Locked in a Cage (with GaiusGermanicusBloodsoak)

"Do you have any idea how?" Yanaike yelled at Reggie. It was unfair how he channeled his frustration to her. Yanaike hadn't done anything wrong. She hastidly made her way to the main room, where she opened her bag. She took her crossbow out of it and threw it to Reggie.
"Here!" she said. "It will probably not be very effective as he seems kind of bulky, but at least you could try distracting him?" Yanaike herself started running in circles through the main room. "What should we do, what should we do?" she asked herself repeatedly. When Yanaike was in panic, she could become quite stressful and the only thing that would probably work out was if Reggie gave her some kind of clear order what she could do to help.
 
Wait, what? How the hell did she... there wasn't time to wonder about the crossbow, so Reggie simply put it to his shoulder and took aim at Goyops. It seemed that he was trying to get something off of his back, so maybe, if he shot a bit above his back when he was hunched over, he would hit whatever was bothering him. Taking careful aim, he waited until the time was right, doing his best to dodge the man's rage in the meantime.
Finally! A good shot! Reggie fired and the bolt flew from the crossbow past Goyops, and into the wall to the side of him. "Yana!" Reggie looked over at her before he finished giving his order, but saw that she was running in frenzied circles around the room. "Yana, Hop onto Goyops' back!"
 
"And then?" Yanaike asked critically as she could not see how jumping on an enraged creature's back, could be of any help. If she had to make an estimation, Goyops would only be angered even more as he would try to shake Yanaike off. No... no... unless Reggie really insisted or he would come up with somekind of overall master plan, Yanaike saw no reason to jump on its back. Instead she kept on running in circles through the main room. What could she do? Yanamen? No, Goyops would just crush them. Coal? No, that only helped for healing. Cabbage? No that was what Reggie disliked and it had nothing to do with Goyops.
 
Okay... Yana was still doing nothing. Seems as though Reggie had to take more drastic actions, as the crossbow bolt did nothing. Quickly looking around, he noticed the horns that Goyops had grown, so Reginald quickly dashed towards Goyops and grabbed onto him, the man's height difference becoming obvious as he latched onto the horns and started to dangle in the air. "Listen to me man! You have to get ahold of yourself! If you don't then I'll fucking do it for you!"
 
Goyops became even more furious as now Reggie was also on his back. His feet changed into hooves and he kept growing in both size and strength, until he was almost 10 feet tall, barely enough to fit in the corridors of the airship. He growled as he found himself now unable to talk and swung his axe around, servely damaging the walls of the ship, to the point of almost breaking them. In his head the female voice kept calling him.
"Great!" she exclaimed. "You're my warrior! You will only listen to me! This is all the fault of that little girl Yanaike. Remember that! I want you to focus all your energy on her and kill her!"

---

"Reggie, you have to stop!" Yanaike yelled. "You only seem to make it worse. We need something different to calm him down." Yanaike herself also calmed down slightly as she tried thinking of magic spells that would would work. Unfortunately, not many of her spells were combat based, and the ones that were, were not very strong at all. Maybe if Reggie could lead him to the edge of the entrance of the air ship, Yanaike could use an air spell to push him out. Then again, the Goyops that they'd known would have been gone as well. Suddenly Goyops charged towards Yanaike, his axe ready to crush her. Yanaike's instincts took over, she turned on all fours and started running, beginning a cat and mouse chase.
 
Why the hell did everyone want to destroy his fucking ship? This really pissed of Reggie, but he knew that he really couldn't do anything to Goyops like this, and now he was simply along for the ride. Goyops now seemed to be replaced by this minotaur like creature, and all Reggie could do now was hang on to his horns for dear life.

"Come on ass hat! Let's go this way now!" Reggie yelled as he pulled on the right horn, making Goyops veer to the right. "We're going for a ride boy!" Reggie did his best to steer him around the ship, but each attempt ended with Goyops ramming into something and severely damaging it. A way needed to be found to get him out of the ship, as that seemed to be the only option now.
 
It seemed that Reggie could barely control Goyops and with each second he kept holding onto his horns, Goyops became even more bulkier, more monstrous and more like the minotaur creature he was becoming. It seemed like 'someone being on his back' triggered the transformation. But then still, that didn't make any sense? Why was he transforming already without Reggie being on his back?
Unless... someone else had been on his back. Someone not visible? A spirit perhaps? Didn't Yanaike have a spell to catch spirits?
While Yanaike kept running on all fours, fleeing from the angered Goyops, she started thinking aloud.
"I might have a way to turn him normal again" she said to Reggie. "But I need time. Are you able to distract Goyops long enough? Or maybe trap him somewhere? And speaking about trapping... I need something to trap 'her' too" Yanaike said, assuming that Hannah had something to do with this transformation. "Preferably something like a butterfly net. Well... I guess any kind of net will do?"
 
"A net?" he asked, practically yelling to make sure that she heard him. "There is a cargo net down in the hold. I'll see if I can distract Goyops to buy you time." As he said that, he did what he could to position himself in front of Goyops' face. "Look at me bull-boy! Yeah, hard to see where you're going when you got a face full of me, huh?" Reggie now started to swing back and forth, trying to steer Goyops' again, but it was met with only a little more success than last time. All it really made Goyops do was smash into whatever was in his way, although it at least slowed him down.
 
"Okay, I'll get it!" Yanaike responded. She was amazed by how well Reggie knew the airship already. He seemed to know the ship into the finest details, even though they were only cruising with it for barely a day. Yanaike made her way to the bottom of the ship pretty quickly and looked around through the hold but could not find the cargo net, she ran a few circles through the hold, carefully inspecting the walls and the floor, but she could not spot it and finally ended up in going up again, without the cargo net or any other replacement. When she was back on the main floor, she noticed how Reggie was sort of wrestling with Goyops and how Goyops was only growing larger and larger. It looked like Goyops was using his horns to get Reggie off, meanwhile spikes were growing on his back. His teeth had changed into fangs and growl-like sounds were coming out of his mouth.
"I can't find it?" Yanaike asked rather unsatisfied. She rapidly fired new questions to Reggie as she wanted to enchant the net as quickly as possible. "How does it look like? Where is it exactly?"
 
While Reggie was doing his best to hold on, he was being pelted with questions, and quite frankly, it frustrated him to no end. "It's brown, made of rope, and it should be behind the crates that the Yanamen were in!" He shouted as he was thrown off of Goyops and into a wall seconds later. The impact was absolutely jarring, and it damn near knocked him out. At the very least, it knocked the wind out of him, and Reggie was now on his knees trying to get his breath back.
 
"Okay!" Yanaike responded. "I'm on it!" She quickly returned to the bottom of the ship and this time he had found the cargo net pretty quickly. She dropped it on the floor, kept her hands a few inches above the cargo net and started enchanting it. "Ansa Vakevi Henika"
As soon as she was done she returned to the main floor again and threw the net in such a way that it hit Goyops back but did not completely cover Goyops. As soon as the net reached the ground, Hannah could be seen trapped inside the net, although she seemed a little bit translucent.
Goyops seemed to have lost his anger and now looked around him, somewhat confused.
 
Reggie was still gasping, but a wide smile spread across his face as he saw Yana's plan falling into place. "You- You did it!" he said between breaths, shakily making his way to his feet. He walked over to Yanaike and gave her a pat on the back. "Nice-going-Kiddo." Reggie took another deep breath as he looked over at Hannah. He neared the net and grabbed a piece of metal that Goyops had broken off the wall in his rage and put it to Hannah's neck. "So you're the trouble maker, huh? You better start explaining, and you might wanna put in a few reasons as to why I shouldn't kill you before I skewer you like a pig!"
 
But Hannah's spirit just disappeared out of the net in a breeze of the wind. She had never actually really been on Goyops' back. Hannah probably did not even have the knowledge of doing this to Goyops. It was merely an effect of the potion she had left behind.
At that Point Goyops turned around.
"D...d...do these go away?" he asked, pointing at the horns that had grown out of his head.
"Probably not" Yanaike said hesitatingly. Sometimes the truth was harsh, but it felt better to tell him the truth than to lie about it. The spell that had been casted on her was similar and her tail did never disappear either.
"O...okay" Goyops mumbled. He now turned to Reggie. "I... l...like to go n...now" he said. His voice was quivering as he was still shocked from the things that had happened. But even though he was stuttering, his mind was very clear. He wanted to go. "I t...think m...my trial has ended h...here. Please l...land the ship so I can l...leave."
 
Reggie tossed aside the piece of metal in his hands and faced Goyops. "You sure? I mean, after all that, I can understand, but if that's what you want..." He walked out of the room and into the flight cabin. A few minutes later, the ship started to descend and a solid, but soft "thud" indicated that the ship had touched the ground. Reggie had landed the ship in large forest clearing that looked like it had the trees chopped down a while ago.

"I guess this is goodbye." he said as he walked back to where Yanaike and Goyops were. Reginald rubbed his ribs, still somewhat sore from being slammed into the wall.
 
Goyops was happy to finally place his feet to the ground again. It felt safe. One thing was for sure. He was never going to fly anymore, and hopefully he would never see that witch, Hannah, anymore. He turned around one last time.
"I...It was a shame it had to end like this" he mumbled. "Even though it will probably take me a very long time to get used to... these c..changes, and even though I will probably have nightmares about that Hannah girl, it was still an... interesting experience, I guess." He scraped his throat.
"Reggie, it was nice to meet you, if you ever are close to my lands, feel free to visit me and refuel your ship. Yanaike, you can be annoying as hell, but you're also quite nice. You're very smart and so pure..." Goyops waved.
"Goodbye!" he said before he turned around and left.
 
Reggie waved goodbye and watched him walk away, turning back to Yanaike when he was no longer able to be seen. "Alrighty then..." he said with an unsure tone to his voice. "Goyops is gone and we have an airship filled with stolen loot. We need to get it sold so that we can lighten our load and get back to work...stealing even more stuff. What do you think about that Yana?" Reggie sat down on the ledge of the ship, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket. He offered one to her as he stuck one in his mouth and lit it.
 
Yanaike took the cigarette, Reggie offered, lit it and put it in her mouth. It must have been a pretty weird sight, such a young looking girl, smoking a cigarette. However this was not new for Yanaike. A few years ago, when she was still part of that gang, she smoked cigarettes on a daily base. Yanaike never became addicted however and smoking cigarettes was not something she really liked, but she did not dislike it either.
"What I am thinking...?" she responded. She grabbed a notepad out of Reggie's pockets and a random piece of coal, and she started sketching. A figure appeared including the airship and two huge propellers on both sides of the ship.
"I was thinking, that if we attack two of these to the ship, our ship could go a lot faster..." Yanaike pulled the cigarette out of her mouth, before exhaling a large cloud of smoke, and then she put the cigarette back into her mouth. "What are you thinking?"
 
Reggie made an approving face. "Not a bad idea, and I'm all for it. Just one problem Yana." He looked up at her before grabbing the note pad and drawing dollar signs on it. "We don't have any money. That's why I've been trying to get to town so we can sell all of the shit we grabbed. If nothing else, we at least need the money for the supplies if we don't want to have someone else do it for us." He stopped for a moment. "What the hell am I saying? Of course we can do it!" He stood up and crushed his cigarette with his foot.
 
"Hmm...?" Yanaike said questioning as she exhaled another cloud of smoke. She followed Reggie's example, dropped the cigarette and crushed it with her white boots. "I fear I've lost you" she said. "What exactly do you mean?"
 
"It's simple!" He said excitedly "We do it ourselves. Our ship, our modifications, no problem!" He hopped back inside the ship, "Come on, shit needs doing and it ain't gonna get done simply standing around." It was probably hard to see why Reggie was getting so excited about it, but for him, it was a chance not only to sell the goods they had acquired, but it meant that he could once more practice his craft and really make the ship his own. Already the gears in his head were turning, more weaponry, more armor, more speed! The possibilities!
 
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