Dafydd hears the shots, then takes off after Helena, gun in hand.
Khaled steps into the back office and snaps his wrist, sending his whip twirling across the chamber and knocking the pistol out of the hand of the nearest assailant. In return he charges forward, pulling a hatchet from below his coat, but not before the other assailant snaps off a shot at Khaled - though no bullet seems to launch.
-
-
The two gunmen in the front room split their efforts, with one shooting at John and the other firing on Helena after she enters, though both shots go wide.
Dafydd thunders up the stairs behind Helena, hit pistol at the ready.
On the ground floor, an assailant comes from the back room, and seeing Eva, snaps off a shot, though seems unprepared for the narrow confines and puts a bullet in the wall.
Eva looks back at Billie. "You would know more than me - you were invited, whereas I saw a vision. I am -" The gunfire upstairs cuts her off.
"I would guess it's the 'blood and death' I foresaw. Are you coming?"
Eva hears the gunshot down the hallway and turns back to see her attacker. She runs down the hallway, and two-handed swings her cane like a club
Khaled screams out when the hatchet bypasses his defenses and crashes into his shoulder. ARGHH!!
You're not making is easy to become friends. In his periphery, he sees the other man's misfortune and thanks his lucky stars and the few gods of 'luck' that came to mind.
So, let's get properly acquainted. Shall we dance? His whip coils and writhes, lashing out to tangle the hatchet-man's legs. He then follows up with a kukri strike across to the man's shoulder... and takes a step back, out of the room.
John hears the bullets whistling past him and old instincts kick in. His pistol is up and firing at the man in the far corner.
Eva runs forward and strikes the gunman soundly with her cane, a resounding crack echoing as bone breaks beneath the blow.
Upstairs, John levels his pistol on the assailant in the far corner and snaps off a shot, wounding him.
Khaled, having just suffered a winging gunshot, snaps his whip to wrap his combatant's ankles, but just as it starts to close, it gets tangled in the legs of the table. Lounging forward, Khaled still tried to strike him with his dagger, but had been anticipating a fallen adversary and swings too low.
Billie knows the sensible course of action is to be on her way home, probably with a stop off at a phone box to call the police. She is also annoyed, bleeding into angry, coupled with curiosity. Billie is far less concerned about a possible abduction plot. But she still doesn't know why she was pulled into so much madness.
She stalks into the murder house while taking the Walther from her coat pocket. Since the strange woman from outside is between Billie and the man attacking her (and now vive versa), Billie goes up a few stairs until she is above both combatants and able to aim her weapon directly on the man. She holds the small pistol with a two-handed grip like she was taught by Andrew and calls out to the man.
"Drop your weapon and step back or I will shoot!"
In the room Helena's handgun came up fast and pointed at the one across the table at one of the men who had shoot at her.
"Drop your weapons!! We haz you zurrounded!!"
Steel was in her eyes. She had always wanted to say these lines, just like in the movies with Mr Jimmy Cagney.
Then coldly she shot at him to make her point.
There was no doubt that Helena was a daily shot. As she aimed for the shoulder that was holding the gun.
"Ze next one will go throw your head, Zo drop Zem!!"
She said coldly leveling her luger at his skull
Upstairs Helena draws down on the assailant opposite her, and offering her threatening words, fires her pistol, striking him in the shoulder.
Dafydd had reached the top of stairs, but delayed, seemingly unsure of his next action.
Billie rushes up the stairs and turns her pistol down on the man fighting Eva, offering him a chance to withdraw… and he starts to step back, before snapping his pistol up to fire at her. She discharges her pistol, and it glances across his shoulder.
In response his figure squeezes the trigger, firing back at her, but he was not prepared for the higher attacker.
Upstairs in the back office, Khaled’s primary foe closes on him again, attacking with his hatchet. The swing in brutal, Khaled barely manages to dodge the blow.
The other man in the same room drops his jammed pistol, grabs a bag off the counter next to him, and turns to the back window, pulling it open.
In the front room, the firefight continues. The man just shot by Helena looks at her and then the wounded man on the couch. Turning his pistol down, he fires at the prone man, who cries out in pain as the bullet strikes him in the chest. As he fires, he withdraws across the room, toward his ally by the other door.
The final gunman snaps a shot at Helena, her having moved into the room and posing a more immediate threat, but fails to hit her. He steps back, and throws the door open into the back office.
Khaled (46): -14 [@ 32]
Assailant #1 (?): -10
Assailant #2 (?): -5
Assailant #3 (?):
Assailant #4 (?):
Assailant #5 (?): -6, -2
Eva looks up toward Billie briefly, "Seems he doubted your resolve."
Stepping forward, Eva once again swings the head of her cane two-handed at the assailant, more brutally than before.
John takes aim at the one he hit and fires off a shot. He then moves into the room crouching behind a small table.
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Dodging the hatchet as it came dangerously close, One going out the back window! Khaled shouts.
Then in a lower tone, If you don't mind... I'll try again. Ready? Once more, the whip coils and writhes, lashing out to tangle the assailant's legs. Khaled then follows up with his kukri across to the man's shoulder.
If at first you don't...
Eva strikes her assailant again, ribs cracking under the aggressive swing. He stumbles, but is still standing.
John fires another shot at the gunman by the door, but strikes the door itself rather than the man. He then dives behind the coffee table in front of the couch.
Upstairs short pulls his whip, snapping it back around the ankles of his attacker. The coil wraps him well, and Khaled pulls his feet out from under him. As he falls, Khaled swings his heavy curved dagger, but he misjudged the doorway and the blade embeds in the frame.
Billie flinched the first time she pulled the trigger. She didn't want to shoot. She really did not expect the man to do anything other than comply with her demand.
What kind of person acts like this with a gun pointed right at them?
Now, for the first time in her life, Billie has been shot at. She might have peed just a little tiny bit when that happened.
When the woman below speaks to her, Billie glances her way for a moment with eyes wide as saucers before looking back and shooting at the man again.
As soon as the shot is off, Billie goes down flat against the stairs and starts practically belly-crawling farther up them.
Dafydd tries to make sense of the chaos echoing through the house. In the end, he decides the man in front of him is as good a target as any, and brings up his Luger.
As they ran from her she ducked down behind the table and where the professor was, gun in hand still, just in case they came back and checked the Professor wounds.
"I haz a wounded man here!"
Her gun never wavering from point at the two asalans now running to the back room.
Billie’s second shot comes at a steep, downward angle and strikes the man at the collar of his jacket. He staggers for a moment before a spurt of blood comes out of the wound on his neck - he coughs weakly, then stumbled and collapses, sliding down the wall.
Upstairs, Dafydd leans into the doorway next to Khaled and catching the assailant offguard, shoots him at short range, a resounding cry of pain echoing from his mouth.
At the front of the second floor, Helena kneels down beside the wounded and now unconscious man. It takes a moment, but she recognizes her old colleague from so many years past. My, how he has aged. You use his clothes and a nearby pillow to slow his wounds, which look grievous. He is alive, but barely hanging on.
The pair of men at the double doors eye John, Helena and the professor. One notch to the other and quickly says something to his colleague. As the other snaps off a shot at John before running through the door, he pulls a glass bottle from a pocket and throws it against bookshelf nearby, causing flames to erupt.
”Go. These fangs will scorch.”
At the doorway to the back room, the wounded man stands up and swings his hatchet at Khaled.
At the back of the room, the remaining man can be seen climbing out the window, and jumping down.
Khaled (46): -14 [@ 32]
Assailant #1 (?): -10
Assailant #2 (?): -5
Assailant #3 (?): -11
Assailant #4 (?): (outside)
Assailant #5 (?): -6, -2, -8, -6 = unc
Feisty...
Khaled pulls his blade from the door frame and tries to lock the hatchet and twist it away from his attacker.
John seems distracted by the flames and misses his shot. He takes a quick look around for any source of water.
Eva looks down at the fallen man before her. After a moment of consideration, she turns back toward the double doors behind her. Stepping over she pushes the near one open, and steps within. She leads out an audible sigh then kneels beside the body on the ground.
"Looks like Ankou and Donn have already walked these halls, the path to the ancestors has begun. What devilry drives this madness?"
At the top of the stairs, Khaled successfully disarms his opponent, tossing his hatchet to the side.
John snaps off another shot at his counterpart, with the flames and changing scenario clearly throw his aim off.
Ava opens the double doors and steps into the first floor drawing room, coming face-to-face with what was likely the first victim of this melee.
The body of the man lying before you is covered in blood. A single large gash runs from his upper left shoulder and comes out his lower right abdomen. The man was likely in his late twenties or early thirties, a decent physical stock, and his clothing suggests something of a scholarly nature.
The room itself has really been haphazardly searched, with things thrown off shelves and furniture upended.
The old man was stable so she looked up and saw the one in the doorway worries he is going to come back. She snaps a shot off at to keep him back.
"Shaiser!"
She got angry with herself for being a bit too good with a gun, as she hits him.
Two of the men who came in from outside are brawling with another man who was probably already inside the house. Billie wants no part of that mess, and she's not going to be able to skirt around it. She hazards a peek over the side of the stairs where she sees the man who shot at her slumped unmoving against the wall. The woman who was fighting with him is nowhere to be seen.
Billie reverses course, crawling back out of arm's reach of the men at the top before standing and scurrying back down the stairs. Once on the landing below, she notices the doors to another room are now open, and the very odd woman from outside is already standing over another body. Obviously the woman is extremely dangerous if she has incapacitated the first man in the hall, and now another in the room, in the time it took Billie to go up and down the stairs. It never occurs to Billie that her second pistol shot might possibly have struck true.
It's tempting for Billie to exit stage right back out into the night and drive straight home, again almost certainly with a stop to place a call to the police. But, she still doesn't know what the cause for the violence in the house is, or why she was summoned there. Her best assessment is there are two groups, for lack of better terms the "outies" and the "innies". By default, Billie is an outie due to entering the house. The situation doesn't seem to be that of a simple robbery, at least not as described in the morning papers. It seems to her more like an assault on the house. But everyone who she saw arriving was casually walking up and milling around as new people filtered in, not how she'd plan a surprise raid. Maybe street gang warfare? But all the outies at least seem rather old for that kind of roughness.
Billie decides to try the woman again. She seemed to know something about Billie, and hadn't cracked her skull open with the her cane when she had the opportunity earlier.
Keeping her pistol ready, but with the barrel lowered toward the floor, Billie asks again "What in the blazes is happening here?"
I'm going to move past you, now. Try something, he'll shoot and I'll cut you. Choose life.
Khaled attempts to move beyond the man and towards the window.
Helena raises her pistol and snaps a shot off at the aggressor standing in the doorway. Whether a touch of luck or a mark of her skill, the bullet struck the man in the throat as he turned his head to duck, and the sound of bone shattering as he fell backwards through the doorway.
Despite being nearly overwhelmed with the insanity of the situation, your analytical mind kicks in. The woman is kneeling over the body, seemingly examining it. She is holding a cane, but the body has a massive slashing wound across it, clearly from a heavy blade. There's no way she could have done that with her current implement. And the pool of blood underneath the body suggests it has been there for some time.
At the top of the stairs, the man in the doorway sneers at Khaled's words as you try to push forward. "The viper's bite take you." he pulls a dagger from his belt and slashes it into khaled's belly.
The man at the window doesn't even look back, he leaps out following his ally.
Khaled (46): -14, -4 [@ 28]
Assailant #1 (?): -10, -20 = unc
Assailant #2 (?): -5 (outside)
Assailant #3 (?): -11
Assailant #4 (?): (outside)
Assailant #5 (?): -6, -2, -8, -6 = unc
Khaled is impressed but, getting impatient.
Perhaps I'm being too nice?
This is getting out of hand. Needs must when the Devil drives, I suppose. Dafydd thinks, reaching out for something he doesn't yet understand himself. In an instant, an ancient sword is in his hand. "You first, chum." Dafydd says, the blade in his hand flashing out.
Greetings, young one. What took you so long? Asks the ancient voice in his head.
Eva kneels over the dead man in the first floor parlor. She pulls a black silk kerchief from a pocket and places it over the man's face, then makes the sign of the cross before her.
Rising, she looks up at Billie standing in the door, a slightly puzzled look on her face. Then in a rather matter-of-fact manner, she answers:
"Serpents hunt for the broken key that leads to eternity. And in doing so, lay deep their fangs into those who unwittingly found it."
Looking from Billie's face down to the pistol in her hand,
"You're quite good with that - nice work out there."
The strange woman is definitely strange and speaking in riddles. She does not seem to be acting out of malice, but rather concern, and her action in covering the dead man's face seems to be compassion or sorrow.
John looks around for anything that can be used to put out the fire quickly. He then takes a shot at the man in the doorway.