(Open to All) Lara Croft and the Valkyr, Key to Everything

[Lara Croft]

Lara landed on her feet in her chosen destination but this place looked a little different than she had pictured, there was no one around or at least no one that was alive. At a first glance Lara could tell that surrounding her were very early colonial ruins, but there was something weird about them. They seemed to be in good positions, in fact they were pristine but that wasn't possible. Everything looked like it was period, like everyone had just literally dropped everything and left and things were left frozen in some sort of stasis only to be wondered upon by her.

A creaking noise sounded behind her and she turned to see that a boy with a ghostly complexion was hanging up a shirt on a clothes line before he turned to pick up some sort of metal object. Lara quirked a brow and watched them smoothly pick it up, and then in a blink of the eye they were gone. The Croft furrowed her brows in confusion and then out of nowhere the boy appeared in front of her, swinging down the object. It was a metal club, damn it!

Her hand rose up to grab onto their arm, the arm felt weird, it didn't feel like it was alive. The flesh was extra squishy and it was almost translucent. Lara had never seen anything quite like this but little did the young woman know it was about to get a lot worse. She felt her fingers go through the flesh and pulled back in surprise before watching maggots worm out of the skin, in response to the stench her nostrils flared. Lara gagged and took her climbing axe in her free hand, swinging at the limb and severing it. Unfortunately they simple regrew the limb, and Lara grot her teeth as she dropped the limb and grabbed an arrow from her quill, she thrust it up into the inhuman brat's chin and listened to it beep twice, a green LED light blinking in synch and turning red in one last beep as the arrow's incendiary tip combusted and caught their head a flame.

Croft frowned as the now engulfed figure rushed towards her, the woman's feet pushed off of the ground and she hurtled over them in a near inhuman backflip, landing flawlessly and promptly placing her axe back in its place to activate her retractable compound bow. Lara notched an explosive arrow and fired it into the back of the creature, smirking as they were blown to pieces. That's when it hit her, this was Roanoke... Or that's what a painted sign as where a pier would have been said. It was ni e she had lessons in Old English.

"Roanoke, eh? Here I come Valkyr. The Key to Everything should be fun to get." Lara hoisted her bow around her left shoulder and began to look around for anything that would resemble the place that had been missing from the world so long. The best she could guess was that some supernatural catastrophe took place, all the citizens were turned into some weird type of monster, and that the town was transported to an otherworldly alternate dimension. Just like her... Ya'know, aside from the being turned into a monster. I mean, she had to kill that kid for a reason right? Plus he didn't exactly count as human so that mattered not.

Lara's gloved hand came across a lever and accidentally pulled it, and low and behold absolutely nothing happened except for a bloody bell ringing. A bell! Wait, church bells? Her head turned and she noticed that at the center of the settlement was a church, and of course around that church were more of those things. Lara sighed, never one to give up a challenge she held up her bow and fired an explosive arrow just as one of those wraith-like zombie creatures appeared in front of her and was hit by it, she was thrown back by the explosion and grunted before rising up and readying another arrow. If only she had a crew, that'd be amazing to have pop up right now...

((I used Combat Axe and Compound Bow with Fire Arrow and Explosive Arrow in this))

[Tearen Wover]

Leviathan cruised through the vacant desert streets at blistering speed, her black, bullet shaped skybike letting out a constant, shrill whine as its engines pushed it through the air. Behemoth had begrudgingly let the girl journey away from the Vasty Deep in order to scout out these rumored ruins for any potentially useful knickknacks. Besides, now that she had everything she needed to be a hardcore Omniverse secondary, she was eager to get herself into trouble.

The sun, high overhead, felt good on Leviathan's wind-whipped skin as she rounded a corner at top speed, clipping a...hitching post or something, who the fuck even knew. This entire place was like...old timey or some shit. Whatever. As long as there was stuff worth a-lootin', Leviathan would come a-shootin'. Oh, there were also zombies or something walking around. She had already introduces several to the front bumper of her sky bike, and they always seemed very eager to say hello. It was a good thing she had brought plenty of ammunition with her, or else this might actually have ended up being kinda dangerous. As she cruised around the streets looking for...hell, I dunno, she suddenly heard bells or something blaring in the distance. Okay, so that was kinda conspicuous. Digging a foot into the sand that covered the cobblestone streets, Leviathan whipped the sky bike's ass into the opposite direction, kicking up an immense cloud of dust.

Moments later, she pulled up to the front of the church where the sound of the bells continued to ring out from. Of course, the ringing of the bells seemed to be drawing zombies from all over the place. Classic zombie rules. Okay. Leviathan pulled the sky bike to a halt and leapt over the side, snapping her foot across a zombie's face in the process. With fluid, almost inhuman precision, she reached into the carryon trunk of the hover bike and whipped out her beloved Negotiator.

Negotiator was a two-hundred thirty pound gatling blaster she'd bought off of the Costa Del Sol black market with her parent's retirement fund. It was a thing of beauty: all gleaming metal and purpose built. She held it forward with both hands and clicked the power own. As the gun spun up, it unleashed an unholy barrage of red blaster fire that arced across the entire vista like a rainbow of fiery hot death. The noise was glorious; just a constant buzz of BBBBYYYEEEEEEEAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

"Whhoooooooooooooo!!" Leviathan screamed, mowing down any and all incoming shufflers like it was her Smiling One given birthright. Of course, lots of things other than zombies were being shot to pieces and set on fire too, but that wasn't all that important right now. What was important was that Leviathan's line of fire only barely missed vaporizing Lara Croft's pretty little head...

[Lara Croft]

The young woman fighting the battle right now heard the roar of what sounded like a vehicle opening up behind her and, from the sound, crashing through everything and everyone that had gotten in their way, and that's when Lara realized those things had crept up behind her when she wasn't paying any attention whatsoever to some of the population. Damn it Lara, the treasure hunter knew better than that, they could teleport so why didn't it cross her mind to check up on what was behind her on account of the fact that her opponents were very much capable of creeping up behind her and taking her by surprise? She should have done that, and Lara made a note not to let something so utterly important to her survival in this place slip her mind so easily again, not only was something like that foolish it was more dangerous than you thought it was. As the sound of someone recklessly plowing through obstacles and zombie behind her continued, it occurred to Lara that if this person was hostile that she would have to make quick work of eliminating them and that if she didn't it put her life at risk. Of course by what she heard that was far from the truth and Lara could rest easy knowing that she'd have some sort of assistance on this journey and that despite everything that had happened it was fairly certain that everything would be fine, that is unless they turned out to be a thief or something.

Lara lifted her head up to look over her right shoulder as a barrage of red energy decimated the zombie-like foe that she was being encountered with right now, Lara ignored the bolt that flew over her head and returned to facing at the oncoming horde of vicious, inhuman creatures. The Croft wasn't sure exactly what they were now, but by the clothing that they wore she could tell they were the original inhabitants of Roanoke albeit very much changed by some force she wasn't aware of at the moment, perhaps it was a disease or perhaps they engaged in the kind of witchcraft that she and others like her had been warned about since they were all young children. She didn't know how that was possible though, these zombies, or whatever they were, should have died of starvation and from what she understood zombies weren't sentient nor could they procreate normally but what she was experiencing now was evidence of something entirely different going on here. Lara had just spotted what appeared to be one of these damned abominations' female population, and they were pregnant and holding a baby and feeding them behind the protection of a window and brick house that seemed to remain untouched by the weapons fire. Was it possible that the entire population of Roanoke, despite being turned into the creatures that they were fighting now, had continued their civilization after being transported to this dimension even though that would be very much impossible according to almost everything she knew about them and supernaturals?

The iconic treasure hunting Croft quickly reached into her lightweight high-tech quiver and grasped ahold of one of her arrows, effortlessly notching it into place and aiming through the targeting reticule that her advanced compound bow sported to make things easier on those firing it. A cool feature that she had added to the bow made sure only a select few could activate the bow and call it out of its retracted state for use by another person, this was done through the same biometrics that allowed her to flawlessly tell her arrows what mode she wanted them in when they were launched from her bow. It was actually quite useful when you thought about it and the technologies potential uses in the future, I mean more people than you thought have tried to steal her stuff and what you thought was quite a lot so why not use the technology to make sure that only a certain few people, like her and the closest members of her crew, could make use of her gear and even further uses like using nerve impulses to change the setting on a weapon? I mean in all honesty it would have had to provide more uses than antitheft measures so Lara had decided to take advantage of the tech and make use of it by designing a new type of weapon that you interacted with and made use of through biometrics. That was when her nerve impulses activated the arrow, and a clicking sound could be heard as the advanced piece of technology shifted into the form Lara had chosen for it to decimate her opponents in so that she could take another arrow, fire again, and move on once more.

The titanium tipped arrow launched through the air after being hurled forward by the kevlar reinforced bow string that she was using so that she could not only fire more rapidly than most bows, but also increase her the power of the arrows because she could pull back more, plus it propelled projectiles forward at a faster pace. The arrow hit its target dead on at a range of thirty meters, exploding on impact and engulfing an area of fifteen feet, or five meters, in flame as rock and dirt flew up from the raw power of that the "overkill" arrow created when it embedded itself in the ground. It decimated the area it hit, taking out quite a few of the zombie-like creatures and, thankfully, negating their advanced regenerative capabilities because of the burns that they had endured from the ground shaking, world breaking explosion that occurred. The horde had stopped coming, an indicator that this odd little civilization had run out of soldiers or that they had decided it wasn't worth the fight, Lara remained skeptical and thus cautiously surveyed the area. She was actually quite happy with herself, and with that she thought that the battle was over and it was likely that the new potential friend who had recently arrived and made things so much easier had reached the same conclusion but little did they know it was far from over.

Within moments of the creatures' so-called defeat they all began moving to the front of the church, their pieces merging together along the way and forming larger whole creatures once more for the duo to attack but it seemed that wasn't the end of it. Lara fired another explosive arrow, expecting it to devastate the larger targets but it was absorbed by a shield that came up when the creatures began their fusion into the gargantuan behemoth that was being formed now. Behold, a nightmarish creature like that of a demonic beast-man of a giant released its unholy, guttural roar and repaired all the damage to the creatures that had merged to make this thing up in all of its entirety as the most unholy of all monsters. It possessed four arms, and three legs, all of which as spikes formed from the limbs of the smaller creatures on various positions all over it, it had dense and thick scales that were hard to cut through without the most powerful of weaponry. The eighteen foot tall creature rose one of its legs and crashed it down onto the ground, sending a shockwave of dust of kinetic energy forward that ripped the buildings from their foundation and sent them hurdling towards both of its opponents with the only way to avoid the attack being having fast enough reflexes to hit the ground.

"Get down," Lara only hoped that their ally would be fast enough to propel themselves downward, and smart enough to cover up their eyes.

((May the boss fight commence!))

[Tearen Wover]

Leviathan rose an annoyed eyebrow as the zombies merged together to form some kind of ridiculous hybrid zombie mash monster. Outstanding. Brava. Not only that, but this skinny chick with the bow seemed kinda pushy. Still, that didn't stop the fact that houses were flying in her direction. With a sigh of disgust, Leviathan calmly sat on her ass and watched the wooden heaps of shrapnel cruise overhead, taking myriad bushes and bits of zombie with them. Honestly, it seemed like these zombies themselves didn't care whether or not their zombie friends got clocked in the heads with a victorian mansion. Maybe she could play that to her advantage.

Once the rolling wave of destruction had ebbed, Leviathan hoisted herself back on to her feet with a grunt and hefted the Negotiator once more. Now, instead of feeding a stream of endless fuck-off laser death into the creature, she goaded it with short, pinpoint bursts. She was sure that, at full blast, Negotiator could probably overcome the monstrosity's rate of regeneration, but that wasn't the most tactically advantageous route to take. No, it would be better to try and draw the creature out from its position with carefully aimed blasts of energy so that it would potentially feel the need to destroy more buildings, and with them, more zombies. She looked over at Croft with a smirk.

"Hey, thin mint. Think you can explode this ass-wipe this-a way?"

[Jak Mar]

After a brief exit from the chase of the stormtroopers of Coresent, Jak, Daxter and Torn took a brief detour to the dunes where there was a offer by a mysterious female in treasure hunting. Jak and Daxter were interested, but it took some much pushing to get the Commander to go along with them on a treasure hunting adventure.

Jak's crew started to feel the heat and Jak placed his handkerchief around his mouth and allowed Daxter and Torn to cool off as quickly as they could. The long eared man looked up and felt the warm wind begin to pick up and placed his googles around his eyes, Daxter followed suit, but Torn had to cover his eyes a bit as he pulled his handkerchief over his mouth.

Jak hoped a summon could help them travel faster in the dunes then by foot, none of them would keep going very far without water. Jak closed his eyes and hoped for a summon of one of the dune buggies from his father's collection of cars that the citizens of Spargus used.

As soon as he said that and he waited around for 15 minutes, a large "CLUP" fell on the sand and Jak and Daxter and Torn hopped in the dune buggy and held on tight.

Jak called out "Dax, take the guns!" Me and Torn will keep things calm down below."

Jak started the engine and headed toward the source of action.

[Lara Croft]

In all honesty Lara was hoping to be in and out of the long lost colony of Roanoke like it was nothing more than a routine shopping trip to the mall, but it seemed as though the poor Croft could never catch a break when it came to treasure hunts. No matter what kind of treasure hunt she was partaking in at the moment, whether it be an easter egg hunt like when she was younger and trying to live a normal life or even something in Tibet or Egypt, it was as if trouble wanted to follow her. She remembered this one Easter when she was about nine and painting eggs, well apparently a very expensive egg-shaped jewel stone had been stolen and Lara had somehow ended up with it and painted it a beautiful array of pastel purples, pinks and blues that covered up any evidence of it being what it was and when it was found out to be what it was the police showed up and ruined Easter. It wasn't as if she wanted to find trouble in the thing she loved doing most, or in life in general, but it was like trouble was stalking her from every crevice in the universe it could crawl into then lash out at her in the hopes that it would be able to make her stumble. It never did succeed and never would succeed in making her trip or fall or be so caught off guard that she made a fatal mistake, but Lara had to say she was a little more than surprised when not only did she find that Roanoke's entire population had been turned into tricked out zombies that continued onward as a civilization and even procreated but that they also could form into a giant monster.

Lara looked to the quirky girl and scoffed at the name they got called before effortlessly kicking herself up from the ground and watching the monster slowly grow as more zombie... things attached themselves to the heavy creature. Honestly she had hoped that there wouldn't have been anything extra added onto this but the fact that the creature was still growing was slightly worrisome to her as she had no idea what awaited the slowly forming group inside. "Gladly, and the name's Lara." She said in her eloquent British accent when the Croft notched a rope arrow and climbed to the top of a nearby building within the span of a few seconds in the hopes she could get a better shot and a better overview of the battlefield they were in. Lara was glad that she had been conserving her arrows and making well placed, high impact strategic sniper shots instead of wasting them one use arrows that did little to no good against an enemy as numerous as this. Lara aimed her bow at the monster, arrow in place, as she sorely wished that she had her rope ascender right now so that the high powered device could simply pull the creature a little closer to them or get its attraction with a tug but she'd have to make due with explosions and armor penetrating arrows.

She held the stance for nine seconds, activating the first three second charge that could be applied to any arrow and then charging up the penetrating arrow so that when it flew forward it would pack a massive punch. The first charge doubled the power, and in this case radius, of any arrow and its little perks and the second charge simply made sure that it got well lodged within anything that it was being aimed at so that they couldn't really bother anyone ever again. That was when Lara imbued the arrow with explosive qualities through activation of the biometrics that registered nerve impulses and then told the advanced nanotech on her arrows what to do and how to do it. The Tomb Raider had never really needed to make a combo this powerful despite all of the situations she'd been in, you see she never really had to face a zombie horde nor something as powerful as this horrid thing that she and her new found friend were facing now. Even though it would take more than a few of these to take the creature down the shot had more than got their attention and while trying to repair the damage the creature began moving to the target location.

[Tearen Wover]

Leviathan grinned as the stench-ridden monstrosity lumbered towards the two...er...four of them. Some new guys had just shown up and they were packing some serious firepower; her favorite kind. As the giant constructed from corpses stomped ever closer, the ground began to shake with increasing magnitude upon each fell step. It wasn't until the zombie hulk was almost on top of her that Leviathan made her move.

With a swift heave, she pulled her entire body and Negotiator on to the sky bike, kicking it into gear and zooming between the immense monster's legs. With one, beefy arm, she held up the barrel of the gatling blaster and focused its fire on the monster's rear leg as it took a step in the air. It rotated its grotesque torso, trying to keep up with the zippy movements of the hovering motorbike. In short order, the relentless blast of fire from the Negotiator all but cut through the rear leg. When the monster went to put weight on it, the component bodies that remained could not hold together with the weight of hundreds more upon them, and it gave out with a strange, bubbling popping sound. With a forlorn roar of fury, the creature impacted the dirt, releasing another shockwave which threw Leviathan off of the sky bike. It skidded to a halt several feet away, and the fiery woman hauled her self back on to her feet, observing the damage she had done.

The creature was still trying to cope with only having two legs suddenly, but the third one was still reforming, if gradually. Hopefully one of these other idiots would be able to capitalize on the opening...

[Jak Mar]

Jak's eyes kept on the wheel as he sped toward the monster who stunk who he could see a female being thrown off a bike close by and concentrated as Daxter aimed and shot the gun on the "opening" on the creature trying to attack everyone else.

Jak kept driving and sped the dune buggy and turned hard, sending sand onto the creature to distract it.

"So I heard you guys needed backup, well it's here.."

Daxter kept his eyes on the gun.

Torn turned to face the female and the other female and nodded.

[Lara Croft]

Lara watched as the strange girl maneuvered her way around the creatures expertly as if there was nothing in the world that they could do better than the, arguably, easy looking but most likely very hard job they were doing now. This girl seemed to have skills, and the twenty one year old Croft was glad that they popped up in time for the epic boss battle to begin and having likely saved Lara's life there was nothing better than having them team up together. Lara saw the creature's leg get disabled, sighing in relief she realized this was her chance to get an advantage over the crippled monster and permanently disable that third leg so that, finally, an upper hand would be gained in this downhill battle. A napalm arrow would probably work in taking out the leg, the heat from nine feet of flame would engulf the entire wound and prevent the creature from having the ability to negate the damage that Lara and her team had inflicted on it. That's what the Croft's nerve impulses told the nanites in the arrow's composition to create, with a few solid clicks the napalm canister was created near the end of the sleek titanium tipped arrow and to make sure that the heat was improved she charged it for three seconds.

The arrow was released, her shoulder jerked back as her precision aiming took place and began to prepare to activate it's charged up napalm canister once it was moments away from impacting the opponent that they were facing. On impact the napalm burst, the enhancement having doubled its radius from nine feet to eighteen feet made one hell of a difference, which is when Lara realized that if she released several shots like these then it would vastly improve their circumstances. Lara was trying to preserve her arrows, though, she didn't have a source of nanites in this town but as her nanites were self-replicating she supposed with a few tools that she would be able to make more arrows. Lara decided to go with charged up arrows to preserve what she had left and the produce more arrows, and hopefully replicate some of her old gear once his whole debacle was over with, the enemy was dead, and she and her group had recovered the relic. Honestly Lara had been quite worried about whether or not she would have enough ammunition, or food, or equipment to survive just like everyone else here probably did but her nanites would fix a lot of issues.

Lara quirked a brow as someone new arrived, they rode a large vehicle sporting a powerful engine and an advanced weapons system that she could make quite the use of, and thus she took note of the type of weapons that they had. The treasure hunter noted the short one with the big ears that looked kind of ridiculous driving such a large vehicles, the passenger and the one manning the guns were all quite interesting to Lara but she had to think about other things of course. Perhaps they were here to help as well, she posted only a few flyers up in the center of the town but apparently quite a few people wanted to party with Lara Croft, to have fun with the Tomb Raider, to rampage through an ancient lost colony with one of the most iconic members of society. Okay, so that's not what she was thinking and what she was thinking was more along the lines of "I hope they know they're not the ones getting the key, they'll get the other stuff but the key is mine, if I split the key it's power will be weakened," plus it took the British centuries to piece back together the key and it would be a shame if it was separated again.

[Tearen Wover]

"Keep firing them boom sticks, sweetheart! I gotta lay down some...SUPPRESSIOOONNNNN!" Leviathan shouted, once more winding up Negotiator and unleashing a blistering barrage of blaster fire at incoming zombie reinforcements. As long as they didn't let any more of these creeps fuse with the big guy, they should be free and clear...pending Ms. Boing-Tits had a steady supply of those explosive arrows. Oddly enough, the zombies now seemed to be organizing themselves into a sort of militia. Tricorn hats and shit, and some of them even had...well...Leviathan assumed they were guns, but they were the oldest, shittiest pieces of hardware she had even seen. The zombie-freaks approached in a nice, neat column though, which made it easy to mow them down like crab grass.

With giant puffs of white smoke, musket balls screamed towards Leviathan, but she didn't even flinch as they ricocheted and shattered against her assault armor like shards of hail. The highly sophisticated polymers and ceramics that made up the suit were actually specialized to absorb attacks from other energy weapons, but these large-bore, slow moving bullets were easy enough to deflect with even rudimentary armor. Naturally, this lead to Leviathan sporting an immense grin, her face illuminated a satanic red as Negotiator continued its endless assault.

"C'mon! C'mon! C'mon! Auntie Leviathan can't wait all fuckin' day!" she shouted at the festering hordes. Leviathan couldn't really see what was going on behind her, but she hadn't heard another explosion yet, so that was kinda frustrating. She let up on the fire for a second to turn around and see just what the hell was going on...did she have to do everything around here?

[Jhago Wulf]

Jhago and Jackson were riding along the desert after a brief instance at the tavern in town. Apparently, some Tomb Raider was hiring the adventuring sort to come help her with some ruins and some key or some bullshit. Jhago didn't care, except that they could loot it and make a killer profit. They both smiled as they saw the smoke in the distance, figuring they'd started the party without them. Party it was. In minutes they were nearing the church, already having figured out that the locals were now of the undead. Jackson fired two bullets from his gun he kept in the glove compartment and heads went rolling. Flying down the road like a pair of maniacs they slammed into the large beast near the church with a loud crunch and a thud.

"What the hell are these things?!" Jackson shouted. They appeared to be regenerating themselves after being shot and the large beast was nearly knocked over now that its third leg had gotten burned to bits. The new blasts and arrows were hitting the stank beast but with the car knocking into it it could do nothing now but fall over into a heaving pile of zombie flesh. Jhago threw the car into reverse as Jackson left the vehicle, sweat pouring down his face as he went running towards the women. By the time Jhago had rolled back far enough for another ram at the horde, Jackson had already stopped shouting bloody murder while shooting the things in the head, negating their regeneration entirely. Meanwhile, the beast tried to upright itself.

Lacking firepower but having the horse variety would allow him to knock it down again, and that's exactly what he'd intended. Instead, however, as he rammed into the creature's right leg it fell apart, likely due to the burn damage. Blood and guts descended onto the car and it heaved forwards and out from underneath the bitch in seconds. He bolted afterwards in the mustang, the vehicle sliding to a stop a good 20 yards from where the beast now lay. Instantly he was surrounded by zombie people, his form moving from the ground to the car.

"Wanna play?!" He shouted at them, feeling the Change take over despite the lack of a full moon. His body pulsed and the man became werewolf. He was consumed by blood-rage and furiously charged them, knocking them over and slashing at them with claws. They quickly regenerated but he started pulling them apart limb from limb. With the fall of the first zombies came a wave of others who were soon gunned down by lasers.

"What you ladies doin here all alone and shit," shouted Jhago, watching the big beast writhe as it was consumed by flames, "Don't you know it's dangerous as fuck out here?"

[Lara Croft]

Lara shot a rope towards one of the legs, jamming an arrow into the cement as she jumped onto the rope arrow and slid down it with her climbing axe as she descended from the building she had chosen to perch on top of. The tomb raider jammed three explosive arrows into the side of the leg and landed on the ground after using the limbs and spikes on the creature's legs to navigate herself without getting hurt in the hopes she wouldn't have to do much else. That's when the Tomb Raider ran like hell as the last beep sounded, the ominous red light of doom flickering on the arrow before a vicious explosion echoed throughout the area and brought a chunk of that leg with it. Lara herself was thrown forward by the explosion and landed in front of the newcomer, the twenty one year old gave a small laugh at their insinuation that this was even mildly dangerous for people like her, then she moved to deploy her retractable bow once more and fired upon the enemy in the hopes that this napalm arrow she was firing would burn the second leg and prevent them from regenerating.

Behind her she heard odd sounds like that of an animal, and turned her head to watch a beast tearing through her enemies and holding them off for her while she launched arrow after arrow into the side of the monster they were facing. "I need to preserve my arrow supply," she yelled out, keeping it short since she didn't want to explain her plan to use the nanites in her arrows to survive in this place and take real advantage of them by producing food, ammunition, and weapons. Lara backed up closer to the beast man, stabbing one of the zombies in the neck with a fire arrow and letting the flame engulf their head and skull, but then something happened she wasn't entirely prepared for. More damned enemy reinforcements arrived, and this time they were in immaculately organized squadrons that, thankfully, the one with the blaster weapon was mowing down as she spoke but what their friend didn't know about these things is that they teleported. And teleport behind the girl they did, and Lara wasn't sure how long she could hold them off from her since her arrow supply was running low and these bastards were blinking themselves all over a serene place they had turned into a battlefield.

Their forces were thinning, though, Lara took note of that as less and less of them seemed to be teleporting as the newly organized group of fatally powerful people decimated an army that could have posed a serious thread to the Endless Dunes. The young Croft squinted as she launched another arrow, unlike these people Lara was still human. She was sweating and the sweat was running down into her vision, which is when Lara wiled her forehead with the back of her hand knowing that she should be thankful not so many creatures were arriving that this ragtag group couldn't handle it.

((Sorry for the lateness, I was waiting for Jak to post.))

[Tearen Wover]

Leviathan grinned as the skinny chick pulled a sweet-ass maneuver that officially demolished another one of the big zombie pile's legs. For an encoure, the athletic girl engulfed the zombie monster in a rippling wave of napalm, causing it to thrash and roar.

"That's more like it!" Leviathan shouted before turning back around and taking a zombie fist to the face. Evidently these things were a hell of a lot stronger than they appeared, because the force of the blow knocked Leviathan flat on her ass. That wasn't so bad in and of itself, but Negotiator was sent clattering off to the side, bumping through the dust and getting all scuffed up. Now see, Leviathan had a real thing for her gun, so when she saw this, Leviathan surged back on to her feet and decked the zombie which had hit her with a full tackle. The enraged woman brought her fists into the zombie's wormy-ass face again and again, until it finally stopped regenerating. By this point, she had been surrounded by more of the grey skinned creeps. With a stalwart set jaw, Leviathan cracked her neck and was about to lay in to another crypt reject before a goddamb werewolf came outta nowhere and started wrecking face.

...aaaaand then he said that. Leviathan's eyes went wide with deep rage as she retrieved Negotiator and turned towards the werewolf's sweet looking care. His dumbass friend locked eyes with her for a fleeting moment, before he dove clear of the vehicle as she trained her gun on it.

"You know what, furball? I think you're right!" she shouted with a sadistic grin. Negotiator roared to life again, sending countless beams of red energy lancing through the helpless car. A moment passed, and it exploded in a majestic fireball. She turned back to face the enemy and the were-oaf.

"It is pretty dangerous out here!"

Leviathan then called over to Croft, who was still skirmishing with the monstrosity.

"Hey Queen Elizabeth! We gonna wrap up with this fucker or what?" Leviathan roared, whipping Negotiator around and focusing fire on the gian zombie golem again. The rude-ass werewolf could handle the ankle biters.

[Jak Mar]

Surronded by hot ladies was Jak and Daxter's dream, more Daxter's dream but still, Jak wasn't going to let that distract himself from the mission. He looked over at the ladies for a second and looked at the main lady and called out "Lara, isn't it? You the woman calling for adventurers. Well then, you got the right guys."

Daxter held tight of the gun on top as he called out to Jak "Jak, Focus! More ugly skinned zombies comin' our way!" Daxter aimed the gun at the gian zombie golem and started shooting the gun on top hard and fast "Let's let'm have it, Jak. "

Jak focused on the driving and placed the car in slight position to let Daxter shoot the crap out of the giant zombie.

Torn frowned "Shut up you two, and Focus on the situation at hand."


Jak's dune buggy had some serious firepower and Daxter knew how to use it. Jak frowned "Ladies, if you don't want to be hit, my suggestion... MOVE!"

He'd turn dark but that would have to wait until another time.

Jak frowned and looked at Torn "Take the wheel, I'm going to help that furball out there..."

The Commander quickly hopped into the drivers seat and kept the driving up. The whole adventurous reckless driving thing probably would kill him one day but he didn't care.

Jak hopped out of the car into the dunes toward the werewolf surrounded by zombies. There was a loud screech and the man turned dark Jak. The horns jutted out of Jak's head, he grew large fingernails and his face turned purple and his hair turned white.

Dark Jak growled and rushed toward the zombies around the werewolf and started helping the werewolf rip the undead creatures apart.

[Jhago Wulf]

He watched in horror as Leviathan gunned down the mustang. He snarled at her in response, pissed off that his ride had been destroyed. Jackson would've cried, but he was too busy shooting back at the zombies with weapons to really care at the moment. The man was skilled with his pistol, taking potshots at the enemies around them. With a few well-placed shots he scored a hit on both of the giant zombie's eyes, and it fell on its face as blood gushed from them. Jhago on the other hand was busy punching and slashing before he shouted at Leviathan.

"That's fucked up. Got a thing against Mustangs or something?"

There were both more of them with the arrival of Dark Jak and his crew, and more of the zombie horde arriving all around him. He was ripping, Jak was ripping. It was pretty much a rip-off kinda situation. Blood mixed with sand and stone as they tore through the flesh of the zombies surrounding them. Jhago made short work of a zombie, ripping it in half as Jak executed them left and right. It didn't take long before he turned to another, stabbing his clawed hand into the stomach of the putrified zombie in front of him, tearing out the entrails with relative ease and speed. Next, he used the entrails to choke one of them to death, his hands digging into the throat afterwards to permanently silence its' moans.

In no time the biters were limited in number, coming around a corner with more weapons that were fired at Jhago. Even in hybrid form, the plasma shots put a chink in his armor and caused him to howl in pain. He rubbed the painful spots and ducked behind the burning wreckage of his car. He then retreated to where Leviathan was standing following her assault by zombie. He slashed at one nearing her, ripping through neck flesh as he regarded her.

"'Name's Jhago by the way. What's yours?" He asked, extending a bloody, clawed hand towards her.

[Lara Croft]

Lara sighed as Leviathan shot into that poor Mustang, everyone seemed to love those stupid these except the chick who was currently laying waste to it with her massive gatling gun as revenge for the werewolf's comments. The woman was surprised once the creature was felled, the massive thing landing right behind her and sending forward a shockwave that knocked her forward onto her stomach and her face with an 'umph'. Lara grunted as she rose up from the sand, the only reason she hadn't rolled being that she was caught by surprise and yet she kept on running forward in the hopes she would make it to the hoard of zombies that were now surrounding her friends. She brushed off the ancient and very, very tiny quartz crystals that had been the result of an ancient ocean or some sort of ancient disaster that delivered quartz or demolished a lot of ground to reveal quartz below and shatter it. Lara was kind of pissed that she was caught off guard by something she should have expected from the level of experience she had and the amount of people that were trying to take this thing down as she had ran, though at least she anticipated it trying to attack by running.

They didn't seem to be having issues until those damned muskets starting firing plasma, what Lara didn't notice was that above her the glistening of a scope was caused by the sun as something took aim at her friends. There was a sniper taking aim, their decades of experience fueling lethal semi-automatic shots were about to begin and if it weren't for Lara glancing up she never would have noticed what was about to happen. She screamed out to her allies to take cover in the hopes that they would avoid being slaughtered after what they had gone through, Lara on the other hand launched one last napalm arrow at the massive creature and then aimed upwards at the old yet somehow pristine building. Lara fired an arrow, a 'normal' arrow with a tungsten carbide tip that was about to hit its target until it was flung to the side by a burst of supernaturally summoned wind that the man, from what she saw from the thankfully short building she could figure out what their gender was, had taken up a sniper's perch on. That's when powerful rounds of superheated plasma rained down upon her and her allies for about ten seconds, Lara dove behind the only cover available but didn't stop moving as the useless defense was destroyed by the sniper that was targeting her and her allies. Suddenly the shots stop and a blur traveled into the building that they were about to enter, God knew what lied in wait for them when they got in there since it could be anything from puzzles to a crumbling floor that they had to race across.

"Yeah, I'm Lara. We'll get better acquainted after this," she said and slapped Jak on the shoulder with her left hand as he right hand reached for the climbing axe on her utility belt and swiftly moved to deliver it to the skull of one of these creatures. She took an arrow and plunged it into the stomach of another one before ripping it out, bringing the creature's last meal and part of the organs with it and then stabbing the arrow through the eye before. Lara delivered a roundhouse kick to one enemy, hand reaching backwards to rip out the arrow from the falling monster's eye and then delivering another roundhouse kick and shortly afterwards impaling the one she was fighting in the chest. Her nervous system sent a signal that told the arrow to catch on fire and permanently destroy that damned then when Lara delivered a killing blow with her axe to yet another one of these Valkyrian demon Wraiths. The Tomb Raider had finally figured out what these damned things were and was reasonably happy with her doing so, Lara was so happy in fact that when she delivered another final blow she felt some sort of aura of badassery wash over her.

Lara noted how screwed these people were with a werewolf, whatever the hell that guy with the big ears turned onto, a really pissed off girl with a giant freaking gun, and a legendary treasure hunter as the group came closer and closer to eradicating their opponent. With the werewolf tearing through enemies like they were nothing but unfortunately having to go find cover because of the plasma shots, Lara quickly found herself going backwards towards their cover. She looked to the werewolf and put away her combat axe once she had ducked towards them, just narrowly avoiding the enemy's damned plasma fire from freaking muskets that really shouldn't have been doing what they were doing. It seemed as though the person who had fired from a sniping position was the culprit for the buff delivered to his undead allies, which made Lara seethe internally at this unfortunate turn of events that at taken place. Of course the young woman was taking a liking to the group that she had going here and hoped that she could call on them again, it was evident that with only one had incident and the victim of said incident warming up to the perpetrator that they worked well together.

((D'aw, don't cry... That'd be adorable tho.))

[Tearen Wover]

Leviathan dove for cover as the bombardment of plasma began to scorch the sandy ground all around the courtyard. Her armor was designed to ward off energy munitions like these plasma bursts, but at this magnitude it was only a matter of time before she had a breach. The girl hunkered down behind a rapidly eroding dirt wall as she watched her erstwhile companions get shot at...

...this was getting stupid. Fortunately enough, the monster zombie seemed to have been dealt with, and that was the only thing that had really been impeding the girl. Leviathan did a quick risk assesment. She was certain that she could continue to fight these zombies...wraiths...whatever...to a stand still, but Leviathan did not, in fact, have unlimited ammunition. She had already burned through over three quarters of her supply; if she fought till she was dry, no amount of loot would break even with the amount she would have to spend on new blaster rounds...especially with these other clowns to split it with. The girl gritted her teeth for a few moments. Leviathan hated running from a fight, but she also hated losing money on a bet. Gotta know when to fold.

Leviathan waited for a brief pause in the incoming sniper fire, and watched as the offending zombie magicked itself to a new vantage point. Not wanting to allow him to set up another shot, Leviathan spun up Negotiator one last time and unleashed a flood of red blaster fire up into the window the sniper was perched in. Fiery bolts of red slammed into the colonial building, causing it to rapidly catch in fire.

Convinced that she had bought herself a few seconds, Leviathan made a mad dash for her sky bike, ducking incoming gunfire from the ground forces. A few blazing green bolts tagged her in the back as she saddled up, but the heavy trooper armor did its job and disippated the energy around her torso. There would be some nasty burns, but she'd be fine over all..

Leviathan kicked the engines in to full blast, kicking up a swirling cloud of dust that plunged the battleground into a brownish haze. With the shrill sound of revving turbines, Leviathan released the vents and she shot off like a rocket. Gone with the wind. Maybe she could sack a small caravan or something on her way back to the deeps; at least break even for her trouble...

[Jhago Wulf]

With the arrival of the last batch of zombies came the departure of one of his "allies." He used the term loosely seeing as she destroyed his only means of transportation; he'd be stuck here without commandeering someone else's ride. Why the hell she'd chosen to decimate his car, and who she even was, was still a mystery. His only clues were the combat armor she'd been wearing, and now it was too late to ask her any questions. He looked around and spotted an approaching wraith-like monster of a man approaching his right side.

With a quick upward palm thrust he stunned the man, then he grabbed the creature's head. Jhago twisted counter clockwise with both arms and was satisfied by the crunching sound he heard when he broke the being's spine. Now limp, he dropped his musket and Jhago picked it up. Jackson had already spent all his revolver's bullets on the horde and was now firing a musket like he was about to. The werewolf returned to the wreckage of the burning car, spotting Lara firing bolts at a sniper. With the loss of the sniper's nest it appeared they had a moment to recouperate after taking down the last of the zombie walkers in the area.

There weren't that many of them, he noticed, now that the threat of the giant zombie monster had been slain it appeared as if their enemy had lost significant morale, despite the opposing side's diminished members. Despite what he just saw in regards to numbers, Jhago was astounded that they just kept getting up aftter being eviscerated, stabbed, and beaten by his fists. It was time for a change of pace. Jhago spied the plasma sniper in another window, and smiled. He wanted that gun. He leapt over the vehicle adroitly, marveling at how easy it was now that he had his own personal stache of omnilium. In a moment the black beast was charging towards the sniper's nest at 30 miles, his body low to the ground to avoid more bullets which whirred past his head. The creature was a good shot, he'd give him that, but nobody could touch him in terms of speed. Except maybe sonic, but he used super-speed shoes, so he counted that as cheating.

The wolfman's vibrams sank into the ground as he approached the church's sniper nest, and he vaulted. The man soared through the air, easily jumping through the window and crashing into the sniper just as he was about to aim at Jak. The gun went off as he entered the building and the remainder of the window was shattered as he plonked into the gunman, his sand-covered mane knocking the plasma rifle to the ground.

And then it happened, again. He was losing his wolf at the worst times before, but now at least he had an advantage. Rapidly, he detransformed and became human again, but he made a daring leap towards the gun on the ground as the other man tried desperately to fling himself at it. They struggled for a minute as the sound of church bells drew to a close as, he guessed, someone else took notice. Finally, Jhago wrestled control of the gun and promptly shot the man in the face, killing him in a matter of three shots or so. He had to admit their regeneration abilities were astounding, but this one wasn't like the rest. He was geared up as if he was about to go digging. He ignored that fact for now; Lara could figure out if that mattered later on. Examining the nest's remnants he found broken glass and a host of ammunition. He picked up the belt clip and shoulder strap the man had been wearing (but not using?) and donned them quickly. Knocking came at the door before it was flung open.

Time to get shootin'.

He shot the person at the door, a woman, and rushed through the opening. Apparently, it led to the bell chamber, and apparently three more people with guns were standing there, looking at him. He was lucky he already had his gun in firing position; they were quick on the draw but not quick enough to be saved. He shot them, knowing he wouldn't hear any more church bells for some time--so long as nobody else was in the building. Looking back at this room's entrance, he felt remorse for the woman who hadn't been holding a weapon but knew it was a part of warfare. Still, her blood was on his hands. He prayed for her afterlife to be a good one.

[Lara Croft]

Lara sighed as she walked up to the double doors to the church, noticing from a distance that the doors had been barred with a wooden block that would have been no problem for her axe to get through in a few minutes. The issue was that Lara didn't have a few minutes so the woman was forced to take a step back, hoist up her bow and prepare a rope arrow to be fired at the wooden block that was preventing her from getting into the church. After the rope arrow embedded itself in the wooden block, Lara pulled and pulled hard u til the moment she heard the wood cracking and with one final heave she broke the wood block in two and opened up the french double doors. With the doors open she could see clearly into the church, and with it being a holy place the Croft didn't expect it to be as pristine as everything else but that didn't seem to be the case this time and in fact there were three armed guards awaiting her arrival. Just as Lara was about to jump to the left in an effort to avoid being hit by the plasma slugs fired by their muskets Jhago showed up and fired his own weapon at them just in time to avoid Lara most likely being skewered by their starving guns.

She breathed out a sigh of relief as the noise made by Jhago firing his weapons i to the enemies rang throughout the air and she realized that the werewolf was her savior today, Lara wasn't about to forget something like that. The twenty one year old had found a friend in one of the remaining denizens of the Endless Dunes, and in this sand filled abomination Lara was quite thankful that of all the things she could have endured in this hell hole that one of them was gaining a friend. Lara didn't know Jhago all to well but from what she had seen from the werewolf he was sensitive, and kind, and caring, and compassionate and Lara could most definitely make use of that in the little ragtag team of elite bounty hunters, treasure hunters, assassins, soldiers, thieves, martial artists, and other people at the top of their chosen occupation which could range from businessmen supplying them with weapons to a tactician or someone like her. In all truthfulness it was absolutely insane that Lara had gotten so used to her current... Predicament so quickly that her mind has begun to wonder around and around preparing her for a long future in this strangle place. With all the things that had happened today and evidence that they would continue on for a while Lara couldn't afford to be thinking about that kind of thing right now, so the Tomb Raider put her head back into the game.

Lara gave a wave to Jhago as she strode calmly into the church, bow in hand with her eyes wondering around and looking for a light switch until finally she remembered that this was a colonial era settlement. It was uncommon for Lara to have a lapse in memory like that, but with all this excitement you couldn't blame her for one little mistake since she was, after all, still human despite how much better her physique was than most people's. Lara's lighter eventually lit a torch that she pulled out from its place, the Croft motioning for Jhago to follow her as her instincts set in and she made way to the only place that these creatures would probably hide a treasure so well. That would be the room they used for mass, and with that Lara opened a set of doors and low and behold there was an altar with the relic they had been looking for at the center of it, but there was something off about this room. It was almost too clean, the room was completely empty except for the altar and a few things that looked to be almost sacrificial in the way that they were placed on and around the altar with a few spatters of blood around it.

With a tedious step forward, the entire church behind them seemed to lurch with a menacing sound that seemed to be the result of the foundation falling into some hollow underground storage well of doom. Sadly for Jhago and Lara that's exactly what the sound was and with that she jumped forward with great vigor in a run of strength and speed, Lara screaming out Jhago's name to get their attention and hopefully make them run since the church was collapsing behind them. "Get the relic, I'll prepare out getaway!" Lara grabbed ahold of something that Jhago could use to get across the rope attached to an arrow she would fire out the window, it was a thick club-like device. In addition she stuffed some sort of gauntlet in her sack as she ran so that she could give it to Jhago, it seemed to be made out of some sort of metal with dark energies and as she picked it up Lara felt a chill go through her body. The Croft kicked open the door, revealed to her was the fact that the church that was supposed to be in front of them had seemingly been cleaved in half and in its place some sort of cliff with buildings that appeared to be a town appeared below them, from here it looked like the only town with humans in it. Lara hoisted up her bow and launched a penetration arrow with a rope attached, embedding it in the rock face on the other side without questioning where the rest of Roanoke had gone too and what exactly was happening to the ruins behind them, hopefully Jhago would get ahold of one of the papers she had seen and maybe that would explain what happened.

((I've decided we should end the RP in a few rounds since people are disappearing and we both need to get out of here, so after a couple of posts each let's end this))

[Lara Croft]

Lara grabbed ahold of the relic as she propelled downwards towards the city below in the hopes that everything would go better than it had, and with the mystical area behind her disappearing into Oblivion and the possibility of the rope arrow breaking high then it would be near impossible to escape unscaved. The sound of the rope arrow being traveled across was the signature noise that Lara enjoyed when on a quest, it calmed her nerves despite all the excitement and nerve decimating i tensity that usually stalked her on missions. The Croft was lucky this time, there was no one close to her to die right now and it was only her hope that the people that were on this mission with her were fairly safe from all the dangers that Lara and they had encountered on the trip. With her new relics in hand Lara couldn't wait to examine her unique little tool in the hopes that what it could do was true to the legends, the Key to Everything was quite a powerful thing if you thought about it

(Annnd this thread is over(