[F01] Kicking Names

[Luke Pendragon 0]

Luke, on yet another quest, looked out over a hill into a bandit hideout that had, until recently, been cleverly hidden. Even getting to this vantage point had required a lot of time to cut through dangerous flora to allow troops to make their way through it. 

“So that’s how they’re getting in and out,” Luke said to himself, looking down at the base of the hill. It looked like earth had been dug through, creating a tunnel. Apparently the bandits had been here for quite some time and had a well established means of transport. It was quite unfortunate that this intelligence had fallen into player hands. 

What was so special about this place? Other than it being hard to get to, there were suspicions that there were valuable resources in the area. Exactly where was a mystery, but if Luke had to guess they were probably inside the tunnel or underground somewhere. He wouldn’t be surprised if there were a series of mines in the area.  

Luke turned around to look at the players that had come here with him. They all looked nervous – they were a small handful who knew they were going up against dozens upon dozens of bandits, if not more. Luke highly doubted that all the bandits were trained in combat. Surely a well established position such as this was full of other kinds of folk. People to do the hunting, the cooking, the cleaning, etc. 

“Listen,” he said, upon seeing their disheartened looks. “We aren’t here to fight them all. We’re mostly here to verify that this place does exist, and to figure out how they’re moving in and out. Your jobs are to secure the mode of transport. Yes, there will be fighting, and as usual we are putting our lives on the line… but we got this.” He gave them a confident nod, though he had doubts about some of them. He hadn’t exactly been entrusted with the best team and he hadn’t been in charge of them for very long. He knew their names and had a report of their abilities, but they hadn’t much combat experience together. 

“We don’t have long,” he continued, “before someone spots us. And when they do, it’s going to get rough. So let’s make it down to that tunnel and try to secure it.  

Thankfully the hill wasn’t hazardous to climb down on this side. It was mostly just grass and dirt with a few flower patches scattered about. Luke and the squad head down in a zig zag pattern towards the tunnel. About halfway down they were spotted – evidenced by the noise from down below and how a handful of bandits were grouping in and pointing at them. 

“Archers!” Luke shouted over his shoulder. The four archers in the group dropped to one knee and started drawing arrows and firing down at the bandits. They were too far away to land accurate shots, but flying arrows were always a good way to make people panic. There were pros and cons to this strategy. Luke was no tactical genius but it made sense in the moment. Make it harder for the bandits to form up and such. But once they actually did form up, Luke would be down four men until the archers were able to catch up. Or perhaps they would remain preoccupied battling it out with enemy archers. 

He was getting better at formulating plans and leading, but he was still a work in progress. At least people listened to his orders, which told him that he was either scary enough to not be messed with or his orders had started making sense. 

“Swordsman, ready for combat!” Luke shouted as they ran closer to the bandits who were amassing near the hideout entrance. They weren’t aware that the soldiers were actually interested in the tunnel, or at least they weren’t at first. When they finally realized what the soldier’s plan was, the bandits started running to the tunnel to intercept them. 

Both groups arrived at about the same time. Swordsmen clashed with each other, including Luke. Luke being the special case that he was, wasn’t as afraid as his men were. His sword was already drawn and his body was already pulsing with the power of the equipment he’d gotten from Wulfrin. He had intentionally remained slow to keep the group mostly together, but now that he was in the thick of battle, he could really let loose. 

Only a handful of the bandits were actually dressed for battle. The rest had thrown on whatever they could on short notice. There were more bandits coming, though they had five to ten minutes before they showed up – plenty of time to deal with this first wave. It was the second wave that would be truly dangerous, but there was no time to think about that. 

Luke moved like a blur, rocketing from one bandit to the next, slashing at flanks and other exposed areas. The sheer strength and speed at which he attacked was enough to overwhelm most weak NPCs, and if that weren’t enough his skill with a blade was more than enough to disarm the more competent of the bunch. He couldn’t be everywhere at once, however. He heard a scream of pain from a familiar voice. He glanced over to see one of his men fallen to one knee. 

“Shit,” he said, running over and cutting down one last bandit. 

“He got me in the side,” the soldier reported. 

“Medic!” Luke shouted. 

“Here!”  

“Take our wounded inside the cave. Nobody came out of there so I imagine it’s empty. Tend to him and keep him safe. 

The player nodded. That left two men by his side. He looked over to the archers. One of them was also nursing a wound, but at this distance he couldn’t tell how serious it was. Had a bandit really managed to land a shot so far away? The other archers kept firing, trading volleys with bandits that had much better cover down below. 

Luke looked back towards the hideout, expecting to see a fresh wave of bandits to fight, but he was surprised to see that they hadn’t come out. Perhaps they’d realized that coming out of the hideout to fight was a fool’s game, especially with a player of such power helming the assault. 

Luke’s every instinct was to barge into the hideout and kill everyone he could find… but he held himself back. They had secured the cave, and that had been the objective. 

“You two,” he said, turning to address those right next to him, “back up the medic and try to set up a position inside of the cave. I’ll make a bit of chaos so that the archers can make it down here.”  

Luke intended to follow through with his words. He ran at the bandit hideout, roaring as he did so. The archers couldn’t afford to keep firing afar and had to turn their attention to Luke. The bandits rightfully thought that shooting arrows at Luke would keep him away. It was difficult, however, to hit someone moving so quickly. Arrows glanced off of his armor and those that looked like they’d hit were deflected with a quick swipe of his sword. 

As he got closer, he thought he might actually go in there and make a mess, but he caught a glimpse of at least two dozen bandits forming up inside. It just wasn’t worth the risk, and he’d be damned if he got chewed out for not following orders. Thankfully, his distraction had been enough. His archers had managed to make it down to the cave and were now safely within its confines. 

Luke sprinted back the way he came to find the cave to be quite crudely made. There wasn’t really any space to do battle as it was just a simple tunnel that went through the hill and likely exited out of some kind of trap door. 

“How are the wounded?” he asked the medic.

“They’ll be fine, but I need medicine from back at camp for one of them.” 

“No worries, we should be out of here soon enough. I highly doubt they’ll try to rush us down in here, so we can follow the path. Trouble is, I don’t think this tunnel is going to be operational when we come back. I imagine they’ll block it off. But we’ve carried out our orders. We verified their hideout’s location and that they take underground paths to navigate. If we have some scouts stationed around the area, we’re sure to find bandits moving in and out of similar tunnels.” 

He could only guess, but this tunnel was not very large. It was hard to imagine large amounts of goods passing through, certainly not large enough to make an entire hideout. There had to be another way in. 

“There’s also one survivor,” a soldier reported, kicking a NPC bandit in the side. He’d been tied up and thrown to the side. 

“Excellent, I’m sure his information will be valuable,” Luke said with a smile. After that, he helped to carry the wounded through the tunnel which did pop out at the other side of the hill through a hidden door in the ceiling. 

Luke’s prediction came true. Over the next week, scouts kept an eye on the area and found two more entrances. Many more soldiers were sent in next time which allowed them to successfully capture the hideout. Clever bandits as they were, many of them had fled before the altercation. 
 

[Luke Pendragon 0]

Luke went back to continue his rescue quest. He picked back up at where he and Aisha had taken the lead, quickly leaving behind Fang and Wato, as well as Norio. Luke was surprised at how willing Norio was to hang back and preoccupy Minnat while they got away, although he had done something similar in the past. Some people were predisposition to play the hero. 

He didn't know why he criticized Norio so much, maybe it was because they weren't so different. All he knew was that, right now, he was glad to have him on his side. Between himself, Norio, Aisha, Wato, and now Fang? The group might have the manpower to do some serious damage to the criminal enterprise in Jian, at least he hoped he did. He didn't know what the mysterious organization had been doing the past year but he knew it couldn't be good.

"Where we headed?" Luke shouted, doing his best to make himself heard over the sound of the horse and the wind. He assumed Aisha had a destination rather than just aimlessly running off into the forest. He just didn't know where. He assumed it was probably to a camp or something, if he knew where it was that they had set up. He’d be glad to get out of this area, that was for sure. For as short of a time as they had interacted, he’d had his fill of Nagato and couldn't get far enough away from him. He couldn't stand that creep. Maybe one day he’d talk to the group about helping him take Nagato and his criminal empire down.

"To camp, but that’s just our first stop. We need to regroup somewhere.  

Meanwhile, Fang and Wato did their best to keep up with Luke and Aisha. If she hadn't been locked up so long, she would've been able to ride circles around them. Now so much time had passed that she wasn't familiar with horses like these. Fang hadn't been outside of Nagato's complex in years, so to see that the world outside it hadn't changed much, it was reassuring for her. Maybe the world wasn't so different from the last time she was free, she thought. 

After hearing so much about this others from Wato, she was interested to see what they were up against for herself. Sure, Wato described the Hanzai, the name of the criminal enterprise, to her in great detail, but words couldn't do it justice. She'd be interested in seeing just what she had gotten herself into by getting herself tangled up with Wato. She had been a part of crews before but something was odd about this bunch, they didn't seem like they fit together at all. Wato wasn't kidding when he described them to her as ragtag.

"It's just up ahead here!" Aisha shouted, slowing the horse that she and Luke were on. Though she said what she did with the utmost confidence, she'd soon realize it was no longer true.

Aisha stopped the horse and waited for everyone to arrive. Moments after she and Luke stopped, Fang and Wato caught up. Not too terribly long after, Norio arrived as well, albeit with a different horse than he left with. This was typical of Norio and the group didn't bother asking questions. They had something else on their minds - that the group had made it to the end of the line, that this was the end, they had done it.

"I don't understand, this is where I set up camp. Where is it?" Aisha asked herself and mostly thinking out loud. She remembered perfectly where she’d set up her tents. There was no way he could be misremembering, that was out of the question. Something had to have happened. 

"Luke, you didn't see it when you got here?" Aisha questioned, certain there had to be an easy explanation for this. If there was nothing here when he arrived, that meant someone would've had to have taken everything down. Nagato was pretty slick, from what she knew of the crime lord, but this? Was he really capable of this? If so, maybe they had been underestimating him all along.

"All due respect, it's a big forest and it all looks the damn same. You're sure it was here?" Norio joined Aisha, knowing full well where the camp was set up. It was a shitty spot but he remembered it well. It wasn't like you could miss a bunch of big tents.

"No, it was right here..." Aisha replied, before it finally hit her. "...Nagato, I bet he took all our shit. We weren't fast enough. If only I had arrived sooner, perhaps I could've stopped this..." she jumped to conclusions, blaming herself once again for all that had happened. She wasn't certain but all the pieces came together in his head - Nagato said he had been warned of their arrival, so while he was in his complex, he’d had his men get a head start. He’d probably had them follow their tracks all the way back to this very spot.

"Shhhh, did you hear that? What was that sound?" Fang interrupted, curiously. It had been a while since she had heard a sound like that, having been imprisoned as long as she had. 

Luke snapped out of it, having heard exactly what sound Fang was referring to. It was the roar of an approaching flying monster. He stumbled up the mound of earth before finally falling to his hands. When he peered up into the skies above him, what he saw was a handful of flying monsters coming right for them. 

"I could be mistaken, but those might be Hanzai monsters."

"It's definitely the Hanzai." Luke said, a sense of defeat in his voice already. He wasn't sure why he felt the way he did, since this was always going to be the end result, he was always going to have to face the Hanzai. He supposed it was just the mounting tension of it all, as well as desperately wanting to confront them on his own terms. The Hanzai were actually headed by a group of rouge monsters, and it seemed that they’d sent their forces to deal with them. 

"Bollocks." Wato remarked, "I thought we were supposed to be bringin' the fight to them. Yet, 'ere they are. How? How'd they find us?" Wato was disillusioned at the sight of the flying monsters soaring high above them. His last interaction with the Hanzai went swimmingly, as evidenced by his being sold off to Nagato and imprisoned. Getting captured by them was one of the least enjoyable captures he could recall and he'd seen quite a few in his day. Part of him was really looking forward to giving them hell, as it might be his last chance at doing something big. 

"You know what? I bet this is all your fault, Luke. I mean, it's all your fault anyway because you're the one who got us into this mess but I bet if you had shown up earlier, we would've been able to escape and get back to our camp before Nagato got to 'em," Norio said, jumping the gun a bit and letting his doubts about Luke get the better of him. 

Luke turned to face Norio and though the two were a similar height, Luke's presence seemingly towered over him. Luke felt from the beginning that Norio couldn't be a team player and it seemed to him that Norio was hellbent on proving him right. Dealing with enough as it was, Luke decided to set the record straight. 

"To think, I thought for a minute that we could work together, maybe even be friends. But no, you still act like you're a gun for hire. I'll have you know that I came here as quickly as I possibly could. If you want to blame someone, blame yourselves for not waiting for me if you couldn’t handle yourselves. Jumping into this without me would've been suicide and you know it.”

"Easy, Luke. You're not the only who learned a few new tricks. A lot happened while you were gone..." Norio snarled, anger emanating off every word he said. That was certainly true, much happened after Luke left to travel back to the desert. There was a lot that Luke missed out on and a lot that he couldn't possibly understand - Norio had grown and changed significantly, as had his relationship with Aisha. They had inadvertently gone from associates to something much, much more. What Luke, among others, would think of such a development? They had kept this little tidbit to themselves up to this point.

Luke appeared unimpressed by Norio but inwardly, he was surprised. In fact, a couple of things about what had just transpired actually caught him quite off guard. The first and most obvious being that, judging by that vibe that he was giving off, Norio seemed to have some new ability up his sleeve. That was quite a development in and of itself given how little he seemed to use wyrd in the first place. This did explain why Norio seemed stronger than the last time Luke had seen him.

The second was less obvious and came as more of an implication - when Norio said a lot had happened while he was away, he subconsciously shot a brief glance in Aisha's direction. Frankly, that concerned Luke far more than any new technique. It was almost as if there was something he hadn't been clued in on yet. Before he could deliberate over it, their quarrel was interrupted.

"Enough. If you two are done with your little pissing match, we should get moving. I know a little town just west of here, we can hide out there," Fang interrupted, unenthused by the egos at play. Strong as these two may have been, it wouldn't make a lick of difference if they were sitting ducks out here in the forest. Luckily for them, Fang was a local and she knew her way around the area.

The quintet set out once more on the horses they stole from Nagato, with Norio following close behind on an injured horse. This time they set out west, finding cover in the trees before the monsters in the distance could close in on them. They were surely circling the skies keeping watch, but the group was safe for now. 

They headed for a small settlement where Fang grew up. It took some time to get there, which only emphasized the aftermath of the awkward altercation between Norio and Luke. Had Fang not interrupted, who knows what else would've been said or done. Fang figured they had bigger things to worry about, but she hadn't been around long enough to judge yet. She'd come to understand in time that everyone in this group was a little off and whether she liked it or not, now she was too.

Heat beat down onto the crew as they shot across the trails, finally losing the monsters in the sky that veered off to look at other areas. For the most part, the towns they passed seemed shady. The area was well known for its dark underbelly and criminal underworld, hence why someone like Nagato would thrive here. It was a festering sore of evil, a blight on the country. 

There was little evidence of large civilization, aside from the stray hut or roving hunters. The towns were few and far between in this area. The settlement they were headed toward was the only one for miles. If they didn't stop there, it would be at least a day’s trip on horseback to get out of the crime infested area. 

As the group finally arrived and dismounted, Luke walked alongside Aisha, Norio lingering far behind. "Tell me, do you agree with him? I told you what had to be done, you were the first to know. If I could've done it differently, I would've."

Part of him understood why Norio took issue with his actions, but it wasn't like Luke wanted to disappear to do other contracts. He wasn’t like the others… he had responsibilities. It was just the way things worked out. Part of him also didn't think he owed anyone any explanation, as he had done what he thought needed to be done in order to get stronger. He supposed he couldn't fault anyone for wanting one though, because there were consequences to his actions and more people were involved now than ever.

"Who, Norio? No, all that matters is that we got here and we got Wato. Just let it go, Luke. He didn't mean what he said. It's been a long time and there's just a lot happening right now. We're together again, we're going to get out of here, and we're going to take on the Hanzai. We can do this, Luke," Aisha said, taking Luke's hand in hers as they walked. She knew she could smooth this situation over, she just had to play mediator for a while.

"You're right, we will. They don't stand a chance against me - against us," Luke said, catching himself and his inadvertent hubris. 

"As for Norio...I suppose I'll give him the benefit of the doubt this time, but you need to tell me something. I want to know what happened while I was gone. I want to know everything." There was something, maybe many things he didn't know and that needed to change if they were going to keep this thing going.

“Let’s wait until we find a place to stay.”

“Okay.”

The group ventured futher into town, following Fang's lead. After a short tour, Fang decided it was time they disappeared for a while. The local called in a favor with an innkeeper and scored the ragtag group a place to stay for the night, under the table too. Here, they could take refuge from whoever it was the group had after them now. 

Frankly, it was hard to say who exactly would be on their tail. Minnat, the bounty hunter certainly couldn't be far behind. Now that the Hanzai monstesr were in the area, there was no telling when their ground forces would be coming after the motley crew as well. After getting settled into a room that was surprisingly large, the group divided and paired off with one another. Wato and Fang took to the far corner. Luke and Aisha hung back by the door to the room. As for Norio, Norio sat alone, in the sole chair belonging to the room.

"You're right, there's a lot you missed, I'll start from the beginning. The first couple weeks after you left were pretty boring, honestly. All I did was listen to rumors, trying to get an idea how much Hanzai presence there was," Aisha began, clearing her throat before she continued. "After that, I took your advice and finally went out looking for Norio. I was on my way to  a town trying to find him and we ran into each other on the way, believe it or not. He was going the opposite way. I wound up joining him for a drink and convincing him to help me with something." 

Luke nodded, intently listening. "We got to thinking Wato was still being held hostage somewhere in the area at the time. I told Norio about some rumors I had picked up on and convinced him to go check it out. Didn't take much convincing. When he got down there to investigate the next day, he found a bunch of Hanzai thugs and Minnat. According to Norio, Minnat had just finished loading up wagons with a bunch of cargo to be delivered to Nagato. We can't know for sure, but we're pretty sure Wato was part of that ‘cargo’. Norio was too late and was ran off by a bunch of Hanzai before he could do anything about it, so Minnat got away."

"Of course. I had a feeling there would still be some of them there," Luke stated, glad he was right in assuming that the Hanzai would still be up to no good, even with Cado and the Hanzai supposedly long gone. "Speaking of Minnat, what's the story behind that arm? Last time we saw each other, he didn't have one that looked like that." 

"Oh, right. I guess you weren't around for Norio to tell you about that. Norio cut it clean off. Looks like he got it healed though, and with some enhancements as well," Aisha explained.

"Anyway, shortly after Norio learned where Wato was going and who he was being taken to, me and him had a falling out I guess you could say. I tried to get him to help me further but he ran for the hills, I think because he didn't want any part of this at the time. He had other things to do. A few days went by and some people came by Wato's mount and they ransacked the place, knocked me out, and carted me off. Everything after is hazy but from what Norio told me it wasn’t good till he rescued me from that mess. So, we've worked together on and off ever since. We went months at a time without seeing each other, even though we knew where to find one another. We did a few jobs together but we mostly just kept an eye out for any Hanzai activity. It wasn't until last month that things changed. All the sudden, Norio was on board. He wanted to help us and I think it's because there's nothing left for him.”  

Luke took a step back from Aisha as his stare grew vacant. He could see now what had changed, there had been a shift in the dynamics. Luke shot a dirty look at Norio, who was picking at his nails across the room. There was lots to think about – good thing they had nothing to do but sit around for the time being.