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xp_logsThe topsiders discover they'll have a few ocean animals to contend with, themselves.
So far as pirate ships went, Clint found himself a little disappointed Summers' dad hadn't gone for more pirate-golden-era-chic or something. Then again, sailing around on an accurate replica -- or original -- of a 1700s frigate or something probably would've been a dead giveaway. Also -- satellites killed the ability to hide on the ocean of pretty much everyone without cloaking technology.
Still, the metal-on-metal-on-rope-and-plastic-and-rubber thing was just sad. It made Clint sat. Fortunately, not sad enough to miss the weird plantlife coming toward the ship. It wasn't moving steadily, like in a pattern necessarily -- more like it was just swaying with the tide, ebbing and flowing... but with purpose?
Tossing that observation out the window, as it were, he lifted his chin toward the ocean surrounding them and asked the nearest person -- one of Amanda's minions, he thought -- about what she was seeing. "So you're magical, right? You gettin' anything off that stuff that's sorta drifting toward us? Cause I can see details, and it's definitely a water plant -- probably seaweed -- but I dunno if we should like... ignore it or whatever, given we just had to watch our friends and mentor type people turn part-fish to deal with an evil, Namor-snatching giant squid..."
"Hmmm..." Clea grabbed a bag left behind for her and pulled a bag of pure white sand. Grabbing a handful, she fling it towards the seaweed, with a little help of magic it reached the drifting seaweed. No sooner had the white sand hit the seaweed, it burst into dark flames. "No. We shouldn't ignore it. That is cursed. I thought I sensed something fishy with it..."
"Oh, ha ha," Clint said, snorting softly. "Pun intended?" He asked, fingers flexing on his bow as he checked his trick arrowheads before flicking through the rotation to the right one.
"Maybe." She stood up and climbed up to the railing to see the seaweed getting closer. With a quick hand movements, a burst of fire erupted and most of the seaweed that was closing it was burned away. But there was much more coming. I am getting cursed pings everywhere now." She jumped down from the railing and looking over at Clint. "I can reverse this but I need time."
Clint started to nod, only to freeze a moment later as his eyes widened. "Uh, pretty sure you're not gonna get that time you want," he said, clicking the arrowhead onto its shaft and pulling it out whip-fast. Out in the water, more and more of the seaweed began to amass, not just on their side of the ship, but seemingly around the whole thing -- it was getting so thick that he couldn't see between its fronds to the water below. "You do what you gotta do, but I think you basically just pissed it off more."
Firing the arrow, he watched as the arrowhead burst wide open, springing a surprisingly large, strong net and blowing it out wide to catch as much of the seaweed on that side of the ship as he could. He'd already started moving over to the other side to do the same when the first piece of dark plant matter smacked him in the face. "Motherfucker!" The word came out half-muffled and a moment later, Clint swiped the seaweed off his face and spat out the pieces that'd gotten into his mouth. "Oh, gross. I hope curses aren't catching."
That's when the fish started flying up and over the ship's railings. "You have got to be kidding me."
"I believe that were the fish kidding, they would not currently be trying to eat our faces." Laurie pressed her index and thumb together on her artificial hand before holding it up to a fish heading directly for her. Arcs of electricity leapt between the fingers, frying the fish before it could so much as flap it's gills in her direction. "I'm not sure they have fully thought through this course of action."
Clint managed to hold back the automatic, oh God, we're all gonna get electrocuted and die that wanted to escape his mouth, but it was a near thing. Instead of blurting that out, he thwapped several airborne fish out of his way with his still-nocked bow. "One sec," he said, sliding over to the railing so he could fire the netting arrowhead over it and into the water to get a good portion of the seaweed on that side of the ship. "I'm gonna... climb up the front of the superstructure, try and get a better idea of what's going on shipwide. I'll still have you covered. Don't zap yourself. And keep an eye on the magic chick. She said she needed time!"
Just as he prepared to sprint for the nearest climbable thing, he got another faceful of seaweed.
"Clint, I feel that we need to have a conversation after this about trusting your medical doctor to know not to electrocute herself." Laurie took out several more flying, attacking fish before moving further away from where Clea was trying to deal with the seaweed and closer to the edge of the ships deck. She knew pheromones didn't work the same on insects as mammals and she had no desire to find out what sort of fresh hell trying to sleep a bunch of Exocoetidae. "I feel that this situation calls for a certain degree of risk taking however."
"Just be careful of the water," Clint answered as he flung the seaweed off his face again. Snorting softly, he realized he was gonna be on every medical person's shitlist once they got back to the mansion. Except for Clarice. And Cece. She wasn't mad at him, probably. He'd need to check in with her about Lucky, though. He hadn't been at the mansion when she posted asking for advice about vets.
His inattention earned him a fish to the shoulder blade, which had Clint frowning. "Ugh, this is gross. Whatever risks you're taking, they better be worth it."
"I assure you, my archery obsessed friend that I only take the risks that reward me." Laurie arched electricity at several more of the flying fish, dodging behind the main mast and coming up toward the leeward side of the ship and downwind to better tackle the attacking fish. "Or at least the ones that pay off eventually."
Eventually, Clint mouthed, shaking his head as he shouldered his bow and lept upward to grab at a handhold. He used it to pull himself up until he could brace himself against the glass behind him and a metal railing in front of him, giving him enough balance to get his bow back in his hands so he could fire several shots at larger fish attempting to get onto the deck.
“I did not expect the Sharknado however.” Laurie stared at the large great white that had launched itself at the side of the boat before diving back under the water. “Clint, tell me you have harpoon arrows.”
"Those aren't really a thing, Laur," Clint shouted down to her as he began climbing the antenna. "I mean, harpoon guns, but it's not like I can fit one of those in my back pocket." Man, what he wouldn't give for some of Tasha's electrocuting bracelets right now. Still, once he reached the top of the antenna, he pulled himself up and stood. The fish weren't flying high enough to reach him here and he had a good view of everything. "But I've got some tricks that might help!"
"Soonish with that help would be most acceptable." Laurie bopped a shark on the nose with her currently electrified hand and watched it fall back into the water. It was the second one she'd done it to, and there was no end to them that she could see. "I'll even cook you a fish stew in thanks afterwards."
Ty really wasn't sure how he'd ended up here, or why. But between the gut-wrenching post-teleportation disorientation and what appeared to flying fish and....
"Medic! I'm hallucinating giant crabs!" He shouted.
"No. I'm fairly sure these are real." Laurie hopped back as a coconut crab snapped it's large claws at her feet, scuttling across the deck of the ship. First ambulatory seaweed, then flying fish and sharknadoes and now homicidal coconut crabs, all it needed to be complete would be a white whale and a man named Ishmael. She was just about to kick the crab back into the ocean when it put on a burst of speed and swarmed up her legs. "Argh! Get off you stupid crustacean!"
A sliver of shadow whipped out to consume the top-most crab. Ty perked up. "Oh, nice." His expression turned to a delighted grin. "Mm, lunch." More fingers of shadow lashed out, picking off crabs one at a time.
“That is both incredibly fascinating and also deeply disturbing.” Laurie cooked several more crabs as Ty’s shadow tendrils picking off the ones swarming up her body. “Do you actually gain sustenance or is calling them lunch an affectation?”
Ty just stared at Laurie. "What? Yes? Maybe? They were trying to eat you, so I ate them back!"
"Interesting. Does that mean you do not need to eat the normal way? " Laurie stepped back and out of the way of another swarm of crabs, knowing that the battery her arm contained wouldn't last much longer and once it was gone, the entire arm would be useless until she could charge it in the sun. "You may need to take over much of the defense here, my battery is almost empty and I'm not sure it would be wise to leave myself without an entire arm at this point in time."
"Does your therapist know about this inappropriate timing thing?" Ty asked.
“My therapist gave up long ago. You would like her, wonderful woman, always appears to have a harried expression when the mention of my name comes up.” Laurie pulled a gun from its holster under her jacket and started to shoot several of the crabs. She hated to use the gun, especially in such a close quarters situation as this but given the alternative was to leave Ty to his own and her defence, it seemed an appropriate use of force. “I am not without alternatives, of course. I just dislike the use of such blunt force and inelegant solutions. Especially when an assailant has merely to disarm myself in order to have the upper hand in both weaponry and possible future attempts at my life.”
Ty just backed up a few steps and finished off the crustaceans from a safer distance. "You do you, woman. You just... do you."
Clea was in the middle of it all rushing to make the magic symbols that should set everything normal. It was the shadow raising above her that caused her too look behind her. "SQUID!" She screamed as she quickly put up a magic shield to block it. "I need help, I can't do both!"
Ty pulled every shadow he could coax his way, then thrust them into a net between Clea's shield and the ..... squid. There was a giant squid, because of course there was.
"Life saver. I am almost done." Clea dropped her shields when the shadows formed a wall and went back to work. She dug back into the bag and grabbed a white candle. Lighting it was hard as it was wet but after several tries the wick started to burn. Closing her eyes and shielding the flame with her hand, Clea whispered the incantation before dropping the candle. The symbol came to life with magic as it pulsed outwards towards the attacking sea life.
Ty felt the magic pass through his shadow-net a bare breath before he felt the magic absorbed by the shadow. It snapped into a solid shield, a third larger than before, encompassing at least one tentacle. Then it contracted back to its original shape.
The squid was now short one tentacle.
Clea placed both her hands onto the circle to lend it her own magic source as it grew. The seaweed dispersed, the flying fish swam away, the crabs turned and headed back to the ocean, and the squid with a missing tentacle sunk back below. After another couple of beats of magic, it slowly died down and Clea fell forward. She was still awake but weak. "I want a cheeseburger times ten."
Ty beamed at her. "I don't!"
So far as pirate ships went, Clint found himself a little disappointed Summers' dad hadn't gone for more pirate-golden-era-chic or something. Then again, sailing around on an accurate replica -- or original -- of a 1700s frigate or something probably would've been a dead giveaway. Also -- satellites killed the ability to hide on the ocean of pretty much everyone without cloaking technology.
Still, the metal-on-metal-on-rope-and-plastic-and-rubber thing was just sad. It made Clint sat. Fortunately, not sad enough to miss the weird plantlife coming toward the ship. It wasn't moving steadily, like in a pattern necessarily -- more like it was just swaying with the tide, ebbing and flowing... but with purpose?
Tossing that observation out the window, as it were, he lifted his chin toward the ocean surrounding them and asked the nearest person -- one of Amanda's minions, he thought -- about what she was seeing. "So you're magical, right? You gettin' anything off that stuff that's sorta drifting toward us? Cause I can see details, and it's definitely a water plant -- probably seaweed -- but I dunno if we should like... ignore it or whatever, given we just had to watch our friends and mentor type people turn part-fish to deal with an evil, Namor-snatching giant squid..."
"Hmmm..." Clea grabbed a bag left behind for her and pulled a bag of pure white sand. Grabbing a handful, she fling it towards the seaweed, with a little help of magic it reached the drifting seaweed. No sooner had the white sand hit the seaweed, it burst into dark flames. "No. We shouldn't ignore it. That is cursed. I thought I sensed something fishy with it..."
"Oh, ha ha," Clint said, snorting softly. "Pun intended?" He asked, fingers flexing on his bow as he checked his trick arrowheads before flicking through the rotation to the right one.
"Maybe." She stood up and climbed up to the railing to see the seaweed getting closer. With a quick hand movements, a burst of fire erupted and most of the seaweed that was closing it was burned away. But there was much more coming. I am getting cursed pings everywhere now." She jumped down from the railing and looking over at Clint. "I can reverse this but I need time."
Clint started to nod, only to freeze a moment later as his eyes widened. "Uh, pretty sure you're not gonna get that time you want," he said, clicking the arrowhead onto its shaft and pulling it out whip-fast. Out in the water, more and more of the seaweed began to amass, not just on their side of the ship, but seemingly around the whole thing -- it was getting so thick that he couldn't see between its fronds to the water below. "You do what you gotta do, but I think you basically just pissed it off more."
Firing the arrow, he watched as the arrowhead burst wide open, springing a surprisingly large, strong net and blowing it out wide to catch as much of the seaweed on that side of the ship as he could. He'd already started moving over to the other side to do the same when the first piece of dark plant matter smacked him in the face. "Motherfucker!" The word came out half-muffled and a moment later, Clint swiped the seaweed off his face and spat out the pieces that'd gotten into his mouth. "Oh, gross. I hope curses aren't catching."
That's when the fish started flying up and over the ship's railings. "You have got to be kidding me."
"I believe that were the fish kidding, they would not currently be trying to eat our faces." Laurie pressed her index and thumb together on her artificial hand before holding it up to a fish heading directly for her. Arcs of electricity leapt between the fingers, frying the fish before it could so much as flap it's gills in her direction. "I'm not sure they have fully thought through this course of action."
Clint managed to hold back the automatic, oh God, we're all gonna get electrocuted and die that wanted to escape his mouth, but it was a near thing. Instead of blurting that out, he thwapped several airborne fish out of his way with his still-nocked bow. "One sec," he said, sliding over to the railing so he could fire the netting arrowhead over it and into the water to get a good portion of the seaweed on that side of the ship. "I'm gonna... climb up the front of the superstructure, try and get a better idea of what's going on shipwide. I'll still have you covered. Don't zap yourself. And keep an eye on the magic chick. She said she needed time!"
Just as he prepared to sprint for the nearest climbable thing, he got another faceful of seaweed.
"Clint, I feel that we need to have a conversation after this about trusting your medical doctor to know not to electrocute herself." Laurie took out several more flying, attacking fish before moving further away from where Clea was trying to deal with the seaweed and closer to the edge of the ships deck. She knew pheromones didn't work the same on insects as mammals and she had no desire to find out what sort of fresh hell trying to sleep a bunch of Exocoetidae. "I feel that this situation calls for a certain degree of risk taking however."
"Just be careful of the water," Clint answered as he flung the seaweed off his face again. Snorting softly, he realized he was gonna be on every medical person's shitlist once they got back to the mansion. Except for Clarice. And Cece. She wasn't mad at him, probably. He'd need to check in with her about Lucky, though. He hadn't been at the mansion when she posted asking for advice about vets.
His inattention earned him a fish to the shoulder blade, which had Clint frowning. "Ugh, this is gross. Whatever risks you're taking, they better be worth it."
"I assure you, my archery obsessed friend that I only take the risks that reward me." Laurie arched electricity at several more of the flying fish, dodging behind the main mast and coming up toward the leeward side of the ship and downwind to better tackle the attacking fish. "Or at least the ones that pay off eventually."
Eventually, Clint mouthed, shaking his head as he shouldered his bow and lept upward to grab at a handhold. He used it to pull himself up until he could brace himself against the glass behind him and a metal railing in front of him, giving him enough balance to get his bow back in his hands so he could fire several shots at larger fish attempting to get onto the deck.
“I did not expect the Sharknado however.” Laurie stared at the large great white that had launched itself at the side of the boat before diving back under the water. “Clint, tell me you have harpoon arrows.”
"Those aren't really a thing, Laur," Clint shouted down to her as he began climbing the antenna. "I mean, harpoon guns, but it's not like I can fit one of those in my back pocket." Man, what he wouldn't give for some of Tasha's electrocuting bracelets right now. Still, once he reached the top of the antenna, he pulled himself up and stood. The fish weren't flying high enough to reach him here and he had a good view of everything. "But I've got some tricks that might help!"
"Soonish with that help would be most acceptable." Laurie bopped a shark on the nose with her currently electrified hand and watched it fall back into the water. It was the second one she'd done it to, and there was no end to them that she could see. "I'll even cook you a fish stew in thanks afterwards."
Ty really wasn't sure how he'd ended up here, or why. But between the gut-wrenching post-teleportation disorientation and what appeared to flying fish and....
"Medic! I'm hallucinating giant crabs!" He shouted.
"No. I'm fairly sure these are real." Laurie hopped back as a coconut crab snapped it's large claws at her feet, scuttling across the deck of the ship. First ambulatory seaweed, then flying fish and sharknadoes and now homicidal coconut crabs, all it needed to be complete would be a white whale and a man named Ishmael. She was just about to kick the crab back into the ocean when it put on a burst of speed and swarmed up her legs. "Argh! Get off you stupid crustacean!"
A sliver of shadow whipped out to consume the top-most crab. Ty perked up. "Oh, nice." His expression turned to a delighted grin. "Mm, lunch." More fingers of shadow lashed out, picking off crabs one at a time.
“That is both incredibly fascinating and also deeply disturbing.” Laurie cooked several more crabs as Ty’s shadow tendrils picking off the ones swarming up her body. “Do you actually gain sustenance or is calling them lunch an affectation?”
Ty just stared at Laurie. "What? Yes? Maybe? They were trying to eat you, so I ate them back!"
"Interesting. Does that mean you do not need to eat the normal way? " Laurie stepped back and out of the way of another swarm of crabs, knowing that the battery her arm contained wouldn't last much longer and once it was gone, the entire arm would be useless until she could charge it in the sun. "You may need to take over much of the defense here, my battery is almost empty and I'm not sure it would be wise to leave myself without an entire arm at this point in time."
"Does your therapist know about this inappropriate timing thing?" Ty asked.
“My therapist gave up long ago. You would like her, wonderful woman, always appears to have a harried expression when the mention of my name comes up.” Laurie pulled a gun from its holster under her jacket and started to shoot several of the crabs. She hated to use the gun, especially in such a close quarters situation as this but given the alternative was to leave Ty to his own and her defence, it seemed an appropriate use of force. “I am not without alternatives, of course. I just dislike the use of such blunt force and inelegant solutions. Especially when an assailant has merely to disarm myself in order to have the upper hand in both weaponry and possible future attempts at my life.”
Ty just backed up a few steps and finished off the crustaceans from a safer distance. "You do you, woman. You just... do you."
Clea was in the middle of it all rushing to make the magic symbols that should set everything normal. It was the shadow raising above her that caused her too look behind her. "SQUID!" She screamed as she quickly put up a magic shield to block it. "I need help, I can't do both!"
Ty pulled every shadow he could coax his way, then thrust them into a net between Clea's shield and the ..... squid. There was a giant squid, because of course there was.
"Life saver. I am almost done." Clea dropped her shields when the shadows formed a wall and went back to work. She dug back into the bag and grabbed a white candle. Lighting it was hard as it was wet but after several tries the wick started to burn. Closing her eyes and shielding the flame with her hand, Clea whispered the incantation before dropping the candle. The symbol came to life with magic as it pulsed outwards towards the attacking sea life.
Ty felt the magic pass through his shadow-net a bare breath before he felt the magic absorbed by the shadow. It snapped into a solid shield, a third larger than before, encompassing at least one tentacle. Then it contracted back to its original shape.
The squid was now short one tentacle.
Clea placed both her hands onto the circle to lend it her own magic source as it grew. The seaweed dispersed, the flying fish swam away, the crabs turned and headed back to the ocean, and the squid with a missing tentacle sunk back below. After another couple of beats of magic, it slowly died down and Clea fell forward. She was still awake but weak. "I want a cheeseburger times ten."
Ty beamed at her. "I don't!"
