Tag Archives: Royal Qiu

Champions of Battle: AD7 – Awakening #23

The massive ratcoon ferociously raked and slashed at Oyintsa; and he kept on provoking it.  With its sheer size, its paws were easily as large as Oyintsa’s torso.  Oyintsa had long since fell over.  With one strong swipe from the ratcoon, it flung Oyintsa into the air headed deeper into the weeds.  He rolled into the brush some distance away before he could gain his bearings.

The ratcoon followed him.  It knew he wasn’t dead.  A few seconds, and the beast was on top of him again.  Biting, scratching, pouncing, it did whatever it could to beat Oyintsa.  As a response, Oyintsa put his hands in a practiced defensive posture to absorb the ratcoon’s attacks.

His thick plated armor protected him from the onslaught.  It was enchanted armor.  Over the years, enchanters and armor-smiths perfected methods of making armors like his; Sanity’s armor-smiths and enchanters were the best.  It was metal when he needed it to be and cloth at other times.  It also had a few surprises.

Occasionally, he could predict where the beast’s paw would land.  In those places, he produced small sharp spikes on his armor.  Upon attacking him, the beast would impale itself.  Instead of causing fear, the pain only made the beast angrier.  It tackled him again trying to cause whatever kind of damage it could.

Royal rejoined the battle following the loud blasts of Oyintsa’s combat shotguns.  Even in his odd position, he found ways to target and shoot the beast with the large barrels and unique ammunition.  Instead of metal pellets, Oyintsa used odd shaped scraps and needles as shot.  As a result his powerful blasts caused the beast enough pain to stay focused on him.  The ratcoon tried to finish him while Royal caused quite a bit of damage to its hind legs.

AD7 couldn’t see a thing!  She knew a lot was happening though.  She wanted to join in the battle as well.  She remembered having great advantages and being nearly invincible in combat.  She also remembered having complete knowledge of things in a battle, even things she couldn’t see directly.  These weeds were frustrating!

Instinctively, she started swinging the bags around.  If anything came out of the weeds, she would throw their weight at them.  She paused to think, then face-palmed realizing she was only holding bags of sandwiches.

Before long the beast was trying to crush Oyintsa.  It was putting all of its weight on him and jumping.  It yelped again as it pounced directly onto a barbed spike.

Royal’s jumping Hanja had faded back to black; it was usable again.  She used this perfect opportunity to cause fight ending damage.  She leapt at the ratcoon.  She took as much thermal power out of her frost blade and put it into her flame blade.

She landed on the ratcoon with a downward stab directly into its left hind leg.  The ratcoon howled as her burning blade sunk to the hilt.  She immediately withdrew it with a jump off of the beast.  The fire was extinguished badly burning target.

The fire blade was used.  However, with almost no thermal energy in it, her frost blade was most dangerous now.  Royal used the dash enchant on her other leg to rush the beast while it was still reeling from her first attack.  Less than a second after landing, Royal dashed through the weeds and slashed the inside of the beast’s other leg.

The blade was colder than ice.  As she cut, the beast’s blood froze.  The frozen slash was deep but the frozen wound didn’t bleed right away.  It sure did hurt though.

Still growling and swiping, the large ratcoon still had the will to fight but lacked the ability to move.  It was bleeding quite a bit from the horrible wounds.  It could no longer keep up with them or move without great pain.  Soon it realized that it could no longer fight.  So, it used its front legs as best it could to crawl back to its den.

Royal and Oyintsa seeing the battle was finished decided not to press the attack any further.  On the contrary, Royal performed several of her most powerful delayed heals on the beast as it retreated.  Their goal was not to hunt a ratcoon, only to travel safely.

By the time the travelers would get back to their ship, the damage they caused the ratcoon would be healed.  Unfortunately, this ratcoon would have very defining scars for a lifetime.  It was already showing signs of improved movement as it got up and limped slowly away.

It took a few minutes for them to get back on the path Oyintsa created earlier.  They signaled AD7 to follow and they all headed back to the ship.  “Well,” Oyintsa started.  He sounded normal though he was covered in the beast’s blood, “Now we know why the rats moved to town.”

The ladies nodded in agreement.

“The ship’s not far.  Best get going.”

#1 – Awakening #22 –Awakening #24

Champions of Battle: AD7 – Awakening #22

Somewhere on the Outskirts of Bosstown

AD7, Royal, and Oyintsa walk into the woods beyond Bosstown.  The depressing city ruins ended a few decameters back.  Nature had completely taken over these parts.  Tall grass and weeds flourished.  The occasional tree shot out of the ground shading the entire area.  Not even the roads were evident here.

As they fought through the weeds to gain ground, they walked over unnatural looking hills from time to time.  They were more like aged piles of rubble.  Each smelled of rust, rotting wood, and wild mushrooms.  There was quite a bit of red gravel underneath them as well; and roofing tiles all around them.

How could my beautiful city be overcome by nature so quickly?  AD7 tried to riddle it out; then face-palmed as she remembered again.  It’s been fifty years!  AD7 wanted to read about the details of her city’s decay but Royal had taken her handheld back a while ago.

Besides, Royal and Oyintsa seemed to be getting more aware of their surroundings.  They were cautious on how and where they stepped.  They moved quickly and quietly.  They made sure they gave every sound attention and could identify them.  With that, AD7 realized they were in the wild now.  There were many places for the wildlife to hide.

AD7 tried to do what they did.  However, it didn’t help that they were each holding five fragrant sandwiches designed to attract meat eaters.  She looked to the sky.  Through the weeds, several birds flew overhead.  The birds seemed uninterested but birds could change their minds at any time.

“Tracks,” Oyintsa stopped as he spoke.

AD7 stopped as well realizing that she was about to run into Royal.  She looked at the tracks.  There were several.  They were everywhere.  Each identical in shape, they looked like deformed hands, with claws.  Among the prominent large tracks were much smaller tracks.

“Ratcoons?” Royal asked.

“Ratcoons… with cubs,” he said the last words with a bit of enthusiasm.  Ratcoons were much like rats; only much larger, intelligent, and aggressive.  Unlike rats, they actually hunted live food as well as scavenged.  As with most animals, adults with cubs to feed and protect were much more dangerous.

Both Oyintsa and Royal shoved things into AD7’s hands.  Suddenly, AD7 found herself holding all of the sandwiches.

“Time to go,” Oyintsa said as he produces a long throwing blade from under his cape.  He throws it in the direction they were walking.  The blade gains power and speed as it mows down to weeds creating a path for them.  After about a meter into the weeds, it returns to Oyintsa.  At that, the three of them run down the path to get as far away as they can from the den.

AD7 didn’t know if they were in immediate danger.  Still, she knew when to follow the leader and did her best to keep up.  Warriors don’t run without good reason.

About halfway through the path he created, Oyintsa turns, points, and shouts, “Left!”  There was a short powerful gun in his hand.  He pointed it to the left and fired behind Royal who kept running passed him.  The sound was deafening.

After being in stasis for so long, AD7 was getting tired quickly.  She found new strength when Oyintsa yelled and even more energy when the beast screamed just to the left of her and stood.  It looked like an enormous brown rat more than four decimeters tall.  Black patches covered its eyes and large white stripes traced down its body.  She saw a fresh wound just beginning to bleed on its left front leg.

AD7 looks at Oyintsa.  He has already drawn another gun.  He flexes and roars.  Suddenly, his cloak expands and turns metallic.  It’s not long before he’s wearing thickly plated spiked armor still accented with his clan’s crest on the back.  His guns have gotten larger as well.  He fires them and reloads repeatedly as he charges the beast gaining all its attention.

Only after it starts attacking Oyintsa does Royal step in.  She pulls out two rather large swords from behind her cape.  AD7 immediately thought to herself.  Where exactly did those come from?  Did she have them this whole time?

There was no sign of them existing before now.  At the restaurant, Royal even sat on them with no sign of discomfort.  No matter if they truly came from nowhere, one of them spouted flames while the other was engulfed in frost flakes.

A Hanja on Royal’s leg glowed red then she leaps into action.  The impressive jump took her over the weeds and directly behind the beast.  As she landed, she turned and slashing downward with both swords.

Her cuts were clean and damaging.  Oyintsa’s attacks were annoying and painful.  But the ratcoon was much larger than them and very fast.  It was going to be a hard battle.

#1 – Awakening #21 – Awakening #23

Champions of Battle: AD7 – Awakening #19

AD7 stared at the waiter in disbelief.  “It blew up?” she asked.  His words were clear as day.  There was no chance that she misheard him.  Still, AD7 had to ask just to be certain she wasn’t hallucinating.  Things don’t just blow up spontaneously.  And if something, anything were to blow up, why the best restaurant she had ever visited?

“Well it was blown up,” the waiter said correcting himself, “before the Mech War started heating up.  Madam Ge rebuilt it here.  She wanted to keep the restaurant local but the old lot was too small for her vision.  Still, she cleaned and preserved the lot to honor her uncle who died in the explosion.”  At that the waiter paused awkwardly, remembering his job “Is there anything else you’ll be needing sir.”

Oyintsa thought about his surroundings and remembered that the young Crisho probably had other tables to work, “No, thanks.”  At this, the waiter left rushing off to help the next table.

“That explains the empty lot,” Royal encouraged AD7, “Seems like you’re perfectly sane.”

Yeah right.  I’m sane and completely out of touch.  AD7 was usually in good spirits even in these odd times.  However, this recent embarrassment proved that there was a great deal that she had to catch up on.

For all she knew, she had caused the war and was sitting with her enemies.  She didn’t even understand the today’s fashion.  She had a whole half century of history to learn before she could live something of a normal life.

Even in her day, the handhelds were very useful.  Perhaps these days they were even more advanced.  She turns to Royal and asks, “Is there something I could read that tells me about recent history?”  After a little bit of thought, Royal activates her handheld and hands it to AD7.  While they were discussing its new features, Oyintsa’s handheld starts ringing.

Instead of answering it immediately, Oyintsa set it in the center of the table.  This way, all of their faces could be seen by the caller.  Pressing a button, he received the call and a small image of a worried Tirzah appeared.

The image of Tirzah showed her talking into her hand.  She was concerned but not to a stressful degree.  “Where’d you guys go?”

AD7 and Royal both heard the question but were a bit preoccupied to respond.  Oyintsa on the other hand responded immediately, “AD7 lead us to a smashing restaurant.  You have to come see.”

“Love to,” Tirzah said, almost cheering, “but we’re done here.  Get something for the rest of us though, eh?  I’ll hit you back.”  She was in one of her rare good moods.  Cyd must have finally joined them.  “Meet you at the ship.”

“See you,” Oyintsa said as he ended the connection.  At the next opportunity, he gets the attention of another waiter, “I’d like to add quadruple to our order.”

AD7 was occupied trying to understand Royal’s handheld.  Still, the large amount of sandwich orders got her attention.  Sure Royal was hungry.  It was impossible for her to be that hungry, “Why so many?”

“There’s twelve of us,” Royal said.

“The rest are in the ship,” Oyintsa said finishing her thought, “Got an extra in case someone,” he emphasized looking at Royal, “was still hungry.”

Royal was looking the other way but she knew she was being teased.  As a response she looked at Oyintsa and stuck out her tongue.

As they waited, AD7 read more of the city’s history from a page on Royals handheld.  Most of the details were left out.  AD7 read between the lines thinking of Eighty-Seven’s responses to each event: the small conflict’s escalation; the steady transformation of the Mech Wall into a fortress; the peace agreement between Bosstown and Rubin’s Trail; the continued aggression from the Mech Fortress with its superior technology and fire power; the calling of Champions to aid Rubin’s Trail’s fight against the Mech Armies; the slow and steady defeat of the Mech Fortress; and ‘AD7’s’ imprisonment at Rubin’s Trail Science Facilities.

Each progression was horrifying for AD7.  Things went from bad to worse to utter disaster; each step breaking AD7’s heart.  She had no idea that things would turn this way.  But Eighty-Seven always followed her instructions perfectly.  She wanted something.  Something she could never have.  Argh… what was it?!  AD7 instinctively kept her calm face while reading but the puzzle was driving her crazy.

They were always together, so very close together.  Rubin’s Trail would have easily mistaken Eighty-Seven for her.  Now, Eighty-Seven must be scared out of her analytical mind.  There has to be a way to get to Rubin’s Trail and free her.

#1 – Awakening #18 – Awakening #20