ArchivedLogs:Marry Christmas

Marry Christmas
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Isra, Horus
In Absentia	Christmas Eve, 2019 Some time after gathering soldiers. Later followed by raid. Part of Future Past TP.
Location Upstate New York
Twilight comes early, stealing what little light the dense overcast allowed. The pallid orange glow of the setting sun plays off of the winter-bare trees, casting eerie shadows everywhere. Silence lies heavily on this blighted land, and every motion that stirs the sere fallen leaves sounds deafening to ears grown sensitive. For all that, Isra makes remarkably little sound as she stalks through the brittle undergrowth. She wears a sort of poncho fashioned from a much-abused gray blanket, matching her gray skin in a grayish world. Her wings she keeps folded tight against her back and as much covered by her outer garment as possible. Occasionally she drops down to all fours to examine traces on the ground, sniffing at broken twigs or pieces of trampled ground. Dusk, in much the same fashion, has swathed himself in tatty grey blanket that does not remotely manage to cover his enormous expanse of wing, even wrapped in snug around him as they currently are. In contast to Isra's grey he just looks pallid, corpse-pale, eyes rather red-rimmed in their sunken hollows. He isn't quite as noiseless as Isra, occasional snap-crunch, a broken stick or rustle of leaves under the soles of his beaten black boots. His eyes are focused more on Isra than on the landscape, watching her shifts and sniffs with hungry attention. Rustle-flutter. The wings of a rather /large/ bird flap overhead; a few stray brown-dead leaves are dislodged from the bough they were stubbornly clinging to as talons settle to grip the branch. Horus brings with him many smells, subway-tunnel and sewer, dog and cat and rat and /person/, and in this barren stretch of forest the firm steady beat of /his/ heart is starkly easy to feel. Rapid. Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump. Flutter-/flap/, another rustle brings him flitting down to a bough about chest-height on Isra, head tilting to cast one huge dark eye towards the gargoyle-woman. There is a strap across his chest, though from this angle whatever it is holding /on/ on his back is hard to make out. Though at the moment he's just all a-/fidget/, restless-dancing from talon to talon against the bare branch he perches on. One of Isra's pointed ears flick toward the giant bird's descent, the other swiveling back to aid in localizing the sound. Her eyes cease blinking as they fix on the feathered form. Perhaps she is a touch wary of the sudden arrival, or perhaps keen hunger has made him look appetizing. The scent seems to give her pause, and she sniffs deeply, /suspiciously./ When the bird descends within reach, however, her reservations leave her. She crouches low, powerful legs coiling and then launching her toward him, fangs bared but still disturbingly quiet even in her assault. Dusk doesn't seem to /have/ such reservations even from the beginning. The powerful tug-feel of another beating heart in the stillness of the woods snaps his attention quick and sharp towards Horus. His teeth bare, blanket shed to the ground as he lunges, too. Fangs glinting in the half-light and very keen on sinking /in/ to plump-juicy bird-vein. These twin assaults stir a flutter from the birdman, a rather /chiding/ stream of chattering emerging. Beak snapping, /eyes/ snapping, but there is /very/ abruptly no more Horus on that branch, wings carting him off /behind/ them to a rather higher tree branch. Tucked safely in the middle of a thicker cluster of branches from which he can peer down /suspiciously/ at his considerably larger assailants. Clack-clack-/clack/. His beak snaps towards them again before he fidgets. Shifting his head to pull at the strap around him, resettling his /things/ -- a small pack, a small tablet, both securely fastened around his body. 'what no.' The volume is turned down low but it's still a very familiar robotic-voice. 'Silly silly silly what this is kind of. Driving -- finish -- /rubbish/ swype okay hi this is rubbish stop no no boring booting biting swype is also rubbish. Time out okay biting is not how this scene goes.' The failure of her initial attack does not faze Isra. She sinks her talons into the trunk of the tree the bird has recently vacated and climbs above the level of the tangled underbrush before pushing off of it toward another. From there she hops to a leaning snag and runs up its length on all fours in an attempt to get above the bird's shelter. Then the tablet appears and she halts, suddenly uncertain. As the voice synthesizer begins relaying the torrent of words, she cocks her head, the light of recognition returning to her feral green eyes. "Horus?" Softly, in her lower register, the spoken word seems completely alien to the forest and to her tongue. Dusk's wings push him upwards, a high leap that legs alone would not have managed. Horus's thicker tangle of branches is far too close-set for his giant wingspan to penetrate, though; he latches on to a lower branch in the tree, pulling himself up onto it to snap his wings inward again and start to reach higher up -- -- before he stops, too, a soft growl rumbling in his throat. "...fff." 'Rubbish rubbish rubbish.' Horus's tablet is not given to much inflection but the /look/ he is casting the others is /so/ severe. 'Wrong-wrong-wrong /cut/ okay places. Back back back. Back to your places, try again. Down, down, down, go -- go stand.' His beak stabs indicatively downwards towards where Dusk and Isra had originally been. Isra hesitates momentarily, shaking her head as if to clear it, and finally complies. She climbs down in stages, more awkwardly than she had ascended. At last she settles herself on the ground, hunched against the cold and the adrenaline crash. "Apologies." Her voice is barely more than a rumble in her chest, the intonation less regretful than hollow. Her wings shift uncomfortably beneath the meager cover of her poncho. Dusk is slower to move, his eyes still locked on Horus for a very long moment, growl thrumming and his muscles tensed. But, after a long pause, he drops to the ground, not climbing down but simply thumping to land in a heavy crouch. The growl hasn't settled quite yet, but he picks his blanket back up, rearranging it about his wings and huddling closer to Isra. It's only when both the others are back on the ground that Horus ventures down. Not /quite/ as far down as the first time; this time he stays out of immediate reach, a bit overhead and still behind the relative barriers of a few thicker tree branches in the path between him and the other two. His tail fans out behind him, feathers ruffling up big and puffy. 'You're not the only inhibit-hunter-HUNTERS, you know. I hunted you. Sneaky sneaksome sneakybird sneakybeast hunting --' Here he cuts off, twitching restlessly on his branch again and chiding /himself/ this time (aloud, via tablet): 'No no no also wrong also wing-wring-wrong just say your lines Horus.' A pause. Another /ruffling/ of feathers. A pause for breath, though he doesn't actually need the breath to speak. 'Do you know what day it is?' Isra's tail still sways slowly behind her, and her eyes do not leave Horus as he maneuvers his way down to speak to them again. She thumps the base of one horn against Dusk's shoulder when he comes to her side. Perhaps it's just less cold than enveloping him with a wing. Horus's question earns a blank stare from her. "It is near to the Winter Solstice," she replies carefully, as if attempting to reconstruct the English language as she spoke, "but the cloud cover...I haven't seen the sky properly in a few days." Dusk's brows pull together, puzzled, at first, through Horus's chatter. The small swipe of tongue-tip against chapped lips, over sharp fangs, is decidedly still hungry. The direct question seems to orient him again, though, more focused when he looks up at the bird. His head shakes, hand touching to his forehead and turning down and away. "Cold." 'Coldcold would you light my --' Horus's head bops. Bopbopbop, but then /he/ remembers himself and pulls back sharply to stand a little straighter, a little taller. 'Cold yes yes yes tis the season.' His feathers ruffle again, wings spreading like he's about to take off -- then snapping back in so that he can /caution/ sternly before he does: 'I am going yo-to fly you are going to follow no biting no no no this is not a boring-boring-boring-boring-BITING kind of flying. You follow. No teeth our-or only coal lumps for you.' And with /this/ injunction, /now/ he takes off, leaving his branch to rustle up through the trees, over the tops of the bare branches to soar up above what would be canopy in other seasons. Isra's ears flatten back against her skull, but she makes no reply to Horus's speech. With a quick glance at Dusk, she climbs again to gain the snag, which gives her a clear path to the sky. She adjusts her poncho and stretches out her wings, fanning them a few times experimentally before launching herself into the air. The initial ascent is nearly vertical, and she beats her massive wings hard to get above the skeletal branches before falling in behind Horus. Dusk is slower to take off, this time; his eyes narrow at the cautious not to /eat/ Horus like maybe he is considering it? Maaaybe? His growl has deepened -- though it finally fades away as Isra takes off. He is sluggish-slow, wings stretching and spreading and finally pushing him upward, following the others in a more cautious lift above the trees. Bop-bop-bop-bob. Horus is carefully dipping his beak into his pack, once he is over the trees. Tugging out -- a hat! Pointed and red with a fluffy white brim and fluffy white pompom at its end. Gripping it by its small end, it takes him six tries before he actually gets the hat flipped /up/ onto his head, settled there precariously and half fallen over one eye. Oh well. It will have to do. Off in the distance, by the edge of the treeline at the far-off end of forest, there are figures. A couple large trucks surrounded by a /lot/ of figures. Perhaps an alarming number, given the teams of Sentinels no doubt hunting Dusk and Isra right now. But these figures are not large and robotic -- not uniform at all, really. Winged and clawed and tail'd, blue and purple and green, some with erratic blips of motion, some just clustered together to converse quietly. 'Nery meet meet Newry may swype you're ruining this.' The disgruntled /huff/ Horus makes here dislodges his hat to fall down through the trees to the ground far below. A pause. TRYING AGAIN, hatless but undaunted: 'Marry Christmas. I brought you an army.'