Gaki loped along in a low crouch, using his hands to push against the walls and floor as he bounded through the cave. The echoes of the last roar died away, but he knew now where it came from. He avoided a few side paths and made his way to a seemingly dead end; a look up above, however, revealed the light from the glowing mushrooms at the edge of a steep rock face. Its top was tinged with frost and ice. Gaki slipped his hands out of his makeshift weapons and hung them from either side of a vine serving as his belt, then jumped and reached out as far as he could. His fingers barely found purchase on the wall, but find it they did and with a seemingly inhuman strength of grip he began pulling himself upwards. His toes too found tiny holds, little more than cracks in the wall that offered the barest of leverage. But then he was up and away, scurrying like some sort of bug up the smooth face and over the top in a matter of moments. He shook his hands and feet as they made contact with the icy floor, but as long as he had the Anteka-pelt cloak the worst of the cold was kept at bay.

Up through the tunnels he went now, his reflection racing alongside him in the layers of ice. He kept close to the wall on his left, and began to smell the air. He could smell a fresh breeze, though it was bitter cold, and now the sound of the beast within the Labyrinth could be heard without issue. Its giant body made the walls rumble...but there was something else. The cry of some other monster? No, it didn't sound quite right...The clash of something that sounded like the shiny rocks he sometimes found hitting flesh and scales. Then there was the sharp smell left after a lightning strike in a rain storm, only it didn't fade away, and it was followed by a "ding, ding, ding" that certainly wasn't the sound of a living creature.

The boy rounded one last turn and set off into a new tunnel--then stopped short, limbs scrabbling on the ice. Up ahead he could see the Jak Jak, its elderly but still powerful body charging at something in the snow, using its wings to plow the thick white powder. And the somethings in the snow, they were...

His eyes widened.

They...they had fur, or scales, didn't they? Except it wasn't right, the fur didn't come out of their skin, it was just...there, hanging off of them. Kind of like his own pelts...And they had big tools, something that looked like a much much bigger version of a stone club Gaki had made once (it had broken a long time ago), and something that also looked like that club but also made noise somehow when the creature blew into it. And another creature had another club, but it was sharp, and it...it folded and moved somehow, almost like a Gargwa wing if you pulled a certain strip of meat on it to make it go back and forth.

And they were fighting the Jak Jak, even though they were so small, and somehow they were hurting it and it hadn't yet killed them even when it hit them. The one with the club that made noise stood near the thing that smelled like lightning, and Gaki could tell it was dangerous just by looking at it. What was it? Was it another tool that these creatures had made? And why...why did they look so familiar to him?

He crept closer, hiding behind a chunk of rock sticking out of the ice. The rock had various blue crystals sticking out of it--Gaki had found in times past that sometimes he could pry shiny rocks out of these that would make sparks for his fire or just looked pretty in the sunlight. But now it provided him a place to watch the battle unfold with wide, curious eyes...

And then he was back to reality. The Jak-Jak had become enraged, and was throwing itself at the others like killing hunters was going out of style. Dammit! he thought. I got distracted. They could have... Rex shook his head. Chewing himself out would have to wait until later. It uses its wings like a shield, and as blunt weapons. Its armor is thick, so it might tire itself out. However, there is one cure-all for thick armor.

Rex hit the magazine release on his Bowgun, and loaded Pierce Shot into the receiver. Peering down the scope, he slowed his breathing, and quickly squeezed off the two rounds in the magazine. If the level one rounds didn't work, he still had level two Pierce Shot among his ammunition types. With smooth, nigh-mechanical movements Rex reached for another magazine.

The Greater Jak-Jak, its head tilted down in a menacing charge and wings placed to its sides for protection, continued its trajectory towards the frozen form of the two hunters. A cloud of smoky snow enveloped the behemoth, swirling around it in a torrent of authority that made the Jak-Jak look like a fired missile. A lithe form charged into such a smoke, however, a capped heroine swing an over-sized, sharp object. The creature looked deadly, yet doubtful, in its movements with the weapon, being quickly cut short of the Jak-Jak's front leg by its shield-like wing. throwing the appendage upwards in a swooping motion, the girl was flung into the air, the Jak-Jak's tenacious strength barreling her figure up near the tops of the dwarfish trees. The Jak-Jak was so preoccupied with the spectacle, the Superpound caught it completely by suprise.

Crack. The crunch of scales breaking off the Jak-Jak's armored back-leg was a chilling sound, bringing the beast further into its maddened rage. With the force of a giant, blue horse, the Jak-Jak flung its back leg into the assaulting warrior, pushing him down and out into the deep snow. It used such a kick to start propelling itself forward, starting another charge to onlooking hunters. Another cloud of snow rose from the Jak-Jak's trod, a missile once again as it-


So there the Jak-Jak stood, frozen in place like a statue as the shock-trap erupted out from the layers of snow covering it. The beast looked around itself as it struggled, watching as the hunters recuperated against the defenseless Jak-Jak. A piercing sensation started to spread itself from the beast's abdomen; looking down, metal rods of sharp implications had planted themselves into the Jak-Jak's breast, fired from a direction it could discern in the overwhelming heat of this electrical surge. Painfully twisting its head upwards, the Jak-Jak saw the descending form of the girl from before, more confident and deadly than before. The Greater Jak-Jak was starting to quickly free itself, but she would still be at the mercy of her assailants before long. How could she be fooled and overwhelmed by such puny creatures?!

A broken pitchfork lodged into the Jak-Jak's underbelly signaled the start of the attacks.