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Post by Orfao The Fatherless on Sept 24, 2013 12:50:27 GMT -8
"Well, considering it is all I use to defend and evade, pretty good"
Orfao concentrated for a moment and felt the Force flow through him. It was calming and invigorating all at once. He sighed and smiled, letting the Force out through his being and creating a Force barrier around the two of them in preparation for if the poison fog reached them. It seemed unlikely as this person kept attacking the jungle.....Was this person sick? Maybe she was tired....Or blind. Yes, that had to be it....Either way, Orfao created a Force Barried to protect them.
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Chloro
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Post by Chloro on Sept 25, 2013 2:53:29 GMT -8
The metallic vulture hung in the skies, waiting patiently for its prey to keel over and die. Seconds passed. Minutes passed. Chloro impatiently drummed her fingers in sync with the short electrical buzz in her mouth. Her target's heart was slowing, not increasing. The mist had sunk down and partially obscured the cliff. Was he peacefully drifting away? That seemed unlikely. She managed to piece together that he had somehow managed to hold the cloud of toxins at bay before the eye in the sky confirmed her guess.
What to do?
Her watch told her that she still had plenty of time before the fleet departed. The Basilisk still had enough fuel for a bit more than an hour. Maybe longer. She still had a full rack of missiles. Her mines were laid around the perimeter of the cliff, blocking the easiest way out. Besides, the gas contaminated the entire area. They just needed to touch a leaf, brush against a tree and they would be incapasitated.
She drifted lower and set her course to circle slowly around Hiro, Orfao and their barrier. She had created the ideal conditions for victory. All that she needed to do was wait. Unzipping her flight pocket and pulled out a dog-eared orange book, entitled "the orange book" and thumbed to a random paragraph while she waited:
... do not for one moment relax in the will to fight. Belittling your enemy's will belittles your own, bleeding and sublimating initiative into passivity that is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive...
Buzz-buzz buzz-buzz buzz-buzz
Chloro grinned, savouring the almost fiery taste in her mouth, actively waiting for their passive resistance to crumble. She just had to wait a little longer...
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The Holy Man
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Post by The Holy Man on Sept 25, 2013 10:04:16 GMT -8
I kept my eyes closed. I didn't need to see the events unfolding around me. The opaque haze was settling, cloaking us from the sky like a thick fog. Orfao was protecting us with his Force Bubble... But how long would that last?
They aren't here for you. Save yourself while you still can.
I knew that Orfao wouldn't leave, just from hearing all that he had said about himself. But I needed to at least try to protect him. He had been nothing but kind to me. If he chose to stay, which I had a feeling he would, it would be of his own accord.
Drawing the Force in, I focused on myself, blocking out all other things around me. I could hear the blood pumping through my veins, and I could hear the faint thumping of my heart grow louder and louder. I pulled all of the Force energy together... And directed it at myself.
What started as a steady heartbeat was growing more faint, as my pulse began to slow. I breathed in slowly, continuing to focus on my own body. Slowly, my heart beat began to trickle away like a small forest stream, ebbing from it's source. The thumping sound withered to nothing but a faint whisper.
And after a few more moments... There was only silence.
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Chloro
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Post by Chloro on Sept 29, 2013 9:35:15 GMT -8
Chloro was on the ground the moment before he had gone into the self-imposed coma, with the War Machine bristling with weaponry. The machine's mechanical eyes glittered with an animalistic bloodlust, having found the spoor of its quarry and now, so close, yet denied the right to retrieve its downed prey. She restrained it from uselessly pawing at the invisible barrier that kept the gas at bay. It took most of her self-control not to pry at the shields herself. But she knew it would counter-productive. Attack the source. The only man standing.
::Drop the barrier.::
The sterilized amplified voice dictated to Orfao.
::Drop it. Or I burn the planet.::
She deactivated the safeties and held her thumb over the trigger. It was a simple command. She had no interest in negociating with do-gooders. If they for a moment doubted her resolve to torch several thousand acres of forestry, she would prove them wrong. And she would continue to do so, until she had made her point. Not a tear would be shed, neither her, nor her employers cared if Tython was swept away in a firestorm.
Not a tear would be shed, but she'd enjoy it.
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Shaman Chill
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Post by Shaman Chill on Sept 30, 2013 21:35:48 GMT -8
*There was a clap of thunder, and the sky overhead darkened. The protectors of Tython had sensed the threat made against the beauty of their planet, and they would not stand idle forever. It was a wonder that they had not simply swept away the intruder at the first sign of an attempt to light their forest on fire, but the Whills were amused, and waited to see what would happen next. Now, dark thunderclouds gathered over the jungle, and quite without warming, a heavy rain began to fall. The raindrops that fell upon Hiro and Orfao would feel cool and refreshing, but the droplets which fell upon Chloro were as frigid as Hoth in January, and turned to ice upon contact.*
*The warning had been sent. The planet was far from defenseless, and it's guardians would not allow any great calamity to befall it.*
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Post by Whill Shaman Erevis on Oct 1, 2013 6:59:50 GMT -8
With the clap of thunder and the darkening of the sky, it was a perfect place for Erevis to come say hello. He had indeed been watching, waiting, and trying not to simply crush Chloro with her own Shadow. His Big Brother decided to show up and politely point out that lighting the planet on fire would considered 'BAD'. Erevis preferred a more straight forward approach, and as such, his face appeared in the shadow cast by Chloro on the basilisk.
"Hey there. I couldn't help but notice you put a bunch of mines in the jungle over there and I think I overheard you mention something about...Um..What was it again.....oh right. Fire. Just...Don't, K? That'd be great."
His face faded an his hand reached out and he tickled Chloro once under the armour, because Whill.
"Nice ride though"
Chloro's own shadow reached up and poked her in the nose as Erevis faded
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Chloro
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Post by Chloro on Oct 3, 2013 0:16:28 GMT -8
The heavy rain washed away the airborne chemicals, which bothered Chloro more than the icy sheets of rain that seemed to cut through her armour and chilled her to the bone. She released the seals to her mask and directed her scowl to the skies. This was unexpected. She wasn't one to believe in the impossible - how sleet could form in a tropical jungle.
Her teeth curled back into a hellraising grimace that displayed all her jagged teeth. Somewhere, she had struck a nerve. A freak outburst? Nonsense. Someone was sending her a message, trying to discourage her. But this only strengthened her resolve. And peaked her curiosity. Who could command a rainstorm to send a message? She had to know.
And her shadow told her. It was a bit disconcerting to have her only companion shift and talk, warning her to stop. And tickling her. She giggled uncontrollably and blushed. Frowning, she tried to keep her composure and whispered to her shadow.
"Pervert"
Hiro was all but forgotten. She wanted to know more about this bizarre phenomenon. They had given her a clue on how to get their attention.
Start a fire.
She pulled the trigger. Missiles streaked from the Basilisk into the forest, setting huge swathes of the jungle ablaze. Even with the rain, the fire kept growing, fueled by reactor slag and other unmentionable materials.
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Post by Whill Shaman Erevis on Oct 3, 2013 6:13:39 GMT -8
And get their attention she did. Erevis appeared just inside the jungle, a large looming shadow, eyes glowing purple, and literally grabbed the missiles out of the air. He looked at them quizzically for a moment, and they disappeared. He glared at Chloro, and she too disappeared, reforming at the bottom of the polar ice caps
"Chill. She is all yours. Try not to break her"
Erevis didn't so much fade as whisp away like smoke in the wind
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The Holy Man
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Post by The Holy Man on Oct 5, 2013 7:38:20 GMT -8
With a deep exhale, the Force exuded from me like the water receding from the shore. It was like a sigh, as the energy ebbed in one fluid motion, bringing me back from the brink of death. My heart began to beat at it's normal pace, and I looked up to see that the figure and her machine had disappeared.
Well that was... Anticlimactic.
Leave it to the Whills to ruin my perfectly good plan. Oh well. If the person attacking us was willing to destroy such a sacred place, then it was they who controlled her fate, not me.
With a sigh, I looked to Orfao.
We shouldn't stay here. I'm not sure who she is, but what she wanted is clear.
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Bloodshot
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Affiliation: Chaos and credits, baby.
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Post by Bloodshot on Oct 7, 2013 9:42:04 GMT -8
As the Regret pushed through into the atmosphere, Bloodshot's head swiveled toward the planet below, as if he could see something the girl beside him could not. That much power... So the rumors are true. The gods of Tython are real. To be felt at such distance, the concentration of power would have to have been immense, and it was nearly that same moment that Pilot chimed in with the anomalous readings he was getting from the same coordinates. Something about freak rainstorms and brief weapons-fire. That's it then. Another hunter beat us here. Never mind. I found him. Take this, He handed the girl a facemask. and this, He handed her a repulsorpack. and jump when we hit ten klicks. Any sooner and you'll freeze solid without the right gear. Gear such as the climate controlled body glove beneath Bloodshot's armor plating. The ship will track my location and feed the data to the HUD in the mask. Then without further ceremony, he grabbed a stun rifle off the weapons rack then opened the ventral access hatch and stepped out into the open air.
Freefall. Gotta be the fastest way to a planet's surface, bar none. Well... Bar teleportation. It was an exhilarating thrill to be sure, but the mercenary had a target. No time to revel in the little things. He hit the clouds at terminal velocity and he was sure it would have stung his face had he been mask-less. Except he never could be mask-less. Gift and a curse.
His vision switched to thermal as the clouds obscured normal light, and two pinpricks of heat became visible in a small clearing below. A small clearing that also happened to be radiating force energy. Bingo. Adjusting his trajectory with the repulsor belt he wore, he continued dropping lower and lower, activating the belt fully at one kilometer up. It wouldn't stop his fall or let him fly like a normal repulsor pack, but it did slow him enough that hitting the ground was only a mildly jarring affair, rather than a lethal one. Standing, he observed the dome in front of him and the two men inside, eyes narrowing beneath the mask. The stun rifle came up and focused on the space between the men, its wide beam able to catch them both if they remained where they stood. Drop the barrier.
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Post by Orfao The Fatherless on Oct 8, 2013 8:44:43 GMT -8
Gods Came, and Gods Went. It was the flexible nature of the Force. The power surge he felt was immense, and suddenly, Chloro was just....gone. He looked into the sky as the rain dissipated and noted 2 dots getting bigger. He eventually figured out the 2 dots were in fact people. He looked calmly over at Hiro as he spoke..
"More friends of yours? I would ask what it was you have done to garner such attention, but I am afraid that whoever it is will have either killed or wrapped us up in some kind of cage."
He turned his head back to the sky, the barrier falling long before Bloodshot would be able to speak to them. Allowing the Force to flow through him like a calming wind, then a raging storm, still beautiful in it's utter inability to decipher good from bad...The true neutrality, he reached up and grasped at the biggest of the 2 beings, and pulled down towards Tython as hard as the Force would allow him. Under normal circumstances, Orfao would allow the man to land and speak, but this was a remote planet, rumoured, and now proven, to be the Home of the Gods, and as such was rarely ever visited.....And now there has been 2 arrivals at the exact location where he and Hiro were attempting to enjoy a pot of tea. Orfaos irritation showed only in that he didn't bother with discourse and instead went full on defensive mode
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Shaman Chill
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Post by Shaman Chill on Oct 8, 2013 19:19:37 GMT -8
Chill hadn't planned to reveal himself in any tangible form, but then his little brother sprung into action, and the Ice Whill smiled to himself at Erevis' mischief. Almost instantly, the clouds dispersed (but not before the last patch of fire had been extinguished), and Tythos' light shone brightly once more. The sun was warm and refreshing, but despite the heat that Tythos gave to all life in the system, the stun rifle in Bloodshot's possession grew steadily colder and colder, freezing until it reached a temperature so low as to render its component metals brittle. If anyone were to fire the weapon in it's frozen state, it might have it's intended effect, or it might explode into tiny bits of shrapnel, or it might simply collapse into fine metallic powder. It was hard to know.
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Bloodshot
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Post by Bloodshot on Oct 9, 2013 9:31:57 GMT -8
He was still over a hundred and fifty meters up when he felt the invisible tug of the force on his body, and how the men below had managed to spot him in the middle of the pouring rain was an utter mystery to the bounty hu... Never mind. The cloud cover and rain disappeared in an instant, and Bloodshot felt yet another massive surge of ambient power as his rifle began to grow cold. Well thanks godling. Don't mind if I do. The ambient energy that accompanied a being as powerful as the likes of a Whill was truly immense, and Bloodshot wasted no time in drawing the unused power into himself. The surge nearly blew his body apart from the strain of containing it before it settled into the task of enhancing his own physical attributes. One of which was his brain. His very Umbaran, telepathic brain. Note to self: Draw more slowly next time. Less painful that way.
He reached out with his own mind as he fell, his telepathy fueled by the immense power he had just absorbed, and surrounded the mind of his attacker with a dozen shards of mental fire and agony, then in that same instant drove them straight into his opponents psyche. Or that's the goal anyway. If the attack was successful and broke through whatever mental defenses the forcie possessed, the man's mind would be instantly ravaged by the sensation of every pain nerve in his body firing at once. Sensations ranging from burning alive to being skinned like an animal to having a thousand needles driven into his bones. This power is fantastic! I should come here more often. He almost felt giddy in spite of himself. This was more power than he'd ever held before in his entire life. Possibly combined. Bloodshot's hope was that the attack would render the other man incapable of coherent thought and thus incapable of continuing the pull toward the ground, which would allow the repulsor belt the chance it needed to compensate for the unexpected increase in speed. Though the few seconds until he hit the ground was not a lot of time to do that.
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The Holy Man
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Post by The Holy Man on Oct 9, 2013 10:44:22 GMT -8
I looked up, and saw more dark specks flying through the sky, coming down towards the planet as the skies cleared. I felt the torrents of the Force brought on by Whillish intervention. The Force power was so strong, it almost literally manifest itself in visual form. Drawing on the Force in this place was powerful... But to draw power from the Whills directly? That was insane. Nobody in their right mind could survive that.
But I guess when you have the mind of an Umbaran or some other obscure species that nobody else knows about, you tend to have an all-but-unfair advantage over lesser mortals. But all of that was information that I didn't know, so all I could do was ignore it.
I looked over to Orfao, and then looked back to the sky.
Probably. Must be my lucky day.
I could feel what Orfao was doing, so I joined in, and did the same. I reached out through the Force, and focused on the falling object, drawing the Force towards it to propel it faster towards the ground.
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Post by Whill Shaman Erevis on Oct 9, 2013 12:16:39 GMT -8
A figure in black coalesced beside Bloodshot as he free fell, his arms and legs out like a parachuter. He turned his head to face the Merc, his dark purple eyes glowing softly, and he nodded his head before he spoke
"Hey."
Time seemed to slow to the point it straight up stopped. Erevis reoriented himself into a seated position, cross legged, now in front of Bloodshot, and time began to move again, albeit very.....very slowly. He tapped his finger on his facemask thoughtfully, his left arm tucked under his right elbow.
"Neat trick. What I want to know is......How did you just absorb ambient Force energy, from a Whill, without exploding into a billion billion little pieces?"
He leaned in, and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper
"I could use it to pick on Odin.."
He glanced around quickly, then looked back at Bloodshot, suddenly serious as he stood on the air, the other man still in the same falling position as before
"Be careful where you land. "
As he faded away, his hollow voice whisped through the ether.
"Oh, by the way...You are 20 feet lower and 400 feet off target.....Try not to break any trees"
And at that point, Time was abruptly back to normal, and the words of Erevis proved true. Bloodshot now found himself over top of the Jungle canopy, 20 feet lower than he was before. Orfao and Hiro would now be suffering from the most intense migraine of their lives for bringing this idiocy to the home of the Whills
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Shaman Chill
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Post by Shaman Chill on Oct 9, 2013 21:09:15 GMT -8
The Ice Whill was surprised. How crazy was this Umbaran?
Given the efficient (at times, the less-well initiated wrongly termed it 'lazy') nature of the Whills, there shouldn't have been much leftover power present. The amount of energy that the average Whill wasted in a typical day shouldn't be enough to power a fresher for 5 minutes. But even if that were not so, forging a connection to the Cold One, in specific, was exceptionally unwise. After all, dear reader, why do you think he is so cold, and how do you think that he renders other physical objects cold? Cold is the absence of energy, and so the Frozen Whill could actually be considered a carefully controlled near-zero energy void that sucks in energy from his surroundings, whenever and however he so chooses.
And so the Umbaran would no doubt sense the awesome power that was present through his foolhardy connection, but the great flow of energy he felt deceived him -- he was not drawing anything into himself, rather, he had opened himself, and was feeling the rush of his own force energy being sucked away. The high would only last as long as his own energy lasted. Chill, far away in his ice palace, felt his forehead begin to soften, and a single drop of ice water sweat flowed down his forehead. He grimaced, and waited to see what would happen. He could break the connection, but he was curious to see what would happen next.
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Bloodshot
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Affiliation: Chaos and credits, baby.
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Post by Bloodshot on Oct 9, 2013 22:30:05 GMT -8
Void met void as the aura of false power led Bloodshot to begin drawing on the energy around him, and nothing at all actually happened. The mercenary had no power of his own to be drawn out. That was the nature of his connection. He could only be as powerful as the ambient energy of those around him allowed him to be. No energy = no power. Well frak. there goes tha... The form of another godling appeared next to him and Bloodshot's already open siphon began sucking in the being's ambient energy like a wormhole (assuming that Erevis was not also a zero-energy entity). The level of power hit him like a boulder, and he didn't hear a word that was said as his mind and senses exploded with a level of awareness that just about drove him to uncoscniousness before he slammed his siphon shut, cutting off the flow of power. Drawing energy from the disembodied force use of a whill (who was likely actually hundreds of miles away) was quite a different thing than drawing directly off the energy of a whill less than two meters away. Even with the reinforcement to his body that the energy provided (which would counteract the energy levels attempting to tear him apart, for those wondering along at home), the rate of absorption had nearly exceeded its ability to protect him. Had he not cut it off when he did, at only a small fraction of the actual power surrounding the whill, he had little doubt it would have blown him to pieces before his body's durability could catch up. I really need to learn how to control that...
When the power faded and he finally regained an awareness of his surroundings, he was four hundred meters south of his former position and twenty feet lower. Okay... That's good news I guess. Good news because the little teleport stunt had broken line of sight with the two men in the clearing and released him from their grip, meaning his repulsor belt was free to drop him safely the rest of the way to the ground. Relatively safely anyway. He broke three branches and his stun rifle before hitting dirt, but it was nothing his armor couldn't handle. That's twice now they've interfered. Makes me wonder what kind of stake they have in this Hiro guy getting nabbed. Rolling to his feet as he pondered, he began the short trek back to the clearing.
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Post by Whill Shaman Erevis on Oct 10, 2013 9:22:27 GMT -8
Nope. Nope nope nope. There was no way a Whill was going to affect the fight about to come between the bounty hunter and the Bounty. The universe would not allow it. Erevis appeared in front of Bloodshot once more, projecting this time from his Throne of Mirrors, and stopped the Umbaran dead in his tracks. And if he tried to steal any more power, Dead would become literal. His eyes were blazing purple, like pits of Amethyst fire, and he fixed his terrible gaze upon the being, and promptly removed the power he had stolen from Erevis
"Mine. Not yours. Now. Go play your foolish mortal games, and pray that you do not wreck our planet in any way shape or form, or you will find a fate worse than Chloro. My chambers are not as comfortable,."
With that, he faded into nothing, becoming the shadows once more, his eyes the last to fade.
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The Holy Man
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Post by The Holy Man on Oct 11, 2013 9:18:03 GMT -8
I watched as the object fell, now clearly visible as a man falling through the open sky. I kept fueling his fall with the Force, for as little good that it did. I also noticed the swirls of darkness in the sky manifesting into a form hovering beside the falling man, freezing them in the sky. I looked around for a moment, to see if everything else had frozen, but it was fine. I realized that I was looking at a Whill breaking the laws of physics before us.
I... have no idea what is going on right now.
I watched on as the man and the Whill unfroze, and the man plummeted towards the ground as he disappeared into the trees. I shrugged, and walked over to the stump I had been sitting on before this mess began. I was suddenly aware of a sharp pain in my head, and I had no clue where it came from. I reached down and grabbed my walking stick, holding it in my left hand as I returned to Orfao's side. I stood beside him, patiently waiting for the new evil to show itself from inside the trees.
I also had decided I would write this by starting every sentence with "I". I suceeded.
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Bloodshot
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Post by Bloodshot on Oct 11, 2013 11:16:22 GMT -8
Bloodshot chuckled as the black shadow thing appeared again and spouted off its ultimatum after trying to take back a power that wasn't there anymore. Heh. It's already gone, dude. On or off, that's how it works. No middle ground. Not to mention the fact that it wasn't actually the whill's own power he had been siphoning. One of the funny little things about the force is that it seems to be drawn to more of itself. Wherever there's a source of significant power, more of that power gathers around it. It's how sith assassins were able to grow more powerful around more powerful prey without making that prey weaker in the process, and the same mechanic behind the use of Bloodshot's own power. If the whill had simply been polite enough to ask before jumping the gun all vengeful-like, Bloodshot's writer would have been more than happy to explain all this ahead of time. And it's not like I'm the one who picked your frakking planet in the first place.
He drew each of his blaster pistols and flicked the settings to stun as he walked, making sure that the weapons would cause no harm to the planet should he miss. Which, given the nature of forcies in general, is a really likely scenario. He also ran a diagnostic on his armor as he closed the distance again, checking the functionality after the fall to make sure it was still in operable condition. As he expected, there was little damage. Shields were still at a hundred percent, mounted weapons were undamaged, and the grav-plates holding his handheld weapons in place had been un-phased by the fall. The only casualty seemed to be the sensor coverage for the forward/left quadrant, but he was confident he could keep the area covered with visual scanning. After all, that was the side with his good eye (so to speak).
He stepped out of the trees opposite the cliff and spotted his quarry immediately, standing next to the half-bald monk looking fellow with the outrageously good eyesight. With little else to do, he continued striding toward the men, right hand empty and a pistol in his left.
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