( closed ) bustin five knots, wind whippin out my coat

[champions]

WHO: Marisol, Korrin, Nikos, Ellana, Norrington
WHAT: A group of smugglers have set up shop in a corner of the Wounded Coast, thankfully they are going to be stopped by a beautiful Antivan woman. And I guess some other people help.
WHEN: Cloudreach… sometime…
WHERE: the Wounded Coast
NOTES: ⛵🌊⛵🌊 ⛵🗡️✨🗡️✨🗡️👏👏👏

Sometimes having contacts was very useful. Sometimes it could lead to minor nuisances, as well, and she’d categorise this particular thing as both.

On the one hand, she’s not eager to show too much of her hand to those not of her particular social sphere. In this instance, of course, “social sphere” would refer to her particular brand of alarming mages and relatives. She’s sure these others are quite pleasant, but they aren’t hers. Not everyone can be be perfect, though, so maybe she shouldn’t hold it too much against them.

On the other hand, it is a chance to be useful, on the sea, enjoy some of those things she is very good at and drag Nikos along with her. (Poor Nikos.)

The Wounded Coast, unfortunately, is rather less pleasant than the Antiva coast, but maybe they'd be lucky. Maybe there'd be sharks.

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[exsecutus]

Ice crackles, explodes; the Repulsion Wave sweeps across the scene. The smuggler with the pipe looks up, startled, just as that wave of magic finds him and knocks him to the deck. And Nikos, who had just slipped a step forward to overtake his target, is forced to feint that same step back as the smuggler falls.

For fuck's sake. This is not how he likes to work, with a burst of chaos. But reassessment is quick, takes only a glance. The smuggler has dropped his pipe and is reaching for his belt, but Nikos darts forward and grabs him by the hair, yanks him back. His knife slices across the hand and dispatches it, and whatever weapon he was going for. When he cuts the smuggler's throat, it's quick, again--a little more brutal this time, to account for his irritation. The smuggler chokes, grabs for the knife in a vain effort. Dispassionate, Nikos glares down at him.

"Shut him up," he growls, cutting that angry glare at Ellana, "you made this problem," and he flicks blood off his knife as he stands to go for the gangplank, leaving the smuggler to die on the deck. If there's more of them--if luck is, somehow, impossibly, with them--then any reinforcements from belowdecks will be loud in their approach. Luck is doubtful, especially with pained screaming.

[champions]

Marisol doesn't need to speak the quiet Nikos that would otherwise be on the tip of her tongue. She lays a hand on Ellana's shoulder, very briefly, intended to be reassuring as frost mists the air around her hand. (There is no time to apologise for Nikos' surliness, in this particular moment.) Not moving towards the man, she simply pulls her hand down, and a spike of ice falls into his open mouth to render him silent as it pierces the back of the throat, into the spine.

She doesn't bother to check if he's dead yet, for he will be soon. That simply leaves the one encased in ice, though that hold will not last much longer, and she casts a watchful gaze towards her cousin, mindful of keeping an eye on him. It is more for his well-being, than because she anticipates poor behaviour, manners aside.

Pragmatism wins out. She cannot protect Nikos if this other man is freed and comes after them. She opts not to cast too much magic in rapid suggestion, and looks to Ellana with her eyebrows raised in a silent question, head tilting towards the frozen man. Would you like to do the honours?

[serannas]

Already taking her knife from her belt, Ellana pauses as the ice spike is driven through him and instead turns towards the one frozen in ice. With the deck wet from the rain and this smuggler the only one left, she can now risk a little fire and she engulfs the frozen form in a sheath of flame. The man thaws, and the knife is flung forward into his throat.

[exsecutus]

Nikos' attention is on the dark hole that leads belowdecks. The gangplank is a narrow path. Could mean reinforcements, could mean nothing. Could mean a bloody ship's cat slinking up to see what the commotion was about. Only a cat would have the sense to stay hidden until well after all unfamiliar footsteps were off of his ship. Another smuggler might have that same sense.

He crouches down beside the hole when he reaches it. Listens, trying to pick out any hint of sound below the wind and the lapping of the sea and, yes, the thud of that third smuggler-turned-corpse now hitting the deck with a thud.

Nothing. He doesn't trust nothing. A ship like this--small, light, shallow and slender--might be crewed only by three men. Certainly three could keep guard. Does not rule out the possibility of more, and if they're going to feel at all at ease on this ship, they ought to rule it out.

He looks back at Ellana and Marisol. Makes eye contact with his cousin and jerks his head, sharply, toward the hole, an unspoken invitation right before he rises half-out of that crouch and starts warily down the gangplank, his knife held tight in his hand. Ready.

[champions]

It's impressive how steady and coordinated a man who consumes as much terrible liquor as Nikos can be. She watches him intently, waiting for his assessment, as Ellana efficiently sees to the other man. Frozen, charred, stabbed. A poor day for him in particular, she thinks.

Quietly, carefully, she joins Nikos, trying to think how much energy she has left, how quickly she can wisely cast again so soon. Careful application of magic is more her suit than raw power, and she glances back to Ellana.

Three people keeping guard very inattentively seems too much to hope for, and certainly they'd have heard the shouts from the one before. Death cloud could drive them out, or she could let them become acquainted with some fear spirits. She is considering the best call, when glass jar hurtles through the air, and smashes on the gang plank - an elemental grenade - before being rapidly followed by four crossbow bolts.

[serannas]

Ellana retrieves her dagger from the dead smuggler's throat and wipes it clean on his shirt as the others hover near the entrance to below deck. It seems a bad idea to bottleneck the tight space like that, so she stands back up and decides to follow after. But when the grenade is thrown and the bolts fly, she disappears in a puff of black smoke to reappear as a honey badger on all fours. She doesn't yet know if Marisol or Nikos are hurt, but she's going to run distraction for them until they get their bearings.

Racing down the gangplank, she throws herself forward, snarling with teeth bared and claws out. Her cougar form would have been more intimidating, perhaps, but it's much harder for crossbow bolts to penetrate her thick hide as a honey badger. Whatever -- or whoever -- she finds down here is immaterial. She's simply trying to cause chaos so the others have a chance to react.

[exsecutus]

The grenade hits right in front of Nikos on the gangplank with a bright flash. Retaliation, attack, reaction, they're all expected enough that this isn't entirely a surprise. The form is the surprise, and the grenade wrong-foots Nikos enough to turn his quick backstep into an ungainly stumble.

More lucky (if he believed in luck) is how that stumble prevents him from getting struck by all four crossbow bolts--puts him out of the way, still mostly in front of Marisol. The bolts are small, which suggests the crossbow is handheld, still capable of dealing damage. Sure enough: one of the bolts strikes true, with a bright bloom of pain high in the meaty part of his upper arm. The truer pain follows after. Nikos grits his teeth, angry. It's the left arm, less important to this moment. He's still holding his knife in the right hand. Still unwelcome.

And then a fucking badger goes snarling down the gangplank. Which at first seems like a hallucination, but there's a cry of confusion from below, maybe a little of pain, too, which is enough for Nikos. His left arm limp and already half-useless, he shoves forward into the dark, drops off the side of the gangplank onto the lower deck in a crouch and tries to get some idea of the scene before he moves. Marisol is in the back of his mind, a burning reminder to keep aware of where she is, to take quick stock, to assess threats before they get to her, and before they compromise this stupid mission.

[champions]

She has seen such a transformation once before; Morrigan. A student, she wonders, or one who has simply learned the same art. It is an unusual form, but she can't watch intently, cannot analyse when Nikos is on the ground and bleeding. Fade step carries her forward, so she is at her cousins side—

But he keeps moving forward. The thought of conserving her magic is set aside, even though he has not remained still to let her help him. Not that she is a healer, but even so, she feels faintly retaliatory.

Not all her spells are well suited to this. She follows after the others. It's hard to see in the dark, and she presses herself immediately against the wall to seek cover. She is brave, but she's not willing to be reckless, and she waits until she sees light catching on the metal shaft of a crossbow bolt being moved, and from her hiding spot casts misdirection hex to sabotage the smuggler's aim and grant her more hands-on comrades more room to breathe. (And be violent, ideally.)

[serannas]

Another advantage to this form is that Ellana can see in the dark, and she can see her target isn't entirely deterred by her intervention. Granted, she is low to the ground and he's still on his feet, trying to load another crossbow bolt, so he's not willing to give up the fight just yet. She'll just have to inflict as much pain as possible to distract him. Leather boots protect his legs up to his calves and therefore Ellana has to scratch and claw her way up higher as she snarls and tries to be as intimidating as possible.

Clamping teeth down onto his thigh, she hopes that will be enough to get him unbalanced. Any man with a sense of self preservation would try desperately to prevent a wild animal from chomping on his manhood, right?

[exsecutus]

There's another scream, rather more frantic, and the snarling scuffle of claws on leather, and then cloth. Nikos tries to sort through the sounds even as he's trying to adjust his vision to the low light belowdecks. There's no moonlight to aid them, and the shapes are shadows at best--but he starts to pick them out. There's space behind the gangplank to circle around--the soft form of lumpy sacks, the solid lines of crates, but space enough that he could fit--and Marisol, on the other side, tight against the wall, it's mostly her eyes that Nikos marks--and then the writhing form of the smuggler, wrestling with a badger.

The crossbow bolt zips by without aim, thrown off by the attack and Marisol's hex. Nikos narrows his eyes. The badger is keeping brutally low, so fine: he'll go high. If the mage-turned-creature can't tell friend from foe and turns on him next, he'll put a stop to it.

Without particular finesse, he shoves away from the wall and sidesteps the smuggler, whips around to hook his bad arm across the shoulders and pull his dagger across his throat. He doesn't need any particular power in his hold. The smuggler is distracted with its other combatant.

In perfect and accidental comedic timing: the knife slices right when the badger gets either too close or right upon its soft small target. The smuggler's strangled cry is less than dignified.

[champions]

Their teamwork is rather excellent. Marisol would laugh, if she were not doing her best to be quiet by default.

She realises the wall she is pressed against feels slightly unsteady a moment too late, when there is a hand clad in a leather glove tipping her jaw up and a knife pressed against her throat, and another smuggler with a sword and shield beside the brigand holding her.

"Sunshine," he growls out, "move a muscle and I'll do the same to this slattern what you did to Gumpert."

Marisol, for her part, does not loo thrilled to be being used as a human shield and hostage. The man with the knife to her throat has the air of someone in charge, and a leather satchel. The other seems to follow his lead. "And call off that bloody dog," he adds.

One thing she'd like to raise, though, as she is steered about, is that Gumpert does not sound like a very imposing smuggler name.

[serannas]

It's satisfying to see the man killed efficiently. Less so to hear the voice near the wall. Ellana turns and takes stock of the situation in the dark. Two men that she can just make out, one with a shiny center to his shield and a sword in the other hand. The one who speaks holding Marisol at knife point.

Well, shit.

Launching forward would result in Marisol's blood being drawn. Transforming into another of her animal forms might give a moment's confusion, but would still put the woman at risk. Could Ellana maybe run up to the top deck like she's retreating and shift back to elf, calling down to try and force them back up? Unlikely, and she'd be abandoning her allies.

There's not much she can do until she gets a better read on the two men. See what their demands are and adjust accordingly. So on small badger legs she backs away from the fallen body of Gumpert (what a name), and bides her time.

[exsecutus]

Nikos registers the new voice. Still with his knife in his hand and his arm around the dead man, he finds Marisol's eyes in the dark. The glint of metal. The outline of two men he'd overlooked.

A jolt jumps through Nikos, charged and angry. He clenches his jaw.

Then he let go of the dead man. The body, heavy and lifeless, falls, awkwardly, hits a crate beside them and sprawls with a damp thud.

"Badger." Said like, Badger, you motherfucker, and it's only the knife at Marisol's throat that gets him to bite down that response. If it were anyone else. "I hate dogs."

No helm on the man. Half-hidden behind Marisol, lessens the target area. Satchel. Putting a knife through his eye at this distance wouldn't be a trouble, but he might cut Marisol anyways. Put the knife through his hand instead, but that possibility still remains. And there's that bastard with the sword beside him. For their side, Ellana the badger has moved back, fallen still. Now the tableau is quite different. And there's Marisol. Not exactly helpless.

And Nikos has picked out his target, unless his cousin gets to him first. Staring at the man with the satchel, he keeps his hand tight on his knife.

"Best let her go. Slatterns know where all the soft parts of a man are. Could drive a spike of ice right up the tip of your prick."