[IC] Final Fantasy VIII: Tempus Veneficarum [7/10 Slots]

[Little_ninja]

Upon feeling the shaking, Xerox reached for his glasses, before seeing a creature devour one of the Galbadians. As he was pressing to scan, the other Galbadian, Fresno, ordered the SeeD to stop moving, before setting of a concussion grenade and ordering everyone to run. With everyone running, the trolley with the prisoners was almost abandoned. Xerox quickly set steel walls and floor around the trolley for the time being, running with everyone while holding Rue.

Adjusting his glasses, Xerox looked below in all directions. He was able to identify the shape and the looks of the creature known as a sandworm. And boy was it ugly. With them coming up from the sand, and thrashing it was hard to tell what they were like. Their mouths looked like monk fish, and its body was like a hybrid of a snake and a worm. Long, with scales-like structures but wrinkled up. The size of it was fairly large. Approximately 3 metres wide and high, while approximately 55 metres long. Not gigantic, but still pretty darn big compared to a person. Looking around seeing a couple of the others running around the sand worms, Xerox looked around to see a couple were chasing him.

Seeing how far they were, he calculated the co-ordinates, and brought about one of the steel walls in his ESS in front of the sand worm. At first, it stopped, before searching for a way around it. "At least it doesn't seem like they can get through steel, or it just takes too long to eat." he commented to himself, conducting mini-experiments on it. Continuing to watch the two come after him, he had placed another concussion grenade off to the side from his ESS. Meant for stunning people en masse, it was more powerful than the one Fresno had used. With the great concussive force, many sand worms had started gathering in the spot, jumping out of the sand attempting to eat the area.

Continuing to run towards the rock, another sand worm got in his way. "Oh, fucking great!" he yelled, annoyed. What a great day this is he thought to himself in satire. Standing still, he had his hand up high, before waiting for the sand worm to come. As it started to approach, Xerox quickly jumped aside with Rue. The sand worm had surfaced, where Xerox was just a moment ago, before getting squashed by a giant metal plate that fell from the sky. Jumping as the plate landed, Xerox was flung a good distance closer to the rock, running only for a little longer before reaching.

Looking out over the desert, he checked to see if the sand worm had been killed by the falling metal plate, and it was dead. "Well, that's one down. Only ..... like another 500 to go?" Xerox joked. There were quite a lot of sand worms around though. "Um... so, what are we going to do about 'Mako' and the other guy? I kinda left them there, protected in a metal cage essentially. Couldn't really drag all that weight over so easily." Placing Rue on the rock, to lay. Xerox looked to see where Rachel was.

[rivaan]

As all others started to run away because of the giant worms, Rachel did something slightly different. After quickly setting up a float on herself, she quickly moved over the now armored trolley. Those giant worms were... well... lacking in the way of sight. It was impossible for them to hunt via sight and even smell for that matter. 'Touch' was their most important sense. Every movement across the sands caused shifts in the tiny grains of sand, a shift that these worms could easily feel and react accordingly. Being still floated, it basically negated their ability to sense her and she couldn't really run like the others with her still hurting knees.

“ Shell..protect...Triple... FLOAT!” She uttered as she spread hit the armored trolley with all three floats and with another three, slowly raising it into the air.” Xerox, rope!" She called, then threw her weapon to the far side on the opposite direction to attract them away from the trolley. It was stationary and not easy to eat so the worms would naturally ignore it if a moving target presents itself even a little. Like the weapon that hit the sands.

[Zarkun]

Jericho watched the sandworms while Phillips prepped his concussive grenade, waiting for a chance to join the others. But he couldn't shake a sense that they were only safe on the rocks because the worms couldn't dig through them like they could the sand. But they still gathered around the rocks if someone moved around on them. The vibrations! Of course! The rocks must intensify them so they can track us better. Course we still need to join the others and there's still a lot of space between us and the support team...

He watched the woman with the spear use float and made a mental note to prepare a handful of those next time they went in to the desert on a mission. He also made a mental note to get the name of their latest edition when they weren't all about to get eaten. "Hey, anyone got another one of those grenades?! Phillips only has the one!"

[Lennon79]

Finishing the run with an epic leap, Duncan just about reached the outcropping in time. The sand churned scant feet behind him as a sandworm broke off in disappointment. For whatever reason, the others had lagged behind a bit (possibly because he had run like the knackers), so Duncan swung his stolen machinegun around to provide covering fire. There wasn't a whole lot that a small calibre gun could do to something that fucking big, but it should help distract them. He unloaded into the sand between the others, aiming further back from where they were running; a few of the smaller worms seemed to fall for it, but the older ones were too canny for that. Fortunately the others had their own solutions and before long the team had regrouped on the outcropping. 'Y'know mate...', he replied to Jericho through heavily fits of panting. 'I might be with you on that...'

Duncan paused for a moment to gain an overview of the situation; most of the team were scattered between a handful of rocky outcroppings halfway between the prison and the outer fence. The Galbadians must have had some method of controlling the worm's movements or else the gate checkpoints would never have been manned; it was a bit of a gamble but if they could reach the main gate, they might be safe. Eika hadn't shown herself either and that concerned him rather more than he wanted to admit. There was still one of the team out on the dunes, but Rachel had picked what was in hindsight the only intelligent thing to do in the situation. Problem was that she was now stranded out there with the prisoners and no way to lug them over... 'Xerox, rope Rachel over. We'll work out a route from here.' If nothing else, they had a brief reprieve before the next rush. 'Jake, you still got support teams left?'

[Little_ninja]

After spotting Rachel, Xerox noticed that she had realized to use float to help get away from the sand worms. Xerox couldn't have done that on the other hand, low on float magic and jet packs were noisy, which would of caused vibrations. Rachel had gone and picked up the trolley with the 'guests', calling out to Xerox, ” Xerox, rope!". "Got you covered!" he replied, pulling out some rope from his ESS. He then started to spin some rope to utilize centrifugal force. The rope was attached to some metal to give it weight to throw.

Throwing it over to Rachel, he heard Jericho ask for grenades, while Duncan seemed to be calling out to bring Rachel over. "Already on it, jeez" he replied, turning his head to call out to Jericho. "Look at your feet!" he called out, having dropped a few concussion grenades at his feet. Once Rachel had readied the rope, Xerox started to reel her and the 'guests' on the trolley in.

"Duncan, I could make a path of metal we could go over, I haven't seen them eat through that, at least not yet. Even if they could, it'd take a while. The bigger worry is if they jump on top of the path." Xerox suggested an option to Duncan. He wasn't really sure what kind of route they could form to get away safely, it was the only thing at the top of his head though at the time.

[akirashadow]

Jake had been watching for approaching worms or disturbances within the sand from their perched haven. "Support teams?" The SeeD asked as he lowered his aim to answer Duncan's question. "perhaps you'd care for a demonstration?" The SeeD simply answered a question with a question as he grabbed the radio once more, turning the receivers volume up for Duncan to listen in. "Overwatch, a demonstration for the strike teams leader. Alpha, Echo, Bravo... on my aim."
"Roger, changing to armour piercing rounds standby... Overwatch ready." Upon hearing the confirmation Jake raised his crossbow once more and fired randomly out onto the desert sand, the small explosion that followed was enough to disturb the surface as a Sand Worm burst up expecting to catch a un-suspecting prey. Flashes in the distance, the local cliff range and the prison were followed by consecutive piercing of the sand worms body as it dropped flat against the floor. "Galbadia Garden fights from the shadows, to brings its enemies to the light." Jake stated to Duncan with a smile. A struggled flinch from the Sand Worms body welcomed the final kill shot.
"Confirmed kill."

"We've also got vehicles waiting on the outer perimeter but..." The SeeD shook his head. "That means going back the way we came." Upon hearing Xerox's suggestion Jake spoke up again. "Overwatch has the area well covered, provided we keep within a group they should be able to hold off any worms that got close with alternative fire. We can use explosives to keep the less intelligent ones from the path. Make it back to the vehicles, get the hell outta here." The SeeD reloaded his crossbow as he waited for additional input from the others, after all a plan can only work if everyone is on board with it.

[Suku]

"Sounds like a sound plan." Minerva said right now they were in trouble sure they all escaped the prison but right now these creatures was stopping them from going forward. With that said the vehicles was the best choice of option she saw. Also much to her chagrin she was at a disadvantage with the whole thing lacking a true way to fight at a distance she was little more than extra baggage. So with that said she had little choice in the matter with things the way they are currently.

[Lennon79]

Duncan whistled appreciatively as the support teams X'ed a sandworm with precision fire. 'Not too shabby... I'd like one of those rifles myself.' With supporting fire from them, the team might be able to rush the remaining couple of hundred metres to safety. 'Alright then Jake, have them cover us at will. Hopefully we won;t get any more coming up from underneath.' Even with the support, he wasn't keen on dashing all that way unprotected... Which was why Xerox's idea was very tempting. 'Alright, bridge us up. Anyone with explosives, chuck them as far as you can, one every few seconds. otherwise, keep together and keep moving up the path as Xerox builds it.' After taking a deep breath, he threw a handful of rocks as hard as he could away from where they were standing. Within seconds of them hitting the ground, the sand started whipping up as a dozen worms launched a frenzied attack. 'Alright, let's move!'

[Little_ninja]

Pulling Rachel in, Xerox listened to the others discuss the next step and where to go. Upon hearing the plans, Xerox had finished pulling Rachel and the trolley over. "Guess it's time to build a road." he said, as he started to think about which pieces in his ESS to use and then mostly smoothing and connecting. Within a few minutes, he had placed a few large chunks of metal all in a straight-ward path to the vehicle.

Jumping onto the first part, he pulled out a giant angle-grinder and started to smooth out a path along the metal road. The speed at which the angle-grinder rotated cut away, polished, heated and fused the metal parts that used to composed the road. It was lucky he had a guard made for the giant angle-grinder, otherwise he'd most likely be burning and possibly having metal fly towards him. He continued to make the path in this fashion, angle-grinder and more metal from his ESS until they reached relatively close to their transport.

[Zarkun]

Jericho didn't reply to Xerox, but he did pick up the grenades. He wasn't sure that they had the same oomph as what Phillips was using did, but concussive force was concussive force and he wasn't about to complain. Nodding to his partner, the pair waited until Xerox had started working on the road, and subsequently attracted the majority of the worms, to make a break across the sand towards the vehicle. Every few seconds, they'd toss concussion grenades off to one side or another to throw the worms off of them and to buy Xerox some breathing room, but the pair had their share of close calls, Jericho almost lost a leg.

Still, the crazy, unshared idea was paying off in it's own way, it limited the amount of exposure the two groups had to the worms since they were too busy deciding which group they wanted to eat more and which was easier to chase. And that's when they weren't going for the fakes that were really grenades. Eventually, the pair reached the vehicle, panting. "Let's never do that again, agreed?"

Phillips panted a little more before speaking and agreeing. "Agreed. But you can't say you didn't get your exercise." Jericho just gasped out a chuckle and continued his panting while waiting for the others.

[rivaan]

"Well, I can help a little with this... If it's vibrations that they need to target..." Rachel said and reached her arm, unleashing a number of aeros aupon the ground, causing powerful swirls in the sand, almost as if someone jumped there. Besides that, she threw another float on herself and the big float that their prisoners were on. The floats spells were their best friend in this situation. She also moved across the road created by Xerox.

When they were close enough to escape the death trap, from underneath them and move closed enough to solid ground, Rachel took the rope of the floating cage where the prisoners were at, and dashed using her floating effect over the last bit of sand without alerting the worms. When on the other side, she quickly pulled the rope, towards the vehicle." Okey, help me with this... please." She requestied from those who already arrived before her.

[Silver Fox]

Ashton took a few deep breaths as felt a brief sense of security from the impending doom of being a Sandworm's lunch, before her teal colored eyes flicked to the others to make sure everyone else made it out alright. Mostly everyone seemed alright, one of the girls used a float spell to help make the trolly of prisoners float. Brainstorming of a plan was discussed before a final consensus was formed, and the dirty blonde nodded softly in understanding, shifting the man she was carrying a bit before following the rest towards the vehicles. Watching the man, named Xerox she believed, build a metal bridge to the vehicles in a attempt to help deter the sandworms from gobbling them up.

Duncan threw some rocks before sprinting, while two others threw grenades occasionally while they ran. The worms seemed to by it as they scrambled in different directions. When finally getting to the vehicles, the tall woman panted a bit, taking deep breaths to get her bearings before looking to the others. The woman who seemed in charge of the prisoners requested assistance and the tall sniper went over, setting the unconscious man she carried carefully and secured him within a vehicle. Ashton then went to the woman with the rope and reached out and grabbed it as well. Assisting in pulling it toward the vehicle, and pulling it down to help secure the prisoners within the vehicle. So they could all get out of there as fast as possible.

[Suku]

Minerva couldn't help but sigh she was unable to help lacking the means to really fight or do much in this situation. She watched quietly as people tried their hardest to get them to the vehicle in question from forming a metal bridge to throwing grenades to distract the sandworms. Yet all she was able to do was stand there it was really annoying to say the least that in a moment such as this she was unable to do much of anything but stand there. Shaken from her thoughts when Duncan and the like managed to get them closer to the vehicle she quickly acted trying to safely get them to the vehicle best she could. To tell the truth this was the best she could do sadly as with everything that happened there was nothing that she could have done in the long run.

[Lennon79]

Duncan had never ran so fast in his life. Dodging giant worms, throwing shit, firing randomly... It was a wonder that any of them survived to reach the edge of the compound. Once the last of the team was safely away from the sand, he drew a massive sigh of relief and turned to Jake. 'My friend, I cannot thank you enough. We might have gotten away with it ourselves, but I had no plan for what to do once we broke out.' He cast an appraising eye on the convoy of rovers the Galbadian SeeDs had brought. 'At least now we won't have to walk.' Despite his confident smile, Duncan was deeply concerned for Eika; she had apparently been there to help attack the prison, but they hadn't seen hide nor hair of her... She was a tough one though, he knew that all too well. He wasn't so much concerned for her safety as much as the possibility of her going missing again... '... As much as I'd like to hang around though, we've got to get moving. Won't be long til they report our escape.' He motioned to the others to start piling into cars, commandeering the lead vehicle for himself. Luckily there was a radio link between them. As they started moving away from the compound, Duncan opened up a channel to the others. 'Alright, so here's the deal... I don't really know what's going on. Dunno how long we've been in there, my balls still ache and I'm not sure where the fuck we are. Still, we're in Galbadia, so we head west til we hit something familiar. I know of a few stashed airships that we can take home to Balamb.' There was the feeling in the back of his mind that something was missing, that the escape had been a little too easy (despite the ravening pack of sandworms). '... Jake, what's be-' He was cut off by a bright flash in the distance, a few dozen miles north. Pulling up hard at the side of the road, Duncan opened the car door to stare in horror as a single point of light arced up into the sky... and then turned north. There was only one thing that could be. '... no, you fucking wouldn't...'

[Zarkun]

Jericho leaned out the window to call to the car in front why they'd stopped when he saw the white streak heading into the sky and frowned. He wasn't great at trajectory, but he knew the direction it was headed, it had been his home when he'd left his parents behind. "Hey Duncan, that's headed towards Trabia. But...what in the hell is it?"

[Little_ninja]

With the concussion grenades all going off, Xerox had finished building the road without a problem, although a couple of sandworms did try to eating them from below, the metal road successfully stopped them. With everyone safe and reaching the vehicles, it was time to head off. Duncan was in the leading vehicle, Xerox just headed towards the vehicle with the least people, with Rue. Rue still needed to rest, but was definitely better now. In the cars, Duncan started to speak. Xerox had his eyes shut, barely listening to the radio.

'Alright, so here's the deal... I don't really know what's going on. Dunno how long we've been in there, my balls still ache and I'm not sure where the fuck we are. Still, we're in Galbadia, so we head west til we hit something familiar. I know of a few stashed airships that we can take home to Balamb.' Duncan said. Instead of replying, Xerox just started to rest. Although he had used his ESS quite a bit before, this was the most he had to ever use it. It was actually draining. The number of objects + the weight + the distance, everything all together was starting to tax his body. Normally, he wouldn't need to use it for such distances or for so many objects, at least not that many with that type of mass to them. However, he wasn't letting it show outwardly. If anyone was with him he would of seen like he was just getting a rest from a long day.

As the cars came to a stop, Xerox opened his eyes, getting up. He wasn't sure what was going on, and also got out, to see a light, arcing into the sky and turning North. With his glasses, he got a better look and had calculated the trajectory of it. It wasn't good. Duncan spoke in disbelief, '... no, you fucking wouldn't...' and Jericho asked, "Hey Duncan, that's headed towards Trabia. But...what in the hell is it?".
"It's a nuke. Headed straight for Trabia Garden by my calculations. Those f**king bastards. There's no such technology to intercept it either unfortunately, the speed it reaches, can't be competed with. If lucky something just happens to be in it's way, but some are built to detect and change course. I have nothing that can do anything about it either." Xerox answered the question, while beating around the bush of the rest of the unfortunate news, clenching his fist in anger, without showing it in his tone of voice.

[MarshiestMallow]

There wasn't much that Heloise could do. She was nimble, a wicked shot with a dagger and good at hiding. This wasn't something she could do, unless she had high powered weapons, and she wasn't ready to risk anymore daggers in trying to stop the sand snakes.

So she watched, she studied and watched to see if there was anything she could do, or to tell others that something was up. Even then the others seemed to know what was what before she did.

Even in escaping she wasn't required, except to get into the vehicle and escape with them all. She climbed in, and curled up, annoyed at herself and how useless she had been. As they travelled, she looked out the window, the sights so familiar to traveling with her father that it put an ache in her heart at the memory of him.

As they stopped, and everyone climbed out, she did too, staring at the sky. As Xerox spoke, she couldn't believe what she was hearing. As Trabia was mentioned, everything seemed to fade. Her home. She might not call it home anymore, but that had been the first place she knew, jt had been where she had trained and it had been where she saw her father last.

Her resolve strengthened. "in other words the place is gone. In other words, they want us to back down.

I'm not going to"

[Zarkun]

On instinct, Jericho reached for his side arm, every fiber of his being screaming at him to protect the only place that had ever accepted him for who he was, but he stopped, watching the missile fly towards it's target with a clenched and shaking fist. Sneaky, no good, vile pieces of chocobo crap. When I get my hands on the person who ordered this strike... He made no verbal reply, instead opting to turn and slam his fist into the door of the car and leaving a dent in it. It was evident that he was less than pleased about loosing Trabia Garden.

[Lennon79]

As the others filed out of the jeeps and began to realise what they were seeing, Duncan stood paralysed by indecision. Everyone knew the Galbadians had nukes and everyone knew that they were crazy enough to use them, that was why no nation had ever really stood up to them before. But seeing that missile arc toward Trabia, undoubtedly aimed at Garden, was deeply shocking nonetheless. Whoever was in control of Galbadia now, they had crossed a terrible threshold. '... if they're launching one nuke, they'll launch more.' Now that they nuclear arsenal had been unleashed, the only force powerful enough to take Galbadia on would be Esthar... or a fully mobilised army of SeeD. '... Corvo will know what to do. I hope.'

Duncan turned resolutely away from the trail across the sky and turned to the others. 'Shit. Well the way I see it, we have two responsibilities. First and foremost, returning to Balamb Garden to warn them and evacuate. Second, to prevent any further missiles from being launched.' Mind racing, he thought through how this could work; they had a handful of experienced operatives here, plus a team of Galbadia Garden SeeDs. Considering that the enemy would be alerted to their escape and would likely pull up a dragnet to catch them, whoever set out to Balamb would be hounded the entire way. On the other hand, infiltrating a facility that didn't even know it had been rustled would be child's play... 'Jake, your men will flank out around the team by a mile or so and protect them as they make their way to Timber. There will be search parties, so expect contact.' He cast an appraising eye across the team wondering who best to send... 'Xerox and Jericho. You two are now in charge. I want you to work together to come up with a good solution to return to Balamb; you know the locations of the airships dropped in prep for the Timber mission, try making for one of them.' He didn't feel comfortable leaving any one person in charge, but the two of them complemented each other well; experience versus intellect. 'Take everyone with you and ensure that they reach Balamb safely. From there, report to Corvo and inform him of... that.'

The others they had picked up would be safe with them, he was sure. Griff was a very competent rifle... woman? And of course Minerva was a veteran in her own right. They would fit in quite well, he hoped. 'As for me... I'm going that way. I'll go on foot, infiltrate the base and blow the cunt up.' Admittedly he didn't have much of a plan for how, but infiltration was his speciality; he would manage. 'Afterwards I'll commandeer a vehicle and head back to Balamb. All going well I'll be able to stop the next launch or otherwise misdirect it, but make damn sure that Garden is secured either way. Just in case.' The real unknown was the size of the warhead; anything over a couple of megatons would flatten the town of Balamb too. I'll just have to stop the launch then, he thought flippantly. '... questions? We don't have a whole lot of time for democracy right now.'

[Little_ninja]

Filled with hate, Xerox took a look over to Rachel to see how she was feeling. They had both grown up in the same place after all. As much as it was hurting him, it probably hurt her worse. With Galbadia launching nukes, things were grim, they needed to warn everyone else at Balamb, before things were too late. Duncan turned towards them, divulging the plan, 'Shit. Well the way I see it, we have two responsibilities. First and foremost, returning to Balamb Garden to warn them and evacuate. Second, to prevent any further missiles from being launched. Jake, your men will flank out around the team by a mile or so and protect them as they make their way to Timber. There will be search parties, so expect contact. Xerox and Jericho. You two are now in charge. I want you to work together to come up with a good solution to return to Balamb; you know the locations of the airships dropped in prep for the Timber mission, try making for one of them. Take everyone with you and ensure that they reach Balamb safely. From there, report to Corvo and inform him of... that.'

Xerox listened to Duncan, in slight disbelief he was going to co-lead the team in Duncan's place. Xerox knew that of the group, he was most likely the one with the least experience, being the only recent SeeD graduate, however, if Duncan trusted him, he would get it done. He nodded in affirmation about taking co-command. He looked over to Jericho. Jericho had assisted the team during the SeeD exam, Xerox knew Jericho was experienced and trusted him. Of the other SeeDs, excluding Rachel and Duncan, Xerox next knew Jericho the longest in this group.

Duncan continued his speech, "detailing" his own mission, 'As for me... I'm going that way. I'll go on foot, infiltrate the base and blow the cunt up. Afterwards I'll commandeer a vehicle and head back to Balamb. All going well I'll be able to stop the next launch or otherwise misdirect it, but make damn sure that Garden is secured either way. Just in case. ... questions? We don't have a whole lot of time for democracy right now.'

"Duncan, take this." Xerox had produced a pair of glasses with some paper. "Infrared and x-ray glasses, instructions on the paper. I'm sure this will be helpful." A small gift, hoping for his success. It was Duncan's specialty, however, that did not mean it wasn't dangerous. Xerox was unsure of what else to say. In all honesty, almost since Xerox came to Balamb, he had been under Duncan's care. He held out his hand to offer a handshake.

After anyone/everyone else had their chance to ask Duncan questions or have a word with Duncan, it was soon time for them to split ways. Xerox approached Jericho, "We should probably start discussing some plans in the vehicles. We don't know how long it has been since we were captured, or what has been happening, so it's probably good to approach Timber with caution. It's likely to be heavily guarded, and we don't know if we can use the same passages as before to enter and exit." Waiting for Jericho's response, it was time to get going.