diatu | [Adventure] Geese! (OTA)

[Adventure] Geese! (OTA)

They were only geese, right? How difficult could it be?

Although he'd been warned the flock had learned to use wands, foci, and Forged items, Cliff was pretty sure that this was hyperbole dreamed up by magic-addled minds. The cocky teenager might regret this later, certainly.

He'd been given a map of campus with the pond the flock had claimed as their own marked in red. Nor was it difficult to figure out which pond it was, even in the physical world--the pond itself had big "KEEP OUT" signs posted around it--with one goose avidly pecking at it, because clearly the sign had offended it somehow.

At least this part, he'd just meant to be a recon mission. Mostly. He had a half a loaf of bread and a bag of grapes, and he was going to try to put one over on the honking nuisances by feeding them. Yeah, that should make him an okay guy in their book, right?

Cliff wasn't actually betting on that, but he could hope to appeal to gluttony.

He wasn't incredibly subtle, either, as he hid behind a tree, trying to keep out of the sight of the flock's watchers. At least if the rumors about their theft of wands and other such sundries were true, he didn't have anything to lose to the reprobates.

He might have to try and get a hold of their treasure trove, if he could, though. But that was a thought for later. For now, he settled in to watch the flock, relatively quiescent, to try and see how they moved. He'd probably have to take a break from class later, too, to see how they accosted students during the day. Best to be prepared, he thought. As if he could be prepared for spellcasting geese.

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Hendrik was walking from class, having more than a few books under his arm. He was taking it slowly trying to get used to the place, and wasn't having too much success. There were things that needed to be done. And as much as he understood the Tree might be exerting Its will, there was still a world to save and a Luminary to protect.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted an unfamiliar person, but Hendrik figured new people were here all of the time much like himself. And at realizing that he needed to take a break, the knight sat himself on a bench and placed the books next to him.

He had heard something about the geese being spellcasters but wasn't quite sure that he'd heard correctly. So he took a book out and began to read.

Heedless of the potential danger, a guardian omnic tromped straight up to the pond.

"You are being nuisances," she informed the geese, including one that was flapping its wings angrily at her to try to bludgeon her away. Her one hand pointed up to the sky as she glared down at it. "Return to a more appropriate place!"

Oh dear. Someone was stealing his proverbial thunder--Cliff couldn't stand for that. He wasn't exactly desperate for money, yet, but lapidary tools just didn't grow on trees--or he'd just climb the tree, pluck some and call it a day.

Trying to run a bit of interference, he started out into the ruckus, tossing grapes and bread to try and distract the angry honkers. Rounder hadn't abandoned him, either, rolling at his heels.

"You got that pillowcase, buddy?" Cliff asked, grateful to be given the makeshift sack when he asked. He charged the goose that was accosting the golem, grabbing its neck not too gently, and stuffing it into the sack and wrapping his fist around the opening. "Pardon me," he told the unfamiliar golem. "Thank you!"

A truly earsplitting "HOOOOOONK!" sounded from behind him, and a wave of fire bolts splattered across the area where he and the golem stood. One struck him in the rump, unceremoniously, and Cliff yelped, chucking the bag of bread and grapes. The contents scattered in a rain around him and the pond as he fled. Somehow, he didn't manage to drop his goosey prisoner from either surprise or pain, and took off at a run for the tree he'd been hiding behind, trying to see if his robes had caught on fire from the avian onslaught...

"What was I even thinking?" he asked Rounder, who could only shrug.

"HEY! You give that back, you white feathery bastard!" A Fouth has entered the fray, running full tilt at a swan that appears to have... a Tie? Rin doesn't exactly tie them tight, but it's still impressive it was taken.

He's only just about managed to have the sense about him to dodge th-Wait, Fireballs?

"What the fuck?!" His attention is arrested for just enough time for the Tie-bearing sawn to pull ahead of him and into the safety of its magic wielding flock.

Lowering his book, Hendrik wondered where the voice was coming from about informing geese that they were nuisances. And while he was inwardly amused at someone telling birds where to go (or being visually directed), the knight maintained his usual poker face.

His visage then showed confusion as they made loud sounds and grapes and bread seemed to scatter everywhere along with some Fire spell. And then someone called one of the birds a bastard and Hendrik snapped his book shut, putting it into his backpack.

"What in the world is going on?" There was no peace and quiet around here, and the knight had thought he'd found the perfect spot to relax.

"Aaaah!" Orisa flung up her hand to protect her sensory organs and quickly retreated several steps back, eager to put distance between herself and the fire-wielding avians. Not good! Worse yet, without looking to clear her space, she backed up straight towards both Rin and the tree behind which Cliff had lunged.

"Magic thieving geese!" Cliff yelled at the older man. His tone was apologetic, but he really couldn't deny that all of a sudden, a quiet night had been shattered with ear-splitting, angry racket. He patted himself down with one hand, relieved to find that no, he had not been set on fire--despite the goose's best efforts!

Magic thieving, magic wielding geese. He instantly decided that he wasn't getting paid enough for this, whatever they were offering. And then, he felt the sack in his grasp go slack as the goose within it performed an act of Sundering magic and escaped.

"Fraw," Cliff said, as another volley--this time of energy bolts--scattered across the pond from another goose. "Look out!" he yelled to the younger guy and the golem. It didn't bother him that they all were converging on his hiding place, but he didn't want to find any of them cornered by the angry flock.

And where the hell was his familiar?

"Gah! O-Orisa?" Rin recoils from the impact of crashing into her. There's no time to think properly before there's yet more fire coming their way.

"Shit!" There's no time to think, like, at all. Kurikara is released from his sheath as he instantaneously throws up a wall of his own, blue fire. Orisa and Cliff will see it flare up around them, but it will also protect them from the incoming missiles. Though it does have the added side-effect of Rin looking, well, demonic.

"What the hell are these things?!"

Somehow his quiet spot had turned to madness with spellcasting geese. He heard something being said about thieving geese, but what could they have possibly stolen? Before today there was no way that the knight would've thought those peaceful looking creatures could be capable of such feats as they were performing. But here the world was, exploding into flames and promptly turning on its' proverbial head.

Hendrik moved swiftly to try and help protect the young man who had yelled to him though he knew this wasn't his fight. But it was in his knightly code. ' A knight serves the weak untiringly, challenges the strong unflinchingly and never retreats in the face of adversity.'

So he drew his greatsword and began running.

"Hello, Rin!" Proper and friendly greetings were important, even in trying times. "These geese appear to be jerks, do they not?"

Her fusion driver hummed as she brought it up, energy streaming into it before its vents snapped shut. "I am programmed to avoid lethal force, but I am prepared to make an exception!"

...That was how everyone got to see the delightful scene of Orisa chasing a few geese who honked angrily and flapped their wings as they ran, the fusion driver's particle emissions chewing up the ground in their wake.

"I thought they were just geese!" 'Just' geese. Oh, the higher ups at school had assured him this would be simple.

Simple, his ass.

At least the question of where the hell his familiar had gone was rapidly answered as Rounder literally tore into the center of all the chaos, hands full of...oh, shit.

"Smoke bombs, look out!" Cliff didn't really expect the geese to be cowed by them, of all things, but it was probably going to foul Orisa's aim and Rin's sight, and Cliff didn't want to be sliced, diced, and/or fricasseed in the chaos. If he could have stopped Rounder, he would have, but his familiar often had a mind of his own, and this was one of those times. The marble sphere tossed the bombs left and right with almost gleeful vigor, adding to the ruckus.

"Fraw," Cliff grunted again as he dived behind the tree, doing his best to take cover and coughing because of the smoke.

"You can say that again," Rin groans, but barely has time to parse what the actual fuck is going on before there's (another) dude with a sword running at the geese and Orisa's powered up future gun.

He thought his universe was weird.

"Smoke whaT?" Too late. He's encased in a belch of smoke that leaves his eyes watering and sight useless.

The only solution is to clear the smoke, right? Right. Thank god he'd kept up his training for this.

Rin encases himself with his blue flame, concentrating for a good ten seconds before letting himself 'detonate'. A wave of heat pulses outward from him, and it keeps going. The others will feel the temperature change, but it won't hurt them, even if the wall of flame touches them at any point. Hopefully, that will have cleared the smoke... right?

Just as the knight had reached the party, he had to evade smoke bombs. And that was a pain in itself. Then he had to evade a blue flame before he could crouch down behind Cliff because that was the first person that he'd seen.

"What in the name of the heavens is going on with these geese?"

Hendrik has absolutely no clue what's up with the birds. All he knew was that it was a nice quiet day and now there's a party of people apparently aligned against them.

"I will not be deterred from my mission!"

Orisa stomped right into the smoke bombs after the geese, her huge frame vanishing into the clouds with not so much as a shadow remaining.

Considering the massive splash that came from further in the cloud just a moment later, her tactical analysis had been... flawed.

Cliff heard that splash. "Oh, crap," he said. That couldn't be good. He didn't think omnics and water mixed, and he really knew almost nothing of omnics...

To the knight, Cliff gave a somewhat panicked look. "They're magical," he replied. "I was supposed to bring one back for the researchers, but I didn't know that they know Sundering magic!" His voice might have cracked there, just a bit. He's edging closer to panic, but trying to keep it together.

Rin's flames and heat wave DO clear the smoke...probably a good thing for Orisa, but not so good a thing for Cliff and Hendrik, as the geese seem intent on renewing their assault with what could only be called magic missiles. One for each of them--save Orisa, if she's stuck in the pond. If not, she's like to suffer along with the rest of them...

Hendrik looked from Cliff to the geese. "Even the local wildlife knows magic..this is something from back home." And yes, that is exactly how they are back there.

So the knight grabbed his shield, which was the only other weapon thing that he had on him. And with the magic missiles now starting, he didn't have much time to think or call to mind a spell.

"Stay here, I shall go rescue the companion in the pond."

She will do the rescuing around here! Orisa burst out of the pond in a dramatic rush of water, waves rippling to each side of her. Just in time to get a bolt of force to the face.

Her eyes shifted colors to a bright red, narrowed down to mere slits as she hefted her fusion driver up to aim them straight at the geese. Water streamed off the weapon as it powered up again.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea, it didn't seem to do much last time!" Cliff yelled at Orisa. Not that he had any better ideas, and it wasn't like Rounder's smoke bombs had any effect, either.

All in all, this was more than a little frustrating, and now Cliff just wanted to shove the entire cluster in the authorities' faces. Why in the heck had they asked for a student to do this anyway? To embarrass Sundered, or Diatu itself, or what?

He wasn't sure, and it wasn't something that made him happy. Cliff thought for a moment about grabbing a goosey neck and putting it into a submission hold, but he was pretty damn sure that would just make him a target of the flock--as if he weren't enough of one as it was.

"You know, you guys could probably just get out of here, it's me they want!"

Well there went that idea as Orisa got out of the water.

But at the suggestion to run, that wasn't in Hendrik's nature. He had a reputation for being relentless and he was that way even to his Luminary charge.

"I am not leaving." This was said in a casual tone like the knight was discussing the weather. Though back home, the cows predicted the weather.

"You are in need of aid against these wretched fowl."

"I will keep you safe!"

Whirling, Orisa kicked angrily with her rear legs, digging them into the ground as she did. The goose that was harassing her didn't expect a sudden spray of mud in its face, and ran for cover as it honked and flapped angrily.

"I can't exactly BE safe, I'm supposed to be taking one of these unruly honkers in for 'research'!" And he's regretting every minute of it, you can bet on it.

No, he didn't blame Rin for running for the hills--probably the last they'd see of that guy, and Cliff was none too happy about that idea, either.

"I tried to stuff one in a pillowcase but it Sundered its way out of it!" And after all the chaos, his current pillowcase sack is little but a smoking ruin anyway.

Man, this was sure a day. He was definitely going to be asking for more money. And taking the knight out for a beer. He'd figure out how to do something nice for Orisa. He just wasn't sure what, at the moment.

Hendrik nodded as Orisa showed up and helped out. What he wouldn't give for a good spell of sleep right about now, but that wasn't ever a spell he'd ever had in his spell arsenal.

"These geese know magic and trying to subdue one does not seem to work. And you offered to take one of them in for research. I have to wonder if they take bribes."

And to the knight's own ears it sounded ridiculous, but force didn't seem to be working.

What a pity that the majority of her systems were offline! They would be particularly handy here.

Orisa dropped her hand to the mud beside the lake, and with artificial precision traced out an equation as she verbalized it. Her eyes snapped down to mere pinpoints as she focused, and the Modification spell quadrupled the amount of functional cloth Cliff was holding.

"Our best stratagem is to render one unconscious."

"I can see that," Cliff sounded snarky--no, what he really sounded was tired. He hadn't expected this to turn out as difficult as it had turned out!

"I just haven't had a whole lot of luck so far, and we need to weed one out of the flock to do that, I think...and I'm kind of out of ideas."

It didn't make him proud to admit, but there it was. There was just a small part of him that wanted to run home and cry for his mom. Not that he was about to do that. Rounder, who had regrouped with the trio, just reached out and patted Cliff on the leg, attempting to be reassuring.

"I take it that you have tried food." Hendrik said, after looking at Orisa and then to Cliff. "And I must wonder if spells would be of no use since they are magic in and of themselves or so it would seem." He'd seen enough magic from Jasper to know that sometimes magic and magic canceled each other out.

"This is why I continue to attempt physical force," Orisa mused. So many tools not available to her. "Perhaps instead of the geese, we can target their environment. A goose trapped in ice cannot cast a spell."

"Yeah, I...sort of did." He'd had the bread and grapes, but Cliff didn't want to put Orisa out by letting her know she'd foiled his plans. She'd done it innocently, after all--she'd been trying to help! Besides, ratting out someone wasn't what a Gekronus Maius wizard did, right? Not proper. Just wasn't done.

"But I got startled when the geese started getting rowdy and I sort of...threw it everywhere. It's probably in the flock's gullets right now."

Or trampled under a number of feet, avian, human, and Omnic, but that was neither here nor there, really.

"I like the ice idea, but I'm not entirely sure how to go about it...make an ice trap, seal one in there? Lure it in with food? I could probably Discover more food..." He at least understood enough about something like grapes or berries and how they grew to Discover something like that, at least...

Hendrik looked over at the geese. "Chasing them has availed nothing. But I do not know if drawing one out would work." For all of his tactical knowledge and experience on the battlefield. this was definitely more of a challenge.

But he then looked up at Orisa and nodded. "That may work. Control the environment in order to control what it contains."

"I have learned a spell that Modifies temperature!" Orisa said brightly, eyes in carats and one finger uplifted with pride. "I can employ that if a goose remains in the same spot long enough."

"Okay, so I can try giving them more food as a distraction, hope one is greedy, and then you'll try to Modify it frozen?" He gave a rather uncertain glance at Orisa, but it sounded good.

Cliff didn't believe in gods, really, but at this point, even he was willing to send a hopeful prayer to his mother's goddess, in the hopes that he'd just get this over with.

"Sounds good enough to me, I just hope it works." With that, he crouched down, bringing his wand out to concentrate on doing as he'd said and Discovering another healthy bunch of green grapes.

"If this situation goes awry, I shall be there to back you up." Hendrik said this to Cliff as he searched and had found the grapes. He felt pretty useless here, but he would definitely offer what support he could.

Should the geese get out of hand or one somehow prove to be too much, the knight would step in and back Cliff up as much as he could. It was really all he could do to help in this sort of a situation.

"I believe I can accomplish this. My analysis puts odds at 71%." Which was no guarantee, but better than even odds by a long shot, right? Orisa dropped the barrel of her fusion driver to the ground, not scrupling to use the weapon as a writing implement at need.

"Worth a shot." And hey, it was better than 50/50, by Orisa's calculations. Having judged that he's got enough bread and grapes--and hoping that the birds were both avaricious and gluttonous--Cliff stood back up, bounty in one arm and Rounder at his side.

Instead of calling too much attention to himself, he just started plucking grapes off the bunches and scattering them around in the hopes that greed would get the better of the malicious magic-abusing menaces.

The knight looked from Orisa to Cliff and nodded. It was nerve-wracking to sit and do nothing, but tactics were a thing for a reason. So Hendrik tensed, sword drawn and held low in front of him.

He was just the backup, but he could pack quite a damn wallop if the situation called for it.

Orisa began drawing a figure in the mud, simply a pattern of subtraction. As one of the geese began gorging itself, the temperature around it slowly decreased... till Orisa could make one big jump, and the water around the goose froze as she completed her spell.

Hopefully that cracked the ice enough so that he could get a hold of the frozen goose and do what he'd intended to do all along.

Cliff ran like hell!

"Cover me and get the heck out of here yourselves if you can!" He figured if he was scarpering away, and they all split up? There'd be a lot more opportunity for them all to get away from the geese, both before they realized what had happened, and before they could either free their comrade or trap the three of them by the use of magic.

As for him? Cliff ran for the Research Offices. Surely even at this time of night, someone would be there, burning the proverbial midnight oil...

Hendrik didn't run, except to make sure that Cliff's ass was covered the entire way. He'd had to dodge more than a few spells from the geese and had turned to face one of them at one point, but then for some reason, it had gotten distracted and took off in another direction.

The knight wasn't waiting around for it, but his eyes watched Cliff get away before turning to get away.

Orisa, whose primary purpose is to keep others safe, had to wait and make sure Hendrik was out of danger in turn! Stubborn group, aren't they... but as soon as he turned, she began backing up, her four legs making that much safer for her than a human.

Well, hopefully Hendrik and Orisa took his advice, because Cliff wasn't going to take the chance of this goose waking up. No, he banked up short once he got to the building the Research Offices were contained in, and banged on the door.

He owed those guys, and he'd try to make good for the pair of them...somehow.

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[Adventure] Geese! (OTA)

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/sorryyyy

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longest adventure ever, orz