"Tssk, Tssk, Tyrael, so pessimistic. I trust you; well, I trust you to do what's best for you, which is a kind of trust..." John turns to Zesiro, raising an eyebrow "Pfft, yeah, sure thing boss. I'd love to run ahead of you and soak up any bullets that come flying your way." the old soldier then sighs, straightens himself and reapplies his winning smile. "Not like I've got anything better to do. C'mon then, Tyrael, let's go get our throats cut."

As John passes Zesiro, he presses his thumb to the scanner on his ID and tosses the silver rectangle to the kid "My identification." John says as a small hologram appears above the card, displaying his full biometric data, date of birth (Wheatreap 29th), planet of birth, Legionnaire citizenship, cybernetic permit, as well as his scavenger, shuttle and concealed carry licenses (and three outstanding parking tickets) scrolling by slowly.

“Oh, and kid, some advice from an old soldier: If you don't trust me, maybe you should knock me out or tie me up.” John says conversationally as he continues towards the castle “Not because I'd particularly like that, mind you. I'm retired, after all, and was really enjoying that hardly anyone knocks me out, ties me up or tries to kill me... However seeing as Tyrael here is, no offense, a suspicious looking bastard, you should probably be keeping your attention on him, 'cause I doubt anything short of actually shooting him will slow him down, and your partner doesn't seem to be too keen on participating... So if he decides to do something drastic then you being distracted by what I might be doing could be fatal.”

John flashes a raised eyebrow and a smile over his shoulder “Though if you do trust me you could always toss me my stunner and have another gun at your side. Your call though!”

Charles
“Over the moon…” Rozalind murmured wistfully.

“Their last communication they were headed north from the city of Vladivostok. Communications broke up after that… or Zesiro is ignoring us. Hard to tell which one it is.” She concluded grimly.

“I was part of MERCY. Second to the team leader, Twain.” She glanced at Charles from the corner of her eyes. “Don’t you have everything you need to know in some sort of debriefing folder?” Yet she and Charles both knew that the papers were inadequate.

“Twain.” She inspected her nails. “Is an imbecile. He is careless. He is sloppy. He relies too much on improvisation and too little on planning and preparation. On top of that there is his magic. His magic is… all wrong. You can’t trust anyone who toys around with the natural order of things. He will have you convinced otherwise, trust me, he can talk his way out of anything. Wizards are like that, half their magic is charisma and charm. But talk is cheap, and he knows it. He does have real power. So, if he ever stops talking… best get out of the way.”

“Zesiro, his brother.” Rozalind hesitated, looking a bit more uneasy. “Pity him if you like, but don’t cut him any slack. Whatever the reason he’s on the team he has a job to do.”

“I don’t know anything about the new girl. Gemma, hm? A scientist like you. Perhaps they would like a few more brain-cells in that unit.”

She seemed like she was finished talking. Then, as if she had nearly forgotten his existence added…

“Icarus… He’s more like a ghost than a team member. Twain doesn’t give him any orders, probably because he wouldn’t take any, but he always winds up doing something helpful to the mission.” She shrugged. “He’s a hunter. That is something I understand. What I do not understand is… well…” She touched her finger to her rosy lips, thinking. “He got his ink before joining MERCY. He’s no wizard, so who knows who he sold his soul too in order to get those… some say the devil himself.” She grinned. “The one who hunts the rabbit for dinner is a different type of hunter than the one who hunts the rabbit for its pelt. Icarus… I suspect he does this... for fun.” She sighed. “You’ll never hear him admit it though.”

The aircraft shook. Turbulence. A loud low roar echoed across the mountains.

"Dios Mio." Everyone was on alert.

Ryann, Dimitri, Herbert, William,

Dzel, perhaps, assumed William was the leader. Or perhaps she, like a baby duckling just hatched, had imprinted upon him as he was the first thing she had seen upon waking. Or, perhaps she just needed to be told only once, then Ryann agreed, and the course of action became clear to the knight, who was much more comfortable carrying out strategy than creating it.

She didn’t need to say anything. She picked up her armor from where it lay beside her, the chain mail was still wet with her blood, which had dripped from wounds that were now fully healed. She held the armor under her right arm, and the gun Will had given her in her left hand. She sprung from her place across the room and down the tunnel after William.

As Will traveled he would, of course, find the tunnel that would lead back outside. Or, he found another path, and he could actually follow the long hall further underground.

Karnage, Jon

Zesiro stopped by the body holding the phaser. “ER… I’ll hang on to it. Just go. The boy sounded annoyed. Thinking that this man talked far too much. Like Twain, babbling on and on and on. Zesiro was accustomed to tuning out his brother Twain, and did the same against the words of these two fellows. “Get the hell ahead before whatever-the-hell-that-is catches up with us first.

They would reach the castle further south of Twain, just under the south tower. There were stairs going up it and a bridge that once lead across to the main castle, however, the bridge was broken now. There were feathers in the snow around the tower. Zesiro frowned. There shouldn't be birds at this elevation, nor, should there be men or demons like the two he traveled with now. Nor, for that matter, should he be here...

Vata

They reached the castle in a few moments. Twain and the men began looking for a way inside. The stone walls were tall, but in some places crumbling. They found one such place on the northern side and made their way across a courtyard of some sort…

… Eventually they found themselves under the half-broken roof of what was once the main hall.

“Lookie here, a nice roof, shelter and….” Twain trailed off, his face became quite serious. They had found the altar and the carnage that surrounded it.

It wasn't just one thing that woke XIII up, it was several. The first thing to rouse him was the ground beneath him shaking violently. The second to bring him further out of his slumber was the sound of a roar. What really woke him up, though, was the sudden change of temperature.

XIII's eyes shot open.

He attempted to sit up, but he smashed his forehead against something solid. Stars formed in the semi-darkness as he laid back down. He was getting colder by the second and he had no clue where he was. For a moment, he feared that he hadn't actually been free from the holding facility and the past two years were a fabrication. He fought his panic down and tried to figure out where he was. A bright light was shining through a hole and into his eyes. He looked through it and saw snow.

That wasn't good.

The temperature was dropping fast, and XIII could feel himself weakening. Slowly, he felt around and discovered that he was encased in a pocket of fragmented stone except for the small hole. He tried pushing against the roof but it was too heavy for him. After a few moments of trying and failing to keep himself warm, he heard the sound of boots crunching against the snow. He looked through the hole and saw four silhouettes in the blinding white.

"Hey! Over here! I'm trapped in here. Get me out!" XIII shouted to the four figures he could see. He braced himself for the biting cold that would go right through his t-shirt and sweatpants.

He wasn't at the Benefactor's mansion. That's for damn sure.

Charles listened patiently to Rozalind and was very grateful for her giving him her take on each of his new team mates. It was true that he had been given some files on each member of the team the information had been quiet lacking in a few places. So while he knew their blood type and most recent mission (once again only very basic information like duration and country) Charles had little to no idea of their personalities or how they all worked together. The new information that he was now filing away mentally helped to fill in those gaps and give him a better idea of how he would fit in.

Bit annoying that he hadn’t been able to uncover anything more about this mission that MARCY was on. Even in the briefing room the only thing that Charles had been told had been that he was “To aid in dealing with a situation that would otherwise cause great distress to the general population, both local and internationally”. Charles wondered what ‘evil’ organisation they would be dealing with.

Before he could get another word out the Aircraft shook and with just two words from Rozalind the team of TIGER were up with their hackles raised. Charles meanwhile stayed very still, knowing that if something were to happen he’d be best to stay out the way. The members of TIGER knew both each other and the aircraft much better than him and so it was much better for a rouge element such as himself not to get in their way and let them get on with it.

“What was that noise?” Charles asked aloud in case anyone had some idea. “Wasn’t another aircraft was it?” He reasoned but deep down he knew that it hadn’t sounded like a machine.

Vata followed a short distance behind Twain as they made their way to the castle. While he waited for Twain's men to find a way in, he noticed the steady warmth provided by whatever Xavier did start to wear off, and within a few seconds, he could feel the biting cold again. However, a moment later, he felt a feeble acknowledgement from the Spirit of Inspiration, and the warmth returned, albeit somewhat less intense than before. The feeling that he got before when he accepted Xavier's offer to warm him up really was him Shaping, although he had never heard of one person making another Shape. Before he could think much more about this, one of Twain's men returned with news of a way into the castle through a hole in the northern wall. He followed Twain into the castle, and as the group approached the main hall, he noticed a burning smell that was growing stronger as they got closer to it. Since Twain and his men seemed to know what they were doing, he didn't say anything about it.

When Twain walked into the main hall, he started speaking. "Lookie here, a nice roof, shelter and…"

"And what?"

Vata stepped forward to see what was in the main hall, and was shocked by the carnage he witnessed. There was blood and bodies disfigured by fire everywhere. He quickly averted his eyes from the horrific scene, and barely managed to keep what was left of his most recent meal in him. Trying to recover from the scene he just witnessed, he took a deep breath, and then started speaking to Twain.

"If what I just saw tells me anything, it is that this place is not safe, and that we should not stay here much longer."

Dimitri nodded as Ryann expressed her intentions then his eyes slid to Dzel as she was gathering her armor and he smiled as she bolted past him down the tunnels behind William. If she was going to follow William, then he would go with the flow and follow also. After all the more the merrier was the monk's philosophy; at least when it came to drinking and eating anyway.

"Then i guess it is decided. Herbert, Ryann! I will follow after you both." he commented with a sweeping gesture towards the tunnels.

With one fluid motion, he tossed the rest of the peach schnapps down his gullet and tucked the empty bottle into his robes. It was his only weapon for now and one never knew when a solid glass bottle might come in handy.
Once Ryann and Herbert took off he proceeded down the tunnels behind them with a steady pace to ensure he did not lose sight of William or Dzel. From the rear he could also keep track of Ryann and Herbet to make sure they didn't fall too far behind the group.

The monk could tell by how she moved that Dzel was a capable warrior. She could look after William on her own if became necessary. So Dimitri figured it would be best for him to bring up the rear in case they wound up being chased by any unexpected visitors that might prove hostile.

Hearing a shout, John peered around the corpse strewn rubble. Finally, zooming in on a hole in a pile of rocks, he espied the heavily scarred face of a man. "By the- there's someone alive in there!" John rushed towards the man, the stranger's plight triggering his own anxieties. Pushing his face against the hole, he looked in at the hollow the man was in and worried about cave ins.

"Ok sir, I need you to not panic, alright? Get as close to the most intact piece of wall as possible, get down low, and put your hands over your head. We're going to get you out."

Will ran, his mind becoming more clear as he did so. He slowed to a more reasonable pace- but still fast, his work for the KPAR required fitness among other things.

'We should probably seek therapy at some point. Not even as a joke, I mean that was like something you'd expect from a soldier with Blitzshock or something. Loud noises don't mean thermonuclear warfare, not always.'

He stopped for a second, giving Dzel time to pop into view before starting off again. He remembered that there was a fork in the tunnel, and visualised the route, rotated the image to make the decision. Learning his left and right would have also been an idea.

Reaching the fork, he waited for the soldier to arrive. "We go left to outside. We go right either it collapses and we die, or we find what we'd have found by taking the left and coming back once this is over. We go left."

They called out to turn left to the people following behind, and waited for them to come close enough to be seen, before heading down the rest of the way through the tunnel- and outside.

The sounds thrust Herbert back into coherence, sending him wide eyed with panic. It shook the very ground, starting as a trembling bass, as deep as the earth it shook, like gravel and rock grinding together, or the shifting of a mountain. The castle quivered around them, the wall rattling Herbert’s skull. Chips of old rock flaked from the ceiling, and fine stone powder and dust puffed into the air.

Then the sound shifted, rising in pitch. It was like metal tearing, stabbing the ears, all sharp and jagged edges. It cut through the bricks of the walls as easily as it did the low conversation. And it was angry, terribly angry, intertwined with molten lead and fire.

Herbert jerked forward away from the wall. At first, he thought it was an avalanche, but it had stopped now, and was all too sudden and lacking of sufficient rumbling fortitude. So maybe part of the castle had collapsed, excited by the presence of the bag-owners, or at least others. This seemed reasonable, and yet there was part of Herbert’s mind that felt that something had made this sound. Of all the plethora of cries he had heard, many of which he discovered were missing in the patchwork of is memory, nothing had ever sounded quite like this, but the fear was still there, buried deep in his gut, without logic or recuse.

Will did little to quash the vexing qualm, bolting off after spewing out a string of semi-comprehensible statements. He had a point though; there was all likelihood that the castle’s structural integrity had been compromised, which meant they needed to get out. At least they had food and warm clothes now so that their death would not be quite as immediate as being crushed by several tonnes of stone and ice. Survival was important; he had to get back to Liza, and struggled to suppress the thoughts that that was be becoming less and less likely.

He coughed into his hand and stood, snatching up the bag from which a discordant chittering came sporadically, stuffed his wet clothes into it, and slung it over his back. Bizbee crawled out onto his shoulder, appearing restless by the flicking of its tail.

Herbert nodded in agreement with Ryann, as he found it hard to make words leave his mouth. He was a little dubious of letting Dmitri trail them, as he looked exhausted, but there was no time to argue.

As they ran, Herbert began to realise just how tried he was. Fire flared up in his lungs almost immediately and his muscles ached with the slow heat of dying embers. Hormones and strength-of-will must have kept him going thus far, but now that things became strenuous, he questioned how long he could continue.

Glimpses of red hair and armour were visible when the tunnels straightened. Herbert’s pace slowed, and just after Will called out to turn left, he spluttered, resting a hand on the wall to steady himself as he staggered to a stop. He held up a hand to show Dmitri he was okay, but it was several seconds before he stopped whooping into his fist. Afterwards his eyes were streaming, and his pace was much slower, but iron-hard determination to live drove him onwards.

Once he reached the exit and broke into daylight, Herbert almost walked, and he had to shield his eyes until they adjusted. His feet crunched in the fickle snow that would have had no second thoughts of slipping him up. When he reached Will, he stopped, and tried to get his breath back, fighting the urge to collapse.

Once more the cold made itself impossible to ignore- the castle had still been icy, but there was no wind there, now he was outside it hit like a frigid hammer. With a sense of horror, Will realised the wind was far stronger now; stronger like it was coming in blasts, air displaced by an avalanche or shockwaves from a bomb.

The blizzard was weaker now, and for a few seconds he took in the surroundings. The air was crisp and cold, and the scenery was dramatic and cold, colourless- a grey sky pierced by black peaks, looming over white snow. It was daunting, it wasn't a view that welcomed, but it seemed fixed, unchanging, calm in a way.

He turned back, and watched as Herbet emerged from the tunnel. The seemingly very old man had suffered from the sprint, and the cold wouldn't have helped, bringing him to the verge of collapse. Hurrying over to help, a sick feeling grew in the pit of his stomach. Panicking himself, running, spreading panic, he could have done much better.

"Shi- Hang on." If the nearly collapsing man shoo-d him away, Will would respect that, if not he went to stop the man from falling, putting an arm around his shoulders and a hand at his arm, standing wide to not slip on the icy ground.

"Goddamn. Sorry. Really fucked that up..." he muttered, more for his own benefit, as Herbet steadied- if he needed it Will would continue giving support.

Speaking more clearly now as Dimitri at the back of the group emerged "suggestion here. We take a few seconds for anyone suffering from the sprint. Let them recover then we go further from here, out of the danger zone if we're lucky, off the mountain. I didn't get much chance to look around before heading into the tunnel during the blizzard, but either we head that way-" gesturing to the path that led under the bridge "-or we find a load of absailing equipment-" gesturing over his shoulder with him thumb, to the insurmountable cliff as it howled with wind "-and try our luck with that. Which is not an option." He paused and added "And sorry about running like that. We'll have to be fast though, watch out in case the bridge above starts getting unstable. Just a suggestion."

'Hoping they don't take this as me trying to take charge. I don't want to take charge.'

He looked back to Herbet, trying to gauge how he was doing. "Think you'll be good for more walking?"

Karnage just snorted and took the lead. He kept his senses, the ones that worked anyways, sharp to ensure that no one get's the drop on them. he listened carefully. he made sure to sniff out anything strange. He even tasted the air for the tale-tell signs of blood and death, as well as any other abnormalities. It wasn't long before Karnage heard the shouting of someone in need of help, and Fritz went off to help him. "That damn fool. He's going to get himself killed if he keeps running off like that." Karnage did not follow after him, instead he went with Zesiro to investigate the bridge. He could smell feathers from birds he did not know, picking on up and tasting it. Trying to discern if it was a bird native to his realm, or perhaps one that only lives in this one. "What are you waiting for? Is there something stopping out passage?"

XIII, Karnage, Jon

“Fuck…” Zesiro and Gemma began the work of moving boulders from the pile. Gemma wasn’t very strong, but with Zesiro’s help she made a dent in the pile. Zesiro was much stronger than he appeared, perhaps the kid worked out after all. He strained under the larger rocks, but managed, to move enough stones to free the man.

With the man freed Zesiro seemed to remember what he was supposed to be doing.

“Erm… Who are you? How did you get here?” He had his weapon back in hand, but now was uncertain of which way to point it. He kept it trained on the ground, so that the stranger could see it, but might not feel directly threatened by it.

Zesiro tilted his head, his brother’s voice was finally on the radio...

Vata

“Leave? No! I think this is juuuust what we came here for.” Twain knelt by a set of broken burned bones. He was not disgusted as one should be when seeing such carnage, instead, he seemed curious. “White chalk… but these are not necromantic symbols… I think…” He squinted at the white chalk on the ground.

He turned on his radio, and called his brother.

“Zesiro. Get to the top of the castle. I think I found something.”

Alexavier looked uncomfortable. He carried along the unconscious man that he had found, unwilling to leave him behind. He carried the man like a backpack, the arms acting as straps that Alex held on to. “I think our safety is of more import than your curiosity sir…” The man on his back wheezed quietly. Alexavier walked toward a plume of fire, hoping to at least warm the man, and himself.

Charles

There was silence. Rozalind did not know how to answer.

“Mum.” A gentleman with a slurring British accent peaked his head out of the cockpit. “I think we see something up ahead, an old castle or ‘summin.”

“Hold on.” She said, and vanished into the cockpit of the aircraft.

There was silence, everyone looked at one another uncomfortably.

Then the noise came again, louder, and closer. The plane shuddered and rocked, jostling its passengers roughly, knocking over anyone who wasn’t belted in or hanging tight.

It would become very hot very quickly; the metal of the aircraft seemed to be heating up.

Stomachs drop as the plane began a steady but certainly-much-to-fast decline.

A voice over the airplane speakers. “We are going down! Grab your weapons!”

The plane continued to heat up, it was like being trapped in an oven.

Charles would have a few more moments to react, to feel the plane jostled once again, until one of the soldiers of TIGER ran up to him. It was a woman with long black hair that trailed out from under her helmet. She grabbed Charles by the shirt and the man standing next to him. Then, there was a plume of black smoke, Charles would choke on the smoke, then become suddenly cold.

The girl threw him and the man beside him into the snow. He would find himself on the ground outside the plane, which, was still in the air. They had teleported…

… The plane, Charles would now see what the noise was and what had besieged the aircraft. It was a dragon.

What made that sight so strange, is that dragons do not exist. Charles, and all new members of TRIDENT were assured that though they dealt with the strange and terrible things in the world dragons, unicorns, mermaids, and other childish fantasies did not exist. Perhaps they did once, but that was for the historians and archeologists in TRIDENT to argue. In the field, they were told, they would never find such fantastical things.

Yet, there it was. As if it had climbed out of a Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual. Sharp claws, red scales, and impossibly huge jaw that were currently prying the wing from the aircraft. Whenever the dragon breathed out, plumes of flame and smoke blasted the aircraft.

The soldier who had teleported Charles to safety wasted no time in watching the strange beast. She disappeared again in a plume of shadow. Several yards away Charles would see her re-appear and drop off two more members of TIGER into the snow.

She would do this three more times. Setting down soldiers and equipment in the snow, sometimes near Charles, and sometimes very far away. Then she would not re-appear.

The man beside Charles cursed. “SHIT! I didn’t grab my gun…” He turned on the communication device in his helmet. “Den Mother! Merrick calling. Do you read me? Where are you?”

The plane and the dragon were both hovering over the edge of the mountainside. The plane itself had no more ability to keep itself air borne. It was ironically the dragon that kept her aloft. The dragon flapping red leathery wings and digging its claws into the metal body of the plane, trapping it in the air, yet keeping it from falling like a tin can down the mountainside. A smoking tin can, for now even the metal itself seemed to catch fire, the whole thing was slowly becoming bright and black at the same time.

To the east was the castle. Broken and frozen. Was such a place safe? Or would there be more danger there?


Dimitri, Herbert, Will, Ryann

They would emerge from the tunnel on the lower ledge of the mountain cliff. The castle and her remaining towers perched on the edge of the mountain above them.

It looked like there was a path, leading south-west-ish and around the side of the mountain face, perhaps downward.

They would also hear the roar of the dragon, and the sound of twisting metal. To the west, over the edge of the world, they would see…

An airplane.

Then, from somewhere beneath, a great red shadow rose up and clenched the aircraft between it’s great jaws.

A dragon.

With help from Zesiro and Gemma, John quickly uncovered the buried man, and was about to start worrying about all the hundreds of people who he now realized might very well be buried alive right under his feet, when his train of thought was interrupted by a *THWUMP*.

THWUMP

Slow and powerful, the sound of enormous wings laboriously beating the air to keep a massive body aloft.

THWUMP

John looked up and saw an airplane... in the jaws of a dragon.

He slowly straightened up. He shook his head to clear his vision, which completely failed to make the image disappear. "Well" he said. "That's an illegal splice job if I ever saw one."

"So kid, you got some orders here or we just improvising? 'Cause, uh, not to undermine your weapon granted authority here, but maybe we should think about getting into some cover."

Vata tried to forget the grisly scene he just witnessed as he waited for Twain and his men to finish...whatever they were doing. Twain said, in his unusually cheery tone, that apparently this was exactly the sort of thing they were looking for. He wondered how he could always be so upbeat, especially while looking at something like that. Fortunately, it did not seem like he was the only sane one in the group, as Alexavier also felt that they should not stay in this place much longer, since he also felt that this was definitely not a safe place to stay in. With that, Vata figured he would ask Twain why he was so interested in the carnage that they just came across.

"I agree with Alexavier. This place is obviously not safe, but yet we're sticking around here. What's here that you're so interested in, Twain?"

Staring up at the dragon, there was no way the Charles could deny that it was indeed a dragon, with his jaw slack in shock and befuddlement Charles came to understand what they had meant in his briefing.
A Dragon would indeed be a very distressing situation.

The biting window snapping at his face brought Charles out of his stupor (was a foggy mind a side effect of teleportation?) and back to the situation at hand. He was scared and very worried both for his safety as well as that of the members of TIGER and Rozalind, who he couldn’t see anywhere.

But he was on a mission, well actually on the way to one but who cares when there’s a dragon about, and Charles had to stay calm and collected even when he felt completely the opposite.

“I don’t think a gun would be too useful in this situation considering how big that dragon is.” Charles stamped his feet, already feeling a bit chilly. “I mean honestly, have you seen how big it is? It’s huge. A piddily little bullet probably isn’t going to do much to such a great big behemoth.”

Casting hastily this way and that Charles hunted across the landscape, glad to see that the majority of the people on the plane and their gear had also been dropped off, looking for somewhere they could possibly hide for a bit. Hopefully by the time the storm had died down the Dragon would’ve gone away too.

“Ah ha!” Charles final exclaimed, having spotted the crumbling outline of a castle not too far away through the snow. “There’s a castle or something over there, looks to be at least standing alright so maybe we could hide in there for a bit?”

Without even asking for a response Charles plucked up both his own case, after digging out out of the pile of snow it had been thrown into, and another one before setting out with measured strides towards the castle. All the while trying to block out the terrifying noises of a shrieking dragon and metal.

Each breath was full of icicles that raked at his throat and burnt his lungs, and hissed past his teeth as Herbert sucked in.

He waved his hand dismissively at Will, shaking his head.

“Thank you,” he said, “But not thank you. I am fine.”

As if to prove this, he straightened up from his hunched stance and his breathing became shallower. He could feel the searching hands of wind and ice, reddening his face, but the new clothes proved much better protection from the elements. The snowfall was already beginning to hide their tracks with a crisp new coat.

He looked back at the castle. It was still more or less intact, as it had been, and there were no signs of any avalanche. The gouts of flame lapped in violent opposition to the cold, and held their unnatural ground. Herbert shivered. Then he coughed.

“I’ll be good.” Herbert answered Will after he finished his upsurge. His breathing was back to normal now, though he felt a little shaky in the legs.

“How do you expect to descend from this place?” Herbert asked, “It could be more than a trek to the bottom, and treacherous. I have no experience in climbing, but I do know we’ve left more than half the supplies back up there,” He said, pointing the castle on its perch, “Can we at least go back and get them? Perhaps their owners would have returned by now.”

It was a foolish plea on a slender hope, but he was confused, scared and tired, and he did not fancy dying freezing halfway down a mountain, or slipping and falling to his death. He pondered which would be worse.

At the low hum of an engine, Herbert looked to the sky. A plane, not like the ones he knew, it was sleeker and darker, but held enough semblance. He pointed at it.

“Look! That could be a rescue party,” He said, though there was doubt in his voice; it was not the sort of plane to rescue lost climbers, but Herbert felt the fires could be better explained now.

What happened next was a vision of terrifying. A huge beast, unfathomably large and winged bit and tore at the metal of the plane, great spouts of fire flashing in the air, red and hellish as the beast itself.

Herbert was on his ass in the snow. He hadn’t realised he’d fallen. His mouth was agape as he stared in disbelief.

John, Karnage, XIII, Gemma

“Ah…. Ah…” Zesiro took several steps back, nearly stumbling on some rocks as he moved. His eyes were wide at the sight of the dragon. “M-My brother says he’s in the castle. We-We should got there…” He wanted to run from the thing and not turn back.

He would have, but one fact froze him in place.

The plane. There was no doubt in his mind that the plane was a TRIDENT aircraft. And it was most likely TIGER.

“Shit.” Zesiro cursed under his breath. “You guys get to the castle, if you see my brother tell him ‘Zesiro sent you’ or whatever you want. I’m going to go see if anyone escaped from the plane."

Gemma nodded in compliance, and began to run through the snow and toward the castle.

Zesiro headed toward the plane and the dragon. The others could follow Gemma to the castle, or Zesiro toward the monster…

Charles and whomever follows Zesiro.

It wasn’t long before Zesiro saw a pair in the snow. One was dressed in the unmistakable TIGER-swat-team-jumpsuit, the other was not...

“HEY!” He called out. “MERCY here. You guys TIGER? What the hell happened?”

The Dragon was still munching on the plane for the moment. It was slowly losing altitude. The Dragon then perched on the edge of the cold cliff face, wrenching apart what was left of the aircraft into tiny silver smithereens. Glittering confetti...

Will, Herbert, Dimitri, Ryann

Dzel turned toward the beast. “Dragon.” She breathed. She took two quick steps toward the beast, instinct and adrenaline almost taking over… Then she hesitated.

She did not have her sword, nor her shield. She had been healed by the monk but in this cold environment she did not have much strength. If she were alone she might not have hesitated, however, she had to consider the others. Protecting the innocent and the weak was her first oath. She was not sure she could protect them against the monster. If she thought she could hurt the dragon enough to allow the others to escape before she died she might have fought. Yet, she did not think she could even do that.

She had one weapon, she remembered, the gun that Will had given her. She looked at the small metal piece in her hand. It worked by some magic. She did not know how powerful it was. “Will.” She asked casually. “Does this weapon pierce dragon scale?”

She spoke in a casual tone. As if such a question were normal.

Where Dzel had come from it was a common topic of discussion.

XIII followed the man's suggestions and waited while the others freed him from the rubble. He was about to thank the people that helped him, but the cold hit him hard. Immediately, he started shivering violently. He heard someone ask who he was and how he got there, and he was about to manage an answer through his chattering teeth when the roar happened again. XIII looked in the direction of the noise and saw a dragon with a plane in its mouth.

For a second, he thought that he was seeing things due to how cold it was, but from the reactions of the others, they were seeing the exact same thing. "T-t-t-that's n-n-n-not p-p-p-possible." XIII managed through his shaking. He was not prepared for this at all, and when the kid told him and the other to go to the castle while he went to see if anyone made it out of the plane, he cursed under his breath and made his way to the castle. The faster he got warm, the faster he could help.

XIII and whomever else follows Gemma... Vata

Gemma lead the way through the snow until she found a stair, they had to climb over a few stone steps, or landings, or walls, and more than a few strange frozen bodies... Finally they came around to the middle of the castle where Twain was waiting for her...

Twain had made some friends, she glanced at Vata and Alexavier nervously. "You found some... Survivors?" She took two steps toward twain. "We did too..." Then she began to feel sick.

"Wow... It's... It's worst here, Sir." She touched her stomach, which wrenched with a feeling that was nearly unbearable.

"Not surprised. Yeah, I found a few, they seem alright." Twain crossed his arms and faced the girl. "Between what this place looks like to me and what it feels like to you I think this alter-room thing is one big clue." He touched his chin doing his best impersonation of Sherlock Holmes. "But what does it meeeeeean, Watson?"

Gemma only looked now to see who had followed her. "This is um... I think... I don't know your name..." She saw a rock and decided to sit down.