ic Both Alike In Dignity (IC)

[trollthumper]

Cannonade took in the whole gathering, cracking a smile at the sight of the young raptors playing with the pinata - and quickly removing his eyes from the sight after realizing that those weren't streamers coming out of the thing's stomach. As the crowd advanced, he was extremely glad he'd left the helmet at home. His mere physical existence here was apparently going to touch off a heavy theological debate. Best to leave the controversy there. 

 

"Good to see you again," he said to the Commander. "Thinks-and-Eats heard the stories about your trip to our world, and thought we'd want to be there for the big day." He smiled to Runs-With-Fangs-Bared, giving a friendly wave. He didn't dare mention anything about the potential difficulties. Last thing he wanted to do was set off a panic. 

[Electra]

Wander replied to the Commander's courtesy with a head-dipping bow of her own, for all that it made her feel a bit twitchy to be dropping her gaze in a room full of predators. It didn't help that the room smelled like an abattoir full of alligators, a combination that was not pleasing to her mammal hindbrain. "We're happy to have been invited," she told the large raptor. "Seeing your city has been an eye-opening experience. I just hope that we're not breaking any protocols by coming like this. We don't want to cause any offense, especially during a celebration." There, that was diplomatic enough for anybody. With any luck, maybe they'd avoid a riot happening before the actual danger even showed up. 

[Gizmo]

"Commander," Wail greeted with a shallower nod. He suspected the younger humans' manners, effusively friendly and accommodatingly polite it turn, were the smarter ways to go but he was the physically largest of the group, with a few inches and considerable mass over even Cannonade, and if the raptors matched up at all with the various clannish, warrior peoples he'd run into over the years then a minor show of pride might be helpful in the long run. He hadn't considered how a shaved head might be interpreted until Thinks had said something, let alone his grey-streaked beard, so he expected his appearance was going to ruffle some literal feathers regardless.

In any case, he felt he'd reached something of an understanding with Fangs-Bared when her squad had crashed into Earth-Prime and hoped some of that remained. "Boy thought a few friendly unexpected guests would be alright," he explained to the Commander in a slightly quieter rumble. The emphasis was slight but his meaning was clear: they knew that hostile party-crashers were a possibility. He stroked his goatee absently with his free hand. "Anything we can do to make sure things go smooth?"

[Avenger Assembled]

The Commander didn't seem bothered by Wail's show of strength, and the watching raptors seemed more impressed (and fascinated!) than anything else. "Keep an eye out for Orthodox clerics with weapons." She sounded especially contemptuous of the last. "My family's political change has not endeared us to the Orthodoxy, especially as I have rank enough to keep our warriors restrained. They will, ah, be wearing brown and grey, and carrying..." She made a gesture with her claws, then spread it wider. "flamethrowers, as you would call them. To cook our meat is the ultimate insult." 

 

"They broke into my laboratory-" started Thinks, before the Commander added, "Your mother's basement?" Thinks straightened to the extent of his not very tall full height at the jibe and nodded. "a couple of weeks ago, and sprayed Orthodox symbols in rotten ungulate blood. It was disgusting."

 

"Feh." The raptor shook her head, and belatedly greeted the others. "You are most welcome. Feel free to socialize and introduce yourselves to the other party guests, it may be...instructive for them to see mammals as sentients that..."

 

Suddenly, from inside the house came the sound of shattering glass and a roar of pure animalistic fury. Something that might have been French doors shattered as a scaly figure came crashing through them, his brown and grey robes torn and bleeding, revealing inside a scene of chaos as a half-dressed teenage raptor faced off against one her size in the same clothes. She was in the middle of shouting, "-mother should have eaten your egg before you hatched, miserable scion of Orthodoxy!"  

 

With a roar, the Commander led the charge into the house, and under siege from an angry mother raptor and four humanoid heroes, the other raptor backed down too. Robes or not, he didn't look to be much older than Thinks or Runs-With. It was tough to tell with velociraptors anyway. "Great Commander, I meant no disrespect," said the big male, showing the back of his neck and cringing, "I only meant to show your daughter that it was not too late for your family to return to the Bringer's embrace and-" 

"Fool," hissed the angry raptor, all predator now, "if not for our guests I would eat your heirs for your deeds! And to think you dared court my daughter!" 

As her mother squared off with the young raptor cleric, Runs-With turned her head to take in the Earthly heroes, which looked half-smeared with what might have been war paint on a human, and her slit eyes widened. "You! How did you get here?" 

"That was me!" offered Thinks-and-Eats, sidling up to join the others with a wink. "I built a dimensional gateway! Isn't it cool?" He seemed blind to the carnage, blind to the confrontation, and obviously only had eyes for the crouching, wire-tense Runs-With-Fangs-Bared. 

[April]

The amber-eyed woman flashed a smile at the young raptor female, "We are here to honor your passage to adulthood, Runs-With-Fangs-Bared." Willow made a small gesture to indicate the damage around them. "I see that you remain as formidable as any daughter of Commander Feeds-With-Rampant-Fangs-Bared should be; only a fool--only prey--would seek to gain advantage over any of the Fangs-Bared clan."

"So please, Commander. Don't hesitate to do what is proper just because you have guests. I would do the same where it my daughter, and my husband, he would be worse."

[Gizmo]

LaMarr had stepped in on far too many domestic assaults over the decades to give a damn whether Runs' clothing had merely been inadvertently torn in the fighting or not. In contrast to his calculated measure of physical presence when they'd arrived the broad shouldered educator's silhouette seemed to loom even larger now simply from the way his jaw visibly clenched and his eyebrows lowered dangerously. It took a concerted effort not to send the robed raptor hurtling out of the house with a bellow but unless it began to look as if they required assistance his anger was secondary to that of Runs and her mother.
 
That restraint, however, was finite. "One way or another, this turkey isn't walking out of here under his own power." The deep bass of his voice reverberated throughout the room, causing shards of fallen glass of shiver against the floor.

[trollthumper]

Cannonade gave a friendly wave to Runs-With-Bared-Fangs - a little gesture to show that, as distance as this whole situation seemed, he was glad to be here. He turned his eyes on the young cleric, who was trying to defend himself. "You know," he said, "one thing I learned really, really young is there's a right time and a wrong time to try to sell someone on your gospel. And something tells me you've got a talent for picking the worst possible time." 

 

He brought his hands together, cracking his knuckles as he stepped forward to the young male raptor. "So if you're looking for some persuasive words to say, I'd recommend starting at 'I'm sorry' and working your way up from there." 

[Electra]

With the Orthodox raptor obviously cowed, Wander stayed to the back of the group and allowed the conversation to unfold while she kept an eye on the party outside. There was a lot of understandable curiosity among the guests, but it looked as though the Commander's subcommanders were already moving to keep the looky-loos at bay. That was good, as Erin suspected that whatever the species, a young female on the day of an important party wouldn't want people gawking at her while she was half dressed and made up. (At least she assumed it was makeup, unless Runs-With's fight with the cleric had involved a box of acrylic paints.) "How did the old boyfriend get into the house anyway?" she eventually asked. "Was he invited?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

"I invited him," hissed Runs-With with what might have been an embarrassed face, rooting through an upturned clothes bin as she talked. Thinks-and-Eats scuttled over to help, reaching down with clawed limbs to help re-assemble her battered outfit. "I thought we could talk and I could explain why he would not be fertilizing my eggs as long as he wore the Orthodox robes, but instead it turned to this madness!" She snapped at her fallen ex-boyfriend, who had by now rolled onto his back to expose his belly in complete submission to the angry Commander. "I would have fought you fairly," she said as she pulled on a helmet with a faint ruffled line of feathers down the middle, something that had been a serious source of argument between mother and daughter, "but bringing the Deliverer into this was...what, did you think I would just bend over for you?" 

 

"I, I..." On his back, exposed in more ways than one, the fallen raptor shook his head. "No! No, I swear before the Deliverer and the First Tribe, I came only to talk! It was the Cleric who pressed the argument! He insisted on coming when he heard where I was going, and it all just spun out of control, I...he said he had found a secret! A secret to prove that the Deliverer was real! As real as any...mammal on two legs," he added, looking abjectly at the humans (and Willow). 

 

With a look of disgust, the Commander stepped back, allowing the boy to his feet. "Feh. They egg-rot the brains of our young males. You see how it is. The bald one is right to suggest a fate for you better than devouring. Perhaps you would benefit from a few years shoveling hadrosaur dung, until you can learn what stinks and what does not."

 

"It is YOU who stinkssss!" hissed the Cleric, evidently the raptor who had been hurled from the building earlier. Bleeding from glass cuts and limping on a broken leg, he was no threat, but his eyes burned with hate. "In our temple, we have found the gateway to the First World before the Cataclysm, the world taken from us by THEM!" He gave the humans a venomous glare. "It is no accident that the First World is ruled by damned dirty apes! We have seen their films; how a million of their years ago their ancestors drove us from our world! Only the Deliverer brought us salvation from the doom that THEY brought to us! We will take back what is ours, and there is nothing you can do to stop us!" 

[Gizmo]

"You think so?" Wail cut in with a rumbling drawl that contrasted sharply with the hissing cleric, having listened to as much of the hatemongering tirade as he was willing to stomach. He didn't much care if the raptor's deity was about to walk in the door and empirically announce its existence or not, he had no patience for so-called spiritual leaders shouting for bigotry and violence. "Joker, please." Inhaling through his nose, the experienced educator let out a note of abject scorn, transformed by his superdense lungs into a column of force as wide around as a dinner plate and as brutal as any haymaker that lanced through the broken window and crashed into the limping raptor in robes, sending him tumbling back across the lawn in an undignified mess of limbs.

[trollthumper]

Cannonade admitted that he wasn't the biggest expert on prehistoric times, but like many red-blooded American kids, he'd gone through a dinosaur phase when he was younger. And the echoes of that time told him that humans and dinosaurs had never shared the same planet. Still, when religious maniacs were rambling on and on about fiery doom and destruction, there were one of two options: either shake your head and turn away, or suspect they had something wired to blow. And given the general tenor of the cleric, Cannonade wasn't inclined towards the former. 

 

"Okay, now I'm curious," he said. "Who's this Deliverer, and how exactly is he gonna give us damn dirty apes our just desserts?"

[Electra]

Wander furrowed her brow. "Dinosaurs didn't get wiped out by people on our world," she pointed out, even as she stepped closer to the cleric. Her bat was in her hand but undeployed for now, her body subtly interposed between the angry raptor and the rest of the party. Mostly reflex, really, this was a group who could certainly handle a little melee if it arose. "Mammals weren't even around when dinosaurs lived. Well, I guess there were like, mice and rodents and stuff, but nothing big. No humans. A giant asteroid fell out of space and killed most everything, including the big dinosaurs. And then the little dinosaurs evolved into birds, and the little mammals evolved into humans, something like that. And it wasn't a million years, it was what, like sixty million years?" She glanced back to the others for confirmation, wishing she'd paid more attention to the boring parts of biology class.

 

"Anyway, you saw a crappy movie. And you've got a portal, which is probably bad news" Wander took another step closer to the battered raptor. "What are you planning on doing with it, besides watching the scifi channel?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

"It was the Deliverer who rescued us from the world of the mammals before the Cataclysm! When we have the proof we need of mammalian subversion, we will declare Holy War against your planet, as we have against the other worlds in the past. No more will heretics with their talk of mammalian 'civilization' and 'saurianity' keep us from our purpose as the divinely appointed masters of this and all other worlds!" As fanatics often are, the priest was unwilling to go further, even under threats of a most vicious punishment from humans and dinosaur alike. His former subordinate, now with a submissive's downcast head, offered what help he could but evidently his own fanatical master had seen some sign of goodness, or perhaps cowardice, and told him little. 

With the younger warriors in the family standing by, the heroes and their local allies conferred. "The military fangs are loyal to me," said the Commander in a hushed reptilian whisper to the others. "I can handle the cleric and my daughter's failed suitor and deliver them into their claws. But if the Orthodox have built some fell work of science to threaten your world or mine, it has to be dealt with soon. I would like nothing better than to rend their flesh from their bones myself!" She hissed angrily. "But we can have no civil war. And an attack by mammalian aliens will not be seen as war between the priests and the officers." 

"Render-Unto-Deliverer has served one purpose," said Runs-With-Fangs-Bared with a pleased hissing rattle in her voice. "His egg-raid here means that I can raid his temple and none will look amiss on it! We can guard your planet, and I can take my revenge!" 

[Gizmo]

With a rumbling sigh, LaMarr loosened his tie and stuffed the strip of fabric into one of his jacket pockets. "Well, can't fairly act like we didn't know we were probably going to suckered into sometime like this," he noted philosophically, undoing the top few buttons of his dress shirt. "Best get rolling, boys and girls. Those jokers aren't going to knock themselves on their own fool asses." Stopping on his way out the shattered hole left by the cleric's rapid departure, he handed the wrapped oval under his arm to Runs-With-Fangs-Bared. "Here, kid, might not have a chance to give this to you later."

[trollthumper]

Cannonade was still having trouble following the convoluted mythology of the Orthodoxy clerics, but he at least knew that he didn't want to see another invasion attempt going down. One giant radioactive T. rex had been bad enough. A whole army of velociraptors with guns... well, Spielberg would buy the rights, but it would still be a terrifying thing. He also knew enough to follow custom, and so, when Wail presented his gift, he handed off the wrapped package of meat as well. 

 

"Yeah, figure the rest of the afternoon's gonna be busy," he said. "You may want to refrigerate this, way things are going." He turned to Runs-with-Fangs-Bared. "So, where the hell is this temple, and are these the kind of religious fanatics who like to back up their gospel with guns?" 

[Electra]

Wander set her package down as well, rather relieved that this way she wouldn't have to know if she'd gone far wrong in her choice of gifts. A good fight was much more her area of expertise. "At least I'm not going to ruin another party outfit," she remarked almost cheerfully as she checked the bat at her belt. "Thinks and Eats, you want to be our wheelman on this? Drive the hovercar," she added, realizing the idiom might not translate well. "We need someone who knows the way and can get us there quick in civilian transport." Maybe it was meddlesome, but the nerdy young raptor was so hopeful in his devotion, it seemed a shame not to give him something to do. You never knew what a good fight could do to stir up chemistry. 

[Avenger Assembled]

The Orthodox temple turned out to be shaped like a gigantic Tyrannosaurus Rex like something out of a children's story, complete with amethyst-glittery purple skin, gigantic staring eyes big as a cathedral's stained glass window, and teeth that glowed like silver or polished aluminum at least twenty stories above the heroes' heads. "We build our temples in the image of our deity," said Runs-With with perfect seriousness, albeit a ghost of embarrassment. "That's why we were so lost when we came upon your temple." Thinks-and-Eats pulled the hovercar around behind the great statue-building, parking it in what looked like a small service lot, the grassy square overshadowed by a nearby statuary group of realistically painted velociraptors tearing apart what were clearly identifiable as Grue drones. 

 

"There's a back door here," he said, "but I dunno what's inside." He cocked his head towards what was, semi-circular or not, clearly identifiable as the janitor's backdoor and break area, complete with a waste receptacle stuffed full of discarded cans and paper wrappers that between the rotting meat and other things smelled very strange indeed to human nostrils. "I think..." He shot a look at Runs-With and suddenly growled, "I think we should go for them!" And with that, the little raptor charged straight for the door, the other raptor charging after him with a hiss of real delight! 

[Avenger Assembled]

The front line of the raptor clerics proved rather less formidable than their reputation might have suggested. It wasn't that they acted slowly - as soon as the heroes were inside the cathedral, hissing alarms bellowed from every corner as the raptor emergency sound echoed like an angry alligator's growl. The raptor clerics were fast-moving, aggressive fighters, some bearing the ritual scars and warpaints of their god, others still in what looked like ceremonial robes or military uniforms. (It was very tough to tell, with raptors). They were obviously experienced; the 'civilian' looking dinosaurs, either elderly, young, or herbiverous evacuated cleanly without panic, their escape guarded by the hissing, slashing war-priests with clear signs of long practice. They seemed to focus their attention on Runs-With and Thinks-And-Eats, particularly the former, but she gave as good as she got in the company of the heroes. 

 

But despite their best efforts, the raptors didn't seem to make a dent on the heroes - perhaps it was the difficulty that even razor-sharp claws had with bulletproof skin, or the lack of experience with fighting "hideous humanoid man-thingsss!" as one particularly stubborn cleric in gold and green put it as he futilely slashed at Cannonade, but so far the hundred-plus raptor clerics didn't seem to so much as be slowing the heroes down.

[Gizmo]

Wail grunted in annoyance as a set of raptor talons made ribbons of his shirt sleeve and another attacker made off with a mouthful of silk tie but the assault failed to pierce his superdense muscle tissue, leaving the clerics at least as frustrated as he was. Grabbing a foreleg he tossed one raptor into a trio of others charging him, then dealt with another via a savage headbutt that left his opponent's more elongated face scrunched up with what he suspected was a particularly unpleasant version of a broken jaw. Still, the vast numbers of the fanatical saurians began to overwhelm, body after scaly body piling atop the veteran hero until they threatened to smother him. "Alright, fair play only goes so far, turkeys," he muttered before taking a deep breath and bellowing with the force of an artillery shell. Those raptors already clawing at him went flying into the air like bowling pins while the rest of the group converging on him were sent tumbling backward into ungainly piles.

[trollthumper]

Cannonade looked at the army of angry, fanatical velociraptors and cracked his knuckles. There was a part of him, a terrible part, that wanted to make a crack about how the kid in him who'd watched Jurassic Park had been waiting for this day his entire life - but that would've been an insult to people like Runs-With-Fangs-Bared and Thinks-and-Eats. It was better to think of these clowns as zealots, thugs, and fascists. And it didn't matter if they were warm- or cold-blooded, he always loved beating up people who fell under those terms. 

 

"So," he said, tossing aside his ruined jacket (making a note to buy another five of them and find if he could possibly slip them into his AEGIS expense roll), "you guys think I'm an abomination, something to hate and fear." He brought his hands out wide. "I'm about to give ya a whole ****load of reasons why." 

 

He brought the hands together, directing the titanic thunderclap at the massive wave.