Florida Man went walkabout again the following day and everyone worried he may not come back this time.
That day more Kopar showed up to work as sanitation and housekeeping in the encampment. Socket busied himself with stripping the weapons off the APC in anticipation for trading them for parts to get it up and running.
That afternoon, Kage asked everyone to go and investigate another plume of black smoke to the northwest. Socket, Ray and Butch geared up and headed that direction. They passed the entrance to the MARTA tunnels that they had previously explored and continued heading northwest. after a little while they encountered another MARTA entrance but this one had been barricaded with concrete barriers to give someone the ability to make a fighting retreat as they went down into it.
On the ground in front of the tunnel entrance there was the obvious signs of a fight. They saw a number of black armored corpses and the source of the smoke; various pieces of the forest surrounding the tunnel entrance smoldering. They cautiously approached the entrance and quickly encountered some men with guns holding their ground.
Ray approached with his normal level of "I don't know, or care that, you can hurt me" and was met with some hostility. After a few minutes of conversation a leader identified as Lysander appeared wearing red armor and a cape to match. The men were not really willing to answer any questions and acted a lot like scared rabbits about to go to ground.
Butch and Ray were happy enough to leave after they explained that they lived right over the way and were worried about anyone who was setting fire to the forest, to which Lysander said he would send an envoy to talk about a potential relationship.
Socket however was very curious thinking that these men might be Atlanteans and that they might have information for him and decided to follow them. He stayed hidden for the most part using a device that cloaked him until the power for it ran out just as he was entering a massive chamber full of 'space ships' like the one that they had raided for parts before. Here he accidentally attracted the attention of the men he pursued and they confronted him.
Socket explained he had business with Lysander and was granted an audience after he showed them his tattoos. After some time and conversation Socket left with new knowledge of his heritage.
Back at camp Ray and Socket were busying themselves getting ready for a trip to Primal Rage the following day. Shortly after socket arrived, the Black Market guys showed up looking to trade the weapons and then Socket got the APC working again.
The following day they set out for SEEGA territory with Kage and Lexington holding down the fort again. After the first days travel, Browww came to alert them that something was coming and was urging them to follow him running south. This is when half a dozen Simvan riders bore down on the APC and the group.
Ray had been up ahead and then fell back to try and confront them while Butch shot at them from the back of the APC. After a short fight Ray ended up going Dragon and combating 4 Simvan on foot. Since they did not appear to be at all interested in talking to Ray about a "business opportunity" he and Butch dispatched them quickly and they were on their way again.
ReplyDeleteBy this point the more thoughtful members of Dinotaurs may be starting to realise the true genius of Ray's approach - by walking up to people with blithe unconcern about what might be on their mind and addressing them from a position of friendly, amiable superiority he consistently undercuts both their aggression and certainty, pushing them off-balance and making it easier to get what he wants out of them. Empires have been built on less, although in all fairness, one of those who has no idea of the possible genius of this approach is Ray himself, who mostly just likes to be liked.
He did however pause for long enough to tell people off for starting fires in the forest because 'people live here'. The fact that many of these people are raptors never came up.
On the trip south, Ray had been scouting ahead of the group, jogging along in raptor-like fashion, head bobbing as he merrily pretended to be a dinosaur so when the APC roared past him, guns blazing he naturally stopped to see what was going on, only for a Simvan on a dinosaur to try and run him down with a lance. Naturally, he attempted to clothesline the leader whereupon a whole bunch of angry monster-men started trying to turn him into a kebab and he went dragon in order to gain enough volume to argue with them.
Unfortunately, despite Wraith's considerable physical power, enormous resilience and armoured scales that would defy a modestly well armed tank he turned out to be a decidedly mediocre fighter, swinging wildly without particular impact at the smaller, fast-moving Simvan who (after their dinosaurs decided that they wanted nothing to do with fighting a dragon) shouted something about 'all that meat' and went for him with a vengeance.
Once again, he fell short of actually killing anyone while Butch slaughtered everything that twitched, eventually shooting the head off the last Simvan - who Wraith had scooped up in one foreclaw to talk to - and leaving Wraith to stare for a bit, shrug and take a bite of what was now basically a protein bar.
Once again, no-one really though to take the time to explain why this might not be the best thing to do, although in their defence they were running off at the time while Ray (human once more) cleared up the battle-site, did some looting and caught a few of the riding dinosaurs to draw along in the teams wake.