. For a Tiss'shar like him, stormtroopers were hardly friendly at the best of times, and with rebels running around the city, it wasn't going to get any better. Of course, he had all the proper documentation. On his datapad, he had an official invitation from the governor herself, scannable for easy verification. He was a guest of the Empire on Belona. That, however, would matter little if they shot on sight. He didn't feel that killing the Empire's soldiers would be great for first impressions, even if they didn't care about their lives.

For the moment, Xan sat down in a chair, leaned back with his feet up on the table, a hand on his blaster, and his eye on the loading ramp. Until the city settled down a bit, he was fine right where he was.

Star Wars - Shadow of Rebellion

The rebels are just going to love Xan.

I'm currently in the process of catching up in the story, so I can figure out how to start.