Session 60 - Hounds Of The Bastards’ Thrills

The Arbiters of Truth have lived up to the last part of their name, as the intel on Cerberus’s whereabouts has proven to be correct.
The missive — which was signed “L.K.” — though it’s understandable why Yves didn’t see that for a few hours — has led the Starfall to a stretch of the Dicelan like any other, a spot five times further south than east from the Three Sisters, far enough from the routes to Machanon where no ships are likely to stumble across something highly illegal and even more reprehensible.
The Warwick is a squat red, white, and black airship, resting in the water. The call from the lookout tower reports that there are a fair number of people moving around on the deck, though the most notable crew member isn’t remotely human. A dog taller than a human at the shoulder is chained onto the deck, three thick metal collars locked around three separate heads, its grayish-brown body thick and muscular, the only fur three lines of bright red from the tops of its heads to where the necks meet the shoulders.
The other ship, marked as the High Angle Duplex by the words on its hull, is designed to resemble two long and thin ships lashed together, though the vicious cannons on its sides would rip the ship apart were that true. People in different colors mill out this ship’s surface as well, though the focus again rests on the creature chained to its deck; another hound, though this one is even larger than the three-headed Cerberus on the Warwick. This wolf is blue and white, with long, fine fur that ripples in a wind that seems to emanate from the animal itself, rattling its chains, curling its long fur into repeating crescent moon shapes.
With both ships resting in the water, tied together for their upcoming bloodsport, it would seem the advantage will lie with the Starfall, as it hides above the clouds, preparing for the rescue…
**
Marina flexes her fingers around the controls of the Starfall. She's been just as eager as Yves to fix this situation, upon hearing the message L.K. sent. "Just give the word, Captain, whatever that may be."
Yves has not said anything directly about this operation since the basics were laid out, but as he looks down at the clouds, it's pretty clear what he's thinking. Can we bring TWO giant dogs in need of rescue on board? And would that be ethical? What do giant cloud-wolves even eat? He is sometimes a highly predictable viera.
(Linnet is below decks stowing Triscuit safely out of sight and out of ankle-swatting range.)
Once outside of Cardia, Isa has reverted to carrying her spear. She is currently standing at the railing, one hand on a stay as she looks down, gauging the height.
"Gunners, sight on the Duplex and sound off when ready. Guns and engines first." Bast peers overboard at the two ships, trying to decide on the best approach.
As this is the first time the Starfall has had the threat of legitimate aerial combat -- should the other two ships get up into the sky -- it was decided that one officer stay onboard to provide adult supervision. Orrey won (won?) the roshambo for that role, and has a series of notes on hand dictated to him by Isa and Bast both for this role.
"Right. Can we go hurt something now?" Linnet, sans kitten, appears on deck with her sword at her hip and her fists already crackling with ice.
"With the two animals on deck, I'm not comfortable with trading fire," Marina says, making a rare verbal contribution. "Targeting engines seems smart to keep them down, but boarding's going to get them out of there safely."
Bast frowns as he goes through the motions of checking his crossbow. "Isa, what do you figure for the boarding party's chances without softening them up first?"
"Yves? How far can you throw a cloud of lightning at them without hitting the dogs?" Linnet asks.
"Lookout, how many people are on deck?" Marina asks.
"U-um, I think... maybe ten, total, between both ships?" comes Holly's not-exactly confident reply. "And the dogs," she adds needlessly.
Isa considers, shrugs. "I'm confident but not certain," she says.
Yves blinks several times, thinking. "By a cloud, do you mean, like, hitting several of them at once? Let me think."
"Precisely! Or, y'know, less precisely."
"Alright then. Gunners stand by, boarding party goes in first, we'll try to cut Cerberus loose to make things more interesting. If it looks like boarders are having a hard time, make some holes below the waterline to keep them busy. Marina, ready for the drop?" Bast says.
"On your signal," comes the pilot's reply.
"Want me to lead it off?" Isa asks innocently.
"Precision isn't the issue," Yves answers, after some consideration. "Not unless I've done something terribly wrong, like, first year at the university and the whole building is evacuated kind of wrong, I'm unlikely to do that sober. Not if I'm close enough to see who I'm aiming at, which is easy enough when the people I want to aim at are 'anyone who isn't an enormous dog or my friend' right now. But I can't reach them properly until they can reach me, so... well. Yes. That."
Bast nods to Isa. "Try not to beat Yves' lightning to the ship."
Isa smiles faintly. "Understood. See you down there," she says, and leaps off the side of the ship.
The Starfall follows.
As Isa drops out of the sky, the battlefield slides into focus for her, the guided freefall shocking her senses into high gear.
As she falls, Isa brings her spear around point-down, bracing it against the side of a heavy boot. She holds herself vertical, Dragoon training overriding air resistance to keep her on target. Minute body shifts angle her slightly from side to side as she descends towards the deck of the Warwick, homing in on the optimum landing zone. Near the point of her spear, a shockwave begins to form.
Isa doesn't quite break the sound barrier before she lands, so there are a few breaths of warning before she lands. It's not enough. She hits the aft deck of the Warwick with enough force to lift the bow up out of the water, and the shockwave of her landing sweeps out in an expanding globe, smashing air out of unfortunate lungs and bloodying more than a few noses and ears.
Linnet exits the Starfall with a much more sedate hop, flinging an almost delicate handful of snow at the Warwick's first mate and barely even looking in their direction. The resulting shout doesn't sound like it was just a snowball - there must have been ice in that one.
The ice shards harmlessly shatter against the Warwick's First Officer, and he runs for cover behind the massive chained three-headed dog as the other sailors on the ship crash down from Isa's shockwave.
"Incoming!" Captain Amos, a short-haired short human shouts from the neighboring ship.
"You said you weren't followed!" Captain MDV bellows from the Warwick.
"We weren't!" comes the reply, and then she's holding a spear, the spearhead drops to reveal a barrel, and a tremendous noise bursts out as a slug is fired at Isa.
From Talen's corner behind Cerberus, well out of teeth range, the green bloom of restoration rises.
Yves has parked himself on the deck of the Starfall. It's doing all the distance-closing for him, conveniently enough. There's a pulse of mana being spent around him, tangible or aural or even an ozone scent for those who can detect such things, as the long, clawed fingers of his hands snap back and forth in precise gestures. Even faster than usual. There's intent, there, and some complex second set of emphatic reinforcement behind each motion.
That's not what spears are supposed to do; Isa is momentarily slow to react and her armor is raised a heartbeat too late. Instead of skipping harmlessly away, the slug digs a furrow across her shoulder.
The streaks that fly from Yves' fingertips are not even blue; they're beyond white, sight-searing infinitely thin darts of intent so pure they barely even waste any energy on crackling as they pick out their targets, destruction to those people in particular humming through.
Bast braces his crossbow on the railing he was standing at and sights at the nearest pirates, a handful of spare bolts sticking out of a pocket close to hand. As they cast about to try and decide whether Isa or the the ship she came from is the bigger threat, he adjusts his aim and lets fly, one bolt following another with practiced precision.
There's a snap of breaking bone, a chorus of pained cries, and the Warwick's first officer sprawls on the deck bleeding from an entirely superfluous new hole in his leg.
First Officer Talen shudders, and something strapped around his chest breaks, and ice shards go absolutely everywhere.
...including into Cerberus.
The three-headed hound howls in pain, and then the other two heads howl in fury and rage.
The chains snap.
"Oh, good boy," Yves murmurs, from high up on the Starfall.
Isa throws up her gauntlet, Bast's "enhancements" flaring in magitek circuits as it diverts the worst - but not all - of the icesplosion. She lowers her guard away from her face and surveys the aftermath. At Linnet, she winces. At Cerberus... she swears.
"You'd best be paying attention to me!" MDV shouts, the tonberry spinning forward and swinging a strange, shield-esque block of wood at Isa's knees.
One of the High Angle Duplex's sailors vaults over the railings separating the ships, a crossbow bolt zipping across from the other.
Yves twitches sideways, little more than a blink showing that he's paying attention to more on the ship below than just who he's trying to... incapacitate. Let's call it incapacitate.
Isa's spear twirls, knocking the attack aside with almost disdainful ease. "Sure," she says. "If you insist."
Isa then proceeds to show exactly what happens when she pays attention to a target. The block turns into an overhead swing, which is entirely too obvious and draws the captain's defense up high... leaving them open for the sweeping butt of the spear as it continues through a full circle. When the motion finally stops, Isa is back in her ready position, and MDV is Most Definitely Vanquished.
Three heads sniff separately, three heads move as one.
Cerberus lunges forward, one target removed, but Isa still remaining there behind, spear/stick in hand, the blister of ice coating her armor, an imprisoner within range.
"Oh for..." is all Isa has time for before Cerberus is on her. She uses spear and gauntlet in equal measure, deflecting and redirecting and trying her damnedest not to hurt the beast actively trying to gnaw on her.
Bast turns to Lily for a moment and tosses off a "Now would be good" as he levers back the string of his crossbow and slides in the next bolt without looking.
Linnet, crumpled on the deck of the Warwick, looks pretty well out of the fight. But she manages to haul herself up on one knee, and suddenly there's a little extra space cleared around her. And...where did that spotlight come from? Very, very slowly, Linnet rises to her feet, rolling up her spine inch by inch, stretching her arms to their full length and standing on tiptoe. As she begins to pirouette, everyone around her begins to sway in the same circle - friend and foe alike. Even Cerberus turns his heads in slow rounds. Faster and faster, with more complicated steps and hand movements, Linnet dances her way back to life. Friends feel the dance as a breath of cinnamon-scented fresh air, while the dogfighting crew begin to sink to their knees under the unbearable weight of...nothing? And when Linnet drops her hands, the pirates fall to their knees, and the Starfall's crew spring back up, ready for more. Even Cerberus is looking a little perkier, if not exactly less angry.
Six ears raise slightly.
Another crack from the deck of the High Angle Duplex, but this one seems to ring in both ears at once. The split shot sails wide.
Isa is prepared this time, moogle-designed flanges unfurling from her gauntlet, presenting steeply angled planes to deflect her half of the shot.
"Bad Cerberus! No! Though understandable given the circumstances!" Yves calls down to the giant tricapita-ed dog. Even his scolding sounds distracted, though, as he pivots toward a particular target on the other ship, keeping in mind various lessons he's been learning about how to prioritize. If someone is making a particular troublesome opponent all the more troublesome, and simply refuses to be inconvenienced by lighting... there are other tricks he's learned. And Yves' fingers slide and flick through the air in new patterns than before, spelling out interesting new options for how to object to what some of these people have been doing. Maybe less brilliantly, but more insidiously.
Bast glances in the direction that Lily ran off in, but not long - something that Yves did has the pirates displeased, rather vocally so. And it would not do to pass up a good distraction, he thinks as he aims at the captain's hat bobbing around on the deck before him.
The hat goes overboard as Amos crumples against the railing. His first mate lunges towards him, and takes a bolt to the ribs for his trouble, and the two sailors that were still armed are out of the fight as well. Only Cerberus and the chained wolf remain standing, of those who met the Starfall on deck.
Seconds later, lightning courses along the deck of the High Angle Duplex.
...and into the wolf.
The wolf howls, head back, fur bristling with that electricity, and the edge of the collar cracks.
The wolf pulls itself clear of the chain, and its eyes lock on Bast.
It leaps, leaving the ship behind, bounding up through the air, over Isa and Linnet's heads, above the deck and over the far railing... only to return above the near railing again, its wind-whipped coat creating its own gale, rustling Yves' ears and Bast's fur.
Fenrir is mad.
"TWO OF THEM?" Isa calls over the wind, disbelieving and annoyed.
"TWO OF THEM!" Yves calls back, in delight.
"YVES, UNLESS YOU'RE TALKING THEM DOWN, LESS CHEERING, MORE SMITING!" Linnet yells, whipping up more cinnamon sugar breezes in a hurry.
Isa shakes her head, crouches, and springs up into the air, easily clearing the descending Starfall, as well as all angry doggods.
Cerberus raises all three heads to watch Isa depart the ship.
Cerberus... does nothing.
Fenrir, on the other hand, does something.
A massive whirlwind whips forward from nowhere, tearing through the deck of the Starfall, slamming Bast into the railing, sending Yves flying clean over it.
On the plus side, Yves is wearing his excellent adventuring coat, so he looks pretty impressive with all the fluttering of that high-quality fabric as he's flung overboard to eventual doom.
Linnet throws a spiral of spicy breeze after him on the way down as she races back toward the deck of the Starfall.
Yves' squeak of surprise--at the attack, being flung off, suddenly being in much less pain--turns into a rapid distant shout of "Diabolos sent me, are we cool? Tell me we're cool!"
At Yves's call, Diabolos answers.
The shadows of batlike wings spread out from Yves's back, flapping once to slow his descent, then angling to bring him around, the edges constantly dissipating in the sun, as Yves flies.
"....eeeee...." Yves says, hovering about halfway between ship and sea, and looking equally baffled and delighted right there.
Linnet skids to a stop shortly before throwing herself over the railing and just...stares. "Good look on you, Thunderbun!" she yells, before ducking behind a crate and turning her attention back to the fight.
"Jasper! Rope!" It takes a moment for the quartermaster to catch up, and then one of the heavy ropes hanging from the crow's nest gets untied from its mooring point and flung towards Bast. The moogle claws at the railing he fetched up on after the blast and hops up, wincing slightly as his knee threatens to buckle, and grabs the rope just before it would smack him in the chest.
Lily's "Captain!" as she rushes up from belowdecks goes apparently unheard while Bast pushes off from the railing and runs away from the fighting, rope in hand, gathering momentum and his legs under him as he swings out over the water - then gravity takes hold and he is back over the deck, swinging past Lily, grabbing something from her with one hand, and gone.
It's not a dragoon's leap, but the arc is tight and true and lands him right in front of Cerberus' middle head. Meeting its gaze, Bast holds up the mask of Diabolos in his right hand.
The left head tilts to the right, the right head tilts to the left, and the middle head holds level.
The eyes on the Diabolos mask glow red.
Yves receives a sudden burst of speed as red lightning crackles along his wings.
And then...
And then:
Bast summons Diabolos.
Bats swarm around Bast, swirling around the moogle and then forming into the upside-down shade of the bat-winged demon.
Diabolos languidly drops, then rises, wings flapping once to bring him level with Cerberus.
Words drag themselves across the sky in burning gold.
GOOD DOG.
A giant tail thumps.
Diabolos turns and stares at Fenrir.
Fenrir circles and lands on the Warwick, sniffing the air.
Wolf and demon observe each other.
Linnet leans over the railing of the Starfall toward the Warwick and fumbles in the bag hanging at her side.
Fenrir lowers their head.
Linnet whistles, holding up a cinnamon roll in each hand. "Treats!"
Cerberus's three heads quirk up.
Diabolos turns back to Bast and Yves.
Yves waves, with a hand and sort of with a wing, hovering awkwardly there.
The demon's face does not change, but it feels like a smile. A menacing smile, but a smile nonetheless.
Then Diabolos is bats, and then Diabolos is gone.
Yves gives a little wistful sigh of fondness at the vanishing bats.
Cerberus and Fenrir both look up at the Starfall... and then both are gone, the briefest light shining from around them, the bluster of wind and the swinging of an iron gate left in the memory.
Two masks remain.
Isa doesn't complete her arc. She alights at the highest point on Starfall, landing next to Holly with a thud and looking down. "Huh," she says to the surprised lookout.
"Treats for us instead, I guess. If we hold the masks while we eat them, maybe they can smell them." Linnet hands around cinnamon rolls for everyone.
The Cerberus mask is a set of three small dog skulls, dim red lights in the eye sockets, linked together with an iron chain.
Yves wings his way with increasing confidence toward the masks, to collect and say absurd, affectionate things in a low tone, as one does to good dogs.
The Fenrir mask is a crescent moon with the silhouette of a wolf's head in it, the sweep of the fur turning into the marks on the moon above.
Holly about jumps out of her skin up on the Starfall's observation deck.
Bast tilts his head with a curious look down at the masks, then scoops them up and holds them by his side, hiding the slight limp from before as he turns to face the Starfall.
"Well done, everyone. Now let's truss up some pirates."