[Closed] This can't be a disaster

[aziraphlail]

WHO: Athessa, Aziraphale, Howard Stark
WHAT: Two Rifters arrive and an elf helps them. There will be no complications here.
WHEN: Current
WHERE: Muddy field, Ferelden
NOTES: None at this time but there's a nonzero chance of that changing...

His surroundings aren't too far from some parts of the English countryside, a bit damp, mucky, but there seems to be a lack of flowers and one particularly noticeable irregularity: a giant glowing green thing. He's not alone, he notes as he straightens his suit a little with one hand. There are a few people nearby. They're of a little less importance than him trying to figure out why he's holding bananas, but even that pales in importance when something disturbingly lanky looks at him and howls.

"I do say," he says, helpfully. A glance around shows him a book on a small grass patch next to him, and a rather familiar sword. At least that might come handy more than bananas.

Comments

[sulahnan]

Athessa always wondered how it happened, which is why she finds herself here, now. Watch a rift, see what comes out. Simple enough, and the chances of rifters coming through were pretty good compared to the chances of demons, she thought.

She is, of course, bad at math and probability. Lucky for everyone involved however, she is good at acting quickly.

“Coming through!” The elf sprints past the befuddled rifters straight towards the fear demon. If she cared more about efficiency than looking cool, she would draw her blades first, and do acrobatics later. Instead, her first action is to hop-step from ground, to tree, to demon, driving her heels into its unsettlingly plant-like chest. She kicks backwards, knocking the demon down but also going sprawling herself. Landing is always the tricky bit. But she recovers, gets back to her feet.

And then she draws her blades.

[achievable]

Howard is bathrobe-clad, tangled in suspenders he's trying to scrape off of his limbs with his hands, and already on his way to anywhere less close to the screeching monster, thanks, when suddenly there's a streak of hair and spunk launching itself fairly artfully at the thing like it—she—knows what she's doing.

He pauses his retreat for a moment to watch, appreciative.

Then the blades come out, and he resumes his retreat, because he doesn't have a blade. He doesn't even have underpants.

[aziraphlail]

A blur of motion attacks the creature, whose like Aziraphale has never seen before, and he takes a step back. They, she? She's got this handled, it seems. She's armed, after all, yelled that she was coming through, attacked it, that's got to mean she has it. He takes a slow and tentative step to the side so he can carefully pick up the book while hopefully not drawing the creature's attention. It seems to be solely focused on her, which is good because he's making a sound of dismay as he recognizes his book and gently dusts it off.

Only then does he look back at the fight where the creature has... vanished? There's a screeching noise as it seems to pop up from the ground between the running bathrobe man and Aziraphale. The poor bananas get dropped as Aziraphale scrambles for his own sword, holding it in front of him as he bravely backs away.

"Get back, foul fiend!" he yells. It roars at him in return, seemingly undaunted, and Aziraphale takes another step back. "Um." Now what? He could swing the sword, certainly. He could even ignite it. But they're somewhere that he certainly wasn't just minutes ago and something he's never seen before is howling at him and it all feels altogether too complicated for him right now.

[sulahnan]

"WELL DON'T JUST STAND THERE," Athessa yells, on the move again. These fucking demons are always disappearing and reappearing somewhere stupid and if you don't have eyes on the ground looking for the tell-tale signs--with these ones in particular, vines sprouting out for no reason, the dirt bubbling like it's boiling water, and a gross green steam puffing out and smelling of rotting plants and sulfur--you're bound to get got. "STAB IT OR SOMETHING!"

She gives the man with the sword a nudge forward, counter to his retreat, as she darts by. Duck and weave, side-step, do-si-do, aaaand stab, slice, slash!

The fear demon screeches as one of its sinewy green limbs is lopped off, but it's a minor hindrance, nothing more. The vines are already snaking around to make a new one, creaking like trees in a storm. It swipes with its other too-long arm, raking woody claws across Athessa's ribs even as she twists to evade. It's not a deep wound, but it stings like a scraped knee and she swears.

"You have a sword! USE IT!" She doesn't bother to tell the other rifter to attack; he not only has no weapons--and nowhere to hide any, either--but he's at least staying out of the way.

[achievable]

While all of the shouting and sword-waving is happening, Howard is diving behind a tree. He comes up muddy and with leaves in his hair—but he brushes them out, while he peers around the trunk, because his priorities are in order.

The monster is over there, with the armed strangers.

That means he has a moment to think.

He thinks: ow.

His hand hurts.

But then he looks up, at the sky, and around at the field, which offers no clues as to its geographical placement, save the lack of clues themselves being a clue that he’s in the middle of nowhere, where the telephone and power companies have not yet reached. Whoever has clearly drugged him and dumped him in a field—the girl with the sword, maybe—with their bad escaped science experiment can’t have been planning this. He just needs to run the rest of the way away, and find a telephone, and call his butler.