as written by barney_fife and Tiko
The Admiral made a quick grasp for his Disruptor pistol as he tried to make his way through the thick flora of the forest.
"Gods damn this isn't like any forest I've been into, I heard the Sagittaron woods were dense but not like this." He grumbled, coming up to an entanglement of large roots that blocked his path.
He grimaced before he stood back, taking his disruptor pistol out of its holster, he took another step back as he brought the disruptor weapon to bear on the gathering of roots.
The weapon made an audible whine, powering up before Steele fired three shots into the wooden obstacle, hoping the force of the disruptor blast would splinter the wood and blow a sizeable hole in the obstruction that would enable the Admiral to climb through.
When the smoke cleared, there was a large and smoldering hole in the entanglement of roots, slowly approachin with the weapon drawn, he approached, though it was obscured by steam from super-heated embers that danced with an orange glow on the ground. Once the path was cleared, he grabbed a machete that was sheathed on his back, and would slowly hack his way through the woods.
____
"Caw!"
Again the bird sounded its call before it released its grip upon the tree branch and glided through the trees overhead to take up a new perch.
"Caw!"
The animal still didn't seem particularly threatening as it followed Steele's progress with inquisitive curiosity.
"Caw!"
Another call answered, this one more distant from the first. There was a flutter of feathers behind Steele as another of the strange birds landed upon a branch not four feet from him. Its eyes blinked in rapid succession, the inner pair first, then the outer pair, but never all four at once. Overhead more of the birds where beginning to gather. At first one or two, then more as the trees began to fill with the raucous calls of the birds.
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Steele was slowing only slightly as he noticed the birds start to gather. The man frowned a bit more as the bird's calls filled the skies.
"Damn birds..." He muttered, bringing his weapon to bear on a perched bird, firing a poorly aimed warning shot in hopes he'd startle it and make it fly away.
"Go on!" He called out to the birds.
"Get out of here!" He shouted, taking a few more steps forward, weapon still firmly in hand.
This alien place was starting to spook, but Steele quickly remembered his training. He assessed his surroundings and determined he needed to find a way to get to the high ground. As it continued to get darker, Steele produced another small pistol, this one was an emergency flare gun.
He fired a single shot into the air, white hot plasma giving off a dazzling glare as he took stock of his surroundings.
Spotting a large fallen tree, it was here that Steele decided to try and make camp. He surveyed his surroundings a moment, watching the birds and shaking his head, before he tore a large, dead branch to use as firewood from the tree.
"This isn't right." He commented, taking a Plasma grenade from a kevlar pouch, he slid the fuse switch forward, and the grenade let out a loud beeping sound, which increased in pitch as the grenade began to count down.
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The gun shot effectively startled the bird who took wing with a ruckus of calls that were answered by a cacophony of others. It wasn't until he fired the flare gun that the growing flock scattered from their perches and took wing with such a panicked frenzy that Steele could hear the beat of their wings past his head.
The loud calls of the scavenger birds carried loudly through the forest - a fact that many predatory animals had adapted to. The edgewere swampcat was no exception.
The great feline beasts weren't known to make their homes within the Forest of the Fall, and its presence this far from the Edgewere Marsh was highly unusual.
The swampcats where a native predator to Aelora, and with their Aeloran heritage came all of the speed, prowess, and physical fortitude of Aeloran predators.
As large as a horse, but as light footed as a leopard, the feline maintained a perfect balance of stealth and power. Its thick mane of fur had shed its vibrant hues of greens, blues, violets and crimsons in favor of its winter coat of white and silver that shifted and blended beneath the shadows cast by the evening hours. Swirling stripes of black on bluish-grey fur added further to the camouflage as it crept through the trees.
The sound of the birds, the gunshot, and the flare gun all served to draw the apex predator closer to Steele's location. It wouldn't be long now before the animal had his scent.
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As the birds scattered at the sight of the flare gun, he disarmed the plasma grenade and put it back into it's pouch. The flare still maintained stability, the fizzling ball of white hot plasma casting a brilliant white light through the forest, casting long foreboding shadows through the forest as the birds continued to flutter around. He would have to ignore them for now.
Steele kept his eyes peeled, switching the integrated LED Spotlight in the disruptor pistol on, and slowly scanning his surroundings, keeping one arm on the gun and outstretched, and the other shielding his face.
Steele backed up slowly, pressing his back against a thick oaken trunk, still bringing the light of the Disruptor pistol across his surroundings, by now the ionized ball of plasma above him began to dissipate, turning a dull orange, and then brown before it vanished entirely, bathing the forest once more in a thick veil of darkness, save for the bright blue-white beam that cut through the darkness. Even though the sun had not completely set, the canopy of the forest provided a much darker environment.
In another attempt to disperse the birds, he held up his Disruptor pistol, and fired three shots, sending three brilliant jets of green into the sky, cooking any nearby birds dead before they hit the ground, and likely stunning several more with the concussive crack from the Disruptor bolt.
Quickly he brought the weapon forward, back still firmly pressed against the trunk of the tree.
"I'll kill every last one of you bastards if I have too."
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Steele's efforts proved effective at dispersing the flock as the carrion birds were rather unaccostomed to retaliation from their chosen quarry. The cocaphany of noises began to die down rapidly as the birds scattered and took flight away from his location.
The commotion had drawn more than the distant attention of the roaming swampcat though, and inquisitive eyes studied Steele from the creeping shadows that came with the dwindling light of dusk.
Kuruka had never seen a man dressed as Steele was, nor lain eyes on a weapon of the sort that the foreigner wielded. A wizard perhaps? He had heard that such individuals lived out there, far beyond the borders of the forest. Individuals that he shared blood with, but no real kinship. Still... curiosity tugged at him.
He had never felt a strong inclination to leave his home to seek out other humans, but now that he stood looking upon one, he felt compelled to learn more of this peculiar individual.
Should he speak up? Should he linger and study the man a time more? What if the stranger fired those blasts of light at him once he made his presence known?
Questions swam around in his head as his fingers gripped the shaft of his spear. Perhaps he would linger and observe the man for the night, and approach him with the rising of the morning sun... should he survive the night.
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Steele trudged forward carefully through the thick, dark forest. Having cleared out the Carrion birds, he moved forward, slowly but steadily. Holstering his disruptor pistol, he withdrew an emergency plasma cutting tool.
With the flick of his wrist, the tool extended, and ignited. A brilliant blue beam of plasma was cast from the end of the tool to the hilt, making it resemble a beam sword of some kind.
With one broad swipe, he cut the foliage down, sending embers wafting up and about.
He took a step forward and took another swipe, cutting the foliage out of his way. The progress would be slow going, but he would eventually make it to the crashed ship, or to a much more suitable campsite, given his current position left him vulnerable.
As he hacked, he looked for anything that could be of use, higher ground, a cave, anything that would be more easily defensable and offer shelter against the bitter cold that had begun to creep on him.
____
Kuruka couldn't help but be perplexed by the strangers actions. He had gained the high ground, and found shelter from the elements via the fallen tree and had even begun to collect firewood and to setup camp. What then compelled him to abruptly abandon it only minutes later in favor of hacking wildly through the undergrowth in the dwindling light? Had the carrion shrikes frightened him so?
He mulled the matter over as he tried to formulate an answer. Perhaps he simply wished to avoid the attention the birds had drawn? No, that made no sense either. He was making enough noise hacking through the foliage to draw attention from miles around, and the weapon he now wielded was like a beacon in the night. Worse yet, it would blind its wielder and limit his range of vision to only a few feet.
Kuruka furrowed his brow, trying to make sense of it. The foreigner moved with all the clumsiness of a child unfamiliar with these lands, but how then did he make it this far into the forest to begin with?
The more he observed, the more the questions continued to grow, and the more elusive the answers became.
As Steele moved on Kuruka fell to a squat to creep beneath several low hanging branches to avoid making any noise. His movements were almost cat-like as he hopped atop a rocky protrusion upon the hilly terrain. With the noise Steele was making and the flashing of the light beam, Kuruka could safely follow at a solid distance out of sight and sound of the man without risking losing track of his progress.
Kuruka wasn't the only one to have taken an interest in Steele's movement's though. The carrion shrike's had drawn the swamp cat's attention, but Steele's hacking and flashing light beam served to pinpoint his location to the dangerous predator and illuminate him.
The beast was lean, and far from its home in the Edgewere swamp, but its body rippled with the shifting of its muscled hide that spoke of its health despite the scarcity of food this time of year. Two bounding springs landed it atop the decayed remains of a large tree, and despite its massive size, the snow and rotted wood served to muffle its landing to nothing more than the faint sound of dislodged snow falling softly to the ground below.
Its tail lashed the air in anticipation and the blue plasma reflected in its eyes as it made its move on the wayward human. One, two, three more bounds and the beast plowed through the undergrowth with swift and deadly intent to bring its quarry down before it knew what hit him.
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Steele's seeking of a better campsite would soon pay off. In the form of a second proverbial feline that had fallen from the crashed ship. Situated inside a deep furrow was a damaged Lynx IFV. It's wheels and axles had been torn from the chassis by the rapid descent, it's front windows also were shattered, leaving shards of glass in every direction.
However the body, with it's rigid construction was largely intact, and the soft azure glow of the camouflaged hull of the IFV provided the Admiral with a brief moment of solace.
That moment of silence was short lived, as his ears caught something running through the underbrush. The Admiral would have scant moments to even get turned around when he saw the large feline running towards him, and lunging for it's kill. Thankfully, his extensive resume within the various special forces divisions of the United Aschen Empire would likely come into play this moment, years of enhancements culminating into an edge that a normal human would otherwise be without.
Enhanced reaction time due to superconducting neural dendrite enhancements being one of them. His reaction time from the moment the sound of the Feline charging, to his mind and body reacting were nearly an instant.
The snap reaction time likely saved Steele's life, as the Feline collided with him to take him down, Steele would quickly bring his arm up to protect his face, anticipating the cat biting down on his arm.
The teeth would likely rip through flesh if that were the case, but they would not crunch his bone. Ceramite-carbide ossification from his time as an Objective Force warrior laden his bone structure with a Ceramite-carbide compound on the cellular level, which meant his bones were hundreds of times stronger than that of a normal human.
His nanites would be working overtime the moment the wounds were sustained, trauma mitigation, blood loss mitigation, pain mitigation. Adrenaline surged and he fell back, using the hand with the blade to swing at the large cat. The Plasma blade would sever limb, or head cleanly in a single effortless swipe, and even slice the feline clean in two if Steele managed to garner a good swipe on the feline's body.
Failing that his arm closed into a fist, and his personal aegis engaged with an audible pop and a hiss, the hard-light field engaging with such suddenness, it would be enough to throw the feline off of Steele for a moment, should his blade not do the Swamp cat in.
Either way, he was in a fight to the death, and the Admiral intended to survive this encounter.