02-28-2018, 02:35 AM
The bikes drew up outside the barracks. Dozens of them at once pulling to a stop by either side of the wide road. Up on top of the slate-grey building, a stormtrooper recruit crouching by the roof’s edge swallowed nervously. She raised her transmitter to her face and spoke in a harsh whisper, “Command, do you read me? I repeat: Command, do you read? Over.”
A sigh could be heard on the other end of the line, “Yeah Jess, I hear ya.”
Too concerned to berate her fellow stormtrooper on his lack of professionalism for once, the lookout simply ignored the casualness of the response and the laziness in his tone. She kept her voice low, even though she knew there wasn’t much point; her white armour might as well have been bright pink for all the concealment it gave her atop the dark stone of their base; there was no doubt in her mind that the unhurriedly assembling bikers had noticed her already, “Roger. We have an unconfirmed number of potential hostiles inbound. Over.”
“What?” she experienced a moment of slight satisfaction at the sudden concern in his tone, before the guy from the control station deep in the heart of their barracks -- whose name was Mike -- spoke again, “If something serious is going on drop the dumb shit and tell me what’s happening already!”
“Negative, Command. Also, ‘Affirmative’. Uh… to the second bit, that is.” Jess slipped out of her professional tone for a moment to make that clarification, blushing slightly beneath her helmet at her awkward phrasing, “Numerous individuals disembarking from dual-wheeled motorised transports on opposite edges of the street and advancing this way. Parking regulations appear to have been unviolated. All persons concerned apparently outfitted in tanned animal hide garments. They are equipped with a variety of weapons, some even with firearms. Repeat; firearms are present. Requesting authorisation to fall back. Over.”
“Fuckdammit, woman, get a little common sense already and drop the dumb act; you were a hairdresser until last Thursday, I know you can talk normally. Now tell me what’s going on out there...! And yes, get the hell back. You don't gotta ask permission to not get yourself shot, dumbass.” Mike’s voice sounded pretty angry. She wasn’t about to let that guy tell her what to do, though. All her favourite movies about military and special forces personnel showed them talking like this, which clearly meant this was the best way to get across information in a combat situation; it wasn’t her fault the guy they’d put on the comms in command was an ignorant turd.
“Negative.” she repeated, shaking her head even though it was pointless given the voice-only means of communication she was using. Getting to her feet, she began to back away towards the wide trapdoor that would take her down into the comparative safety of the building’s interior.
Blam!
***
“I got him, boss.” growled the six-foot-something bruiser on her right, a moment after they’d all watched the stormtrooper to whom he was referring take a bullet to the brain and trip over backwards in a spray of blood and shards of shattered plastoid.
“Yes, you dolt, I can see that!” the little old woman snapped. Her name was Doreen Withers, and she was one of the Four Claws of the Northside Wolfpack; the direct subordinates of their gang’s esteemed leader, Jarl Fenrir. Since the boss man was so disinclined to actually do any work himself, though, the actual business of managing his crew generally fell to the Claws, which made Doreen and those like her pretty important people around Northside.
Which was what this was all about. These stormtroopers had slain a Claw (admittedly, with the dead one being the only Prime in their group, things could have been worse; he would come back before long, which was more than could be said for any of the other three, should they end up in his situation) and of course, the NSW had a reputation to maintain. Whilst none of them would ever go so far as to claim that they actually liked Shotgun Steve, they had to admit that their gang’s reputation would take quite the hit if everyone started to get the impression that these Imperial dogs could just saunter their shiny, plastic-coated arses right on down here to Tier Five and start killing off the Wolfpack's best people on a whim.
“Alright, brainless oafs!” shrilled the old hag in the black leather jacket, “You all know the plan! Let’s get to it!”
“Yeah!” a few of the well-built, young (well, young compared to her, at least) men and women around her yelled raucously, beginning to jog towards the stormtrooper barracks. After the pavement on the side of the road, there was a concrete courtyard several metres long before one reached the reinforced steel door of the actual building itself. None of the four who'd shouted actually made it more than a couple metres into this yard before stopping and turning to look back at their comrades.
“Uh...” said no less than a dozen others awkwardly, whilst the rest of the crowd simply milled around without uttering a word and waited for someone to give them clearer direction.
“... What are you all waiting around for!? The plan! Get on with the plan!”
“Um… yeah…” a tough leaned down, bending almost double so that he could whisper into her ear, one hand cupped by the side of his mouth, as though to prevent others from picking up on the question he was asking, despite it being blatantly obvious to everyone present, as they were (almost) all thinking the exact same thing, “what was the plan again, boss?”
“The plan!? How could you forget the plan!? It was so simple! The plan was-! The plan was… the. Plan. Was… the plan... was…” Doreen’s voice, so infuriated only moments before, grew remarkably quieter and less assured as she muttered to herself. Eventually, though, she did come to some conclusion, and her eyes flashed triumphantly, a small, smug smirk tugging up her creased skin around the corners of her mouth, “ah, yes, the plan. The plan was to call William as soon as we got here and ask what to do next. Yes, that must have been it. Ignorant cretins, why didn’t you remind me!?”
She swatted ineffectually at the towering slab of muscle, leather and denim standing before her. The man didn’t so much as twitch. ”Sorry boss, I forgot.”
“Hmph.” the hag fished a sleek, black phone out of her jacket pocket; it was one of these shiny, new, expensive contraptions, with all sorts of confounding features like a four-ghh Dataverse connection and a set of blue teeth, apparently. She never normally used it, but as she had completely forgotten what her part of the plan was, she hardly had much choice at this point.
She tapped the screen a few times. This silly thing didn’t even have any proper buttons, it just sensed her finger when it touched the glass, somehow… it was creepy. Nothing much happened for a while, but after a few false starts, the screen turned black and an interesting-looking message in blocky, white text popped up in its centre: ‘Do you wish to perform a factory reset?’
She wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, but she clicked ‘Yes’ anyway. Even if this was the wrong thing, she could just try jabbing more random areas of the screen afterwards. She’d find the actual phone bit eventually.
‘Are you sure?’ showed up on the screen. Frowning slightly, she hit ‘Yes’ again.
‘Are you *really* sure?’ she hit ‘Yes’, scowling now.
‘Do you actually know what a factory reset is?’ once more, she went for ‘Yes’ her lips pursed in annoyance as she pointedly ignored the fact that she did not, in fact, know what a factory reset was at all.
‘Really?’ her screen asked her. ‘Yes’ she told it.
‘And you’re absolutely sure you want to go ahead with it?’ this time, the two button-images beneath the text were labelled ‘Oh, get on with it already!’ and ‘Wait! No! I’ve come to my senses!’. Glaring at the stupid piece of modern tech, which she was sure that that fat bastard William must have intentionally reprogrammed to insult her, Doreen stabbed the former option with one gnarled, twig-like digit.
The screen went black.
“Uh… boss...” came a deep, sonorous voice from behind her, and only then did the shriveled old lady realise that several of her bikers had crowded around her and stared down at the phone whilst she worked. The speaker was a woman with more muscle than most of the men around – which was saying a lot, given her current company – small, dark eyes, weathered, tanned skin and a head shaped like a particularly lumpy potato.
“Yes!? What is it now!?”
“I... uhh... think you just deleted everything on your phone...”
“Huh? Don’t be absurd! Of course I didn’t!” Doreen snapped shrilly, scowling up at the block-headed dolt.
“No, you really did.” another woman replied. This one slimmer and a damn sight younger and prettier, though her crew cut and multiple nose piercings gave her a rough sort of look. Her skin was the hue of dark chocolate and her expression was one of mild disinterest. This one, Doreen even remembered; her name was Vanessa, and she was one of the best damn drivers in the entire NSW, as well as being an excellent mechanic. She was also one of the only four people who had actually announced that they knew what to do when Doreen had told them to follow the plan.
The hag still glared at her, though with significantly less vehemence than she had given the other goon. Her mechanics were her breadwinners, the heart and soul of her personal division of the Northside Wolfpack, so she was rarely as strict with them than with the others.
“Hmph.” she turned her head away after a moment, roughly jamming the now useless phone back in her pocket; with her contacts all wiped, she no longer had any way of reaching anyone… it wasn’t like she could actually be expected to remember phone numbers, after all, “Alright, fine. If I can’t phone anyone then I suppose our only option is to go off and find them, then come back later.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Vanessa give her an incredulous look. William Darrell had insisted that they time this perfectly. Both Doreen’s and his own groups were to lie in wait near their designated locations but not engage their targets until Lana’s group, at her father’s hardware store, had launched their attack. It was to be timed perfectly so that none of the swine would be able to contact their comrades and warn them to flee… so it came as no surprise to the elderly motorcyclist that her engineer found this decision appalling… but what choice did they have?
“Boss, I remember the plan. Me and those three.” she spoke slowly and patiently, and gestured over her shoulder with a thumb, indicating the trio who, like herself, had headed for the barracks without asking for any explanations, “Couldn't you just ask any of us?”
“Oh.” Doreen stared at the young woman blankly for a moment… briefly too surprised to be embarrassed for not having thought of something so simple. Then she coughed into a fist abashedly, averting her eyes once more. “Right. Of course. What was it then?”
“Storm the place. Kill the swine. Head down to the basement where they keep their prisoners locked up and rescue the survivors of Steve’s crew who got themselves captured before.”
“They have prisoners in there?” it was Doreen’s turn to sound incredulous. Normal Imperial procedure was to transfer captives to proper prisons ASAP. The facilities in their barracks and stations were really only holding cells, the likes of which a drunk might be thrown into to cool off overnight. Whilst she was as aware as any of the other Claws that these particular stormtroopers weren’t all that popular with their commanders on Tier One right now, she hadn’t realised that their disagreements were serious enough for them to have not even been able (or, perhaps, ‘willing’) to transfer their prisoners.
“That’s what you told us after your meeting with Will an’ Lana.” Vanessa gave her a noncommittal shrug.
“Oh. Okay, then. Let’s kill these fuckers, boys!” the little old lady shrieked, punching the air enthusiastically. A resounding roar of approval burst forth from the crowd of bikers – both the men and women amongst them, despite her use of a gender-specific pronoun to refer to their entire group – and, as one, they stampeded away from their neatly parked white and grey motorcycles (gotta show off them gang colours!) and towards the barracks.
Doreen was swept along with the crowd, though her short legs and arthritic joints made it a trial to keep up with the horde of much fitter men and women around her. Fortunately, the charge lasted but a few moments, before the mob slammed against the locked steel door.
There was a great pressure all around her, and for a few moments Doreen feared she might be crushed amidst her own subordinates. She soon ran out of patience, though, and snapped her fingers.
Doreen was a gangster with an intense passion for motorbiking… but she had not always been such. In fact, when she had first been summoned to the Omniverse, she had been on the Camelot side of the divide. She was a witch. And even though she now preferred a good helmet to a pointy hat, her skills of old had not abandoned her.
The moment her skeletal digits clicked, several small puffs of greasy, oily, black smoke puffed into the air around her out of nowhere. From each of these little clouds of grime, a dark, dirty raven burst, squawking madly. Hardly pausing for a moment to get their bearings, the summoned familiars began pecking and clawing at everyone in sight who wasn’t a mean and vertically-challenged old crone.
After a loud chorus of cursing and swearing from her crew – along with a whole lot of backing off whilst swatting and flailing at the vile creatures attacking them – had cleared some space around her, Doreen waved her gnarled caricature of a hand out before her, fingers curled and claw-like. Instantly, massive rents tore through the bodies of her creations, as though she had just shredded them with actual talons. A fraction of the briefest of moments later, their forms collapsed, returning to being nothing but tiny, filthy clouds, drifting in the breeze.
“Get out of my way! Get out of my way!” whilst her elbowing and shoving could have scarcely hurt her collection of massive bruisers in the slightest, they parted before her nonetheless, not particularly keen on getting attacked by anything more fearsome than a small bird. Her magic allowed her to call upon practically any animal she could envisage, and to keep with Jarl Fenrir’s ‘werewolf’ theme, she had grown accustomed to making use of wolves whenever possible. Obstructing her path when she was pissed off was a good way to get themselves gnawed on, her frequent associates all tended to learn pretty quickly.
Upon reaching the door, she pressed a palm against the lock, before spitting a word that split the air like thunder. Her people backed off a little further. None of them really knew how much she was actually capable of, outside of the Jarl himself, though occasionally she would give them a little hint by displaying some other minor – or not so minor – spell.
In this case, more of that oily smoke from before leaked out from under her palm, which she held in place for a couple seconds, before jerking back suddenly, as though stung. Despite this reaction, those closest could see that she was completely unscathed… which was more than could be said of the poor door.
Below its handle, the lock had melted away completely, all the way through, leaving a two-inch-wide hole in the thick lump of solid steel, that metal having seemingly been transmuted into some sort of gritty, black ooze, which now dripped down the door, giving off the harsh, acidic stink of some sort of chemical waste.
She grabbed the handle and tugged hard, visibly straining to throw it wide… she managed to budge it by about half an inch before backing off, panting from the effort and shaking her hand a little, “You there! Open this blasted thing!”
The individual she had indicated by jabbing one crooked finger towards – the largest man in her field of vision (which wasn’t all that wide, considering how much bigger than her everyone else here was) – stepped forwards and, with no apparent effort, swung the massive slab of steel aside.
A dark and twisted grin stretched the woman’s withered features, and when she spoke next her voice was much quieter than before, yet filled with a horrid sort of savage glee, “Now, get in there and tear this place apart.”
A sigh could be heard on the other end of the line, “Yeah Jess, I hear ya.”
Too concerned to berate her fellow stormtrooper on his lack of professionalism for once, the lookout simply ignored the casualness of the response and the laziness in his tone. She kept her voice low, even though she knew there wasn’t much point; her white armour might as well have been bright pink for all the concealment it gave her atop the dark stone of their base; there was no doubt in her mind that the unhurriedly assembling bikers had noticed her already, “Roger. We have an unconfirmed number of potential hostiles inbound. Over.”
“What?” she experienced a moment of slight satisfaction at the sudden concern in his tone, before the guy from the control station deep in the heart of their barracks -- whose name was Mike -- spoke again, “If something serious is going on drop the dumb shit and tell me what’s happening already!”
“Negative, Command. Also, ‘Affirmative’. Uh… to the second bit, that is.” Jess slipped out of her professional tone for a moment to make that clarification, blushing slightly beneath her helmet at her awkward phrasing, “Numerous individuals disembarking from dual-wheeled motorised transports on opposite edges of the street and advancing this way. Parking regulations appear to have been unviolated. All persons concerned apparently outfitted in tanned animal hide garments. They are equipped with a variety of weapons, some even with firearms. Repeat; firearms are present. Requesting authorisation to fall back. Over.”
“Fuckdammit, woman, get a little common sense already and drop the dumb act; you were a hairdresser until last Thursday, I know you can talk normally. Now tell me what’s going on out there...! And yes, get the hell back. You don't gotta ask permission to not get yourself shot, dumbass.” Mike’s voice sounded pretty angry. She wasn’t about to let that guy tell her what to do, though. All her favourite movies about military and special forces personnel showed them talking like this, which clearly meant this was the best way to get across information in a combat situation; it wasn’t her fault the guy they’d put on the comms in command was an ignorant turd.
“Negative.” she repeated, shaking her head even though it was pointless given the voice-only means of communication she was using. Getting to her feet, she began to back away towards the wide trapdoor that would take her down into the comparative safety of the building’s interior.
Blam!
***
“I got him, boss.” growled the six-foot-something bruiser on her right, a moment after they’d all watched the stormtrooper to whom he was referring take a bullet to the brain and trip over backwards in a spray of blood and shards of shattered plastoid.
“Yes, you dolt, I can see that!” the little old woman snapped. Her name was Doreen Withers, and she was one of the Four Claws of the Northside Wolfpack; the direct subordinates of their gang’s esteemed leader, Jarl Fenrir. Since the boss man was so disinclined to actually do any work himself, though, the actual business of managing his crew generally fell to the Claws, which made Doreen and those like her pretty important people around Northside.
Which was what this was all about. These stormtroopers had slain a Claw (admittedly, with the dead one being the only Prime in their group, things could have been worse; he would come back before long, which was more than could be said for any of the other three, should they end up in his situation) and of course, the NSW had a reputation to maintain. Whilst none of them would ever go so far as to claim that they actually liked Shotgun Steve, they had to admit that their gang’s reputation would take quite the hit if everyone started to get the impression that these Imperial dogs could just saunter their shiny, plastic-coated arses right on down here to Tier Five and start killing off the Wolfpack's best people on a whim.
“Alright, brainless oafs!” shrilled the old hag in the black leather jacket, “You all know the plan! Let’s get to it!”
“Yeah!” a few of the well-built, young (well, young compared to her, at least) men and women around her yelled raucously, beginning to jog towards the stormtrooper barracks. After the pavement on the side of the road, there was a concrete courtyard several metres long before one reached the reinforced steel door of the actual building itself. None of the four who'd shouted actually made it more than a couple metres into this yard before stopping and turning to look back at their comrades.
“Uh...” said no less than a dozen others awkwardly, whilst the rest of the crowd simply milled around without uttering a word and waited for someone to give them clearer direction.
“... What are you all waiting around for!? The plan! Get on with the plan!”
“Um… yeah…” a tough leaned down, bending almost double so that he could whisper into her ear, one hand cupped by the side of his mouth, as though to prevent others from picking up on the question he was asking, despite it being blatantly obvious to everyone present, as they were (almost) all thinking the exact same thing, “what was the plan again, boss?”
“The plan!? How could you forget the plan!? It was so simple! The plan was-! The plan was… the. Plan. Was… the plan... was…” Doreen’s voice, so infuriated only moments before, grew remarkably quieter and less assured as she muttered to herself. Eventually, though, she did come to some conclusion, and her eyes flashed triumphantly, a small, smug smirk tugging up her creased skin around the corners of her mouth, “ah, yes, the plan. The plan was to call William as soon as we got here and ask what to do next. Yes, that must have been it. Ignorant cretins, why didn’t you remind me!?”
She swatted ineffectually at the towering slab of muscle, leather and denim standing before her. The man didn’t so much as twitch. ”Sorry boss, I forgot.”
“Hmph.” the hag fished a sleek, black phone out of her jacket pocket; it was one of these shiny, new, expensive contraptions, with all sorts of confounding features like a four-ghh Dataverse connection and a set of blue teeth, apparently. She never normally used it, but as she had completely forgotten what her part of the plan was, she hardly had much choice at this point.
She tapped the screen a few times. This silly thing didn’t even have any proper buttons, it just sensed her finger when it touched the glass, somehow… it was creepy. Nothing much happened for a while, but after a few false starts, the screen turned black and an interesting-looking message in blocky, white text popped up in its centre: ‘Do you wish to perform a factory reset?’
She wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, but she clicked ‘Yes’ anyway. Even if this was the wrong thing, she could just try jabbing more random areas of the screen afterwards. She’d find the actual phone bit eventually.
‘Are you sure?’ showed up on the screen. Frowning slightly, she hit ‘Yes’ again.
‘Are you *really* sure?’ she hit ‘Yes’, scowling now.
‘Do you actually know what a factory reset is?’ once more, she went for ‘Yes’ her lips pursed in annoyance as she pointedly ignored the fact that she did not, in fact, know what a factory reset was at all.
‘Really?’ her screen asked her. ‘Yes’ she told it.
‘And you’re absolutely sure you want to go ahead with it?’ this time, the two button-images beneath the text were labelled ‘Oh, get on with it already!’ and ‘Wait! No! I’ve come to my senses!’. Glaring at the stupid piece of modern tech, which she was sure that that fat bastard William must have intentionally reprogrammed to insult her, Doreen stabbed the former option with one gnarled, twig-like digit.
The screen went black.
“Uh… boss...” came a deep, sonorous voice from behind her, and only then did the shriveled old lady realise that several of her bikers had crowded around her and stared down at the phone whilst she worked. The speaker was a woman with more muscle than most of the men around – which was saying a lot, given her current company – small, dark eyes, weathered, tanned skin and a head shaped like a particularly lumpy potato.
“Yes!? What is it now!?”
“I... uhh... think you just deleted everything on your phone...”
“Huh? Don’t be absurd! Of course I didn’t!” Doreen snapped shrilly, scowling up at the block-headed dolt.
“No, you really did.” another woman replied. This one slimmer and a damn sight younger and prettier, though her crew cut and multiple nose piercings gave her a rough sort of look. Her skin was the hue of dark chocolate and her expression was one of mild disinterest. This one, Doreen even remembered; her name was Vanessa, and she was one of the best damn drivers in the entire NSW, as well as being an excellent mechanic. She was also one of the only four people who had actually announced that they knew what to do when Doreen had told them to follow the plan.
The hag still glared at her, though with significantly less vehemence than she had given the other goon. Her mechanics were her breadwinners, the heart and soul of her personal division of the Northside Wolfpack, so she was rarely as strict with them than with the others.
“Hmph.” she turned her head away after a moment, roughly jamming the now useless phone back in her pocket; with her contacts all wiped, she no longer had any way of reaching anyone… it wasn’t like she could actually be expected to remember phone numbers, after all, “Alright, fine. If I can’t phone anyone then I suppose our only option is to go off and find them, then come back later.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Vanessa give her an incredulous look. William Darrell had insisted that they time this perfectly. Both Doreen’s and his own groups were to lie in wait near their designated locations but not engage their targets until Lana’s group, at her father’s hardware store, had launched their attack. It was to be timed perfectly so that none of the swine would be able to contact their comrades and warn them to flee… so it came as no surprise to the elderly motorcyclist that her engineer found this decision appalling… but what choice did they have?
“Boss, I remember the plan. Me and those three.” she spoke slowly and patiently, and gestured over her shoulder with a thumb, indicating the trio who, like herself, had headed for the barracks without asking for any explanations, “Couldn't you just ask any of us?”
“Oh.” Doreen stared at the young woman blankly for a moment… briefly too surprised to be embarrassed for not having thought of something so simple. Then she coughed into a fist abashedly, averting her eyes once more. “Right. Of course. What was it then?”
“Storm the place. Kill the swine. Head down to the basement where they keep their prisoners locked up and rescue the survivors of Steve’s crew who got themselves captured before.”
“They have prisoners in there?” it was Doreen’s turn to sound incredulous. Normal Imperial procedure was to transfer captives to proper prisons ASAP. The facilities in their barracks and stations were really only holding cells, the likes of which a drunk might be thrown into to cool off overnight. Whilst she was as aware as any of the other Claws that these particular stormtroopers weren’t all that popular with their commanders on Tier One right now, she hadn’t realised that their disagreements were serious enough for them to have not even been able (or, perhaps, ‘willing’) to transfer their prisoners.
“That’s what you told us after your meeting with Will an’ Lana.” Vanessa gave her a noncommittal shrug.
“Oh. Okay, then. Let’s kill these fuckers, boys!” the little old lady shrieked, punching the air enthusiastically. A resounding roar of approval burst forth from the crowd of bikers – both the men and women amongst them, despite her use of a gender-specific pronoun to refer to their entire group – and, as one, they stampeded away from their neatly parked white and grey motorcycles (gotta show off them gang colours!) and towards the barracks.
Doreen was swept along with the crowd, though her short legs and arthritic joints made it a trial to keep up with the horde of much fitter men and women around her. Fortunately, the charge lasted but a few moments, before the mob slammed against the locked steel door.
There was a great pressure all around her, and for a few moments Doreen feared she might be crushed amidst her own subordinates. She soon ran out of patience, though, and snapped her fingers.
Doreen was a gangster with an intense passion for motorbiking… but she had not always been such. In fact, when she had first been summoned to the Omniverse, she had been on the Camelot side of the divide. She was a witch. And even though she now preferred a good helmet to a pointy hat, her skills of old had not abandoned her.
The moment her skeletal digits clicked, several small puffs of greasy, oily, black smoke puffed into the air around her out of nowhere. From each of these little clouds of grime, a dark, dirty raven burst, squawking madly. Hardly pausing for a moment to get their bearings, the summoned familiars began pecking and clawing at everyone in sight who wasn’t a mean and vertically-challenged old crone.
After a loud chorus of cursing and swearing from her crew – along with a whole lot of backing off whilst swatting and flailing at the vile creatures attacking them – had cleared some space around her, Doreen waved her gnarled caricature of a hand out before her, fingers curled and claw-like. Instantly, massive rents tore through the bodies of her creations, as though she had just shredded them with actual talons. A fraction of the briefest of moments later, their forms collapsed, returning to being nothing but tiny, filthy clouds, drifting in the breeze.
“Get out of my way! Get out of my way!” whilst her elbowing and shoving could have scarcely hurt her collection of massive bruisers in the slightest, they parted before her nonetheless, not particularly keen on getting attacked by anything more fearsome than a small bird. Her magic allowed her to call upon practically any animal she could envisage, and to keep with Jarl Fenrir’s ‘werewolf’ theme, she had grown accustomed to making use of wolves whenever possible. Obstructing her path when she was pissed off was a good way to get themselves gnawed on, her frequent associates all tended to learn pretty quickly.
Upon reaching the door, she pressed a palm against the lock, before spitting a word that split the air like thunder. Her people backed off a little further. None of them really knew how much she was actually capable of, outside of the Jarl himself, though occasionally she would give them a little hint by displaying some other minor – or not so minor – spell.
In this case, more of that oily smoke from before leaked out from under her palm, which she held in place for a couple seconds, before jerking back suddenly, as though stung. Despite this reaction, those closest could see that she was completely unscathed… which was more than could be said of the poor door.
Below its handle, the lock had melted away completely, all the way through, leaving a two-inch-wide hole in the thick lump of solid steel, that metal having seemingly been transmuted into some sort of gritty, black ooze, which now dripped down the door, giving off the harsh, acidic stink of some sort of chemical waste.
She grabbed the handle and tugged hard, visibly straining to throw it wide… she managed to budge it by about half an inch before backing off, panting from the effort and shaking her hand a little, “You there! Open this blasted thing!”
The individual she had indicated by jabbing one crooked finger towards – the largest man in her field of vision (which wasn’t all that wide, considering how much bigger than her everyone else here was) – stepped forwards and, with no apparent effort, swung the massive slab of steel aside.
A dark and twisted grin stretched the woman’s withered features, and when she spoke next her voice was much quieter than before, yet filled with a horrid sort of savage glee, “Now, get in there and tear this place apart.”
![[Image: Hijiri_Name_Sig.png]](https://image.ibb.co/k1H7Hd/Hijiri_Name_Sig.png)