BZPRPG - Ko-Wahi

[Geardirector]

IC: Mar (Ko-Koro)

I accepted the cheap swill that Siika had covered without a moment's hesitation. It was just the sort of thing that I was all too used to subsisting on. Didn't really even think about as I started gulping it down. I had a lot of other stuff on my mind.

A Sonics Elemental was always able to hear, of course, but with my mask being an Akaku, I also had an unparalelled ability to see. Especially with the unique upgrade I'd picked up during the business Renegade Tactical had been hired to assist Shaddix with.

If there was anywhere I had a good opportunity to use my infrared, it was here, in a place so defined by temperature on one side of the scale, I imagined Ta-Wahi might be similar.

It wasn't difficult to find what I was looking for. There were visible heat profiles somewhere in a space behind the counter, one that moved like a living being, about the right size...

I switched to my familiar X-Ray for a moment, looking again. Indeed, the room was very dark. It would have been especially difficult for me to spot anything like that, probably a precaution they had thought of.

I turned to Siika. Karv was sitting next to us with his own face swiveling back and forth in calm vigilance.

"Alright..." I spoke up, after making sure our conversation would remain private, "I've seen someone. There's a back room here, somebody's hiding in there, looks to be a Matoran.

"Do you feel comfortable making a bit of noise?"

OOC: @Rahisaurus 

[Rahisaurus]

[IC: Siika, Ko-Koro]

Siika leaned over to Mar. "Do I feel comfortable? ... You know you're talking to a Skakdi right?"

Without further warning, she stood up abruptly, her stool clattering to the floor behind her. "THIS DRINK TASTES LIKE MAHI FLUIDS!" she bellowed, before smashing her ceramic tankard on the floor. Just for good measure, she picked up Mar's and smashed that one too. "Now who's gonna serve me something with a PUNCH?" growled the Skakdi, baring her teeth to the room in a wild grin, using her impact vision to punctuate the final word by flipping the nearest table.

For a split second, silence. Then, chaos erupted as half the room's occupants fled for the door, or vaulted out of the windows, and the other half - mostly comprised of drunkards or bashed-up scoundrels who came in here for this exact reason - yelled in reply, beginning an assault of half-full drink cups and food on the roaring Siika. She deliberately left her spear and shield on her back, not wishing to actually injure anyone, as 3 of the 7 remaining patrons ran towards her. She sent a hasty wink in Mar's direction, then turned to face them head on. She grabbed one by the torso with both hands, depositing them firmly onto their back with a thud, winding them. The other two took the opportunity while her hands were occupied to grab her legs, one each. Roaring in mock-anger, she threw herself onto her back, hurling her legs in the air and propelling the two matoran over her head.

She continued to make a target of herself, throwing matoran off her whenever they got a little too proud of themselves, almost like a big muaka plays with her cubs. Hopefully this was enough to keep eyes off of Mar while he did whatever he needed to do.

ooc: @Geardirector

[Geardirector]

IC: Mar (Ko-Koro)

I winced with pain as Siika roared at the top of her lungs. I remembered to mutter something foul under my breath as I grabbed my crossbow. The moment of silence after the table flipped was used well. I knew there would be more noise coming.

I signaled to Karv, directing him to cover the counter and the bartender. The Matoran tending it would hear a growl at the back of the Rahi's throat as it stared him down with teeth bared. He wasn't going anywhere.

Clutching my weapon, I closed my eyes, breathed and focused. All this noise. It had to go somewhere, and I had already figured out where. As Siika threw a pair of Matoran over her with her legs, I could feel the crossbow I was holding start to hum gently, vibrating, almost buzzing with power as I hefted it ready to fire. I slipped past Siika and found the closed door to the back room. The person inside had caught the noise, but didn't react notably. Bar fights were presumably to be expected. A few squeezes of the trigger, and the wooden frame of the door leading to the back splintered apart. That woke him up, and he was on the move, but I could see him the whole way.

I had long since learned to focus on whatever I was fighting with as a totem. To siphon off some of the sound that came towards me and lessen its strength to spare my ears.

The room at the back was larger than I expected, more like a complete living space nestled into a small area right up against the edge of the city wall. I stepped inside, fixing on the Matoran hiding behind an upturned table, holding something in their hand.

"You know I can hear you, right?" I asked, sounding a bit self-satisfied.

"I'm counting on it" they answered, and next thing I knew I staggered back as my sight and my vision were assaulted at once, a loud and blinding flash - Stralix Powder! The power stored in my crossbow dissipated as my focus snapped. Amateur!

I blinked through the spots in my vision as I saw him lunging at me, something long and sharp brandished in his hand. I made a split-second decision and grabbed my pistol. A diskette whirred from the barrel and struck the floor in front of him. More stralix powder ignited as I played it simple and safe, just repulsing all noise away from me and sending it all in his general direction. It was more than enough to halt him, he mimicked me a moment before in staggering backwards and in that moment I reached for my own blade. Now it was gathering ambient noise, as I traded a few parries with him. I was finding my focus again, and I swiped the air ahead of him, a blade of compressed sound launching from the blade to strike him and send him against the table he'd been covering behind moments before. Bladepoint at his neck put him out of commission.

I sent a whistle to Karv to tell him to reach me, and then I sent another message to Siika.

"I've got him"

OOC: @Rahisaurus

Edited March 18 by Geardirector

[Rahisaurus]

[IC: Siika, Ko-Koro]

"I've got him" the voice of Mar said, directly into her ear.

"That was quick" she said, turning her head to where she thought the voice was. Oh. 

Siika groaned and pushed the last very tired matoran off her, this one having been drunkenly persistent in his valiant fight. Some of the others had given up and wandered off, and the rest were out cold, either from the drink, or Siika's "encouragement".

She picked herself off the floor to find a distraught bartender peering at the carnage from over the counter, her eyes flicking from smashed cup, to upturned table, to a pair of awkwardly positioned snoozing matoran in the corner. Siika offered a shrug. "Bunch of loonies, all I did was ask for a drink." she murmured, and waited for the shocked bartender to traipse back into the kitchen, mumbling erratically about the damage. Then she sneaked around the corner and found the door Mar had gone through, entering quietly.

Standing in the doorway, she could see Mar had had his own struggle in here, from the remnants of Stralix powder on the floor and the discarded diskettes. The figure he was pinning against the table seemed a little familiar - the same black paint, the red creeping at the edge of their eyes - but as she got closer, she let out a sigh. "Not the one I ran into." came the gruff remark, her face reflecting her disappointment. "That means there's more than one of them, as we feared."

ooc: @Geardirector

[Geardirector]

IC: Mar (Ko-Koro)

Karv made it in after Siika, taking a seat next to where I was standing and fixing his eyes on the Matoran I held at bladepoint with his throat set to growl at the slightest provocation.

I nodded as Siika confirmed what I had guessed upon getting a good look at him. This was somebody else besides the person we were looking for, but definitely someone connected to them.

"Well, I guess you're just gonna have to tell us where they are, then" I said, directing it at the Matoran who glared back at us with something wild at the edge of his vision.

"It'll be a cold day in Karzahni before I tell you anything" he growled, prompting me to look around us as the stark ice-blue walls and to listen for just a moment to the sound of the wind outside.

"In my business, that's what we call a poor choice of words" I said with something like a wink, approximated with the shutter on my mask's scope.

"I'm sure my partner here can persuade you to see things our way"

OOC: @Rahisaurus