Tag Archives: Kin-Po Talent Set

Champions of Battle: The Very Best – Opportunity #20

Brisa sat there for a few moments, paralyzed by fear.  Jaquan and his crew took their seats around the table.  None of them said a word.  Jaquan made it a point to sit just to the left of Brisa.  They waited in silence giving Brisa time to think.  Within a few minutes the servers brought food serving Brisa first.

Still, it took a little time for the truth to sink in: Catlin’s friends were the BigBad Crew.  Brisa thought back to their earlier conversations.  Each time Catlin giggled was a reaction to knowing this secret.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”  Brisa was still wearing the mask.  There was thin black cloth covering her eyes along with a painting of a mantis designed to hide were she was looking.  However, it was quite obvious that she was talking to Catlin.

“The first time we met, wasn’t under the best of circumstances,” was Catlin’s calm response.

“What do you mean?  You knocked on my cabin door.”

Neely was sitting to the right of Catlin.  He mumbled something to her.  Catlin whispered a barely loud enough for Brisa to hear, “I dropped it a few minutes ago.  We have to wait for her.”

After a time, she gathered her wits just enough to look them all in the eyes.  Almost all the BigBad Crew was there: Jaquan, Neely, and Liana still in her mech suit.  Even Justice was there.  Brisa wasn’t sure if he was an official member of the crew.  However, he had been with them since the championship victory party.  The only one missing was…

OH NO!

Catlin sat across the table from Brisa with a bored look.  Brisa had missed it all this time.  Catlin’s eyes were different than before.  Not red in black, not glowing, or spouting black flame, they were normal.  Still, there was no mistaking it.  Catlin had attacked her at the shuttle port.  The one she had the most reason to fear had just become her close friend in the last few hours.

Brisa’s thoughts of safety were nothing but illusionary smoke.  Catlin had tracked her down easily.  Within the first few minutes of the flight Catlin was knocking on her door.  Like a fool she opened the door embracing the enemy with open arms.

How did Catlin disguise herself so well?  She must have used something, perhaps an enchantment to hide herself.  She was never malicious and could have attacked at any time.  Instead, they had what Brisa thought was the most wonderful time.  Still Catlin used a trick to get close to her.  If she was truly repentant, she would have apologized at the beginning.

“I apologize for my reaction to you earlier,” Catlin said, “I thought for sure you were a spy.  I was looking for a good time to tell you but it never came.”

“We all apologize for our actions before,” Jaquan spoke up, “but now, let’s eat.”

Brisa was so full of conflicting emotions: ultimate deception by an enemy that had become a best friend; a lady that had given her so much to prove that she wasn’t what she had to be?  Brisa said as she got up from the table, “I’m sorry.  I can’t do this.”  She walked away from the table, back towards her cabin.  She half expected to be pulled back to the table and forced to sit.  Since she was not she assumed she was free to go.  Under the mask a tear left her eye.

Catlin stood almost grabbing at Brisa with her Kin-Po Talents but thought against it.  Instead she called, “We’re planning to leave for Bear Gate at hour seventeen.”

Brisa paused at the information then kept walking.  She was welcomed to join them but unsure if she wanted to.

“So,” Liana said, her mask altering her voice to that of a machine’s, “What do we do now?”

Jaquan simply answered, “We eat.”

#1 – Opportunity #19 – Opportunity #21

Champions of Battle: AD7 – Awakening #13

Did I just dodge a missile?  Adrianne thought to herself.  She had little time to reason it all out.  Whatever shot at her would shoot again.  As much as she wanted to see what it was, stopping to look would be fatal.  She had best run now and figure things out later.

Tree bark and branches fell where she had just been.  She picked up the debris on her scanner.  Just then she realized she was moving in a straight line away from something that was going to shoot at her soon.  It had only been for a split second but that’s all it takes to aim.  She activated Silent Blur’s wings and their rockets to sharply change direction.

As Adrianne was committing to the maneuver, her instincts kicked in again as she activated her Kin-Po and Aura talents.  She was wearing a gravity suit similar to what the racers wore, but her maneuvers were just a little more intense and desperate than the suit was designed to handle.  With her life on the line, even getting a little disoriented could be the end of her.

Blaster bolts followed her as she swerved behind a tree.  Thankfully, the attacker could not keep up with her acceleration.  The blaster fire trailed her hitting the tree a few times before it stopped.

Using Silent Blur’s wings again, she quickly whipped the ship around to a position fit for climbing.  Metal claws dug deep into the tree as she scrambled up.  It was a long shot, but just maybe she could shake it off her trail.

It almost worked.  The attacker moved very quickly around the tree to get a good angle for a shot and found her.  Adrianne saw something move and began to corkscrew up the tree to avoid the blaster bolts.  It fired mindlessly as it tried to keep up with her climbing around the tree.  Adrianne stayed ahead of it, but it was not easy.  She was going fast enough to launch the ship off the tree.  She had to use Silent Blur’s wing rockets to press Silent Blur against the tree as she climbed.

At this point, the attacker was having a hard time keeping up while shooting.  It also showed little intelligence.  It kept following the shortest path behind her instead of cutting her off.  It had to be a machine.

The machine continuously fired and it continuously missed.  At this point, she was surprised that the woods were not catching on fire.  She was thinking of a way to end this impasse without getting shot down but couldn’t think of a solution.  Her confusion increased when the continuous rain of bolt fire suddenly stopped.

She thought it was a trick at first.  Then her short range motion tracker caught a parachute opening.  Her motion sensors found the device in her data bank.  Even without the data bank the device looked familiar to her.

It was a hover hunter, a small droid designed to search and hunt for a designated target.  She knew them very well.  She modified her defensive droids from them.  They had exactly one missile and a short battery life.  They had a cloak but the device was small enough that it avoided most scans.  They were invisible unless you looked for their particular frequency.

They could be reused.  Once the droid was retrieved, the missile could be reloaded and the battery recharged.  Each droid had a camera and a tracking device so the gankers probably knew exactly where she was.  They could surround her before she saw them.

Hunter hovers were very expensive to say the least.  These gankers were very well funded.  She had to be very careful to get back to Rubin’s Trail alive.  Now that she knew the weapon of choice for her enemy.  She searched for the frequency to allow her to pick up the little deadly drones.

She wasted no time stuck in the tree waiting for the blips to appear.  She knew they had found her.  She knew they would overtake her in the air.  The best she could do is to run along the ground hoping to escape the danger.

And so, she jumped out of the tree towards the ground and let Silent Blur’s wings soften the fall.  Heading west, she hoped to avoid any hover hunters they may have released from their ships to track her since the first one had failed.

The frequency scan was short.  When the scan was over, she was in no way pleased with what she saw.  Five cloaked hunter hovers in her vicinity and two cloaked ships circling directly above her.

#1 – Awakening #12 – Awakening #14

Champions of Battle: The Very Best – Opportunity #11

Brisa had never expected to follow Jaquan and his crew all the way to Bear Gate.  The city had a very dangerous reputation; surrounded by dense dangerous woods; impossible to reach by air.  Only a relative few people knew how to get there.  Justice seemed to be one of them, but how?

She was surprised the BigBad Crew took the travel plans so well.  They were just going to walk through the woods.  That was crazy, even for a professional fighter.  They were going to that insane city to rest, oddly enough.  The tournament was even deeper in the woods!

Mr. Meng, the chief executive of The Champion’s Chronicle, wanted to do a story on the BigBad Crew for some reason.  He seemed to know that something especially interesting was going to happen.  He wanted to expose all of their secrets or something?  Brisa wasn’t sure.  She did know that to make an authentic story, someone would have to follow them wherever they went.

Not her.

Her job was getting the information to pass to the brave/foolish reporter.  She was supposed to get the information unnoticed, a relatively easy task.  It seemed she failed to do even that.

Of course, it was Duard Ban’s fault getting her trapped in all this mess.  That idiot always thought too much of himself.  Jaquan hated reporters.  Everyone, from the fans to the doorkeepers at the hotel, knew that Jaquan Zu hated reporters.  Still, he leaped at the assignment without thinking of her position in this.  He wasn’t scared of Jaquan.  He will be now.

He was bold enough to stand directly in front of Jaquan Zu, trying to get him to stop.  He got a good rib-crushing stomp in the chest for his troubles.  Now, he’s resting in the hospital.  As Duard’s errand girl, Brisa was the only person from Champion’s Chronicle near the scene.

She always wanted to be an ace reporter but never thought her chance would come like the, or be so short lived.  She watched her quarry load onto the shuttle, a large white box of a ship.  None of them wanted to see her again, their glances made sure she knew as much.

She watched each of them file into the shuttle one at a time.  Each of them scared her to death.  For the strangest reason, Neely scared her the most.  Not so much for what he did; but what he said or, how he said it.  His words bore into her consciousness.  Even now, she remembered power behind his words.

Just thinking of his words brought the entire torturous scene back.  The memory was more powerful than the experience.  The fire and frost seeping into her chest while floating helpless in the air.  She was unsure that she would ever forget.  There was no way she was going to follow them.  She wanted to write about safer things.

She was done.  The only thing left was to tell Mr. Meng of her utter failure and probably get fired.  Her hand slowly lifted her handheld to talking position while she carefully dialed the numbers for headquarters.  She wanted to get a good look at her boss perhaps for the last time.

Within moments, she was speaking with Mr. Meng.  A hologram of his torso and face appeared just above her handheld.  She saw a bit of scenery behind him too.  Apparently, he was sitting at his desk.  He was heavy set and sweaty.  His grey suit was quite disorganized with splotches of food condiments.  He had tan skin with thick golden tiger-like stripes all over his face and body.  Never mind his appearance; she knew his reaction to failure.  He yelled at Mr. Ban enough times, and that was for minor errors.  Could she go through with this?

She started slowly trying to sound strong in front of the one Crisho she desperately needed to impress.  She failed miserably.  “Th… they found me.  I don’t know how.  It was… it was horrible.  I thought th… they were going kill me,” Brisa was at the verge of tears by the time she finished.  As she heard herself talk, she realized that she really had no idea how they found her.  She was recording things on her handheld; there was a bright flash; then she was staring into the most frightening pair of eyes she had ever seen.

“Kid, listen to me,” Mr. Meng sounded strangely understanding, “they’re bluffing you.  Don’t fall for it.”  He spoke to her in a calm but firm tone.  “I know these tough guy types.  They put up a good front but when you get to know them, they’re a bunch of softies.”

He spoke like he had been there, but Brisa knew better.  The BigBad Crew was not bluffing, nor were they softies.  They knew who she was.  They knew why she was there.  If they saw her again, they would stop her from doing it.  “B…but.”

“No buts kid,” the chief executive almost started to sound frustrated.  He corrected himself immediately, “Our star reporter is out of commission because of this guy; Zu is hiding something, I know it; and you’re the only one we can tag on his trail right now,” his argument made a small amount of sense. “You want to be a news star, you need a big chance.  This is your big chance.  I’m not asking you to do anything dangerous.  All you have to do is follow him.  I’ll get a reporter to meet you at Bear Gate and you’ll come home.  It’ll be easy.  Just stay out of sight.”

That was easy enough.  All he was asking her to do was follow them.  The shuttle had no windows, there was no way they could see her.  All she had to do was stay out of sight for the shuttle ride to Bear Gate.  Once she was there, the new reporter team would be there, and she was done.  It was an easy job.  “Okay,” it seems a little too easy though, “I’ll do it.” This could be a bad idea.  Despite her doubts, she boarded the shuttle.

—–

The BigBad Crew rested in their private cabin on the shuttle.  They had their own aircraft but Justice insisted they travel like this.  No worries.  Jaquan only had to sign a few autographs for the fans and then ask to be left alone.  The fans knew to give him his space.  Justice filled Jaquan and Liana in on the details of the city and made reservations for their trip.

Catlin sat on a couch right next to Neely and rested on him while he read.  Neely didn’t mind her head on his shoulder.  They had been good friends for a long while now.  Also, with her close to him there was little chance for her to turn wild.  Sometimes it happened while she slept.

Catlin’s Thermal and Motion talents were very active even while she rested.  They were amplified by her Unholy talents.  Each person had a heat signature that moved with them.   Using this skill, she watched all the passengers and crew on the shuttle for a while.  However, she was tired from enchanting the huge jug of healing water for Neely and the activities afterwards on the shuttle pad.

Catlin was on the verge of falling asleep when she noticed a particular heat signature moving towards the back of the shuttle.  This one was altered slightly; it had a unique pulsing signature that only someone using the Thermal and Motion Talents could place.  It also had the shape of a bow-tie.  She spoke just loud enough for Neely to hear, “Brisa Gan from the Champion’s Chronicle is following us.”  She decided to sleep anyway.

“Oh well,” was his simple response.

#1 – Opportunity #10 – Opportunity #12