Birbs and Foxes

Mission Details:

The water-drenched flatlands known as the Cattail Marsh certainly weren't much of a spectacle, at least during the day.  Not even the rays of the setting sun could fix that.  It was about as inviting as it looked, too.  One particular glaceon knew from experience that it was annoying to travel through the marsh, if not difficult.  Of course, the two birds with him would have little trouble other than occasionally having to move out of the way of a tree, since they could fly.  He could have frozen the water and just walked or even skated over it if he still had Ice Beam on his side, but he just HAD to go and use another TM, he couldn't just settle for what he already had....

"Frost Breath", what a ripoff.  All it had done to him was take away his ability to use Ice Beam.  There was nothing akin to any "Frost Breath" replacing it from what he could tell, he was just down a move due to some faulty TM.  Surely, this was the case.  It couldn't possibly be that this move in particular was just something that he could not properly use.  So he would have to walk through the marsh, but it wasn't like he hadn't done that before.  Besides.... it would be night soon.  He'd insisted on them coming later in the day for that specific reason.  For the light show.  "So, Linus, do you know why I wanted to come here so late?", he asked as he stopped at the edge of the water, taking a moment to speak to his companions before getting to the "fun" part.

Nearby, in a rather easy to climb tree, a little ball of brown fluff was sitting on a branch over the marsh in the hopes of drying off.  He'd heard this place had a pretty lightshow during the nights, but he hadn't expected it to be so wet.... despite it being a marsh.  He'd decided to sit in a tree, away from the water and hopefully safe from any lurking dangers, as he waited for the promised lights.  The trip here was a pain, he hoped it would at least be worth it.

(Sova's Energy: 38)
(Keith's Energy: 2)

Spoiler:

Acro's wings flapped occasionally as he kept himself in the air, Linus nearby as the two set off on their mission. Sova was below them, having desired to take Linus to this place. Acro had seen that there were missions that needed to be done here, and decided to come along with the glaceon and honchkrow. He listened as the two spoke, avoiding the trees as he went along and keeping an eye out for the outlaws he was to catch.

Linus looked to Sova as he spoke, being asked about why he was brought to this place so late.
"Uh..." Linus started, thinking for a moment.
"You really like water?" was all the honchkrow could come up with. His dark shape moved above the reach of the trees, only moving back into the mess of trees to listen to the glaceon. He awaited an answer, not really paying attention to where he was going, and clashing with a brown ball of fur, accidentally sending it flying off the branch while Linus clung to the tree with his wings and talons, "The hell!?"

The marsh water was just as uncomfortable to move through as Sova had remembered.  But, it would be worth it to see the lightshow once more.  He chuckled at Linus' answer to his question.  "Nope, I can assure you, I don't like the water here.  You'll find out what's so special in a-", he paused as he heard the commotion, looking to see what had happened just in time to see the bird latching to a tree and something brown falling down towards the water.
His fur began freezing over as he activated Ice Shard, but he stopped as he felt the water around him quickly cooling; he was going to freeze himself in place if he kept it up.  He tried to push through the water, but he just couldn't catch the thing before it splashed into the water. If only he was a vaporeon or something.

The eevee was just minding his business, waiting for the sun to set and his fur to dry when something flew into his side, taking his breath away and knocking him off his branch.  He didn't get a good look at what had done this, the only thing he really got to see was a patch of cattails in the water before colliding with said water, right beside the plants that probably would have cushioned his fall, maybe even kept him at the surface.  Instead, he sunk into the water and re-soaked his fur, unluckily being knocked right into a deep area of the marsh.  Next thing he knew, something was pulling him out by the scruff of his neck.

Reaching the scene a few seconds later due to having to force his way through the water and into a rather deep area, the glaceon dove under and latched his mouth onto the fluffy thing that had crash landed.  He pulled the thing out to reveal it was.... an eevee!  But it wasn't really moving.  He wondered if Linus had killed it.... but there was no way that bird could kill something so easily.

Acro stopped his flight, landing on a nearby log. It bobbed slightly under his weight, having still been slgihtly attached to a nearby tree. The archeops looked down at the wet ball of fur, "Is it ok?" he asked, not looking at Linus due to the fact that the bird was not the one that dropped from a rather high place and into the water below. He reached for his bag, his eyes still on the eevee as he reached to see if he had something that might help with any injuries it might have received from his partner's accidental assault.

Linus dragged himself onto the branch the pokemon he had run into used to be. He struggled to keep balance for a moment, but finally perfected it. That changed however, as the branch began to creek under his much heavier weight. The bird gave a terrified squawk as the branch snapped, he caught himself in the air once more, gliding out of the way of the tree in case the entire thing decided to collapse with the branch. He looked to see that the tree was indeed not falling, and moved back to the group, "Sorry!" he spoke with genuine concern.

Sova shrugged to the archeops' question, before looking down at the ball of fur being held up by his jaws. He took a moment to consider the eevee's condition, before replying with his mouth full of fur, "I dunno, but I'm not very good with first a-", he was cut off as he heard a snap above him. He directed his gaze to the sky above to see a tree branch hurdling down right above him and immediately jerked to move away, but the water pushed against him and slowed him far too much.

He decided that since he wasn't going to very effectively get out of the way, he'd just protect the eevee, so he froze what of his for that was above the water to at least somewhat armor it and held the little ball of fluff as close to him as he could with his head down, shuddering as the tree branch broke over his back and left a web of cracks in his ice armor. Good thing it seemed to be a bit rotted, as it probably would have hurt a lot more otherwise. He took a moment to breathe, resisting the urge to bite down on the fur in his mouth from having a tree branch dropped on him. "Are.... you.... TRYING to kill it??", he questioned the honchkrow through the fuzz in his mouth.

The eevee heard a commotion of some kind, it sounded like a dysfunctional conversation. He felt himself being moved around, like something was carrying him. His paws were touching the water slightly which was a bit uncomfortable. He was honestly a bit afraid to open his eyes and see what had captured him, but he finally forced himself to do so. At first, he saw only the water as his head was hanging low. Then he lifted his head up to see what was carrying him, a blue thing that looked kind of like his mother in form, only his mother was yellow.... Maybe this thing was a shiny Jolteon? He didn't really know what that would look like.

He turned his head to one of the other sources of sound to see something that looked like a fat murkrow. Finally, he spotted a really colorful looking cross between some kind of bird and some kind of reptile. Were they going to rob him? He didn't really have anything they could steal. So would they kill him? Or maybe leave him alone since he wasn't worth their time? He was hoping for the latter.

Acro Energy : 50
Linus: 11

The archeops attempted to stop the branch from falling on the glaceon, but he had been too slow. Acro's wings flailed slightly as he lost his balance on the log, nearly falling into the water and becoming as waterlogged as the eevee, "S-Sova!" he spoke when he finally regained control of his balance, "A-Are you okay?" he questioned the glaceon. He waited for a response, relieved to hear the glaceon speak, but waiting for a for sure answer on the health of the glaceon. It would have been terrible if the fox had received some serious back wound!

Linus blinked in surprised, "H-Hey now I didn't mean to do that!" he spoke, a bit offended that the glaceon jumped to the assumption that he was trying to kill the strange brown wet fluff thing. His look of concern turned sour, not quite enjoying the thought of the glaceon jumping to accusations.

Acro Roll

Kat carried out 10 launched of one Cattail Marsh :

, , , , , , , , ,

Linus Roll

Kat carried out 10 launched of one Cattail Marsh :

, , , , , , , , ,

Sova glared up at the honchkrow and spoke, "It doesn't matter whether or not you meant to do it, what if you'd killed it? Try to be more careful." He'd decided to ease up a bit, considering it was an accident and he was supposed to be teaching the crow, not trying to demoralize him.
"And yes, I'm fine.", he then replied as he turned to Acro, his voice still being muffled by the fur being held in his mouth.

He looked down at the thing he was carrying once again before attempting to communicate. "Hey, are you alive? Speak up or I'ma drop you back in the water.", seeing at this point that it was indeed alive and simply hoping to get a reaction.

Keith listened in on the conversation, they were.... kind of talking about killing him. Actually, they were talking about NOT killing him, but from what he could gather the fat murkrow was the one who'd knocked him off the branch. Then the glaceon spoke to, from what he could tell, him. He hesitated to respond, but the threat of dropping him back into the water was more than enough to persuade him. "Y-yes.... Don't hurt me.... I-I don't have anything with me, I'm not worth the tro-"

"Dude, we're guild members. We couldn't do that even if we wanted to.", the glaceon replied to the slightly paranoid eevee.

Acro nodded, "I'm Acro of Team Roark, and over there is Linus," he spoke, gesturing his wing to the Honchkrow that had slammed into the eevee. He was unsure of whether or not the glaceon wanted him to introduce him, so he left it to the glaceon to introduce himself. He remained silent afterwards, paying attention as those around him spoke. He was rather focused on the task at hand, since his partner seemed to have nearly killed someone. He did not notice a strange little bug skating on the surface towards them...

Linus looked to the eevee, "I-I'm really sorry, I got distracted and didn't see you there..." he seemed to have felt guilty about it immensely, but was still rather sour for the glaceon's accusations and words. He seemed to ignore the glaceon completely by now, only speaking to the eevee, "Nothing broken? Are you alright?"

Keith hesitated to answer.  Guild.... those were the things that had teams that did a lot of exploring and did jobs for others.  He knew this much.  He also knew that they carried badges to identify their selves.  He decided to check one of them for this identification before trusting they had no malicious intent, looking to the blue jolteon as he happened to be the closest of the three to the eevee, given he was currently carrying him.  Sure enough, he spotted the badge on the oddly colored jolteon's bag.

Relieved, he looked back to the other two who were talking to him.  "I-I'm alright.", he replied, sort of honestly.  He was still a bit short on breath and didn't exactly feel nice after being rammed out of a tree and hurdling into the water, but he wasn't dying or anything.

Sova, feeling like his only current purpose was to keep the eevee from falling into the water, remained silent as the others talked.  He didn't give his team name - why did it even matter?  HE was the team, might as well have called it Team Sova.  Though that meant if anything, saying his name would be reasonable.  When the eevee was finished replying to the others, he decided it was his turn to speak up.

"I'm Sova, by the way.  Now you can thank me for saving you."

"Oh....  S-sorry....", the eevee replied.

"Sorry?  The hell are you apologizing for?", the blue jolteon glaceon questioned, a bit confused.  He was kidding about the eevee thanking him, he didn't really care whether he was thanked, but he surely would have expected thanks before an apology.

Keith fell silent at the glaceon's rather harshly worded comment.  He'd simply felt guilty for making a stranger go out of their way to help him, but now he felt even more guilty for doing something to displease the stranger, as well as worried about agitating said stranger.  He wasn't in much of a position to defend himself or run if these new faces decided they didn't like him, after all....

Sova Roll:

Lord E V carried out 10 launched of one Cattail Marsh :

, , , , , , , , ,

Keith Roll

Lord E V carried out 2 launched of one Cattail Marsh :

,

With a swift movement, the surskit that had crept up on the ground was suddenly skating across the water at a high speed. The water rippled as it took its steps across the water, quickly running circles around the Archeops. Acro did not realize what was going on and it was too late, his wings had been strapped to his sides and he was incapable of flight and balance on the log, "Wo-woah!" Acro cried out before falling into the water, his back landing into the water first, and to his horror he discovered that the area was deeper than it was over with the others. He struggled under the water, but it seemed that the bonds would not break. He held what breath he could, and continued to struggle his way back to the surface.

Linus squawked and took the skies, another string of webs narrowly missing him as he avoided the same fate as Acro. He dodged a few more, focusing on keeping in the air and avoiding the webs than what was actually firing them and what they were aimed at. The honchkrow sent a dark pulse at the source of one of the webs blindly, aiming more to stop the pokemon rather than harming it for now.

Sova watched as his friend was grounded. More like sunken, really. Before he could even lift a paw to try to help, a mesh of the substance that had taken the archeops down was flying right at him. He knew he couldn't avoid it, so instead he tossed the eevee away, into the water before the web could get on both of them. At least this way the eevee could escape. When the sticky netting wrapped its self around his body, it certainly made it more difficult to move, though he wasn't in nearly as bad of a situation as the archeops. He moved back to the shallow area of the water he had previously been in as it still wasn't a long distance away, just as another of the very sticky nets of webbing entangled him.

At this point, it would have been enough to make keeping above the water a difficult task; luckily he had gotten to the shallow area as he'd hoped and no longer had to fear being dragged under. The land here was higher up than the average level of the water in this area due to a nearby tree's roots uplifting-

Another of the strings of web hit him, this time much thicker and positioned horizontally to hit him and reach around to the tree, heavy enough to make him stumble back in the water and stick himself to said tree and long enough to latch onto the tree and effectively pin him to it. He spotted the eevee emerging from the water as he tried to pull himself off of the tree and shouted, "Run!"

Keith hadn't been paying much attention to what was going on, just enough to know the colorful bird had fallen into the water, the less colorful bird had taken to the air - probably to knock some poor pedestrian off a tree - and the blue jolteon had abruptly tossed him into the water. He figured he'd angered the "jolteon", but after fighting against the water to pull himself to the surface, he saw that the blue thing had been stuck to a tree, the rainbow bird hadn't yet emerged from the water and the fat murkrow was busy using a rather dangerous looking attack on some blue thing skating across the water. He heard the oddly colored jolteon suggest for him to run and honestly, it seemed like a pretty good idea. But he couldn't just leave them.

The eevee's attention was drawn to the other of the web-factories, just as it shot one of its sticky lines at him. He ducked under the water just in time to avoid it, but found that the surskit had dove under the water with him. Within moments, it had dashed into him and rammed him in the stomach, like some kind of water jet, knocking the air out of him. A few bubbles of air escaped his mouth before he managed to kick the thing away and swim back to the surface.

Acro struggled, bubbles of air escaping as he tried to push himself up. He uselessly tried to free his wings and legs, but failed to break the strong bonds. His tail flailed about as he moved, the tail managing to break the surface slightly, but not create a large splash but rather waves. He was running out of air, he slammed his tail against the ground, trying to use it to push himself up. It somehow worked, he burst through the surface of the water, coughing and choking before taking another breath before he submerged once more, the force of his tail not being enough to keep him up.

Linus managed to get the surskit assaulting him to stop spitting strings at him, he evaluated the situation, seeing that Acro was struggling to keep above the water and Sova was seemingly stuck to a tree. He quickly turned, preparing to dive into the water to free the archeops seeing as his life was in more danger at the moment. He was cut off however, as a Surskit fired a Water Pulse that struck his cheek, halting his progress. He shook off the attack, and turned towards the bug type, before diving towards it in a Peck attack.

(Sova - 27 energy)
(Keith - RIP)

Keith watched as the surskit that was previously attacking him switched its focus to the fluffy murkrow. Despite the bird having been the reason he was knocked off of his safe branch and into this situation, he knew it was an accident and wanted to help any way he could. So he dove under the water and swam up under the surskit, tackling it with as much force as he could muster from under the water. It wasn't all that forceful of a tackle, but it was enough to lift the water skater slightly and stop it from avoiding the crow's attack. He quickly dove back under to avoid getting hit along with the surskit and hoped for the bird to be able to handle it from there.

Meanwhile, the glaceon was still stuck to the tree, being kept from the fight. He pulled against the sticky webbing in the hopes of breaking free, but no luck. It seemed hopeless and for a moment he felt like giving up.... Then he had an idea. He lifted his paws out of the water, since he didn't need them at the moment due to being glued to a tree, then proceeded to drop his body temperature and freeze his fur. The water under him began freezing over due to the close proximity to the freezing fox, but that wasn't the important part. The webbing was beginning to stiffen. As it coated over with a layer of frost from the cold, he activated Ice Shard and icy spikes almost instantly ripped through most of the webbing.

The rest of the webbing broke away fairly easily at that point due to pretty much being frozen. He dropped to the layer of ice that had formed around the tree he had been stuck to and took a few steps forward, the reach of the ice increasing as he moved.

Acro had given up on using sheer force on the webbing, seeing he held his breath, trying to reach his talons on his feet to the webbing to slice at it, but failed. He looked around, his eyes burning as the water was rather unclean and he had little experience in opening his eyes underwater. He looked around, hoping to find something to help him, but there was nothing. There weren't even any boulders he could use Ancient Power on to lift himself from the waters. Panic gripped at him even stronger, and he tried to perform the tail manuever once more to get more air, but something seemed to have crawled onto his tail and anchored him there with little effort. He looked to see a purple blob on his tail, it seemed to be looking the other way, as if it had not noticed that it had just pinned the archeops.

Linus's wings flapped as he avoided yet another string shot, pulling away from a Peck Attack he had performed on one surskit of the two. He was struck with another Water Pulse, but shook off the confusion once more, before turning and using yet another Peck on the same surskit, hoping to knock it out first so less had a chance to attack. He shot a dark pulse at another before he went in for the peck, aiming to stop any oncoming attacks that might hinder his own.

Sova took a deep, focusing breath as he fought against the urge to immediately go kill the little water demons that'd made the group's day so difficult.  This was good, Linus needed to get better at fighting and these enemies honestly weren't that strong.  The web barrages were annoying, sure, but the surskits themselves weren't exactly very threatening.  So instead of immediately jumping to help, he decided to instead make sure Acro was alright.  He looked around for any sign of the bird and became slightly worried upon seeing no signs of him.  He darted off to where the archeops had fallen under the water at with the help of Ice Shard, appearing as if he was running across the water.  In reality, though, a thin layer of ice was covering the water around him as he ran over it, breaking away as he darted over it as it wasn't getting enough time to properly freeze, but it was enough to at least keep him above the water.

He stumbled and almost fell once as the water didn't quite freeze fast enough to keep up with him, but he was alright.... other than his bag coming open and one of his Joy Ribbons getting blown out without him noticing.  The other had been around his neck, safely secured and hidden because PINK underneath his blue ribbon, but he'd forgotten to secure the second one at all.  He cut off the ice maker, so to speak, before skidding to a stop along the water's surface due to his momentum.  A few moments later, he was completely submerged in the water.  It was more than a bit difficult to see the archeops, especially since it was sunset, but he could just barely make out the faint colors of the bird under the water and swam over to him.  He knew it was going to be disgusting, but he opened his mouth and let the marsh water flood in so that he could bite onto the webbing around Acro's wings and set him free.

Keith resurfaced a few feet away from the surskit and watched as it was pelted with a flurry of pecks.  He didn't really know what more he could do.  It looked like the blue jolteon was.... running on the water to go get the colorful bird.... he didn't remember his mother being able to do that.  He wasn't really sure what to do, it seemed like the group of guild members had the whole situation covered.

He looked for something to be useful with, but the only thing he noticed was a strange pink ribbon floating in the water.  He swam over to it and ducked his head under the water, bringing himself back up under the ribbon and draping it over his neck.  He didn't know what it was, but he assumed it belonged to one of the others.  If he returned it, that'd be something useful!