While bracing his shield against the snake's body, knowing full well the futility of such act, George drives his sword at the snake, hard, using the tightening of its coils to amplify his thrusting power.
Ouch, only 2 successes.
Once she sees George in trouble, Vivian is thrust into a slight panic, and charges the snake's coiled tail, pulling and stabbing at the gigantic predator's appendage.
George realizes that the snake is closing its coils much faster than he'd guessed. Taking advantage of Vivian's and Thom's frantic distractions, he makes his escape. Vivian and Thom are too hurried to land any serious blows against the snake's hard scales, but at least George is in the clear.
Heart pounding fast, Vivian latches herself onto the end of the snake's tail. Scrambling to keep it between her and the snake's fangs, she can only hope that it will bite itself, rather than her.
George rushes to Vivian's aid, grabbing her around the waist and digging his heels in, trying to contain the madly waving tail of an angry reptile.
Vivian scrambles onto the snake's tail, held steady by George. The snake lunges for her, and she has a split-second to regret this reckless tactic—before she is struck in the face by a skillet. Panicked, Thom lunges, and his spear catches on one of the straps of the bag stuck in its mouth, dislodging it!
Vivian's bag comes tumbling out, knocking Vivian and George off of the snake's tail and onto the ground.
As Thom threatens, Vivian delivers. Slightly stunned from her skillet, she pulls a final blade from her belt and shakes her senses clear. She flings it at the snake while Thom has it distracted, and the knife buries itself into the corner of the predator's eye!
She takes no longer than to verify the hit before grabbing the skillet and scrambling away. Thom's not the target of the snake's rage now... she acutely understands.
George jumps at the snake with renewed vigor and yelling "That's right lass! Just you go!" swinging his sword at the snake's unprotected underbelly and scoring a deep hit.
Thom distracts the snake for a critical moment, and Vivian and George both deliver devastating blows!
Defend
Attack
George, pressing the advantage takes out his two-handed sword ditching the shield and the one hander, deeming to do as much damage as possible, he gives a loud warcry and lunges at the snake, aiming a savage blow at the place that he hurt already in the previous attack.
Darnit, only two successes.
Vivian gets her skillet ready to smack the snake in the mouth when it inevitably lunges forward again to attack.
The snake lets out a shrill hiss as the mice bear down on it. George rushes it head-on, and it turns to face him, to meet his charge—
To George's eyes, a number of things happen almost simultaneously. The snake lunges towards him. Vivian swings her frying pan downwards. Thom attacks with both spear and sword, aiming for the snake's exposed belly. And George, giving a fierce warcry, rushes forward to meet the serpent, swinging his blade in a wide and deadly arc. His sword impacts something as hard as rock. There is a loud CRACK.
George finds himself on the ground. The right side of his face feels like it is being shoved into broken glass, and he can hear Vivian and Thom shouting indistinctly. His vision is strange. Blurry. Painful.
A few seconds ago, George's sword cracked one of the snake's fangs—just as the other grazed bloodily close to his right eye. Only Thom's spear stabbing halfway through the serpent stopped its jaws from clamping down on George and sealing his fate. Fortunately for George, the snake was slow, and the mice were swift. The snake flinched and hesitated as Thom's attack struck home, and a quick smack from Vivian's pan settled the matter: It was time to cut its losses.
Reeling back, the garter snake grabbed the remains of the little kestrel, jerking it clear of the briar and pulling it a short distance away from the path, with some difficulty. Thom and Vivian were in no shape to give chase, fixated on helping their comrade.
George's injury isn't fatal. The eye may even yet be saved. But the garter snake's ordinarily mild venom has already infused the bloody gash.
George raises his paw to his ijured face, feeling the numbness spreading through his body already. Vision in his eye grows dark and blurry and he closes it with some effort.
Well he says, This bloody figures
And collapses to the ground.
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"George!" Vivian rushes forward to her mentors side, throwing the skillet away down the road. Though she's spent well past her limits, she's not yet ready to worry about herself.
The patrol at last reaches the wayward town of Pebblebrook. It isn't an especially large settlement—there are perhaps forty mice at most living here—but nonetheless the guards have the distinctly nervous sensation of being watched as they walk through. Nobody approaches them, or expresses concern over their condition. But the guardmice are definitely being noticed.
"We have to find Rosalee", whispered George. His face hurt, and he couldn't see on his eye.
"I don't know if it is a smart idea to ask after her"
Running out of options, Thom is forced to make quiet contact with a young mouse. He directs the patrol to Rosalee's house, though he warns them, "She's supposed to be crazy. Used to be a guardmouse, they say." It's then that he notices the cloaks the mice are wearing and gives them a suspicious look.
The patrol proceeds to the indicated house along the edge of town. It's more of a shack, really. The windows are shaded, but the door is unlocked.
A foul stench greets the mice as they enter. The interior is a mess. A shelf full of books has been slammed partially away from the wall, and several books litter the floor. A pot of something—possibly stew—lies upended nearby them, quietly rotting away. But this is not the source of the smell.
On the floor, next to a cot, lies the body of Rosalee. A broken teacup is still gripped in one of her paws. From the smell of things, the former guardmouse has been dead for several days now.
George sits down on the bed. Looking at the rotting corpse of a mouse. He bet that she was killed simply because she was a member of the guard. He's seen this before. Hatred was terrible especially when taken too far. His fists involuntarily clench so much that it hurts. He closes the good eye and realizes that a quiet growl escapes his mouth. He begins to hum a nursery rhyme his mother used to sing to him when he was a pinkie. After some time, he begins to sing in a quiet voice. As he sings, he tries to let go of his anger. Slowly, he feels it leaving him, his breathing growing even, his fists unclenching.
Vivian silently watches George wrestle with his anger as she tries very hard to not think about the dead mouse in the room. When Thom breaks the silence, so does she. "Should.. should we...," she starts, faltering. Finally, Vivian points to Rosalee's body but looks away. "What about Rosalee?" Tears well up in the tenderpaw's eyes.
Looking around the shack as George takes a moment to calm down, Vivian is unable to find anything of substance—until she realizes that this is because she's avoiding one particular area. She finds a small book tucked beneath Rosalee's body, still held in the dead mouse's pale paws. It is labeled: Rosalee's Journal.
Vivian grabs some of the herbs around the shack and makes a pot of medicinal tea. She sits in the corner and reads through Rosalee's journal, sipping the mixture and slowly starts to feel better.
While George calms himself down, Thom and Vivian prepare a healing poultice with George's herbs. Later, Thom places it over George's eye, carefully dabbing with a cloth at areas he believes to be infected and gingerly reopening the wound in places that need to be cleaned.
In the end, it still hurts and will remain a scar, but George feels much better. Thom believes that the eye will survive. The mice find a place to rest for the night, perhaps out of town. The bee buzzes impatiently within its prison. George knows that, come morning, some weighty decisions will have to be made.
Vivian reads the journal in quiet. She's not sure what to make of what she reads, but one thing rapidly becomes clear: Rosalee's life was not easy. And her death was most definitely no accident. The former guardmouse has been poisoned.
Belief: All jobs, even small ones, are worth doing right - the Guard's reputation suffers when we give less than our best.
Goal: Learn what motivates mice like Rosalee to retire from the Guard.
Instinct: Whenever I'm tasked to do something, I'll triple-check before considering my work finished.
THOM
Belief: It's not what you fight, it's what you fight for.
Goal: Earn the trust of my new Patrol Leader, George.
Instinct: To prove his worth.
GEORGE
Belief: The mouse guard should protect all mice regardless of status.
Goal: Keep Vivian from getting herself killed and instill some knowledge and experience into her.
Instinct: I will immediately go to the aid of someone in need.
Persona Points: You earn a Persona point if you Accomplished Your Goal. You earn a Persona point if you Played Against a Belief (in a "cool and dramatic fashion" where we could tell it was going against the mouse's values). A Persona point is allotted to the MVP (the mouse who made the most crucial contribution towards the mission), the Workhorse (the mouse who had all the right skills and made all the rolls to keep things moving), and the Embodiment (the mouse who best embodied his or her conditions during the game). You can't be both the Workhorse and the MVP, and there doesn't always have to be an Embodiment award given out.[/ooc]