The First Battle

[Hikaru]

Hikaru grunted breathlessly as she rolled along the ground to smother the flames that licked at her coat. They were staunched quickly enough, but she still wanted to make sure that not only was she no longer on fire, but that she had enough room away from Nasira. She rolled to a crouching position, facing where her opponent had been, ready to counter or defend whatever the necromancer had planned for her.

But Nasira's attention had been diverted by two newcomers, rogues it seemed. Good. Hikaru turned and began to dash back to her previous cover of rocks she had camped out to begin with. She retrieved the rifle she had left there, hefting it easily. 

Hikaru peeked around the out cropping of rocks, and surveyed the battlefield, weighing her options. Did she have clear targets to pick out at a distance with her rifle, or would she be better off stowing it, and heading into the fray at a different point?

She also measured herself. It seemed she was recovered from whatever Nasira had done to her. At least it felt like it. Hikaru no longer felt the chill, or numbness. Her vision was clear again. She hoped there was no permanent damage. Either way, she felt clear enough to be able to continue fighting and even engage in melee.

[Crow]

There was a stir on the battlefield.

Specifically, nearest to Nasira and the two Rogues that were attacking her.

It began as a low din, but quickly it grew, until a cacophonous squall of black feathers had enveloped the lot of them. Counting the sheer number of birds proved to be a challenge, each crow swooping in and dancing out of reach again, talons lashing for whatever Rogue flesh it could reach. The noise certainly didn't help matters, with every blackbird cawing and shrieking as they soared into the sky.

Amidst the mayhem, and with as little warning as when this tempest began(had there really been so many crows on the battlefield?), a lone bird perched itself on Nasira's shoulder. It was none other than Diablo, who only remained long enough to share a significant glance with the necromancer, and was off again, disappearing into the feathered chaos.

[Clopin]

When a massive murder of crows rose out of the din that had suddenly appeared close to them, Bob reared up out of sheer surprise. They’d appeared out of literally nowhere, and it had caught him off guard.

But he was a war horse, he could do this!

Pink hooves regained their position, as he ducked and tried to avoid the swooping birds.

“AH! Bob, for my sake stop moving, they’re pecking at me now!” Clopin shouted, as the unicorn dodged another attack with the king on his back.

“I’m sorry y’all, but they’re hurtin’ me as much as they are hurtin’ you!” Bob yelped, as a crow pecked his backside.

The gypsy king had had enough of this madness. The silver blade of the scythe glinted in the sunlight, as it swiftly sailed through a number of the birds. Some were knocked from their flight path, and others dropped dead, their heads sliced off by the blade.

He then turned on the necromancer, and without so much as a warning, he expertly leapt off the unicorn’s back, somersaulting in the air towards Nasira, scythe poised to cut whatever he could.

[Owl]

Owl had been looking for a way out. Battle wasn’t her favorite thing. She would rather not do harm if she didn’t have to.

As she was running through the dust, a sound made her ear swivel before she felt something sharp slip into her back legs. Briefly surprised, she paused before growling and bucking her legs out. The claws dragged down her legs before she felt them come free. Cold, coagulated mush fell from the wound.

Owl turned herself around. Her tail flicked as she narrowed her eyes at the saber that had hurt her. She was quiet for a moment, thinking about how she could handle this non-violently.

“You shouldn’t mess with the undead.”

~*~

Shenzi cackled, seeing the hound was taking the bait. She turned her head sharply to the side, grabbing the end of a branch with the front of her teeth. The hyena jumped around and seemed to be going back into the shelter of the scrubs. Her grey pelt began to vanish as she moved away before she turned to one side. She let go of the thorn branch, causing it to swiftly swing back to the front of the bush. She was hoping to smack the dog’s face with the sharp thorns.

The laughter increased in volume, becoming near hysterical.

[Nasira]

"Caaw, caaw, caaw!" A sea of iridescent black wings and a cacophony of short, rapid caaw-caaw-caaws and whooshing feathers suddenly enveloped her assailants and only her assailants. Nasira was dumbfounded. She was so used to seeing crows that the possibility of the murder being an entity had not occurred to her until one of the jet-black corvids landed on her shoulder and looked her in the eye. Nasira stared back, seeing not the dull, beady eyes of an avian but something else entirely. 

"Crow?"

The large corvid took off to join in on the carnage. Nasira watched him go, uncertain of whether or not her assumption had been right.

That was when the gypsy king struck.

The cut on her thigh had been shallow, so it had already clotted. Her right shoulder, the one that had been shot by Hikaru's rubber bullet, had a wound the size of an egg where the skin had been torn clean off, and tiny beads of blood dotted the abraded exterior. It hurt when she moved, but it was not as bad as the gash on her left arm. The bleeding had slowed down, but it had not completely clotted yet. It made Nasira feel a tad queasy, so she turned her head away and resolved not to look at it anymore. She, surprisingly, felt okay, but at this rate, she was not going to make it. One more wound like the one on her arm, and that could be it.

Nasira's forte was ambush, which was near-impossible to do in an open field. Her power and rank had painted a huge target on her back, hence why she had not been able to kill anybody yet. Whenever she came close to doing her prey in, somebody else would get there in the nick of time to stop her. She had overpowered Aladdin, Kopa and Hikaru, but they were all still alive and well because of someone else's interference, while she was bleeding. Nasira did not know what she should do. As much as Edgar freaked her out, it would probably be in her best interest to go get healed. But doing so would leave her troops without a leader. Crow outranked her, but she was not even certain that murder of crows was even his doing. Besides, even if he was here, Nasira already had her orders.

Clopin's scythe had sliced through several crows, and they fell to the ground in red and black smears. Nasira's face grew dark. Like hell she was retreating. Like hell. 

Not that the necromancer had much of a choice as Clopin went right for her as soon as he had slashed those crows. Using both hands, Nasira swiftly blocked the king's strike with her scepter. Her arms shook as she struggled to keep it at bay. The tip of the blade curved over her rod like the beak of an ibis, its sharp point hovering dangerously close to her eyes. "GET OFF!" She bent her leg and dove a hard kick at his groin. She quickly stepped out of reach. This could not go on.

Nasira rapidly transformed, depleting her magic. Her pupils receded to thin slits, and a shiny film of gold coated her mahogany irises as her vision dulled, and the yowls of careening warriors and crows' caws "abated" to tremors. In just seconds, the willowy necromancer had shape-shifted into a giant cobra. Her serpent alter ego was not nearly as gaudy as her late brother's, but her neurotoxins were just as lethal, and she was now big enough to sustain just about whatever the bastards threw at her. The colossal cobra blinked as the everybody else suddenly turned into an array of colors as though she were in the middle of an acid trip. Nasira could now see in infra-red, using the thermal energy of her prey to find and kill.

Nasira growled like an angry dog, the loud sound produced by forced air through tiny kazoo-like holes in her trachea. She reeled her head back.

[Hikaru]

As her dark eyes swept over the field of battle her jaw tightened slightly in concern. There were loose skirmishes all over the field. No order to them. No unified front. People were diving into the fray only to break away. The initial confusion of the armies coming across each other needed to be organized. Where was Aladdin?

She turned her gaze skyward, looking for their council member. She had seen him take flight after she had intercepted Nasira with her attack. She hadn't seen him reappear, but she had been thoroughly focused on the fight for her life. Now that she took the time to search him out he was nowhere to be found. Had he retreated behind the lines for aid? She couldn't know, and she didn't have Maxwell's communication system to find out.

Something had to be done, damnit. 

Hikaru dismantled her rifle and stowed the pieces away. Lugging it around whole would slow her down, but she also didn't want to abandon it here. The bulk of her gear and armor would slow her down, but she was accustomed to this weight. She was better off with the protection and preparation in the field than she would be if she relied completely on bare speed anyway.


Hikaru flipped up her hood again as it had fallen during her earlier tussle. She took a steadying breath and then focused on the nearest skirmishes, the ones that she could get to relatively quickly on foot. She looked for Freedom Fighter emblems and colors. She needed to get to as many of them as possible and try to gather them into some semblance of order.

The closest Freedom Fighter she spotted was the saber cat Rafael. He seemed to be facing off against another blue creature, but the battle didn't look completely heated yet. Perhaps she could intervene? Nothing for it but to find out. With a grunt Hikaru unsheathed a sword and dashed out from behind her cover and made directly for the two of them.

"RAFAEL!" Hikaru shouted in a volume she had never once displayed before, and pulled up besides him sword held up towards the other. She hoped that the creature would retreat faced with two on one, but Hikaru was ready to fight if they didn't.

[Jenn]

Jenn had managed to dodge the majority of the dark magic Nasira had sent in her direction, though a small part of it did manage to clip on of her wings slightly, causing her to hiss at the stinging feeling, a couple of feathers dropping to the ground.

She sent her own attack in retaliation, however found herself unable to do much more after that, as a murder of crows had appeared, suddenly and seemingly from nowhere, which had swarmed both her, Clopin, and Bob.
She felt their tiny beaks pecking at her clothes, feathers, and skin, leaving tiny marks and cuts in their wake. It was almost impossible to see Nasira through the cloud of black feathers.

Growling curse words in a few different languages, she gripped her blade, slashing at as many crows as she could reach. She dared not fire any ranged attacks, for fear of possibly hitting Clopin or Bob by mistake. She heard their yells through the barrage of wings and caws.
She swung and sliced, crows dropping to the ground, but more only seemed to replace them. Jenn could feel herself growing ever more frustrated and annoyed. The cawing was almost deafening, and the tiny beaks pricking at her skin felt like needles.

Her frustration peaked, wings flaring out with a snap as her eyes glowed, hands outstretched as a bright flash of light spewed forth, hitting most of the crows within a certain radius around her. If it hadn't killed them, it would certainly have been enough to scare them off.

It hadn't been a smart move on her part however, since such a heavy use of her grace without preparing herself for it left the angel dizzy and disoriented. She stumbled on her feet, hand pressed to her head to try and stop the pounding feeling. She looked up in time to see Clopin land not far from where she stood, having been thrown by Nasira.
Blinking away the fuzziness in her vision, she looked around for the necromancer, summoning her blade to attack again.
She hadn't been expecting to see a giant cobra where the woman once stood.
"Uh... Clopin... what the HELL is THAT?"

[Crow]

There was a shift amongst the attacking crows. The whole of the flock seemed to undulate unnaturally as birds dropped like stones from the sky. At first, the murder began to rise and fly out of reach in an attempt to escape, but then the angel's blast of magic had all but obliterated them, sending even more corpses raining down onto the battlefield. The cawing became even more discordant, now mixing with the shrieks of pain of dying birds.


  Then something stranger still happened. Crows began to stop flying entirely, and plummeted of their own accord. Just before hitting the ground, however, the birds shifted and changed shape, until they were birds no more, but a rain of harmless black feathers, fluttering to the ground. As oddly and abruptly as the murder had arrived, so too did it disappear again.

[Kula]

With a heave Kula managed to land a kick right into Kopa's gut at the moment that his claws loosened their grip on her shoulders. With a hiss she scrambled away, shaking blood from her fur as even the tussling had managed to prick superficial cuts onto her from where she'd been held. Head on a swivel the lioness was quick to turn herself back to face Kopa, swatting at his face while she backed up to put a bit of distance between them. She needed a moment to breathe and regroup her plan -- if you could call charging in blindly a plan. Kula's movements as she backed off did something she didn't anticipate, however; a collar held about her throat with a plan leather band began to slip from its cover beneath the armor 'round her neck. The buckle itself was plain, just a bit of wrought iron like that of a belt, but a few inches from either side of it sprouted a ring of crimson fur that roped its way around Kula's neck.


The scent wafting from the fur was unmistakable, though faint and mixed with the rotten tinge of death.

[Kopa]

Kopa could feel himself grow terrified. He knew he had been kicked in the gut, but that pain was nothing compared to what he had just realized. He hadn't smelled that scent since his father was alive. He felt himself back away from Kula, to regain his bearings. Confusion was replaced with anger and sadness. He leaped at her, his claws outstretched, ready to slash, his claws aimed at her eye. He didn't know what this meant, but he knew for certain that that was his father's fur. What he didn't understand though, was why it was around Kula's neck. "Why do you have my dad's fur around your neck?!" he snarled with anger.

He knew it was his father's fur. No other lions had it. And those who did were sleeping with the stars.