Stairdweller

Diving into The Abyss - A Shattered World

The Order handler for the Valkyrie was the first to address Sef, so he dealt with his request first. Truth be told, he was a little uncomfortable having the creature aboard ship. Actual flight was enviable to a man who had only ever been able to glide, but he didn't trust he shattertech and had a sinking suspicion that it was going to break at some point and he would be help responsible. Nevertheless, he signed and initialled the relevant papers.

"I trust you can find your own way aboard, Miss Angel?" he said, addressing the Order Asset in question. "You are quartered with the mechanical engineers, I believe, if I remember my crew manifest properly. Unless you require an escort?" He turned back to Sonne and Lord Gearheart, clearly dismissing the winged Halfling.

"Ah yes, the troop transfers," he nodded to his fellow - senior - airship captain. This was Vossef's first voyage on anything larger than a frigate. "I appreciate the borrowed manpower, and I am sure the soldiers will appreciate the danger pay."

He signed off on those papers as well, taking his own copies and adding them to the folder he had carried from the quartermasters' office. "If you will excuse me, my Lord?"

Finally, he turned to Sonne, as he began to stride toward the airship's loading ramps. "I would like to get underweigh as quickly as possible; preferably as soon as the crew has all been accounted for." He knew first hand that the cargo was, for the most part, loaded; he had yet to speak to the admin staff that were responsible for signing in the crew members. "Perhaps in the interim, a quick tour of ships facilities?"

Diving into The Abyss - A Shattered World

I'll have a post up tomorrow morning; sorry for the wait, but something came up and ate my time.

ZONES: -system offline-

E.A. "Bobby" Smith

@Twisted Fate@Empour@UrbanEvolution@ScarlettWaters16

Bobby watched Land-Diver plummet over the edge of the building in mild horror. A crueller person might have thought something like 'that's not a very useful ability,' but Bobby was more concerned with an internal rant about why it was nearly all kids on this damn mission. He'd seen other adults in the cafeteria; why hadn't any of them volunteered? He was half-way through vaulting over the edge of the roof when he saw Henry break the scuba-suited Zoner's fall. Which was good, because there was no physical way he could have gotten down there fast enough to be helpful. Bobby turned his vault into more of a rappel, skidding down the side of the building by digging his claws into the façade enough to slow his fall but not enough to stop himself.

Henry and Miriam were causing enough of a commotion to afford Bobby a chance to sneak over toward where the winged girl was drawing fire. "C'mon, Twinkle," he whisper-shouted, stealing Miriam's nickname for his fighting buddy. He crouched low and ran between different spots of moderate cover, working his way around the building and looking for a weak point. A pair of aggressors armed with nail-studded hunks of broken furniture surprised him as he emerged from behind a pile of overturned park benches. They seemed pretty surprised, too.

Bobby jabbed a lightning-quick strike at the closest one's eyes, claws extended to dig into the sockets as thick goo sprayed out around his fingers. The power of his punch drove his black claws through the backs of its eye sockets, into its brain and it collapsed, boneless and twitching at his feet. Bobby wrenched his arm, but his hand was unfortunately stuck and the collapsing Aggressor dragged him stumbling forward. The other one's improvised club swished though the space his head had only recently vacated.

"L'il help here, buddy?"

ZONES: -system offline-

Sorry for not mentioning you, @ScarlettWaters16; I thought Jazz wasn't there yet.

ZONES: -system offline-

E.A. "Bobby" Smith

@Scarlettwaters16
@UrbanEvolution
@Twisted Fate
@Empour

"Someone who can do distance attacks should probably support that Denizen with the rifle," Bobby suggested. "Or even just try to draw some fire offa him." He looked at the fighting; neither side seemed to have spotted them yet. "They ain't seen us yet, either. We oughtta take advantage of that."

He looked around at the four others, trying to get an idea of their abilities. He pointed a claw at Miriam and Jared. "You two can fly, so I think you should come in from the top of the building. Henry should probably attack head on, what with being a giant lizard monster and all. I'll be part of the ground attack too, but I think I'm better off acting a little stealthier." He eyed Land-Diver. "What do you do? Can you do distance attacks? Could you try to help out our Denizen friend?"

Island in a Sea of Death

"I'm not a nurtitionist," Abby said, eyeing the men moving bodies out of the building, She was going to need to find out where they were taking those. She had some questions about the rate of decomposition - not to mention that she needed to collect more specimins.

"I think I said that wrong. What I meant was I've spent most of my life in the bush, and I've made a point of knowing that I can eat. I can find edible plants, mushrooms, shellfish, all kinds of nutritious and delicious things. So when the IMPs and canned baby corn or whatever the Walmart run comes up with are running out, I'll be happy to be teaching anyone who wants to learn to forage to do so."

She checked a few of the open lockers until she found a clean one - number forty-three. She placed her backpack inside, careful of the contents. It felt wonderful to have even the limited security of four thin metal walls again. Not for the first time, she wished she had a car instead of arriving on foot.

"Thank you for letting me share your laboratory. I'm not a medical doctor, but I have some questions that need answering about this whole "zombie" plague and I figure a scientist is ascientist, right?"

She locked her locker and turned to face the Japanese sergeant. "But I think you have some misapprehensions about how this apocalypse thing is going to play out. As of two weeks ago, we're back in the dark ages. We've got no electricity - even if we find enough gas to run the generator, it'll have gone stale in a year or two and be no use to us. We've got no infrastructure for mass production of food, either. At least three quarters of everyone is dead. Even if the rabids were gone tomorrow, we're going to have a monumentally hard time just keeping basic life running. There's never been a disaster like this.

"So, what I'm saying is, everyone's going to have to pull their weight. Your soldiers are great at what they do, and they're a far sight better than some civillian with a hammer, I agree." She patted the hammer at her side. "But we're going to have a lot of other things that need doing. We're going to need people bringing in water from that lake; we're going to need people watching the children; before long we're going to have to start farming if we want to stay alive. And we're going to need craftspeople, construction workers fortifying our settlement, we're going to need to find out of there are other survivors out there we can trade with. There isn't going to be any room for just being alive and happy, Sergeant."

Island in a Sea of Death

No, I'm still here. Sorry, got a bit busy.

ZONES: -system offline-

Bobby saw the two airborne Zoners arrive, joined quickly by Henrysaurus - he was hard to miss - and land-diver. They'd all decided to congregate on a roof a slight distance away; but Bobby had rapidly learned that his long, ungulate legs were fantastic for jumping, so he alternately sprinted across roofs and leapt streets until he had joined them.

"Hey!" he smiled without showing his teeth. No need to show off the chompers when he was covered in drying blood to his furry elbows. "'M Bobby. I got a pretty good look at the Aggressors from my roof over there. Two big ones, lots of little ones - counted twenty-five, probably more, they were moving 'round a lot. They're all concentrating on one of the warehouses, but I couldn't get a good look at it from where I was. They've got some barriers and junk walls set up, too."

He crouched down, pointing at the map with his right middle claw. "Nice map. This alley," he traced it, "ends up sorta in the mid-back of the pack. None of 'em were watching it; I think it would be a good attack point. On the other hand," he pointed to a different street, "this one comes out right next to where the two big'uns are hanging around, but it looks like they've got it blocked off. I dunno if we can get through that way."

The Continental

I am still around.

ZONES: -system offline-

Nora and Bobby

"It's kind of gamy," Nora replied thoughtfully after swallowing her mouthful of Aggressor. "There is a strong after-taste of aldolase. The zinc balances it nicely though." She finished the piece in silence. The texture was reminiscent of raw tuna.

When the message from Eli came through - she piked it up on her ear knobs - she nodded a curt goodbye to Jazz. "I believe I will go to track this helmeted villain. It sounds like it could be informative." The bird-girl headed off. Nora ripped off a larger chunk of triceps with her mechanical arm before she left too, continuing to eat as she jogged back to the entrance tunnel.

Some distance away through through the half-shadowed streets, Bobby trotted toward the north side of the city. He occasionally climbed a building to get a look at the lay of the land, navigating northward to keeping the sun on his left. He didn't have to wonder if he was getting close when he heard the sounds of gunfire and general calamity ahead. He scaled another, taller building an could see, distantly, the roiling red forms of the Aggressors. He leapt across a narrow street onto a rooftop nearer the battle, and began looking for a good way to get started. These Aggressors were a lot bigger than the one he'd mauled in the alley.