Boredom Has Returned (OPEN)

[Richard]

< Er...what'd I wander into?>

The first thing that Richard could think of to respond to that was not very appropriate for a situation that was as serious as this. He needed to focus anyway because he could have sworn that a bullet just whizzed past his ear, which meant that they were getting closer to a kill shot.

Whoever had dropped into this crazy escapade of theirs had to be an ally as an enemy would not opening expose themselves in such a way, which meant that Richard could answer this person. Fortunately, he didn't have to do this as Dustin responded for them and apparently was trying to get the attention of Richard's pursuers.

The sound of people's feet turning around meant that Dustin's little ploy worked, and it also meant Richard was going to have to save his teammate from these people. <<My suggestion would be to pick something that is able to move fast, but not big enough to actually be hit by the hillbillies. Other than that it is just like Dustin said>>

After he said that , Richard had a sudden idea that probably would have been useless for him and Dustin. <<Unless you have a really dangerous morph that might scare these people away. That would be very useful in our efforts here. Also, could you give us a name so that we know who we are talking too? Thanks in advance.>>

[Melanie Martin]

Mel had to fight her instinct to morph wolf and attack the group. She'd done outnumbered fighting more than once, but she wasn't the only large morph in the fight then. A wolf on its own was formidible, but it was certainly not as effective without the tiger and others backing it up.

Same with the deer, and the deer would be certain to get shot at if they had a clear one. Lemur was a challenge as well. She'd be unprotected scaling the tree to get to her ammo. Maybe she could use something else, a rock might do more damage, and she could aim from better foliaged tree than a palm.

< Melanie Martin, from...well, first Vancouver, then L.A. Long story, I'll tell it to you later.> she replied. < I'd love to just go wolf and go all "grrrr" on them, but I'm not confident doing it alone. Last group fight, I had a tiger backing me up. And my whitetail might as well just wear a "dinner's ready" sign. I'm going lemur, just a moment.> It was obvious that none of them had large morphs, or they'd be using them now.

She fluttered to the ground, hopefully out of sight of the hunters, and then demorphed before remorphing into lemur form. It was a change, since it was a primate, there were changes for sure but not so drastic as some of her other morphs. She just got smaller, furrier, grew a long tail and her ears and nose got bigger. Granted, human hands and feet had nothing on the lemur's for climbing.

She watched, ensuring they were distracted, then went at top speed for a better hiding place, deciding not to go for the tree. Throwing from the ground was safer and closer to ammo.

< Fire one!> She saw that she could stay alive by not staying in one place.Aim throw. Move. Aim,Throw.Move. They wouldn't be able to hit her before she'd made it to a new spot and fired again. She ran for it as a shot whizzed a few feet away.

[Dustin]

Dustin didn't get too far after he made his attempt to draw the peoples' attention. A couple people broke off from the main group and it would only be a matter of time before they reached his location and spotted him. Thankfully Dustin managed to hide himself under a log by the time they reached his location. He was still in danger though. And Richard too, since not everyone stopped chasing him.

Luckily the girl who called herself Melanie must have gotten into a position to help, because suddenly rocks were falling from the sky.

"Ah, what's that?" he heard one of the people exclaim. "It came from the tree over there. It's throwing rocks at us!" He saw their flashlight aim up into the trees and a shot was fired, followed by another shot. "Missed. Gotta reload. What is that, an albino raccoon?"

Dustin was flooded with relief. Melanie was still alive. For now. But it would only take a moment for them to reload so if Dustin wanted to do something, it would have to be now. While part of the group was away chasing Richard and their gun was unloaded. Dusting crawled out from his hiding spot and hoped to death that a wild animal attack would be enough to scare these guys off.

<<I'm going in!>> he shouted, preparing to ignore any protests. One of the guys was still busy scanning the trees and shielding them from potential rocks, the other was focused of reloading the gun. Dusting knew opossums were great climbers, so he scurried up behind the guy with the gun and tried to climb up to his face. Maybe to scratch his eyes or something.

"What the... !" the gun guy yelped. Dustin hadn't even made it to his waist before he was getting swatted at. The second guy's attention was caught immediately and he kicked Dustin off of gun guy's back.

Dustin hit the ground and the shock of the blow was so great that his opossum mind involuntarily forced into playing possum. It was a natural defense mechanism that was all but helpful right now. He was effectively paralyzed and could do nothing but watch as gun guy finished reloading his weapon. As the muzzle was pointed at Dustin's head, he realized he had one last hope.

<<You guys, I could use some->>

BLAM!

...



((OOC: Yes that's what it looks like, and no I am not abandoning Miami. Sorry if you are mad, but I wanted to surprise people. ))

[Richard]

For some reason, the sound of a gunshot came after the shearing pain that Richard felt where his tail should have been. Now he knew why cats were so sensitive about people playing with their tails, and why they hissed at people who had ever damaged their tails. He didn't know why he had automatically assumed that all the people had gone after Dustin. It was a rookie mistake, and he had got punished for it severely.

The woman said that she had a morph that was considered scary, but it was probably not the best one to use at the moment. Richard what could be better than a scary morph in this type of situation, but he was sort of disappointed by the fact she said she was going lemur.

Just to make sure that he had everything accurate in his mind, Richard went over the list of animals that were technically combating the humans with the guns. There was one ocelot, one lemur, and an opossum, which meant that they were totally going to get owned in this fight.

Something landed by him that looked like a rock, and from the men's comments Richard deduced that Melanie was the ranged attacker. With her annoying barrage of stone, they might have a chance at diverting the people away from their base.

<<I'm going in!>>

At first, Richard didn't register what had been said as it was a completely suicidal thing to say. There was no way that Dustin would actually try to attack someone with the morph that he was probably using. Richard had probably misheard what had been said or something.

"What the... !"

Unfortunately, these words meant that his morph's hearing was working fine, and that Dustin was making a mistake. Richard did not know how fast he could go in this morph, but everyone was about to find out as he kicked himself into overdrive and made his way in the direction that he had heard the footsteps go into. He was moving in a snake pattern, so that the people who were taking shots at him were less likely to hit him.

Richard could hear the sounds of a minor struggle in the distance, which stopped when something hit the ground. He was sure that it was probably Dustin as it hadn't been loud enough for a human to have made it.

<<You guys, I could use some->>

He was almost there when a gun was fired, and it was like the world stood still for one minute as Richard deduce the most probable outcome that could have happened. He had only one objective now, which was probably not the best way to keep their cover from being blown.

<<Melanie, I need you to aim rocks at their heads, so that I can get to Dustin. Hopefully, they will be focused on me, but if they start shooting at you then bail. We don't all need three of to die today.>>

As much as he would rather of asked the new girl to change into a wolf to attack the men that had surely killed, Richard knew that they were not to blame for their actions as they had no way of knowing that the opossum they shot was really a human in morph. Richard had ducked down into some brush while he told the new person his plan that he was unsure if she would agree to or not.

<<So on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your feeling on my plan?>>

((OOC: first I would like to say that I am not mad that you killed Dustin. Second I was surprised by it. Third, does this mean that Willy is joining Miami or are you bringing in a new character? Fourth: If something needs to be altered, then tell me and I shall alter it as I had no idea how to really respond to this.))

[Melanie Martin]

< I'd like to go wolf, but there are just too many. > she said. She kept throwing and moving, seeing a way she could take at least one guy out. She scaled a nearby drainpipe with a rock in one hand, and was able to get enough speed and leverage dropping it to send one guy to the ground, unconscious.

Things went bad as she ran, though. A bullet hit her leg, and she yelped in her thought-speech. Dragging herself on three legs, she got out of sight and decided she'd had enough.

< I've got to demorph to get rid of this.> she said.

She was glad when she emerged into human form again, her body healed and the pain vanishing. Returning to lemur form, she resumed the rock throwing.

<Go, go!> she called.

[Richard]

Richard was glad that his new found ally had that chosen to go to her lemur morph instead of her wolf one, which had not been his thinking a few moments earlier in this confrontation. A wolf may be able to take down one enemy quickly; a lemur could efficiently distract a group of enemies.

As one guy went down, Richard saw as the other one fired at her, which meant that he needed to move quickly. His ocelot body took off at top speed as the guy bent down to check on his friend, which gave Richard an idea that would save him from having to bite the guy on the leg. He started to run in a arc formation, which allowed him to jump off the guy's butt and knocking the man on the ground.

< I've got to demorph to get rid of this.>

Now that he knew that she was still alive, Richard used his eyes to find Dustin's opossum body and grabbed it by the tail just as the rain of rocks began again at the rest of the humans that were coming to check on their friends.

<Go, go!>

Not like he had much of a choice at this point. Richard bolted through the brush until his form was lost among the trees and overgrowth of vegetation. Hopefully the humans would learn that this area was not the best for hunting of game.

<<I'm clear, Melanie. Time for you to scamper off as well.>>

[Melanie Martin]

Melanie was glad when she could finally turn tail and run. She couldn't help noticing the spotted cat body; it was much like her own Leopard Cat morph. Once the spotted feline was out of sight with the opossum, she ran, following him as fast as she could.

She'd been under no impression that changing factions would mean she'd escape the losses of war, but she hadn't expected it to happen again as soon as she arrived.

< It's like it never ends. My old faction got halfway blown up, and I get welcomed to another with more of the same. The bad part is, these weren't controllers as far as we know. Probably don't even know who the real enemy is. > She wished they could get them to understand what was happening and join them, but she wasn't counting on it. Adults were much harder to deal with than teens.

< How is he? Is he...?> she asked. SHe was waiting to demorph until she was safely inside.

[Richard]

This was one thing that he had not wanted to deal with even though he knew it was a guaranteed occurrence, but Richard had thought it would be someone that he had not known well. Dustin had been at the academy with him, so it made the fact that he knew that Dustin was dead a lot harder to accept.

< It's like it never ends. My old faction got halfway blown up, and I get welcomed to another with more of the same. The bad part is, these weren't controllers as far as we know. Probably don't even know who the real enemy is. >

Richard had probably not needed to hear about that part as it was not really helping his tactic of returning to a mood of grief instead of anger. The fact that he lacked sufficient morphs that would be able to attack them probably helped him from not losing himself in his rage.

The fact that he was snake running to the base with an opossum in his mouth meant that his trail would be harder to the remaining hunters to follow. When he actually go to the base, Richard set down the body of the opossum on the porch. As he did this, Melanie's question came up.

<<He is gone. A bullet at that range would not allow for even a small chance of survival for him in this morph.>>

[Melanie Martin]

< I suspected as much.> She knew that this was war, and that any of them could die at any time. But still, it was a harsh first battle here in Miami. She tried to show compassion, even though she didn't know him well. What did run through her mind was that he'd made a foolish mistake. She didn't verbalize it though. Any of them could slip up and she knew it.

< I'm sorry...Believe me, it's never easy. I've had to come to see it as that every loss means we have to fight harder...I won't live with so many deaths ultimately meaning nothing. I want to make sure that they mattered in the end.> She didn't ask the "did you know him well?" question-he probably had, if he'd been here any length of time. It didn't take long to get familiar, she'd found out.

[Richard]

Richard heard the sounds of Melanie trying to console him, but he really didn't feel like being given a talk on how it was even more important to keep fighting the good fight so that no one else had to die. This was not a situation where Dustin had to die. Richard should have sent him back to get help, but instead he went along with the plan of having the hunters chase them.

With a quick change, Richard demorphed and was standing back on his own two feet again. "I'll go get a shovel, something to use as a coffin and something to use as a grave marker. We need to bury him before his smell attracts any real wild animals to us. As soon as I get back, you can go in and get yourself something to eat. You have to be starving." He quickly wondered into the base in search of the supplies he needed to do a proper burial.