ic Hazard Pay

[Avenger Assembled]

Across the barrier, Riley slipped his hand inside his poncho and came out with a pair of expensive-looking binoculars. With fascination on his face replacing his usual dour or tense mood, he scanned the sky, studying those distant birds carefully. "Wow," he breathed, awe in his voice as he took a few steps to keep the distant animals in view. Reluctantly, his training and long experience reasserting itself, he lowered the binoculars to look over at Phantom. "Are they hostile?" he asked, keeping a wary eye on the nearby scrubland. He didn't have much experience with treeless natural environments - it was a little alien. 

[Gizmo]

Winifred drew herself up a bit at Riley's glare; his attitude might have been exceedingly poor as a norm but she didn't see what she'd said to have that demeanor aimed at her. "That hardly seems to excuse failing to try," she muttered quietly, sensing that the topic was closed but unconvinced by the arguments that had been made even if the monkey had made some cogent points. Raina hadn't really been able to explain the vector for Merlin's communication to the alchemist's satisfaction - magic answered the 'why' more than the 'how' - but there was no point trying to deny the familiar's intelligence, nor that his grasp of both the subject matter and modern convention was superior to her own. And wasn't that humiliating.

Still, she stepped through the portal with her shoulders squared and her back straight, no hesitation in her movements. Where Riley had produced a pair of binoculars Winifred pulled out her notepad and began hurriedly taking down notes and making sketches of everything she saw, keeping one eye on their instructor.

[angrydurf]

Huang loitered until the others had gone through the portal before stepping through to follow ahead of his mother.  He loitered nonchalantly near the portal as he scanned the surroundings and shook his head to Riley, "No more than any wild beast, dangerous if they feel threatened or think you a likely meal."  he offered win a somewhat affected bored tone.  He looked over to Winifred and felt a bit badly for her he knew what it was like to be plunged into social situations without a read on the nuances, "Men of ill intent used the basic framework of that argument to exploit rather than elevate less technologically advanced peoples."  he said frankly, "So now it is highly frowned upon as assumed cultural superiority has led to a great deal of unnecessary suffering in the span you were out of commision."

He looked to the others as they examined the odd peculiarities of the region, "If not for the natural portals to this realm we would risk much setting foot here at all."  he offered finally, "But preexisting stable portals means this world is not so disconnected from ours to start with." 

[Electra]

Raina hung back as long as she could, fascinated less by what was on the other side of the portal than by the portal itself. She ran her hands along its outer edges, feeling the magic tingling over her hands, teasing the parts of her mind where her magical senses sat. She wondered if she could make a portal with enough practice, wondered where she would go if she could. If there was a universe out there for everything that could possibly happen, maybe there was a world out there where none of the past year had happened and she was happy and home and maybe okay with sharing a little of the wealth with a dimensional cousin. Or maybe that me is just fully indoctrinated in the dark mysteries and who knows what that would mean? 

The portal felt so interesting against her senses, strange and familiar and huge and dark but not scary, just vast... Raina realized suddenly that she was holding up the field trip, and reluctantly pulled her hand back. "Still want to learn to make an anchor," she added, then hopped through the portal, Merlin clinging to her shoulder with great determination. 

[alderwitch]

Phantom floated through the portal, letting it snap shut behind her with another soft pop of displaced air as reality reasserted itself against the unnatural portal. "No, there's nothing sentient enough to be hostile on this hemisphere. The point of divergence between this realm and the one that we've just come from happened before the ice age - which, for those of you who are familiar with our coastline can probably tell. We're closer to the ocean than we would be in our world, yet we've not moved in distance - only through the coil. All of the creatures on this particular continent are rudimentary in intellect with developing sapience in the oceans instead. On land, we're quite safe."

Their erstwhile teacher continued on, pointing out the minutiae of differences and elaborating about what diversion points meant, exactly, and how to find the landmarks in a vastly changed landscape and the potential problems inherent in trying to do so, for those who were interested in such things. The clearing was of good size, the alternate world's Bayview comprised of scrubby tundra leading down to sandy dunes. There were small lizard like creatures that scampered, creating the soft rustling noises one would expect of a largely feral world and although the bird's calls were equally unfamiliar as their appearance, they weren't' especially menacing. The students could easily range out a little further from their teacher to assuage any curiosity - or escape a lecture, while remaining within easy view. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hnh." Riley crouched down low, keeping his booted feet firmly planted on the grass as he studied barely visible tracks in the moist soil at their feet. "We're not alone," he said as he straightened up, crossbow snapping into his hand with the smooth motion of one with long experience with the weapon. "Not talkin' 'bout the animals," he added before anyone could speak up. "These are human tracks. Things with human-shaped feet, anyway." He shot Phantom a hard look, even as he scanned the treeline with eyes much older than his sixteen years. "Thought you said this place didn't have anything on the land that acted like people." 

[Electra]

"We're probably not the only folks who can portal into a world like this," Raina pointed out, looking down at the ground as well. She didn't see a thing, but Riley's nervousness was infectious, and she got out her lighter to create herself a small red fireball. Cupping it in her hand, she looked towards Phantom. "If there's somebody else here, what do we do? Are we supposed to try and avoid interacting with people from other timelines, or is it okay so long as they aren't evil? What if they're other versions of ourselves, from a universe that's so close that we're doing the same thing they are at the same moment?" 

[Tiffany Korta]

Maybe it was a touch of homesickness but the stark landscape somehow reminded her of her home, more so now she guessed. Admiring the landscape did allow her to spot that something was off and she only a fraction behind Riley on spotting the footprints, and there was something off a sound just behind the natural sounds all around them.

“Not that you need me to say this but Riley’s right about these footprints.” she had crouched  down to examine them “And does anyone else hear that noise? Some kind of humming noise.It doesn’t sound natural to me.”

[angrydurf]

Huang frowned at the revelations looking to Phantom with concern as he bent to examine the marks Riley and Cathy pointed out.  They looked like little more than scuffs in the dirt to him like any passing creature might make but if Riley was confident it was humanoid he wasn't about to question it.  He stood and frowned down at the ground, "Too far north for anyone from amazonia to get up here."  he mused aloud nodding to Raina, "And magic messa never manifests this far east."  he added with a shake of his head as he cast around him with his magical senses trying to see signs of recent dimensional magics in the area but if they entered elsewhere an merely passed through here it would do little good.

"Welp that was short trip."  he said with a sigh fully expecting his mother to usher them back through the portal and call off class to investigate.  He turned ad took a few steps toward where she had last summoned it looking to her expectantly.

[alderwitch]

Phantom's nod was short and curt as she raised her gloved hands to create a portal once more as she floated back to where the barrier between the worlds thinned., "There shouldn't be any humans here, no, and there's no magical residue of passage - or the tracks have been hidden. It looks like we'll be cutting this trip short so I can get to work. Children if you could--" Her words were cut off with a sudden crackle of electricity as her arcane spell tripped sensors hidden below a layer of top soil. Arcing up from the ground in an eyeblink, a cage of what appeared to be electricity snapped closed around their mentor. Phantom's voice cut off with an intake of breath that was clearly pained. Whatever the light was, it seemed to flicker in and out of reality in time with its victim, locking her limbs into rigidity that she was clearly struggling against. "...rrrrun."

That it was a trap, was obvious and it seemed unlikely one crafted for dinosaurs of any stripe. To those who'd been trained to hunt, it was clear that this ground had been marked for a particular sort of prey with a trap designed to point and purpose. The grass rustled, with something larger than lizards, and on the hill slightly above their position - in the high ground - three humanoid and armored figures shimmered into view, using some sort of a high end technology entirely out of place for this world.

[Tiffany Korta]

Cathy instincts were again good and she was in action almost as soon as the humanoid appeared she was up in the air on her ice slide her skin sparkling in the sunlight as it became like ice.  As she got near them she twisted in the air laying down a layer of ice underneath their feet, hopefully making it difficult for them to stay standing.

She has practised stuff like this so many times in the past that it was only when she turned back toward her friends that she realised that there teacher was technically in charge.

“I erm put down something to hopefully delay them for a bit... I hope that’s okay?”

[Avenger Assembled]

His face blank, Woodsman worked the lever on his crossbow and fired from the hip. The bolt whizzed through the air and hit the ground at the feet of the leader of the armored trio. What looked at first like a miss was soon revealed to be nothing of the sort as a thick black cloud of smoke came pouring up from the arrow, a cloud so big that it soon engulfed the heroes and the caged Phantom as well! The cloud was thick and unnaturally dark, bearing with it a faint, unpleasant scent of ammonia. Cathy was there and still talking, but Riley Quinn, was a child of the Forest Primeval. When a leader tells you to run, you run! 

"Tree line!" Woodsman called to the others, turning and running with unerring instinct towards the edge of the clearing, cutting sideways to get out of where the predators would expect him to emerge from the cloud. 

Edited October 21, 2015 by Avenger Assembled

[alderwitch]

The men's rough curses as they skidded on ice, landing with meaty sounding 'thuds' filtered through the thick smoke that Riley's arrow caused to billow out over the once pristine woodland. "Up, you fools, UP!" The outraged bellow of the big man in the center cut through the insults and cuss words of his two lackeys. "We're not getting beat of a payday because of a handful of kids. You, get up. You, clear this muck so we can bag the prize."

The man who was clearly in charge barked orders like the staccato crack of a whip, marshaling his men to their feet. Under the noise of movement, that faint whine grew louder as a device was activated. The wind pressure changed around the children, sucking at the air and the smokey cloud that obscured everyone's vision. 

[angrydurf]

"Like Hell!"  Ouroboros exclaimed as his mother ordered them to flee.  He turned to face the ambushers eldritch power crackling around his hands, "Wrong party to cra-"  He broke off as the smoke from Rileys bolt billowed out blinding ally and enemy alike, "What in the unspeakable realms of chaos are you doing?"  he bellowed belligerently as he cast about trying to peer through the pungent fog with no success.  "Sou Hai!"  he rumbled looking through the gloom for Riley, "Sei yeem jai!"  the dhampir screamed to the retreating voice of the classmate he was more and more certain was some kind of vampire hunter infiltrating the school to get at them.   His grumbling curses were punctuated by booming calls of, "Moron!", and, "Fai chaai!", or "gua si gwai!"  before trailing off into all the darkest things he'd heard his father utter in the ancient slavic tongues of his vampiric ancestry still finding no language to fully express his mood at the obscuring cloud and it's source.

[Gizmo]

Winifred's heartbeat jackhammered in her ears as Phantom as the cage appeared around Phantom and the smoke cloud enveloped them all. A muscle spasm buckled her left knee and she nearly toppled to the ground before just barely regaining her balance. Throat constricting and chest feeling tight she could practically feel the Alkahest ripping her apart from the inside out as she screwed her eyes shut and focused on the acrid smell of Smith's cloud cover. Ammonia. Urine to ward off animals, perhaps? A sensible addition. Distasteful as it was she forced herself to slow her breathing and concentrate, mentally reciting the chemical compounds she would have used to achieve a similar colour and volume of smoke.

Heartbeat fading to a dull roar she made sure her bag was securely fastened over her shoulder and felt about inside for one of several stoppered flasks, separated by individual pockets from her books, fingers closing over the glass for reassurance. She could do this, she could keep the beast under control and think her way through the situation. Faretti's tirade brought her back to the present, eyes opening despite the smoke. "Language," she called, voice tight under the affectation of dispassionate propriety. Keeping her head down she ran in the direction she remembered seeing Raina, hands outstretched to feel for any obstacles. Hopefully the witch would have a better idea of what they ought to do; she'd seemed knowledgeable about the class' material before the unexpected interruption.

[Electra]

As soon as the trap slammed shut, Merlin and Raina were next to it, Merlin studying the trap itself, while Raina waved her hands in the air like a mime in an imaginary box, trying to suss out what it was doing to Phantom's magic. Merlin informed Raina that the mechanism of the trap was quite advanced and almost certainly hidden belowground, but if he could get to it he could disable it. "Okay good," she told him, keeping an eye on the advancing figures in the distance as she grew a fireball in her hands. "You do that and we'll- what the s***?" Before she could so much as launch a fireball, an arrow impacted, the air was full of acrid, incredibly foul smoke, and Riley was yelling at them to run for the hills. 

Coughing and spitting, Raina scooped Merlin under her arm and rose into the air, sputtering the notes of her spell as she tried to clear her mouth and nose. A few yards up got them clear of the worst of it, whereupon she pulled the mirror from her pouch and made herself invisible, but only to their enemies. As she waited for the smoke to clear, she took a moment to send a vicious glare Riley's way. They'd have words later. 

[Tiffany Korta]

She didn't normally pay it much attention but Cathy always saw a faint aura around people, but now with an cloud obscuring her view those heat auras were really useful. With a quick sweep around the area she picked out those of here friends and worked out the enemies.

With a flourish, that unfortunately none of the others could see, she sent a stream of ice to form around the energy she pegged as the leader freezing up his feet to he ground.

[Avenger Assembled]

When the smoke cloud cleared, there was absolutely no sign of the Woodsman - at least until a crossbow bolt came zipping out of the dense brush at the edge of the treeline and came right for the leader of the bounty hunters. The arrow struck home with almost contemptuous ease, missing icy bonds and insulated armor, instead coming to rest at a join between two armor plates directly over the center of the mercenary's body mass. The bolt struck home with a thunk, a too-quiet sound in the middle of a super-battle full of wooshing energy and cursing voices. And then the internal charge in the bolt detonated; the binary explosives inside directed outward by the handcrafted structure of the carbon-wood composite bolt. There was a loud boom and spread of a small cloud of white smoke - and suddenly the mercenary leader was slumped unconscious in his bonds, the front part of his body armor blown away over his lower midsection, exposing a charred undersuit within that had taken most of the blast. 

From the treeline came Riley's voice, commanding the other two mercenaries, "Drop those guns!" 

[alderwitch]

As their leader dropped, the two behind him looked at each other in consternation. It was easy to see the whites of their eyes as this was not anything like the plan and their leader had been taken out in a single shot. What sort of kids were these?

They hesitated, the barrels of their guns briefly dropping as if they might surrender before taking aim once more. One of them pointed his laster pistol at Cathy. The muzzle discharged with a flare of sound and the whine of foreign technology. His compatriot took more careful aim, seeking out the sniper in the treeline but they were both nervous and skittish and shaking hands made both shots go wide of their mark.

[angrydurf]

"Couldn't have just opened with that eh?"  Huang grumbled though clearly he was impressed by the excellent shot from the tree line.  In a flash of vampiric speed he interposed himself between the hunters and their trapped quarry and turned on them, "Right about now you're thinking of running."  he fumed eyes glinting darkly with his display of power, "It's a good instinct,"  he taunted and tilted his head slightly, "Unfortunately it's already too late for that."

"BY THE EVERLASTING ENIGMAS OF EIDOLON I BUILD YOUR PRISON!"  He boomed voice carrying the syllabant resonance of the eldritch powers he called upon.  With a violent raising of the young magi's arms a prison of otherworldly jet black stone erupted around the hapless bounty hunters trapping them within a nest of twisted obelisks stronger than steel.

[Tiffany Korta]

Cathy bought her ice slide back down beside the other students, after a final circuit to make sure things were completely safe from the whoever these yahoo’s were. She wasn’t feeling safe enough to change back from her ice form just yet though.

“I think we’re safe for now, there doesn’t seem to be any more of them nearby. Do we want to find out why they were here? And what can we do with them? It’s not like this is really our world.”  her nose at that point caught up with the rest of her “And what is that smell?”

[Electra]

"That was horrible," Raina groused, returning to the ground with an irate Merlin burying his nose in her sleeve. "Nothing like a little fricking blinding everybody to make an encounter go more smoothly. And I have no idea what the smell is, but it's disgusting." She gave Riley another glare. "I don't know how we're supposed to get it out of our clothes." Or fur, Merlin put in with a theatrical shuddering. "Or fur," Raina agreed. "Merlin thinks the controls are buried under the trap. He can disable them if we can get at them." 

[alderwitch]

As Huang's twisted obelisks shot from the ground, the remaining bounty hunters had only the time for panicked outrage at being captured by a group of teenagers. Hanging in their eldritch prisons, they gave their captors baleful looks but, for the moment, had been rendered harmless in their prisons while their leader remained quite unconscious on the ground. A cursory search revealed thus far, no more bounty hunters waiting in the woodwork, although it was unlikely this was the whole of their number. It was very likely that several potential hunting grounds had been staked out and similarly trapped. Either that, or this lot had been exceptionally lucky. The lingering stench of the cloud was fading as it dispersed over the area but the faint smell of the ingredients lingered in the air. 

 

Their teacher for the day remained trapped in the electric cage, her form flickering like the still of a bad horror movie - in and out of sync with this particular reality. To those of a mystical persuasion, it seemed clear that the device was able to generate a field that kept the heroine from connecting fully with any dimension. The technology on the bounty hunters was alien from their world - high tech, certainly, but not of a bent currently familiar in Prime, although it could have been alien in origin.

[angrydurf]

With a deep frown Huang nodded agreement with Raina on the odor, "Yea maybe see if captain stinkbomb has a shovel arrow or something."  he groused crankily as he stared at his mothers strange prison.  He turned toward the entrapped foes, eyes glinting red with the potency of his vampiric nature roused to anger.  "I'm going to have a little chat with our new friends here." 

 

Stalking across the clearing to the downed mercenary he quickly and ungently divested the man of his high tech toys before he woke and cause more trouble.  Standing to loom his full height over the entrapped  underlings he growled low in his throat his voice dropping to a more gravely register.  "Toss the weapons."  he demanded coldly as he reached the side of the twisted cage and with a clenched fist slowly set the twisted obelisks of their prison tightening around them a looming threat of an unpleasant death by crushing impalement.  "Now you are going to tell me who sent you."  he rumbled his tone a gravelly homage to his own father's  dark intonations.  He had learned from the best after all, "And I might just decide not to leave you here to be picked apart by the scavengers."

[Avenger Assembled]

Riley had expected praise for his one-in-a-million shot when he emerged from the forest, but by the time he'd made his way back to rejoin his friends he'd heard what they'd had to say about his strategies. Rather than chew them out while they were in the field, he settled for a short "That's stupid," before studying the cage. "Okay, uh, here's an idea. This is something for catching someone from other dimensions, right? And it runs on electricity?"

 

Even as he spoke, Riley was working on his crossbow, setting it down on the grassy patch at their feet and kneeling over it. "So you use something that drains electricity, like copper from another dimension..." Taking a length of shiny black cable from his belt, he secured one end to a bolt which he fired deep into the ground, then took the other in his hand and tossed it at the cage, targeting Phantom herself as closely as he could. "And you give that power somewhere to go!" 

 

When the lightning bars crackling around the cage had died down to a more manageable level, Riley took out two more bolts, insulated them with his heavy gloves, and lodged them in the sides of the cage to lift it up, straining his muscles as he tugged against the device's bizarre weight. "Can you...get underneath?"