One other thing wanders into the view of the woman. He's a large green and red dragon-person with large wings and a red fluffy tail. He's currently wearing a flight jacket and goggles with thick pants. The jacket and pants are just bulky enough that they might be armored. He waves. "Hello! Are you from around here? Do you know what...that is?" he asks. He has a distinct Spanish accent.
One other thing wanders into the view of the woman. He's a large green and red dragon-person with large wings and a red fluffy tail. He's currently wearing a flight jacket and goggles with thick pants. The jacket and pants are just bulky enough that they might be armored. He waves. "Hello! Are you from around here? Do you know what...that is?" he asks. He has a distinct Spanish accent.
Today, strapped to this dragon-person's back is a dark-wooded spear a little shorter than he is tall. The end is a brightly gleaming steel triangle tip, of the utmost stereotypical design for the weapon.
It is currently humming a war march into his mind, as it has since it appeared this morning, never deviating.
Felicity doesn't turn off her car's engine even as G'nichi appears from the undergrowth. "No, I'm not from around here. And I don't know what it is, either. I'm... not trying to get any closer to it, really. It's not why I'm here, I hope. Do you know where you are?" He wouldn't be the first person to stumble into the Nexus from an unfortunate world, though Felicity thinks usually those are human, not muscular lizard-people.
Felicity's own clothing is also sufficiently padded to suggest armouring, though it's also recognisable as modern firefighter's gear, so it's primarily insulating and padded to resist blows and combustion, no armour needed. She's also resting a hand on the front passenger seat, as she doesn't know G'nichi and it's better to be safe than sorry especially in Apocalypse Junction.
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Hopefully the floating head(s) aren't the reason Felicity is here. Simply at this distance the contrivance is uncomfortable to see. And that feeling of dread has been getting stronger the closer Felicity has gotten to it, which really isn't encouraging.
Less encouraging still is the sound of screeching, tearing metal as the ring of faces rips itself in half, the ends of each portion wrapping together until now there are two rings of four faces where once there was one ring of eight. One of the daughter faces continues picking at the mostly dissected helicopter whereas the other begins to slowly hover in the general direction of Felicity and her car.
G'Nichi will be able to feel it, too.
That bone deep, stomach churning feeling of wrong the face-ring exudes.
"Yes, I came here to look for people who might be in need of rescuing." He glances at the strange heads. "But I think we will if we stay here any longer. Can I uh, sit in your truck? I can take the back if you don't trust me in the cab. Flying in the dense trees is a bit difficult." G'nichi might also need to sit in the truck bed as he is quite large.
"I came out here looking for Martians. Not their tripods, the red weed that grows near their landing zones. Maybe a sample of the black dust, if I can get it." Although if Felicity found a crashed tripod with a dead Martian inside it, she would probably take a blood sample from it, and perhaps see if she can take part of it off to load in the back of her pickup. "Yeah, get in. Be careful with the cool box, though. It's got biological sample trays in it." Presumably waiting for the red weed or black dust.
Once G'nichi has climbed inside and let her know he's secure, Felicity throws the pickup in reverse and carefully turns around before driving back the way she came. It won't be the most comfortable ride; the flatbed of the lightly used old truck is not designed for seating, and with the spare wheel, toolbox, several bags and the cool box all competing for space. The latter is quite firmly strapped in; Felicity took its safety pretty seriously.
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G'nichi politely sits among Felicity's equipment, trying his best not to get his tail and wings caught on anything. "So the Martians uh. Land here often?" he asks, trying to make conversation despite having absolutely no idea what that is.
"Not so much in the petrified forest, honestly. But yeah, they're around. One of the reasons I picked the forest to look is because sometimes they do land here, and the red weed should really stand out. And it doesn't burn well, so there's still plenty of hiding places. Their heat-rays are pretty nasty." Though also not something that Felicity has to directly worry about.
G'nichi better be holding on quite well, as a desiccated zombie has stumbled out of the trees, a former swimmer wearing swim goggles, a pale green one-piece swimsuit and a blue plastic swimming cap, covered with a lot of white ash that makes her harder to see amongst the dead trees. Her left forearm is covered in severe bite wounds, the hand only loosely attached. Felicity swerves quite violently to get past her, which would rattle her cool box and other supplies if they hadn't been packed so well.
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”Uhuh. I don’t think I’ve seen any of-“
G’nichi spreads his wings to keep his balance, managing to avoid smashing his head on something. ”Any of that. But uh. I’ll tell you if I see any.”
"Wait, hang on. Did you come out here to help people who might be in trouble without doing any research into what trouble they might be in? Because if you were only expecting zombies like that one, you're... more likely to need rescuing as to rescue someone. What would you do if a silver dome on three legs raising it four storeys up came through those forests and shot at us with a beam of invisible heat? Or a genetically engineered dinosaur with steel-ripping claws came bounding out of the forest? Or the Geiger counter I've added to the dash started to click? Or an aeroplane flew overhead and dropped smoke grenades to mark us out for a band of raiders?" Felicity slows down so she can look over her shoulder at G'nichi, an incredulous expression on her face. She quickly turns back to look at the road, however, and slams on the brakes.
Ahead of them, racing down the road, are three beefy motorcycles and a trike, ridden by leather-clad humanoids marked with a skull over a pair of crossed tyre irons. They're being chased by a fossil dinosaur with a long, slender snout and large claws on its forelimbs, wires and pneumatic cables wrapped around its bones with a barrel marked with a circle radiating three rounded triangles lodged in its ribcage providing power. Its steel-capped teeth and claws are spattered with blood, and a speaker hidden in the skull unleashes a robotic roar as the bikers try to escape, occasionally trying to shoot it with handguns or sawn-off shotguns, which fail to do anything.
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"I'd be fine because I'm fireproof, I'd stab it, I'm immune to that too, and I'd smite them, in that order." G'nichi says cheerily "Speaking of, excuse me."
G'nichi leaps off the trailer and flies off in defense of those innocent motorists. It's rather strange looking given how bulky he is, but somehow he doesn't seem to weigh much.
Coming up on the robo-fossil, G'nichi tries the easiest approach for him first. Gas leaks from his nose which ignites like a pilot light and a stream of toxic flames erupts from his mouth at the dinosaur.
Let's see if it's creators thought to protect its mechanical components from overheating. A lot of control boards can't really function once the gold and copper components start to melt.
The fossilised Baryonyx screams as the fires wash over the ancient bones, a noise sounding suspiciously like a digitally-altered peacock's cry. The wiring starts to glow, its plastic covers melting and burning away, and it lowers its head to bite at the draconic hero's wings with its vicious, steel-plated teeth. In life, the theropod was piscivorous, and its teeth are small, sharp and pointed backwards; getting bitten would not be pleasant.
The riders turn around as G'nichi swoops past them, and come to a stop not far from Felicity's truck as they stay to watch. One gets off her motorcycle, but doesn't intervene yet; she's not fireproof, for one rather major reason.
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G'nichi flaps as hard as he can to get himself up and out of the fossil's bite range. It's difficult to do while also trying to breathe fire at something. He gives the beast one more good gout of fire before his fuel reserve runs dry. It's a scratchy feeling at the base of his neck that lets him know.
With its circuitry suitably melted and its mouth wide open, G'nichi settles for a basic plan B: he throws his spear in the hopes that there's something important mounted in the head.
The robotic dinosaur's slowing as the wires melt, and rears back as G'nichi flaps upwards to follow him with its gaze, opening its mouth wide. The spear plunges into its mouth, along its neck, and lodges into the steel barrel in the ribcage, which promptly explodes as the spear provides a vent for the now-super-heated radioactive waste stored within. Shards of fossilised bone, burning grey-white radioactive lead, and pieces of steel and titanium are propelled by the blast, spreading more of the FOOF-fire across the tarmac as most of the skeleton collapses.
Getting the spear back right now might be tricky; it's in the barrel, surrounded by chemical fires, and the tip is soaking in molten lead and uranium, both of which are burning.
Felicity stops the bikers getting too close, and moves everyone upwind of the burning radioactive dinosaur. "You got lucky we came along. Could you deal with it yourselves?" "No, but we weren't going full speed. There's a refugee convoy a couple miles away, we got 'em to stay still and then tried to lure it away. We were going to make sure it was a long way off before speeding up and escaping, looping back 'round to meet up with the guys we left with 'em." The biker smiles, happy it all worked out, until Felicity shakes her head. "Someone's built a log palisade across the road just over the next rise. The crash barriers are still intact, and the logs didn't come from next to the road- the trees are still pretty dense there. You'd have been trapped with nowhere to go, and if you didn't crash into it, that dinosaur would still have caught up. " That makes the bikers stop and think.
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G'nichi makes a hasty retreat from the dinosaur. He had been trying to avoid creating an even greater biohazard but oh well. You miss sometimes.
His breath also probably isn't FOOF as he's definitely breathing out more than a few molecules of gas. "Well, it's scrap now, so it's just a lesson in planning your escape routes. Sometimes Bahamut sends His faithful where they need to be. All's well that ends well, yes?" G'nichi adds cheerily, recalling his spear which thankfully leaves the radioactive burning slime it was covered in behind.
In this case, missing would have prevented the explosion.
"It was going to attack refugees. We didn't have a lot of time to plan. Besides, there wasn't a barricade there last time we went this way. Not many people live here, and most of those don't for long. This area's a bit more fluid than most without people anchoring it with ideas on what's where, y'know?" It's why the motorway leads out eventually; enough people believe it's going away from danger that it actually eventually does. "A pity about it being scrap. Who gets such a complete Baryonyx fossil and then goes and weaponises it so crudely? That's... truly bizarre." Felicity at least managed to identify the dinosaur, and now the fire's burning itself out, so it should be safe to move on soon.
Behind them, the zombie swimmer appears, stumbling towards the group and raising her arm. One of the bikers pulls a rifle from a holster on their bike and kneels next to the bike, using their vehicle to brace the longarm as they line up a shot and kills it again. The rifle has a silencer, so whilst loud it shouldn't be enough to attract any more zombies- at least, no zombies that hadn't already heard the engines.
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G'nichi stops to give the biker-sniper a thumbs-up. "I suppose that is a valid question. Why bother weaponizing a fossil? A simple metal frame with a similar shape would probably have done just as well. The wires keeping the bones together can't have been that sturdy."
It sounds like a lot more effort than its worth.
"Yeah, and if you really do need or want to use bones, kill a Deathclaw and use those. It's nearly as big, far easier to find and just as intimidating. Although killing it might prove difficult." Earl should maybe use deathclaws more.
The fire's gone out now, and the ruins are starting to cool. The metal's solidifying, and the asphalt has set after melting from the heat, leading to some of the bones being partly submerged in the road. "Might be safe to go past now, go check on our mates and the refugees. You guys wanna come?" "Well, I came out here to try and find some Martian weed, the red stuff. I'd like to grow some for my scientific enquiries. But, well, I can't go that way because of the palisade, so... I'm up for it." Felicity will go and grab the crate of glass bottles, moving it off the passenger's seat of her pickup so G'nichi can sit in the cab if he wants to.
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”I was just here to do a rescue or two. Sure.”
G’nichi has slowly gotten into the habit of shrugging with his wings.
He’s happy to take the passenger seat, though it’s likely a bit of a tight squeeze. ”Sorry. Xeni made me rather large.” he adds sheepishly as he pulls his wings tight to keep them out of Felicity’s side of the cab.
"Well, you've made one rescue." Felicity takes one of the bottles out of the crate and puts it in the glovebox, next to a flaregun, an emergency hammer, an electric torch and a small medical box. The crate itself is put in the flatbed, and fastened securely down. There's no other weaponry actually visible either on Felicity or in the car. "It's fine. I mean, you can sit in the back if you'd rather, it's just a bit awkward for talking, y'know?"
Felicity doesn't mind the squeeze, particularly since it's unlikely G'nichi will try anything. Then she'll start her truck up and follow the bikers around the smouldering dinosaur wreckage to where the refugees have stopped.
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"Oh no, it's fine. I'm fine. I'm sure it won't be that long of a drive anyway."
The drive is actually a little uncomfortable for G'nichi due to having to squeeze his wings against the seat, but if he wraps them around himself it isn't too bad. "So you make research trips here often?"
"No, not really. This is my first, honestly. Usually I buy samples from... well, the Road Pirates are one of my providers." Felicity gestures at the bikers ahead, whose club patch is quite visible from this angle. "Usually they source me triffids, but I've managed to plant some and even germinate them, which was tricky. Most triffid seeds are infertile. The problem now is that I don't know how the Martian weed propagates, if it has seeds or spores or if I could take a cutting. And the Martians primarily use heat-rays, which are pretty nasty weapons and there's not a lot the bikers can do about them- especially as they aren't lasers or anything like that. It's just heat, visible as a heat shimmer if you're lucky. I don't burn, so I decided it's safer for me to do it than it would be for anyone else."
As they drive along, the stone trees on either side of the road thin out and occasionally a wreck appears on the motorway. Often the cars are rusty, burnt-out hulks, but not all of them. The refugee convoy itself is parked along the side of the road near where a large trail of devastation leaves the trees, presumably where the robo-dinosaur emerged. There's four vehicles in the convoy, an ice-cream van in the lead, a dark blue hatchback with a horsebox hooked to the back of it, an ambulance, a police car pulling a caravan, and at the back a builder's lorry towing a small trailer with a digger in it. There's also three more motorcycles parked nearby, although really only one is actually a bike; one's a Dynasphere monowheel and the other is motorbike-shaped but it has mechanical legs.
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"Well, being a dragon means I'm mostly fire-proof. Otherwise my flames would have scorched my own tongue. If you get any hints during the trip we can check it out. I don't think my weaponry would handle a large vehicle though. This day's weapon is just a normal spear. Fine by me, but it can't go through reinforced armor particularly well."
He'll have left the spear in the back. G'nichi will take normal weapons over messes like the cursed katana any day.
"I'm going to stop and ask these guys some questions. Usually refugees and such who flee a world bring some of the threats of that world with them, in the Junction at least. So there might be something nearby I can take samples of for my research." But also perhaps there isn't, if it's just zombies or something. So Felicity brings her pickup in behind the bikers as they join their compatriots in the convoy.
The refugees don't have any guns visible, though the bikers do; the bikers are also notable as they're not all human, unlike the refugees. One of the bikers appears human, but he's got horns, whilst another is a dwarf currently fixing their legged bike thing. (Another of the bikers is Aizkora, though G'nichi doesn't know her and she wasn't needed to jump in against the dino-fossil.)
The refugees consist of six adults and three children, as well as an alpaca that is currently grazing near the edge of the road whilst a teenage girl holds its lead. The refugees are a bit wary of the bikers, visible in how they keep glancing at them (especially the guy with horns) and all carry weapons. One of the bikers, a human woman with a President badge on her jacket, is talking to a man wearing army surplus gear and hiking boots, with a hefty and oak table leg resting on his shoulder.
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G'nichi mentally prepares himself and goes to speak to the children. He is eternally popular with children. Mostly because lots of kids like dragons and/or big fluffy tails. "My name is G'nichi. Are you all okay? It looks like there was quite the scare back there." he asks them gently.
Including the teenager holding the alpaca, the children are a six-year-old boy wearing a green dinosaur onesie and a thirteen-year-old girl wearing a pair of jeans, a white blouse and a plastic cagoule and a nine-year-old boy wearing most of a red football kit. The three children all look at G'nichi as he approaches, and... it should be pretty clear quite quickly they've never seen a non-human before. The three children look different enough they are most likely not related... And none of the adults look exceptionally similar, either.
The first to speak is the six-year-old. "Don't touch, I'm 'lergic." "He means he's an allergen. You touch him, you'll get an allergic reaction. He got really screwed by NASA. Yeah, it was quite scary. Had to keep an eye on these munchkins, too." The girl doesn't explain why the dinosaur lad was screwed by NASA, or what that even means. "I weren't scared. And we gotta introduce ourselves! I'm Harry, that's Michelle, and the dinosaur's Tyrannosaurus, but really he's called Fred. G'nichi is a funny name. Where're you from?"
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"I don't think humans and qaglins have the same allergic reactions, but we'll play it safe." G'nichi winks. He has no idea what a NASA is. "I'm from the big city of Inside, which is a few hours away. I imagine the bikers were trying to take you there or Riverside"
"And it's got people? They aren't all dead and walking from the asteroid's space dust? The biker guys only got here twenty minutes ago, they aren't taking us anywhere. Just leading off that bonkers dino thing." Michelle sounds a little sceptical of that, but she's never even heard of qaglins before. "What's a qaglin? I thought you were like horns, someone who got physical mutations when the sky went funny colours and nearly everyone died." Harry gestures to the horned biker, who is leaning on his bike and reading a copy of Nikola Tesla and You.
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"Qaglin. Part dragon, part qilin." He decides not to try posing and add "all hero!" which he thinks about often but so far has never worked up the nerve to try saying. "I assure you that I am quite naturally like this. Um. Mostly. That's a long story you don't need to worry about."
It's certainly his natural form NOW. It's complicated.
"You didn't answer my question. It's another dead city, isn't it? Like Manchester and Lancaster and all the others." The girl sighs and turns away, watching the alpaca whilst it grazes.
The two boys are a bit more interested, however. "I like dragons. They're cool. Dunno qilins, though. Less cool than dinosaurs, I reckon. Dinosaurs are awesome, even when they're hooked to barrels and try to eat you." "We got plenty of worries already, y'know. Especially if Michelle's right and that city is dead. Never heard of Inside, but I'd never heard of most the places we've been since the asteroid blew up." If it didn't have a football team, Harry was not interested in it.
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