Snippet #2421935

These people were crazy, Theon was certain of it. He was crazy too, of course, but these people all had death wishes, and that was a whole other brand of crazy. They were only flying deathtraps, so far away from the ground that they'd all end up little splats of red when they destroyed each other by firing fucking cannons at each other at point blank range. This was insanely stupid. Gritting his teeth, Theon ran at near top speed across the plank to the other ship, noticing the toaster's rather impressive efforts at drawing attention. His attack resulted in a pile of soliders all clambering to get untangled from one another.

They were soon to be a bunch of meat, of course. Theon pulled the duckfoot from his belt, cocked it, and unloaded a blast on the run into the mass of flesh, blowing large holes in most of them, splashing the others with bits of blood, bone, and brain matter. The gun didn't even fly out of Theon's hand this time, so he stashed and took up the axe instead, catching the first wrist that he came across, stopping a sword slash cold and responding by splitting the bastard's skull down to his mouth with his axe.

The violence had almost made him forget how high up in the air he was, but the next blast of one of their cannons reminded him. They couldn't shoot these fucking things if they had no crewmen left to load and fire, so that was what he set about doing, sprinting towards the nearest crew, slamming his axe into the first's lower back, all the way to the spine. Tossing him aside he grabbed the cuff of the second's shirt. "Grow some wings for me," he said, before casting the man over the edge. Perhaps it was worth analyzing, how Theon desired to inflict what he feared upon others. If only he were the type to do such a thing.

He was not, of course. He would sooner remove men of their heads, as he proved immediately after. The killing spree was interrupted, however, when the last crew member plowed into him weaponless, driving him too quickly towards the edge. His legs bumped up against it, and there was a push on his chest, sending him over. Sheer terror alone made him grab the man's shirt and pull him over, too. He yelped in horror just as Theon grabbed hold of the railing, and the soldier wrapped his arms firmly around the scryer's waist.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" he shouted repeatedly. He tried to shake the soldier off, but he had a hold on Theon's axe arm. "What are you doing? Let go! You want to kill us both?!" The silence seemed to answer in the affirmative. That was when another of the soldiers appeared on the other side of the railing, knife in hand. Theon glared murderously at him. "I got one of your buddies here, asshole. You're not gonna kill one of your friends, are you?"

Again, the silence seemed to answer in the affirmative.

There was one fatal flaw in the soldier's judgement. He forgot to check behind him. The last thing he would ever feel was the cold kiss of steel against his neck. A pull of a trigger and a resounding boom later, and there was hardly anything left of his face. A mist engulfed those unfortunate enough to be caught in front of him with blood and grey matter. He slunk into the deck and his killer took his place. A smiling face with a hint of disappointment greeted Theon. Vivi was not impressed with her brother's showing. A series of tsk's escaped her mouth as she looked over the poor sight.

"Come on Teo, you're better than this," She said, propping an elbow up on the railing. She then glanced further over the railing and noticed that Theon had company. Making friends without her, it looked like. "Uh, Teo? You've got something on you. Here, I'll get it for you." With that, Vivi leaned on the railing, dangerously stretching herself out into the open expanse below them all and placed a gun to the hanger-on's head. She wasn't foolish, she angled the barrel away from Theon. The look of absolute despair and fright in the soldier's eyes did nothing to abate Vivi's nonchalance, as she pulled the trigger like it was any other chore. Another boom, and Theon would find himself an entire person lighter.

Not one to keep her brother hanging, Vivi reeled herself back over on the deck and holstered her pistol. Then she mounted the railing with a hop, keeping Theon between her feet. With reckless abandon befitting the spitfire, she leaned over the railing and grabbed a handful of the back of Theon's shirt and hauled. Setting the gap of her soles in the railing she arched her back and yanked, trying to reel Theon over edge once more. "Now. You can't be going overboard like that. I don't know what I'd do without you," She said, displaying the sole hint of emotion-- other than excitement-- during the entire boarding. If she wasn't so damn she that she could haul him back in, she'd be freaking out. Vivi just hoped he didn't see the way she had cut a swath toward him the moment his feet left the deck.

"You," She said, jamming an acusing finger in his chest, "Are not leaving my sight again."

"You had no problem leaving me last time," he reminded her sullenly. Between nearly falling to his death and then being rescued by his sister, he was not in the best of moods, and he certainly didn't feel like being scolded. He pushed past her and started reloading his duckfoot. He wasn't sure if he'd meant to say that. Things had changed since the argument that resulted in Vivi abandoning Theon and his raiders, but he still found it irksome for her to act all clingy now, when it had been she who'd left. Maybe that was just the bad mood speaking. He was getting a headache from it all. He needed to kill someone else. The raging spark that had been in her eye moments ago was snuffed out instantly. Her mouth shut tightly, never nearing the everpresent grin that always seemed to make its home on her lips. Her body went rigid and mechanical as Mordecai's. Vivi wordlessly unsheathed her sword and went about mopping up, though the joy in the act had all been but sucked out.

Gwen, meanwhile, was encountering some difficulties of her own. A good captain, she had absurdly retained from someone’s drunken opinion on the matter, was a person unafraid to lead a charge into enemy territory. She wanted, very much, to be a good captain. The problem was, while she was indeed quite willing to get up close and personal with the kinds of people who would try to kill her friends and tear her beloved Elysium out of the sky, this was not to say she was entirely capable. While a crack shot with just about any kind of firearm, Gwen was a very small person, indeed, and as small people do, she tended to get tossed around quite easily. This, she thought to herself as she hit the deck, shoulderblades first, with a hard thud, was perhaps only compounded by the fact that she didn’t really know how to fight at such short distances.

She’d swapped to her pistol, of course, she wasn’t that stupid, but she wasn’t going to accidentally hit one of her crew or the Guild members because of all the moving around they were doing, which left her options rather limited, moreso when someone or another managed to slip past Gadget and pressure her in close quarters. Gwen yelped, ducking the incoming sweep of a scimitar, flinching a little when she felt the ends of a few hairs give, making her quite aware that her dodge had been somewhat spare as far as such things went. From her crouch, she used her legs to add force to the metal-handed punch she swung at his gut, but that only doubled him over for a few seconds, not long enough for her to reload.

He went low as she slipped the bullet into the chamber, and she managed to close it before she had to leap back into a one-handed spring, propelling herself as far away as she could. Alas, she landed atop a body rather than the deck wood she’d been expecting, which naturally tripped her, and she landed hard on her rear this time. Rolling her eyes to herself, she cocked the hammer and fired in one smooth motion, dropping the fellow she shot and picking herself up with a huff. She wasn’t really used to fighting, but she wasn’t going to tell anyone else that. She’d been raised an engineer, not a soldier, but what these people needed from her right now was a captain, and that meant she’d just have to do better.

That started now. Noting that the siblings seemed to be occupied, she sought the automaton instead. “Gad-get!” she sing-songed, barreling ahead of the majority of the fight and drawing even with Mordecai. “Please inquire of that gentleman you’re currently maiming as to the location of his captain. We have a message to send to Artorias, and I’d like it to get through.”

The skyship sailor, hearing what might be an opportunity to survive the things this machine was capable of, spoke up at once. “C-cabin. Fortified door. Please don’t kill me.” The man looked as though he’d honestly probably lost control of his bladder already, which she supposed might be a natural reaction when someone like Mordecai was tearing his way through your friends. She felt a bit sorry for him, really.

“We won’t,” she promised, with a smile that was probably not at all reassuring. “Unconscious only, please, Gadget. Then follow me, if you would. You seem like a great way to get by a reinforced door.”

Mordecai had no objections to this plan, and so, with a decisive motion, he brought the sailor’s head into contact with his knee and dropped the man there, following Gwendolyn down a series of stairs and then to what appeared to be the largest door on the ship. It was, in fact, reinforced, bands of steel crossing the wood on the outside and probably the inside as well. He studied it for a moment, then looked to the captain for confirmation that this was the door she wanted destroyed. At her nod, the automaton drew back a few steps, drawing even with the wall on the opposite side of the hallway. He was capable of breaking down the portal without any additional momentum… in one of his combat modes. As he had yet to engage one of these, he would need a bit of extra wallop.

His visual sensors picked up the most likely weak spot, and, digging his feet into the wood of the floor, he propelled himself forward into a leap, not unlike the one that Gwen had made for his person when she decided to test his reflexes the other day. Unlike that particular instance, however, this one did not end with him rebounding off the surface in question and landing on the floor. Rather, there was a mighty crack, and splinters of wood flew everywhere, a few nails from the steel supports joining them. Mordecai shifted in time to block the worst of these from hitting the captain’s less-durable human flesh, and when the door did not simply fall over, he instead ripped it from its hinges with a great groaning of planks and metal, throwing it inwards as a resounding round of gunfire perforated the air.

The door itself crashed into the captain of this vessel, bringing him down and wrenching the firearm from his hands. Mordecai wasted no time in leaping in after it, fishing the fellow out from under the metal and wood, using one of his hands to bind the man’s wrists in a hold that probably qualified as viselike, and the other to lift him into the air and set him down again atop the ruined door.

Gadget really did some excellent work, Gwen reflected as he used the massive door to block any incoming bullets. Really, if she’d just given him the message and told him what to tell this man, she would have been entirely superfluous. Then again, she liked to think she brought a certain element of style to it that perhaps Mordecai’s monotone might not have managed. Casually strolling in after the automaton, she eyed the captain with thinly-veiled contempt. The man was thin, though not lanky. More like… mousy, and the equally-slender moustache adorning his upper lip was doing him no favors in the respectability department. He looked incredibly frightened, but she supposed she could forgive him that much. Gadget was quite the opponent to face down, and her own blasé attitude, and the pistol held loosely in her flesh-hand, were likely not helping him believe he was going to survive.

“Name?” she asked, the syllable too saccharine to be at all genuine, and he flinched a bit before answering, looking furtively between the weapon in her hand and the golem holding him, apparently giving it up as useless to do anything but comply and bet on their mercy. “C-Captain Kurt Longfellow, ma’am.” He looked almost like he wanted to salute, which was kind of cute, but naturally, the lock-hold Mordecai had on him prevented most, if not all, movement.

“Well, Captain,” Gwen replied, eyeing him a bit like a hungry dog eyes a steak, “My name is Captain Gwendolyn Skybound, and I’m curious to know what possessed you to fire on my ship with no provocation.” She was mostly taunting him, now… no doubt Artorias had demanded the Elysium be shot down on sight. He didn’t have the greatest patience with his enemies, though she’d honestly never expected to be counted in that number. Her father had been a friend and advisor to the King. Strange, how things could change so quickly.

“P-please, ma’am… I’m just f-following my orders. He said… t-traitors to the crown.” This caused her eyebrows to furrow, creasing her forehead in a rare show of disquiet. Swiftly, she remembered herself and resumed the act. Cocking the pistol, she pressed it to his temple, feeling no satisfaction from the fear that played so fiercely over his rapidly-paling face.

“Traitor? Me? Someone needs to remind that man of a few things…” The fingers of her free, metal hand flexed with a faint sound, and she could almost feel the phantom pain of the limb that used to be there. Her jaw tightened, and abruptly she moved, pointing the gun at the wall and firing off a shot into the wood. The barrel smoked faintly, and Gwen cracked a smile. “Here’s how this is going to go, Whiskers. A traitor is going to show you more mercy than your king would in the same situation. You’re going to think about that later, but not right now. At this moment, you are going to get yourself to your cockpit, call off your dogs, and land this pile of shit you call a ship at the nearest port. You’re going to speak of what happened to no one until you can make your way back to Galatea and get yourself an audience with the king. You’ll tell him that the Lady Steele sent you, and he’ll let you in just fine.

“Once you’re there, you’re going to tell him that she is very disappointed in him, and that if he wants to bring this Guild down, he’s going to have to go through her, and he’ll need to try a whole lot harder than this. You’re going to ask him if any trace of the man she knew is even left under that damned crown, and you’re going to express her hope that it does. Is that perfectly clear?” At the squirrely man’s nod, she grinned broadly. “Good, I rather thought so too. Gadget, please escort the captain to his flight deck.”

Sure enough, Gwen had reached the deck not two minutes later, when to the surprise of all the vipers aboard, an announcement rang out. “Men, this is Captain Longfellow. Stand down and surrender. We’re withdrawing.” Incredulous they may be, but they were soldiers still, and to a man, those still conscious threw down their weapons and backed away from them, though none looked pleased with the development. For her part, Gwendolyn spoke immediately afterwards. “That’s a wholesale surrender, folks, so let’s get the hell out of here before those cannons put any more holes in my ship. We have a key to find!”