The Circle City Chronicles-THe banishing League O.A.T.

Miranth dropped the energy net. As far as she was concerned, the hunter killed the darn thing. All the heads were gone and the tentacles had stopped moving. She didnt feel any life left in it anyway. Thank you wonders of modern science. She plopped down, sitting in the water, exhausted and way to close to the demon, even if it was dead.

"That was some nice decapitation. I hope we all learned something interesting so far today. I know I did."
 
Sure enough, the demons body ceased to move, the heads staring blankly at nothingness, blood of a deep greenish black bubbling out of the dead necks of their dead heads. already the carrion heads were beginning to decompose. Demons did that. Eyes far off in the distance watched, smiling. " Hmm... seems the beast did it's job... pity. if those heads were faster thinkers adn talked less.. they might have stalled the BLOAT team.. AND lived to tell the tale..." Came a womans voice from behind a set of high-end tech-savy binoculars. She stood up in a black tactical military outfit, forming tight to her lithe frame and turned around, mounting her mechanical warhorse and hurrying into the tall grass of the endless waves of green grass.


"phew... man that thing was anoying..." Persephone said, standign on one of her floatign witches circles. Other woudl note that they didn't move unless she trew them, they simply existed in space as a solid unmovabel object. somethgin squelched inside the demon, the body rumbling and its torso flounderign int eh water. a big rip stretched in its spine, sendign sludge and slime onto persephone who was above. in her suprise, her concentration laxed, and her circle gave way, she fell intot eh big hole int eh thing with a comical squeal.

" EEW EEW EEW EEW!" came her yelling. " oooooooh GROSS!" she moaned.


" SOMEONE GET ME OUTTA HERE!!!" She yelled. the beast.. was dead.

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END OF FIRST BATTLE
Lvl 1 encounter
Results

kills- 8 of 8
Injuries sustained-0 of 10
Teamwork 4 of 5
Tactics 8 of 10
Individual participation 10 of 10

POINTS EARNED- 30 points!!!

Total points- 30

GRADE- A
 
Miranth fell over laughing at Persephone. "Hahahaha. Oh, wow...hehee." It took her a few minutes to get over the incident but when she did she stood up and brushed herself off. "Well, at least that's over with. Now, how about we head over to the rig and see how many more nasty demons we can find there? Who's up for it? And we can probably set your leg on the boat Sato."
 
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
(From Throught eh Looking Glass and What Alice Found There)


The boat bobbed out over the waves lazily. nothing felt fast on the water, calm and wavy movign dunes of blue sand that sprayed wet, chilly spray in every direction. An hour later and STILL no sign of the oil rig.


Persephone sat in the corner by the wheel, The navigation system was driving for them.
"Man, How far out IS this thing? It says from the report it's our biggest supplier of oil to circle city so.. we should be able to see it a good while before we get there.. right?" she said.

No sooner had she said that, then a shadow of a tall tower came into view int eh distance. and then another tower.. and another.. almsot fifty degrees to either side, another tower came.

"dear... gods.." Persephone said, standign up and stareing at the spectacle. The rig was massive, stretching through almost sseventy percent of the foreseable horizon infront of them. Tall towers, blistering smoke, large gears and mechanisms spinning and going through their motions sluggish and heavy. The place was a island of steel... a castle of iron.

" That... is full of demons?" persephone whimpered a little


" We are SO-SO screwed...."
 
Sato stood up in the boat with his leg healing just fine. Should be able to use it now even if it is not fully healed.

He heard the witch's complaining screams about the rig. Sato limped to the front of the boat and took a long look at the oil rig. It was big and it was expansive but god damn it they were the corporation's hunters and witches; quite possibly some of their highest ranking too. He turned around to look at Persephone and then slowly looked at everybody else. With a calm speaking voice he projected to the others, "I will not lie, I think this mission will probably be one of the hardest we have come to face if not the hardest, but i do not think that Blithe would choose us to do this thing if he did not think that we would fail. There is no need to worry we will get this done; our team has the abilities needed." Sato smiled at the group lightly and turned back to watch the oil rig get closer and closer, bringing with it a message of immanent hardships to come.
 
Seems to simply appear next to Sato when he wasn't looking.His wounds he recvied previously healed and gone already. Smileing slightly, "You know I've seen scarier things. It may be tough but the hardest? I think not." Cal looks out onto the 'Rig with a slight frown. However..He thinks to himself. Thats going to be one hell of a long walk. "So heres my question to you," He looks back to Sato with a serious expression the oil rig looming like a dark spector on the horzion. "Think you lot can handle it?". He didnt bother to lower his voice and turns to face the lot of them. Slayers and witches alike. The rig riseing up behind him like some forgotten god and the flames flash up shadowing his face "Think you all got the guts to face the devils the come for us?"
 
"I should hope you do.. else this desicion will get me fired for sure." Came a familiar voice.



Zorin Blithe...


His voice came over the radio transmitter on deck.


" I see you all managed to deal with that problem at the docks. They were evacuated without the publics notice when the demon came there two weeks ago. Cal, you were sent there before anyone else, but i TOLD YOU it was reconassaince.. what the hell happened?"


There was a stagnant pause.. then he continued.

" Fine fine, it doesn't matter, you wouldn't be on the boat if you hadn't delt witht eh hydra, I'll send a cleanup team. By the looks of it, your still abotu eight leagues off." ZOrin finished. Indeed they still could not see the bottom of the rig. It just seemed to keep GROWING out of the horizon as they went.
 
"Okay, for one, they arent going to fire YOU...theyll fire us. And for two, nope, I know for damn sure that I cannot handle another thing like that hydra. Just being realistic here. I'll do it, but I dont know if it'll end up that pretty." Miranth stared at the radio on the deck, her arms crossed and her face showing just a little annoyance. "And if you knew that thing was there, some heads up would have been nice," She looked between the radio and the earth slayer, "from EITHER of you. Would have probably been a really good idea. Some major responsibility from the commanding officer, what if it hadnt decided to surface until we were already on the boat and in the water? That woulda been a disaster waiting to happen. We would've ended up with more than just one injured slayer." She knew it was risky to tell off your commanding officer, especially if that man was Zorin, but she kinda knew him, probably more than most after having lived at Amaranth her whole life. But boy was she glad he was on the other side of the radio.
 
Nero simply laughed, a sound that probably startled everyone on the boat. "Miranth, you dont seem to know much about the corporation do you?" Nero said, "Amaranth has plenty of bodies to throw into this fray, it's not like we're the last teams left standing after all. Chances were that had he even told us this information his ass would've been toasted all the way to hell. so instead of trying to grill his ass any further, we start to formulate a plan as to how we're going to handle this rig. Surely something this big and vital wouldn't have just been abandoned, after all who would monitor the critical things?"
Nero paused for a second to let the question hang in the air then continued, "so is there anything you want to tell us now zorin?"

Hiaril already in the process of making her own devious plans quickly looked up and said, "ok, if we're to get through this we need to all know our strengths and weaknesses. So when we're done talking with Zorin lets all tell each other what exactly we can do. That way we wont surprise each other much when we get into battle. I've also got a vague idea as to how we should handle this that i'll explain later."
 
Zorin smiled with binoculars in hand as the boat came closer and closer to his position. He sat upon an empty keg of purified water marked
(amaranth usage only)

"Ah. so we DO have some grown-ups aboard, eh?" Zorin joked. "Good to hear." he exclaimed dully.


" As far as Attack plans go, first we need to search out the main nests. The demons haven't seemed to find a single spirit aboard, but i knw they are here, otherwise why would so many demons by prowling around, scaring off all the workers. this place is on auta-pilot so to speak. but without workers it only functions at around 40 percent it's normal capacity, and THAT is NOT good for business. Amaranth built this place forty years ago, built it to last, and it supplies nearly half of our fuels for circle city." He paused at that, putting down his binoculars.

Zorin pulled out what looked like an odd pistol and fired off a round intot he air. a red flash popped up towards the left edge of the rig, signaling the docking station.

"That about covers our history lesson." he said, standing up and stretching, radio still in hand. they woudl hear his back pop in several places before he yawned and took a few paces to the left, hearing something.

"I think We might have company soon. Haul ass up the ladders as soon as you get to dock 5. but be quiet about it... This is the big leagues. Zorin out."


Zorin whispered the alst few words, slipping the radio into its case on his belt and cracked the knuckles on his right hand, energy charged around it in purple and black arcs before he flung his arm tot eh side, the black crystal sword wipping out, replacing his hand. the air around the blade seemed to freeze and turn to shards of ice, clinging to the blade before an unatural heat extinguished them.

" c'mon.. c'mon...are you attacking.. where are you... are you ascout?" he asked himself, eyes darting here and there
 
Miranth had been staring out the window of the boat. Everyone else was distracted making their own plans or looking at the radio which was emitting Zorin's voice. She saw the flare go up and start to come down.
"Hey guys, I know where we have to go. Umm..someone want to turn the boat that way?" She said pointing over toward the very last glow of the flare as it touched down in the water.
"And Zorin, you know that I'm an adult. And as for you Nero, I know more about Amaranth than anyone else on this ship. Also, I love your plan Hiaril. I'll go first if you want. I have some combat skills, although witches arent really supposed to use weaponry, since I was to be assigned to the water areas, they figured that it would be best that I could handle a weapon. My magical skills are of course that net that you saw. It's electric, so it works on just about everything, although it does more with water based entities. Also, I have very good control over the element of fire, and it will do some serious damage. My weapon is a whip, metal of course, it conducts electricity, so I can send my magick through it. Very useful. Umm...as for weaknesses, I'm not proficient in the combat, and that demon was the first experience I've had outside of an Amaranth training facility. So, whatever weaknesses I had there, dont really apply in reality. So we're just gonna have to see."