Log:Defiance Guild: Search and Rescue

Search and Rescue

OOC Date: December 6, 2018
Location: Tatooine
Participants: Defiance: Kasia Ashkuri, Grom, Rheisa Dirleel, Tarion Tavers, Ryo Odessa, and Hex as GM

The short story: Defiance rescues some local children, in spite of themselves.

The long story:

The wind is gale force, unrelenting, vicious, and the sand stings, burns, bites, with every gust.

"WE ARE LOOKING FOR SOME KIDS, OK KA," Hex yells at his people over the sound of the wind. His goggles are in place, and though his Twi'lek fashioned clothing seems suited for the desert (where is his duster?), the multi layered swaths of cloth are whipping about in the wind, making him look a bit like a colorful windsock. "KIDS. LITTLE KIDS. FOUR KIDS. HATCHLINGS! GROM! HUMAN HATCHLINGS OK!" The wind dies for just a moment to allow normal-ish speech again; Hex takes a moment to hccckkkkk up a loogie and spit before talking again.

"We're splitting up, I'm going in with the villagers to search west and south, you guys are searching north and east towards the rocks and canyons. The sandstorm's rolling in ugly, so try to find these kids before they get dead in the desert. Watch out for sand people. Try not to die. If you get lost.. you're probably dead, but listen to Rheisa and not Tarion when it comes to water collection cause she's gonna be like 'this is how we harvest dew' and he's gonna be like 'we drink the blood of the weak.'"

Hex pulls his goggles back on. "Any questions?" He doesn't wait for questions. "Alright, good luck ai'jouku!"

It's windy, and the sand doesn't even need wind to be irritating to Kasia, but sand + wind and it's just awful. "You don't get yourself lost either," she tells Hex, eyeing him for that moment when the wind dies down to try and determine level of drunk going on here. Apparently what she sees doesn't concern her enough to insist on going with him though. "Be safe, yeah?" He gets a peck on the cheek, and then she steps away to look at the others." She's wearing pants, and a floppy hat, and a long sleeved shirt to protect her weak human skin from the sun, and probably the sand, but it's not enough. She's also got a cloth tied around her head to help protect her nose and mouth from the grit on the air. "No questions from me. Are you guys ready?" She definitely also has blasters on her hips, and a bag that contains some supplies, hopefully water is among them.

"Grom is here! Human hatchlings, Grom was listening the entire time," the Houk bellows cheerfully. "If this sandstorm beast attacks, GROM SHALL SLAY IT. The beast, not the hatchlings," he clarifies in the next breath. "GROM IS READY," the reptilian murder machine in heavy armor booms back to Kasia with a toothy smile.

The Togruta is by no means an indigenous desert dweller, but the hunting plains of Shili and the vastness of Tatooine's sandy sea do have attributes in common that she finds familiar: Visibility can go on for miles and sound /carries/. Also, the sun /can/ be brutal on Shili, just...not Tatooine brutal. Rheisa's already entered full hunt mode, spastically scanning the area ahead like an impatient hound ready to be let off leash. Her echolocative sense is taking a bit of a hit everytime the sandblasting wind kicks up violently enough and causes commotion of its own. "Ka," she pipes up in agreement to all the above statements of their windsock leader, voice a little muffled behind the cloth wrapped 'round to safeguard the breathing bits. Layers of wrapping, denym pants (real people pants!) and whatever's hidden in her satchel is all the protection against the elements that she's brought along for the ride. "Blood sometime IS good to drrrrink, if you are soon to give birth. Do not think that is us though, yes, so waters only." She starts off for the east-ish.

Near the rear of this moving mob is Rip Recker, a newer member to the cavalcade of slaying monsters and gunslinging smugglers. He's armored up beneath a large poncho of sandy tan, with matching pants and dark boots. He wears a large wrap around his face that keeps his nose, mouth, and neck covered. He's armed but it isn't visible, and his arms are tucked beneath the concealing poncho. When asked for questions, he just raises his hand, angling his thumb skyward. He's good to go.

"Rheisa literally drinks the blood of the weak!" Tarion cries in protest to his overweight boss, adjusting his eyewear. It's not goggles, which would be most useful out here; it is, instead, a pair of extremely reflective mirrored glasses sit on the bridge of his nose, doing approximately nothing against the sand that is whipping around. "These kids are dead already! Is it kids or hatchlings? These hatchlings are dead already, and they're not even people. They came from EGGS. People aren't hatched." This may be insulting for any nearby egg-people. The man is wearing his grey armor that he literally always wears, rather than something actually suited for the desert, but he's accessorized with the glasses and also a colorful durag. The durag is really just a white tanktop he has tied to his head and then wrote a cryptic message on in a black marker: "TRESSED FFO FIRK" What could it mean?! "SEE?!" the hunter yells when Rheisa pipes up, thrusting insistent, indignant hands in her direction. "Do you see?! The kids are dead, we're dead, everyone is dead, I hate you all, and I want you to know that."

Honestly, a new environment means new clothing opportunities, and that's enough to get Ryo out and about. The brown-skinned man is wearing his finest space linen white blazer, a salmon-colored, side-collared tunic and a pair of tight white trousers tucked into a a pair of salmon-colored knee-high riding boots. Around his neck is a /very/ flowy blue scarf and a pair of space aviators protect his eyes.

TL;DR Ryo looks /and/ feels great.

"I gotta say, I look /and/ feel great," Ryo admits, having just finished striking an adventurer's pose, a single hand shielding his already-shielded eyes from the sun. He whips his scarf around his neck and wanders on behind the rest of the group, his other hand idly swinging his DG-29 around. "Now, why are we looking for these kids?" he asks, looking around at the others. "Don't Tatooine kids like...just live in the sand, anyway? Like...that's their entire bag or whatever."

"Can't hear you," Hex announces to Tarion, whom he can hear perfectly well. Kasia gets a fond pat on the ass, then he jumps in a speeder and vroooooommmms away, leaving the crew behind him. A lull in the approaching storm shows rocks, canyons, outcroppings to the east. There is sort of a road to the north, probably leading to homesteads and moisture farms. But the East looks like much better shelter from the elements....

Kasia shoots Hex a fond look as she gets the familiar pat on her backside, and then she looks around to the others. "Alright, shall I assume we don't want to do all this on foot?" She assumes that answer is yes, because her answer is yes, so she heads to whatever transport/speeder type vehicle they have with them, intending on climbing into that sucker to go to the search locations, rather than walk. Walking is for chumps. "I say we start out near the moisture farms first?" She points off in that direction. "That seems like a place kids might go play, right? Just wander off and think it looks like a-- well okay not a park, but place that isn't just bleak sand?" She pauses to eye Ryo before getting int he speeder. "You do look nice today. Alright, all aboard who is going to board, I'm already sweaty enough."

"GROM HATCHED FROM EGG, TRASH KNIGHT," Grom roars back at Tarion before pausing and visibly thinking. "Though... Grom is a king, not a person. Perhaps Trash Knight is correct. TO THE ROCKS," he decides, contrary to Kasia's initial suggestion, brandishing his four and a half foot long monstrosity of a blaster to the east like a marching baton, and noting further, "Rocks are best for building nests for hatchlings. SO SPEAKS GROM."

Rheisa pauses just a short wandering from their /sensible/ mode of transportation and crouches down to compare some disturbances in the sand. There are the typical ripples, drawn by deesrt breeze, but there are other depressions, too, that don't quite follow the windswept pattern. People tracks? Hatchling tracks? Perhaps. She touches them lightly, burying fingers and waggling her own toes into the warm grit. That half-swaddled head of hers jangles a nod in agreement to Grom's assertion.

"To rocks. Move east. Someones before us have come this way, I think. Who drive?" She cranes a look around to Kasia, Ryo, and Rip.

Rip climbed onto the back of the ride and lets his feet hang off, but at a safe distance from the ground. He latches and waits for this thing to start moving. He has no feed back over where they should go because he couldn't see a kriffing thing to begin with. He pulls the hood of the poncho up and adjusts his goggles over his eyes once more, trying his best to see.. anything.

"They'd have already found them if they were in a people-place like that," Tarion insists when Kasia suggests they head north, piling into his own speeder, a Sorosuub X-34 that Tess pissed in once but you can't even smell it anymore guys. "I'm with Grom, the canyons and whatnot over there are much better for hiding in and not-dying in. If the kids went north, I'm okay with being wrong if it means they're dead and I'm not instead of all of us being dead. Or just me being dead. Really as long as I survive this I'm okay with whatever happens to the rest of you," he remarks cheerfully, firing up the speeder and glancing around at the others as it hums to life. "Unless you're giving me a bonus to go north, in which case, you know, let's go. Otherwise get in already. I'm driving." And then, without waiting for anyone else to get in, he roars off towards those canyons.

"Thanks, Queen," is Ryo's heartfelt response to Kasia as he reaches up to blow her a kiss. He, too, wanders over to the speeder and crams in tight with the rest of the gang, however poorly dressed they may be. "It's honestly /way/ too hot. Why do we live out here, again?"

East, to the rocks, cliffs, and canyons! It's bumpy out this way, the terrain increasingly narrow, rocky, and hostile until the crew has to get out of their speeder and hike. But not too far from where it is they have to pull over, unable to proceed.... signs of civilization. A deep canyon has been cut by nature into the earth, millennia ago, too wide to jump and climbing down and then up again would take a long, long time and would probably be too dangerous. You don't want to fall from these heights. But luckily, stretching across this canyon is a bridge, made of rope and thin wooden slats.

It's not in great shape, and creaks in the wind. A pink child's ribbon is snagged on it, toward the opposite bank.

The creaking gets a little worse the longer they watch it. Some slats are missing.

Kasia waits until everyone is on board, and then she too roars off, or more accurately putters off like a good space-soccer mom, probably taking a bit more time to get there than Tarion. She shuts the engine off, and slides out, frowning at the idea of having to walk in the heat, but she shoulders her bag agian and starts heading off toward that canyon, and then to the rope bridge. "I think we should probably cross this one at at time? I... I'll go first." She doesn't wait for an answer, or to see if anyone listens, because if she waits she might lose her nerve, and then she'll never cross. Deep breath, she goes, trying to remain steady and not panic as it starts creaking, and wobbling, and creaking. "It's creaking so much!" she says, trying not to sound worried, but... she sounds worried. SO WORRIED. There's a significant wobble at one point that elicits an audible 'AAAAH!' out of her, but she makes it. She makes it. She looks back at the others, SHOOK.

"GROM WILL THROW LITTLE MAMMALS ACROSS," the Houk offers brightly upon noting that they have a chasm to cross. "Oh. Or mammals can take little rope path, that is almost as much fun." No it isn't as much fun, and yes, Grom is sulking a bit. Then Kasia's near death wobble crossing is underway, and Grom claps happily. "Grom was wrong, this is much fun!" when his turn comes, the reptilian warrior declares, "King Grom, OF THE SKY!" and activates a set of rocket thrusters in his boots that struggle... mightily, and slooooowly to lift the quarter-ton of Houk off the ground, and gradually manage to inch him through the air and onto the other side. Throughout, he has struck a majestic af pose.

Rheisa eyes the lethal gap and flimsy looking bridge that spans its distance. It IS a long way down. The depth and killer crags call up to her everytime the wind howls through the canyon. "Spirits be with you," she offers Kasia and releases one of the ropes from her testing push/tug. Both of her hands go up and she echoes a "aYi!!!" of victory on Kasia's behalf when spacemom makes it across safely. GROM is watched with a few moments of curious squinting when he takes flight, then she opts to traverse the conventional route. Nimble feet tiptoe over the danger bridge with superb balance, swaying be damned.

Rip's turn comes up and he makes it four steps before there's an audible cracking noise. He hears it, the people behind him probably heard it, Grom may have heard it as his rocket boots puttered by, those down at the bottom of the canyon heard it, and the hatchlings may have heard it. Rip had a moment. Exactly one moment, to utter anything to better his predicament, but the only thing he issued after looking down was. "Drek." Through the slat he went, nearing ultimate weightlessness when by some act of whatever decided to save him resulted in his arm hooking through the rope and suspending him in place. He watched the heavenly descent of the two broken slat pieces as they fell below and out of eye sight. Looking up, he grimaced, but gripped the rope and held on for now. "Stand back. I may die.." He warns any who haven't made the journey yet.

"Throw me," Tarion volunteers to Grom while he's unloading from his speeder, hopping over the low driver's side door and then reaching back in for his rifle and green reptile skin purse, stowing his glasses because they were expensive but leaving the durag on because it was cheap. He does stop to check the look in the side mirror, where the text reads perfectly 'KRIF OFF DESSERT', giving himself a wink before he straightens up again, approaching the others with no idea that his spell of protection is reversed. "Oh, what, he's already over. This is much less fun," the bounty hunter complains, tromping onto the bridge without even the slightest reserve or concern. In a strange way, the rollicking aplomb with which he strides matches the sway of the bridge almost perfectly, and the waves sort of... cancel out, allowing the man to cross with what is likely annoying ease, stepping directly over Rip's head. The child's ribbon is collected from the post, and tied around his wrist. "Did you know that on some planets ribbon is seen as a trade good? I didn't either, but it sounds right, doesn't it? Maybe Tatooine is one of them!"

"Well, that's dark," remarks Ryo, noticing the fluttering pink ribbon. He breathes an exasperated sigh and shakes some of the nerves out before holding a hand over his eyes and blindly wobbling his way across the bridge. Reaching the other side, he moves his hand away and looks down at terra firma once again, "I'm amazing. Thank you." Blind luck saves Ryo's life once again.

Kasia would have gone back to help Rip, honest, but presently her knees are made of something akin to jello and if she went back out on the bridge again, she would definitely fall, or vomit, or vomit then fall. She opts to leave rescue missions to those more capable of not dying in the process, and instead takes her still wobbly self a few steps away, eyes squinting at the surroundings. Rocks. Sand. Rocks. It all looks the same to her-- hang on. "Hey, look," she points out some rocks, which she moves toward, apparently just starting to get the hang of nature here. "Look, these rocks can be used as steps if we're careful." She glances back at the others, and then starts trying to climb them, because jello knees and climbing are good ideas. She's been with Defiance for too long now.

Grom sets his boots to the ground and looks proud of himself. Only belatedly does he look back and notice that one of their number is still dangling on the edge of death. "Gasp!" Yes, Grom shouts the word 'gasp' rather than actually gasping. "Nameless human is hanging from ropes like so much over-ripe human fruit! GROM WILL GET YOU, HUMAN FRUIT," he vows aloud, promptly fixing upon the simplest way to resolve the issue. With Rip still almost the entire length of the rope bridge away, Grom trudges to the edge, bends down to grasp both sides of the rope bridge, and advises, "HUMAN FRUIT SHOULD HANG ON VERY HARD, NOW," before ripping the ropes loose of their mooring in an inhuman display of strength, and pulling so hard that the ropes on the far side snap loose as well, propelling poor Rip through the air as if fired out of a Tatooine slingshot. "FLY, HUMAN FRUIT."

"What did you do?" Rheisa inquires of Ryo and his amazingness. The query isn't laced with snark. It's genuine! Like maybe she's disappointed she's missed whatever it was while distracted by Tarion's new accessory. It IS a pretty ribbon. "I give you three beads and gutkurr shell dish for ribbon," is then offered to TT while Grom ambles on over to assist and she's more or less turned her back to follow Kasia. "Is-----"

The Togruta's words fail when Rip's slung free to sail...and she gets low. Just in case. She twists around and stares, dumbfounded at where the bridge used to be. "Grom." Pause. "How strrrong is your bird boots? Elsewise is long climb home, yes?" Shaking her head, she resumes course up the steps a little ways with face tipped into the wind.

"Smell like meat. Old fires, maybe. Peoples ahead on this trail, yes? Smell like hunting camp." She pauses to lay low and fish out a knife.

It seems as though they just step over him, knocking dust and rocks through the cracks to pepper his face. Rip seemed content to hang there. He didn't feel fatigue, or a need to release himself really, well.. That changed. Grom took hold of the bridge and he sighed. "Oh no." He felt the ropes give out on the other end, then the rope became increasingly tight around his arm. He could let go and still hang there, it was so tightly wound around his forearm. SNAP. SNAP! Weightlessness. At this point, Rip experienced flight in brief images. He saw light and god rays of light cut between the gaps of the slats as he looked skyward whilst being flung. Then it segued to those on the other side, whom he passed over gracefully, appearing as a shadow over them. He struck the side of whatever they were climbing with an audible smack. He felt fine, his armor broke his collision, but then the bridge he was still attached to began to fall. Instead of fighting it, he sighed, then was drug downward and over the edge of the small staircase they intended to climb, rolling over rocks, breaking more slats, and finally hitting the other side of the cliff face, face down in the dirt. He laid there for a moment, then lifted himself up slowly. His entire front side was caked with moondust, so when he finally breathed out, a small cloud vaped from his face wrap. "I made it."

"Show them to me when we get back and we'll see if you have a deal," is the response to Rheisa. Absorbed in his own little world, Tarion is wandering around on the far side of the scary bridge making up facts about ribbon and sand and their various and highly marketable uses that justify ridiculous prices for either one. "Sand. Sand. Sandfoliator 9000. Look at this over here, we got... more sand, sand, there's footprints in the sand, if I know my sand, and some say that I do," the bounty hunter observes aloud, pointing down at a number of small imprints in the... sand. "There's a bunch of little ones, then they become just one big one, so there's a few options here as to what happened. Personally, I'd guess that what you had here was a number of Jawas that fused into a single Mega, which is something I saw on the DiscoverIt holochannel," he theorizes, crossing his arms over his chest, scratching his head through the ribbed fabric of his durag. "Megas being the mysterious sand-spirit that the Jawas worship and spend their entire lives trying to become, of course. I'm betting if we follow the Mega tracks, we can at /least/ take its photo and sell that for some serious credits." A finger follows the trajectory of the tracks up the rock-stairs Kasia has indicated. "And it looks like we're going up," Tarion muses, following after her. "Either that or where there's only one set of tracks, they were carried, but like, what are the odds of that? There's no big people out here carrying Jawas around for fun. ...or IS there? Haha, just kidding. It's a Mega." A confident grin spreads across his face, adjusting his rifle's sling.

"I made it across the bridge," is Ryo's answer to Rheisa. "By divine appointment, probably." He rests his hands on his hips and looks back toward the bridge, reaching out to point at the now-airborne Rip. "Look, it's not like it was /easy/, okay. It took some kind of skill that that guy didn't have." Ryo ponders for a moment, "Or maybe he just wanted to get thrown by Grom. Jealous, honestly." Ryo sniffs and pulls a small baggie of powder from his coat pocket and dumps a bit out onto the back of his hand. SNNNNNOOOORRRRRT. He pinches his nose and blinks a few times, before looking Rheisa over. He waves his hand over her ensemble and says, "We have got to work on this, though. That tribal thing you're always doing is way too cute for you to be wearing jeans right now. Cut it out. Aaaaaaarrggghhh. Sorry, I'm just seeing sounds right now; it's wild. We're having fun. I love us. This is great. Rheisa, honestly, though; call me. Oh my goooooood, it's so hot."

As the Deflings follow the clues towards the likely location of the missing children, they clamber up a path, rudimentary steps, that slowly becomes a trail leading up to a higher mesa and cliffs. The terrain opens out and before them... an encampment of Tusken Raiders.

Smoke rises in the air from several campfires, but walls of cliff, rock, and rubble prevent the group from seeing readily inside. There is one main entrance, a trash heap to the southeast of the entrance, and a pit-like trench dug across the main opening. There are sharp wooden spikes in place to discourage entry past the pit. There are no Raiders visible readily. That doesn't mean they're not watching, of course...

As if it wasn't clear enough that they do not welcome visitors, a corpse, baked mummy-like in the sun, lies forlornly outside the entrance.

-(OOC)- Hex says, "This is the camp."

Kasia climbs, because she's under the influence of Defiance and their bad decision making ways, but Hex would be proud of her. She dove recklessly into a situation, climbed a thing, and then stumbled across a camp. By the time the camp is in sight, she is real out of breath, bent slightly at the waist with one hand on her side, the other wiping sweat from her brow so it stops stinging her eyes. Basically she sees nothing helpful about this camp, but does tentatively start to move toward the entrance, not seeing any threats, or much of anything else.

"Grom is not sure," the Houk answers Rheisa's question as to the strength of his boot rockets. "But if we need to cross, we can use this-" he raises a fist full of ropes. "Grom found them in the desert, once. No doubt they will be useful." He nods, proudly. Moving on, as he peers at the camp, musing, "Hmm. Axe... or gun. Grom dislikes deciding! There should be... both. Grom will give a knighthood to whomever invents an Axe-cannon! It could be a cannon, with an axe blade on one end OR a cannon that fires axes, GROM DOES NOT CARE WHICH."

Rheisa looks down at her pants, then to Ryo and HIS ensemble. "Everything you wear white is white no more," she points out all the dusty desert-travel stains accumulating. Critique for critique. What IS white is the fangly smile she brandishes before scampering on along to catch up and behold the challenge before them. Her nostrils sample the air idly, confirming what she'd smelled earlier. There is definitely food in there. And maybe blood of the weak.

"Kasia, no!" she hisses in rushed chastisement after the woman and motions for 'SHH' and both hands pat downward at the baked earth under their feet. "Is no good, walking like this into a warrior's camp. That pit, those sticks..." god, those sticks, her leg aches just seeing them, "is 'go away' sign. They not stupid. Maybe they already know we here. Let us find another way, at least, for option, yes?" And before any angry residents CAN unleash a firestorm of arrows or beasts or axecannons, she's slinking on over to investigate the rocky perimeter. And the garbage. Rrrats? No. A hole! One orangey, stripey arm gestures a 'come hither' blindly behind her while she peeps into the literal hole in the wall. Can she fit? A ginger tuck of the head and armreach inside debates.

Rip doesn't take too long to rise back to his feet and dust himself off. For awhile, at least in ascent, every step renders a small cloud of dirt, sand, or both which had collected from his impact. Making it to the top among the last of the group, he takes a moment longer to get his bearings again and try to assosciate what he was seeing with what he knew of their mission. Oh, and there was a dead body. "I heard random dead bodies in the desert is a sign of good fortune. Like when a bird dreks on your shoulder or something.." He looks at the others, his expression half concealed by the cloth wrapped about his face. He pulls out his blaster for giggles. Judging from his luck today, he'd probably lose it.

"Pssssh. What do you know?" is Ryo's well-thought out response to Rheisa. He grunts and waggles his DG-29 around, looking down at the camp ahead of them. "Let's goooooo," he shout-whispers, following after Kasia. "I've been practicing," he offers, just staring at his gun as he walks.

Thanks to Rheisa's sharp eye for anomalies in the terrain, the intrepid crew of consummate professionals are spared having to charge through the front gates with the pits, and corpse, and bottleneck where they could be easily shot! Instead they trudge through the trash midden, which smells... not awesome. Different from city trash, but astringent and harsh with refuse, bodily waste, bits of dead animals or city-scavenged trash that cannot be reused.. it smells bad. Like Ryn. Or a Jawa Mega. But through the hole they go, and all of them pass through without difficulty. Even Grom. How is he so large, yet so majestic? How does he avoid collapsing the whole tunnel on them? Who can know the mysteries of Grom? It does seem strange no Raiders have spotted them, however, as they're usually very alert...

The reason for this becomes clear when they pile out of the tunnel. There are three anoobas here in a section of camp that looks like it was used for skinning and tanning animal hides. The three predators are currently pulling apart a dead Tusken Raider, growling and snapping at each other, and these are not smaller, nice ones like Jehn's pet. These are huge, and they look hungry. One growls, low and slow, and then attacks!

When Kasia is chastised by Rheisa, she freezes in place, looking back a the woman that she trusts to know about survival in places like this. Put her in a city and Kasia can lead you around in what is at least relative safety, but nature? Nature isn't her game. Rather than speak she lifts both hands in mock surrender to the Togruta's superior understanding, and retreats a few steps so that she's closer to the others. "Alright, another way in. I don't see one." Thankfully Rheisa does, and so through the garbage passage they go. "This smells worse than the time Hex made me get in the dumpster," she complains in a low voice, shoving the cloth that hides her face and mouth up into her nose instead. It doesn't really help. They make it through to the other side and she is relieved for about four seconds, then there are anooba there that don't like her, making her stumble back several steps, right into whoever came through the tunnel behind her. She should have had her weapon out, but she doesn't, so for now she's just trying to yank it free while not being eaten.

"GROM SEES A BIG CAT," the Houk declares happily, reacting with the natural empathy and pacific demeanor of his people: firing off a needlessly large bore blaster bolt at the largest of the beasts, blithely unaware of any non violent solutions.

Mm, well. Rheisa was right about one thing: there IS food here. In many forms! Some sweet handbags-to-be, too.

"NAH!" Rheisa barks, headtails arched the little they can to get 'big' while she yanks up a rock from that wall they just shimmied through and throws it at the nearest Anooba's foot. "AHWAY!" Flash of fangs, hiss and screech and she's brought out the inner feral to challenge their challengers. The knife's gone away and instead the blowgun's come into hand. Rather than joining Grom in the shooting right away though, she clambers on up in attempts to get a higher perspective on the whole camp.

Rip is resigned to non-violence. Not out of any notion of preserving the lives of the creatures, but rather the creatures he calls friend (well, some of them anyway.) He brandishes the weapon he had drawn earlier and aims it at one creature that ventures too close. Rather than blasting it though, Rip just makes blaster noises with his mouth. Frightened by this, the animal nearest him, the one he gestures and makes noises at, is persuaded to harass one of Rip's other friends thus leaving Rip to his relative limited peace.

"Fine, fine, no takers?" Tarion grumbles, stepping up to the tunnel and adjusting the strap of his rifle so that it's at its maximum length, clamping the end in his teeth so that he can drag the weapon and the purse he hooks onto it behind him like a sled. Emerging on the other side, his expression immediately brightens again, spitting out the strap and cooing "'noobas!" to the ravenous beasts. Dropping to his knees, his hands extend out towards the smallest one, with a "C'mere," gesturing the spiny fellow over, and shockingly, he does as requested, approaching rapidly and bowling the bounty hunter over to rip his thr- no, he's licking his face. What?! "Good boy," Tarion mumbles, scratching behind the thing's ears. "I'm cool if you don't want to like, help me kill your buddies here but maybe you're sick of them, right? I mean, I've bunked with Bothans before and I wouldn't have needed much encouragement, this is the same thing. It's the same thing, Noob." Throughout, the creature keeps licking Tarion's sunburned face, which will give him a nasty infection in a few days, but hey. A finger points over at the medium-sized anooba. "Go get him, boy, and uh, really anyone but me, if I'm being real with you, Nooby."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH," whispers Ryo, guns waving in front of him. "Let's go, Grom! Battle buddies!" he cheers, firing wildly at one of the big cats. Surprisingly enough, the blaster bolts hit their target, causing Ryo to stop in his tracks, "Ah, krif; that's bad... Grom, run away!"

Chaos breaks out from all directions at once. The anooba that attacked Kasia missed its chomp at her, but only just, and another howls in pain as it is grievously injured by Grom. All of them seem wary of both Rheisa and Rip, shying away from those two, and the medium-sized beast shrieks in bloodcurling pain when Ryo shoots it once, again, and it's down. They're pack animals... or at least usually they are, when Tarion hasn't been bending them to his will with his inexplicably charming ways. The Large anooba roars with outrage, fury, and ... grief? ... as Ryo guns down its mate, and it attacks him in return, biting savagely. That's gonna be a problem. The small anooba, turning on its own kind, jumps into the fray to attack the larger packmate, but to no avail.

Kasia manages to yank her weapon free from the holster, tries to steady herself and take aim at the anooba trying to eat Ryo for lunch. She squeezes, fires, and barely grazes the thing. Dang it. "Just hold on Ryo!" she encourages him to not die while someone else shoots the thing. It's with some small surprise that she looks at Tarion's new pet anooba, then over to Tarion. "We are NOT taking that back with us."

Grom pauses in his firing of the small artillery piece he calls a rifle (which all the manuals insist should not be shoulder fired the way Grom presently is), to peer aside at Ryo. "But why should Grom run, Battle Buddy? All is going so-NOW SUDDENLY IS CAT, SHOCK AND ALARM," the Houk declares, firing again at the murder beast. "Grom will save you, Neck-flag Battle Buddy!" ...by firing an anti-vehicle caliber weapon at close range, at a target that is presently inches away from Ryo. And yet... in a blast of doom and scorched Anooba carcass, it all works out. "GROM WINS. Battle Buddy helped."

"Three...four..." Rheisa shades her eyes with her free hand and surveys the freshly made ghost town. "Six homes, three fires," her fingers countem off accordingly, too, as if anyone could hear/cared to look up from the furry fray taking place. "Two...nah. Three or four holes..'cache'? Hiding places, maybe, but open." While her companions go about their mixed tactics of handling the local wildlife (or being handled BY the wildlife), Rheisa treads cautiously along the rubble wall to hop off the other side and into the area with those pits of mystery for a listen/looksee. She tips her cheek to the ground, then edge near the darkness but cannot sense even a hint of movement down there. Or the next. Moving on to the nearest tent, she stoops to rummage around a bit of overturned camp junk and comes up with a rather pretty rock. The stone's mooth surface is etched with a grid pattern and several dots on said grid. She turns it over a few times in hand thoughtfully, then rises from the dirt and thrusts her find into the air for all to witness. "This is map?"

Rip isn't looking for the children, he's watching this debacle unfold as creatures get blasted, and others get bitten. He starts laughing a bit, and a cursory glance is paid to his comrade Rheisa. "I told you that dead body would bring good fortune." He's smiling beneath the wrap he wears. Something catches his eye and he turns from the chaos to bend slightly over and pick up a dead, mummified womp rat. "How did.. Hmm. More good fortune, I presume." He casts the carcass into the chaos and dusts his gloved hands off.

"Look at this though," Tarion tells Rip, interrupting his reverie with the womp rat with his love letter folded in the shape of a fashionable hat. "It's a hat, /and/ erotic fiction. This could be the next hit craze sweeping the illicit ladies' reading clubs of the galaxy, Rip. Don't touch it though, I don't want it ripped. That's a joke, Rip. But seriously don't touch it."

Being thrashed around in the jaws of a large desert cat is honestly not up there on Ryo's list of ways to go. The list is as follows. 1. Crushed by Guri's thighs. 2. Drowned in an orgy. 3. Run over by a cloud car. 4. Run over by a clown car. 5. Drowned in a clown orgy. 6. Clowned by a drowned clergy. 7. Murder-suicide. 8. Stabbed in a jizz concert...

...998. Beaten to death by an irate ex-lover that bears a striking resemblance to Stone Cold Steve Austin. 999. Beaten to death by an irate ex-lover that /is/ Stone Cold Steve Austin. And finally; 1000. Being thrashed around in the jaws of a large desert cat.

As Ryo is dropped by the now-dead anooba, the Festian gambler just kinda lays there in the sand...bleeding out of all sorts of tooth holes now covering his torso that had until now only been touched by the cheapest of silks. "B-Battle Buddy...carry me...in your...big, strong arms..."

Walk it off, Ryo, you're fine.

As the dust settles, they are free to explore, and there is so much good luck here. So much. By that, we mean corpses... Tusken Raider corpses. There aren't many of them here, but those that are have been mangled by anoobas they apparently failed to defeat -- though there are some dead anoobas here as well. To the far southeast, pits lie open for graves. Directly north of the tanning area, there is a little compound, with an electronic gate. It's old tech, but that just makes the cobbled together tech that much more dangerous; someone is going to get electrocuted if they mess this up.

The only keypad is a square of 9 buttons, faded and dusty, green in color. They turn red if pressed.

"Someone help patch Ryo up," Kasia instructs, but doesn't do it herself, now that things have settled down somewhat she cautiously starts to look around. Though she does glance at Rheisa from time to time to see if she's frantically waving at her to stop, and in one of those glances, notes the thing that she's holding up. "Hey, that looks like this," she moves cautiously toward the old school tech, lifting a hand to motion Rheisa closer so she can get a better look at the thing. "Maybe that tells us what to push?"

Rheisa obediently stands by with her rock/primitive stickynote and holds it out for comparison.

Grom hefts the badly bleeding Ryo and obligingly tosses his over one shoulder, like a dapper, dismembered sack of in a dashing scarf. Tromping around after Kasia, he comes to the door, before the Togruta calls. Peering at Rheisa and her map (?) the Houk corrects with a chuckle, "No, Grom is often tricked by such trickery as well, that us not map.. it is a rock. Ooh! Bring rock to door!" He nodnods happily to Kasia, "We can use rock to smash numbers open!"

Rip doesn't touch the hat, but watches it carefully, spotting stains across its surface, but respecting Tarion's new treasure. When they trudge from Cave Debacle out to the open, Rip spots the good fortune all around them. "Someone came and shared the good news with all of these people. It seems in their zealous pursuit for happiness, they died of happiness amongst their animal companions." He snorts and follows the rest toward the gate, where he stands apart from the rest eyeballing the computer panel. Tumbleweed rolls by briefly before Rip just lifts his blaster and blasts the DREK out of the paneling, showering sparks everywhere. Smoke trails up from the barrel of his blaster as he spins it creatively before seating it back home within its holster. "Kriff computers. Blast the damn thing and be done with it, I say. With all these omens of good fortune, I'd rather not wait to see what's behind door number 1." He gave them all an approving nod before turning his attention back to the destruction of the camp, walking idly as the wind caught the heroic flap of his excess scarf.

"I got this," Tarion announces, dropping back to his knees at Ryo's side with his purse, tugging out his medpac and expertly selecting a random pack of something from inside, expertly tearing the top off and expertly squeezing it into Ryo's wounds like ketchup. Squeeeeze. "I'm basically a doctor," he comments brightly to anyone who is listening. How exactly he's come through this without the slightest injury or serious mistake is anyone's guess, but there's still time for that? Reaching back into the medpack, he selects a few papery sheets of... something, and spreads them over Ryo's torso, smashing them down with rough hands and then hovering the same hands over the sheets and whispering an insistent "Stay" like that will actually make them stay there. "Did we find the dead kids yet?" he asks the others, zipping the medpack back up and shoving it back into his purse, leaving Ryo in Grom's capable care. There's an explosion, and Tarion stares at it because he's the opposite of a cool guy. "Damn. I was just going to push all the buttons at once and hope for the best."

BANG, with a sharp report of blaster fire, Rip explodes the rudimentary keypad and the thing explodes into a shower of sparks. Flashes of electric blue lightning proceed to crawl all over the gate, making snap, snap, pop! noises, and filling the air with the scent of charred electronics and ozone.

This goes on for a while.

And on

and on

and

on

Just when the pause is starting to get kind of awkward, at last the power runs out, and the gate goes silent, tame, swinging open with a feeble creak. From inside the building within, four human children emerge looking scared, but then... hopeful, when they see the Deflings! "Please help us!" the oldest, maybe ten, shout-sobs and they run over. Then they stop real abruptly. THESE PEOPLE LOOK TERRIFYING. There's a moment of assessment, then all four begin to sob and cling to.... Rip, who looks the least scary of all them. All the hatchlings are alive and unharmed, and there's still time to get home before the storm rolls in!

Sure, they did break the bridge. But they'll figure that out.

Surely.