rubyrubyruby

Clare reaches up to adjust her mask so that it's sitting better. A brief wrinkling of her nose when some of the group offends her olfactory senses and she's hesitantly accepting the clipboard back. And then a major flinch at the tantrum that takes ahold of the large woman among them. "Who /are/ you people?" Sprite gets some major attention again. Doesn't seem like animals of that sort are the norm at all. "I'm going back to my station. If you're intellgient and rational people...you're going to let me do that. I don't know what you want to...drop off, but it's not going to happen." She starts to back away the way she was brought. Calm, rational steps. "This is a closed system. If you're not from either Nation or Revolutionary Corp...If you're some sort of splinter group..." She shakes her head. Suit goes ~Squ-squ~ "This isn't a mail depot. There's a way down from my station to the floor. There's an access tunnel you can take out from there."

Liya considers, for a moment. "What does your station do?" she asks, as she muddles through what Clare has said. She walks along with Clare, not letting her go alone, though at the least, she isn't trying to stop Clare. Yet. "And what happens if we don't let you go back to your clipboard and numbers?"

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Gaval has no memmory of running that last bit. All he remembers is the sky becoming his earth and the earth the sky. His ears still ring no matter how hard he shakes his head. In a daze he looks about which crouching in any cover he can find. His eyes, seen through the mask, are offically staring out a thousand yards. He still holds his sword in a death grip and it's somewhat ammazing he hasn't impaled himself apon it or cut someone else durring their mad dash to 'safety'.

Liya coughs again, as she starts to come to. With the mask off, and clean air coming into her lungs, she slowly recovers. She sits up, blinking, eyes watering from the gas that was impacting them all. A deep rasping breath, or maybe ten. "Masks, take them off," she manages, as she reaches to pull Sprite onto her lap. It takes some doing, but she cautiously starts looking after the wyvern, ignoring her own injuries in favour of first helping out the beast that trusts her to do just that.

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Ruby inserts herself near where Liya and Maggie have set off. The mask at her neck remains there. Quite ineffectually. Bouncing on the heels of her feet, she watches Maggie and Liyandra head off, eyes feeling like they're drying out she hasn't blinked nearly enough times. "...Can't 'it oos. Too fast. Can't 'it oos. Too fast..." She pulls her headband forward over her cornrows, feathers fanning and splaying back from behind her ears. Ruby smacks at her thighs and then knuckles the major muscle vigorously. Feels real. Feels good. "It's just noise! Noise can't 'urt!" she calls after the femmes first into the gauntlet. "Run for your loife! And then she's bounding in, shoving and pawing past Merrisol if he's still rearguard with an exhuberant shove. Y'know, for luck."
The noise does reach a crescendo. Two dueling symphonies of mechanized madness locking into hardpoints and shoved along rails into position. Chambers loaded and slammed shut. Deep wide barrels erected with juttering clunk-clanks. Massive leaning windmills on wheels that are thrown into a crazy spin. Many many instrument of war, rather than music, that are all tuned up and ready to play a lunatic and deafening song.

RPG: Merrisol challenges a difficulty of 12. Merrisol chooses Resolve and the gifts PHY-ST, STY-CC, and STY-SW. Merrisol fails.
Merrisol's obscured head swivels to the left and right as he tries to adjust to the slightly smokey view through the round glass lenses. The vista shakes around him, partly from the uneven terrain underfoot, but also from the distant rumbling as the machinery of war revs into motion. He checks his forward gait at the rude sideswipe and tracks Ruby's gangling lope ahead, his 'whaaat?' look lost behind the inhuman mask. Fixing on Liyandra and Maggie next, he offers a sharp nod to the pact of mutual assistance but draws a filtered breath of grim gratitude when they drop down into the relative cover of the first trench. He alters his steps further afield, putting real distance between their positions for no doubt brashly protective reasons. Clods of dirt rain into the squared U-bend of the trench as he skirts around it to stay aboveground in a charge towards the first of many obstructions, a shelled-out artillery fortification. Scattered sand drums, their broken edges fanning upwards in deadly blackened claws, describe the long-ago blast that ripped apart the shelter.
The first shells have begun whistling overhead as the sides begin their mindless bombardment of the enemy borders, and even though his position isn't being specifically targeted, the traveling concussive waves try to knock him off his feet, the oppressive din is like nothing produced in Amber except perhaps within a volcanic forge. Gasping in the confines of his mask, he grabs a toppled wall and vaults over into the exposed bunker, casting about to assess the possible exits and getting a bleak lensful of the ragged old corpses of the gunners. They had been pinned down, the escape routes collapsed, poor unfortunate blighters. Knowing the others might make for this same shelter and fate after him sparks his horror into urgent determination. Attacking the far wall, he tests the give of various barrels, and then throws his shoulder into the gap he creates while heaving the debris aside. Clotted sand spills all around his legs, but a way is being opened to the next stretch of field. Almost. Nearly there. Then...
*BOOOM!* almost directly overhead, as shells from the opposing armies crash mid-air and detonate in a rippling shockwave full of shrapnel. The framework of Merri's efforts caves inwards, and he /just/ manages to get his arms braced upwards to keep the structure from doing the same to his head. The sand is still cascading freely as the wall comes down on that side, howling Beggie and All. At least he's created a wider escape passage than he originally intended?

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The line of runners, additions upon their head, arms and belts become more a reality with each trot, are the only constant. They are permanent: Islands of reality unto themselves. No matter what trappings their guide attempts to drape onto them, there is a immutable reality to each soul. They are individuals. One might be able to find quite a bit of psychological comfort in that.
The run has gone on for quite a while. With nothing like a trustworthy sun or stars to tell the time, a focused mind might be able to tell just how long the group has been running through sheer smarty-pants. Ruby is starting to huff and puff like a bellows though. Her pits are soaking through with sweat and between her breasts is a rorschach blot of dampness. Relying on strength alone is only taking her so far.
It's telling of how far out they're going that it's taking this long to get there. She couldn't possibly be lost, could she? Maybe she's awful at shifting? Perhaps if mounted animals were involved this would be quicker? Now, every extra bit of encumberance is a hinderance. The sweat has gotten so bad that she's smearing sweat from her goggles and has to push them up atop her head and just let her eyebrows deal. "Don't...worry...Can't be mooch farther. You know't when we smell tha foul burnin..."

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