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Akh gets struck thrice, hard. He mitigates the first shot , but the other two leave his chassis encased in ice. Seeings that Sinjin's high-powered pistols are outpacing him, Akh shifts gears. He makes a single precise slash and allows the entropic energy to rip tiny gashes inside Sinjin's body.
He engages his quickstep elixir and flies out and over the railing and then drops down to get out of Sinjin's line of fire.
Akh deflects icy bolts, mitigates one, and his thermal capacitor buffers the bolts further . "That's funny. Maybe sad. I'm not sure. But some good things do last. Not candy though. That's pretty short lived." With that confusing comment, Akh retaliates against Sinjin.
As the second claw slash connects, space ripples around Sinjin, temporarily tearing...
Akh flourishes a light-distorting claw. "Your Akh? I don't remember that part. I just remember you trying to kill us, a lot. Shame about that. Would have been nice to work with you like in the old times." Vents open on Akh's tail as he jets forward. He closes the distance with Sinjin in a flash and slashes.
"A mob? No, but the king has some of his ryphorian guards right there." He points at the screen with his claw "They're probably too scared to act after they just saw that, but they might gather their courage if we attack."
"Yes, looks like that's Sinjin." Akh watches Iru tumbling out of view on the screen with mild trepidation. "He nabbed the big bear and Zeldirn and everything. At least there aren't too many guards, and if we're lucky some of the rhyphorians will fight to free their king - maybe - if we start things. Lets not wait any longer. We have our distractions and this is probably as good as we'll get considering. I'm ready, probably. It'll get worse of course, but if we're there at least we can slice and shoot the problems apart."
Enjoy your trip!
"He can definitely fly, so no pushing him over the railing sadly. If the Conservatory is the whole outside balcony, I think it'll be quite hard to corner him and pin him down. After all he can just zoom away. He won't want to do that if he thinks Eska is still around, but if he gets beaten badly enough he probably won't stay to fight. Hmm." Akh thinks it over. "Yes, we start with the Eska jamboree. Not all of you can fly, so we'll come in through the hedge maze since that'll have the most cover." Akh doesn't like the feel of this revised plan. It seems like it has even more uncertainties and holes than the original one, and thats saying something. He looks through his things but finds nothing that might lure Sinjin into a more disadvantageous spot. He asks Telpi "Is there a way to get live footage of the Conservatory so we can see the current layout of enemies?"
"If we seeded some more sightings of Eska, he'd be forced to send more of his retinue out. It sounds like he's pretty confident. Blowing up his ship at this point might just have him put up his guard." Akh considers the options. "What can you tell us about the Conservatory Telpi? How is it laid out? Can we just collapse it on him?"
"Well, no surprise there. The King was a wimp even when we were visiting." Akh coughs "And no offense really. Better for us if he still doesn't take us seriously after everything we've survived." "So then, the problem is how we get there while making sure we're not walking into a trap. If it was up to me, I'd find some way to deliver heavy explosives to the throne room while he's waiting for his Eska-delivery there. Or create some distraction to pull away what's left of his guard from the throne room before we show up." "And I'm no Guess? but disguises seem like a good idea."
For Akh Extremely accurate (and cute).
"I don't think they have any of the Eskas... at least not yet. They could have gotten Velgo, but we were here instead." Akh ponders out loud "If that's the case, Sinjin's expecting his people to head up to the Conservatory with a captive. Can we use these burner datapads to call him back and tell him a different place. A second ambush spot?" "The other option is we rush on over there, but he's probably expecting something like that."
"I'm not so sure Jaraduk. I think these four came here to get her. Maybe the King just leaked the little he knew of our plan."
Akh sweeps all the bodies inside and then waves Telpi into the apartment as well. "What happened? Something very wrong, probably."
"If you want to run... it's that way, not inside." Akh calls out to the fleeing assassin as he slashes.
He follows by approaching the hole he opened in the wall. He lowers his head to quietly say to Jaraduk "Step on out if you'd like, I'll cover you." before sending an entropic pulse out at blue to dissolve his knife-wielding hand.
Akh extends his long neck past the doorway and calls out "Everything alright in there? Do you need me?" as he fends off a knife. With a quick flash of his claws he rips into green.
Akh mitigates the stab that hit him then shears further into the yellow assassin with his entropic claws.
"Don't run too far Telpi! In case there's more where these came from!" Akh calls out to the fleeing friend.
Akh grumbles silently about the group's enemies not just walking headlong into the rather painstakingly laid trap. He thinks about the enclosed space and the awkwardness of keeping the enemies nicely corralled, and decides to make his own pincer movement. He flies over to the eastern wall , vaporizes it with his entropic glove, and then flies outside to encircle the four foes. "Why bother? We don't care about her." He murmurs to the assassins.
With a new aeon stone circling around his neck, Akh tucks both serums away and looks to the others "I think I'm ready for now. We head to Eska's place and wait for our trap to spring. If everyone does their parts, it won't go entirely wrong... probably. And fighting people is something we're surprisingly good at, so we should be able to handle a hurt, confused and isolated Sinjin."
Nothing else I'm aware of, but maybe I missed something.
Akh sweeps through the market quickly, taking advantage of the misunderstanding among the locals. He grabs only a few items of interest.
Akh scopes out Eska's apartment for the best hiding places and firing angles, hoping to get the jump on Sinjin with a definitive edge before a bunch of tattoos start creating their own problems. He uses his knowledge of the drow and the typical methods the Xun use to confront their targets to estimate Sinjin's approach angle.
He returns to the party to observe the impending clash between guards and bystanders. "What's this about? What do you mean where is Dregor? Its not like he's missing... right? Don't tell me he's gone and blabbed about the whole plan as far as he knows it to the other guy..."
"Well, I hope that'll work Garvagam. I wonder how loyal they are if they take a break and go hunting with you rather than following Sinjin around..." Akh ponders out loud "Well, if they don't come with you, they'll probably just get accidentally blown up somewhere." "Good luck!" He waves a claw to the hobgoblin and returns to the party. "And good luck to us. I wonder what'll go wrong this time? This is definitely the most elaborate plan we've put together yet. And no Brenneri were even involved this time."
"I like that too. Though changing the look of the floors might be more than we can do quickly."
Akh nods knowingly to Velgo's comments regarding Guess?'s transformation before the group leaves "Guess?'s emotional core is steady, solid, locked perpetually on target, so that makes sense. The target is money by the way. I think of it like the hard golden center of an everlasting slobberstopper." He waves a claw goodbye and heads off to plan out the details with the rest of the crew.
"Hmmmmm..." Akh listens to Guess as the goblin goes off "I was thinking that if we were going to enter into the organized crime business, we'd be better off going in ourselves. I saw how the 'family' treats its members. People were constantly looking over their shoulders and wondering if they made the higher ups unhappy." He swings his head morosely "I don't know if I can deal with that now that I've got proper self-preservation reasoning going on in here. Too stressful."
If Akh's mouth could water, it would have begun watering at the thought of a astrozoan-sized marshmallow. He considers trying a lick just in case, but ends up resisting with some difficulty. It wouldn't do to scare off this collaborator, no matter how potentially delicious they may be. "Well, maybe after all this is done, I can become your disciple. A little gene modification never hurt anyone." Akh muses, very certain that gene modification would probably have some nasty side effects, but that he could also handle them when they arrived. "But for now, we have our show to run! Good luck with your part."
Akh is quite happy to hear that there's an expert shapeshifter and illusionist here to make the plan a bit more convincing, but the steep price tag gets him thinking those hologrenades might be just as good. Nevertheless he comments "Nice to meet you of course. You can impersonate two people at once? Is that two people in different locations? If so, how much would it be for you to teach that. Imagine if we could do this entire mission while I have another copy of me here at the bar enjoying some nice laid back snacks? And there's no such thing as NEVER right? Even I would fold for some nice marshmallows." "And yes, Jaraduk is right that we will handle the fighting. But it's not out of the question that there will be some serious danger. Are you okay with at least slipping away from a megalomaniacal drow with magic powers?"
"Mmmhmmm." Akh eyes the hologrenades appreciatively "Imagine a dark alley with an 'Eska' at the end of it and us lying in wait. I like it."
"Hmm?" Akh looks over toward the stage "Lets see it them. As for you, drink all you like for now, but we'll need you in better shape soon. It wouldn't be particularly convincing for all of Sinjin's troops if you were slurring like that when you said you'd be the best crime boss there ever was." He joins Melissa in approaching the stage and picks up clawful of spicy grub poppers along the way. He looks out for anyone wrapping up a show.
"Or we have lookouts that work out which group is the one Sinjin is with and we hit that one and let Mr. Big Bear take care of the rest." Akh ponders "I like the idea Melissa."
"Counting on the size of an elevator to bottleneck his goons?" Akh thinks this sounds a little too optimistic "If he has any kind of self-restraint he'll just have them come down in a few batches. Or up. Or... he could just use some secret magic to store them in a pocket in his jacket and then open it and they all jump out. Considering him, that doesn't sound like a stretch." He scratches goopy insects out of his teeth with a claw "I'd rather he think he needs to split up. Something that you think would make him want to keep all his goons somewhere else. You know of something like that?" "Otherwise that doesn't sound too bad. But surely you're not bad in a fight yourself. With your background and all. Why don't you join us? If Sinjin is as dangerous as Eska says, and she's probably just underestimating him, we could use your help. Plus it proves to anyone that you're strong enough to lead."
"You can't believe so many jobs could go wrong one after another and think it isn't a brenneri plot?" Akh nods, as if this is an obvious conclusion.
Akh thinks over Zeldirn's initial conditions. Keeping Eska safe was a no-brainer. She was a cool magical tattoo artist and definitely just a victim of working for overly attached Drow. Of course, she was probably going to die despite the team's best efforts. That how things tended to go. Still, it couldn't hurt to agree to that part. "We'll keep Eska safe through this as much as we can, but we need you to work with us to make that work. You said offer the soldiers a better deal? Do you think you can do that if any of them make it here? We'll probably be busy dealing with assassins and Sinjin himself." "The other question is, how do we make sure he brings as little as possible with him in terms of his guard? What would make him leave the majority of them behind? You probably know." Akh looms over the drunken Drow. Then, when Zeldirn asserts that he'll take over the crime family and offers the team a place in the network, Akh considers quite carefully. He sips at a Slurm as he thinks. After a minute he says "I think we've bounced between working for different people that all tried to exploit us as much as possible for a while now. Even independent we got tugged around by a probably-evil brenneri and her schemes. Wherever we're going next, I think we're going to want to be entirely in charge of our own destiny. Not that we couldn't do some jobs with you, but I think you'll see soon we're quite good." He doesn't say 'too good to work for a drunken, second rate drow scion' but he does follow with "Not that I'm entirely ruling out your offer, but lets do this now and we can think about partnerships later."
"Wow, that's dreadful. No wonder you're here drinking things that aren't even delicious." Akh swings his head "Sinjin's greatest defeat? Is that Eska getting away? Or is it something else?" "We're hoping you can tell us more about Sinjin and his army of goons. Preferably secret things that we wouldn't be able to find any other way. Things like big weaknesses we'll be able to exploit. Why? Because we're probably going to be engaging in a very poorly considered and likely doomed operation very soon and it would help to get all we can learn." "Of course if you want to join in and help us punch Sinjin in the face, that would be welcome too."
Akh buys the disheveled drow a proper drink before delivering the mention of Sinjin. A proper drink of course being turbolime flavored Slurm with six extra shots of syrup. "Well Zeldirn, we're not the bearers of good news, but at least we're the bearers of Exciting news. You look like someone that enjoys a good time. And we're about to create one. Probably." Akh pokes at the fellow's floating graviton mote with the end of an entropy-tipped claw. "So Sinjin has been trying to get us killed or at least seriously inconvenience us for a while now. We heard its pretty similar for you. Is that the case?" Akh rests his coils along a trio of stools as well as the table and starts popping fluorescent erasers (or something that looks like them) into his mouth.
"Hmmm..." Akh considers the phoenix tattoo with curiosity and a little bit of envy.
"They can fly too?" Akh thinks to some of the ground-bound members of the party and how much trouble they might get into fighting giant flying ink-cats "Then we should pick an ambush location, if we can find one, where they won't be able to fly well or fly far. Shame there isn't a big magic eraser we can use on them." "Well, lets get our other allies in line and then we can work out how to try to lure Sinjin into the right place at the right time. It'll probably end up with his people running amok on the station, but that's the King's problem, so long as we can split Sinjin off." He looks to the others to see if they have more questions.
"Oh, a fair fight would be great. I'd be more worried about Sinjin making it unfair in his favor."
"Oh, I remember the pistol. There were jokes about it that went over my head for a long time. Something about gunning people down. I will spare you the details. I'm not too worried about the wings. They sound wasteful and they're going to make him stand out like a sore thumb." Akh coughs "The phoenix though? That's new. What kind of power up are we talking about? Just something that's going to heal him? Or will it bring him back from the dead like in the vids?" Akh has no good sense for how to subtly craft a post from Eska that will draw just the right amount and kind of attention and leaves that to Guess and Melissa. He instead runs through some more details with Eska to understand exactly the capabilities of the tattoos and how they might be disrupted.
He sends a message back to Telpi "We will go take a look shortly. Thank you."
Akh nods "As for the luring of Sinjin to this moon, we need a way for him to bring less of his retinue and warships along. We've got some ideas for that, but if you have your own thanks to your time working with him, please share." "Otherwise it'll just be about leaking the right information to him so he comes personally to find you."
Akh downs the tea offered in a flash, after which he rolls the teacup around on his prehensile tongue with all the dexterity his defective necrograft can muster. He periodically pauses to comment on Eska's story "The Golden League was my home and owners for a long time before I woke. They're quite picky with their tools. You must have been as good as they said if they weren't willing to give you up. For me I started thinking for myself and then fell into a vat of marshmallow and that was enough for them to deem I was too defective to serve any use. Maybe you should have gradually made your tattoos more and more mediocre so you got out of the limelight." He flips the cup off his tongue and seizes it with a precise click of his claw "But making cool tattoos is something you should be proud of. Whether they were used for murder or not, it sounds like they were amazing." He floats over and gets a handful of sugar cubes that he starts popping one by one into his maw "Anyway. You got away and you're alive. How would you like to also stop worrying about Sinjin coming at some unknown time in the future? That's kind of what we'd also like. And we have a plan to make it happen."
Akh points at his golden body and stage whispers "No, that's pretty fair Guess. I was even built by the Golden League, even if I ended up getting thrown away. If I was Shaieth I would definitely be assuming people would show up to kidnap me in my retirement years." He gives the lashunta a pleased cough at seeing what he perceives as a kindred spirit. "Guess is right though. No kidnapping this time. Even though I guess kidnappers probably would say that too to get you to lower your guard. Hmmm..." "Want to look us up on the infosphere? I'm sure our anti-Sinjin exploits and anti-EJ exploits are pretty well known at this point. You can see who we are and then decide whether Guess' story about what we're trying to do makes any sense. In the meantime I think I'll help myself to some tea. Have any sugar cubes?"
Approaching the Arena, Akh perks up "For fighting a bunch of drow, this sure looks promising." Once in front of Garvagam, Akh realizes he particularly likes the cut of this hobgoblin's jib. He decides he might as well put the group's needs on the table and see if the hobgoblin is interested "Pretty simple. We're in the business of luring a powerful drow crime boss and a whole pile of his goons here to this moon. I know him well enough that I know he won't be a pushover. Plus if anything goes wrong - and it will - there'll probably be one or more warships shooting holes in this nice settlement. We're looking for people that are going make this whole plan come together the way we want. People who like a challenge and probably a fight too. Zeldirn is one of them. You seem like someone who likes a challenge and shooting problems. Want in?" If Garvagam seems reticent to believe the group's skills are up to the task, Akh shows off a little of what he can do by flying through the gym and vaporizing a particularly drow-shaped obstacle in the obstacle course with his entropic claw.
Akh waves to Eska "Maybe we'll see you again to get tattoos! I hope you also have cool removable decals." He turns back to Telpi "Zeldirn, I think. How much more of the tour is there? It would be good to meet more of your friends I think. Can't hurt to know more people before everyone is put into terrible, life threatening danger."
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