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Owner Pose
Cantio After discovering the location of the crashed airship, Cantio's put out her call for assistance and provided coordinates to a port where a small freighter awaits. She explains that an airship carrying food supplies intended for Summer crashed on a remote island out at sea, and that anyone willing to help investigate would be rewarded handsomely for their efforts.

The ride over is fairly uneventful, with the island coming into view and not a cloud in sight. It doesn't take particularly long to reach the beach that Cantio described as the crash location, either. The island is massive, though, and she warns that the food supplies might have been scattered during the airship's descent.

____

You are on the northeast side of a C-shaped island on the SHORE. The FREIGHTER you jsut came in on is directly under your feet. GRASSLANDS are visible to the southeast, complete with trees, hills, and all sorts of oversized animals. A MAN wearing a roughed-up military vest and shorts ishuddled behind a broken airship wing with a machine gun. A WRECK is smoldering to the east, somewhat submerged and crammed right into the sand.
Cantio After discovering the location of the crashed airship, Cantio's put out her call for assistance and provided coordinates to a port where a small freighter awaits. She explains that an airship carrying food supplies intended for Summer was en route to deliver said supplies to the locals, but something went wrong. The airship crashed on a remote island out at sea, and she's now investigating it along with anyone else willing to help investigate, promising a handsome reward for their efforts.

The ride over is fairly uneventful, with the island coming into view and not a cloud in sight. It doesn't take particularly long to reach the beach that Cantio described as the crash location, either. The island is massive, though, and she warns that the food supplies might have been scattered during the airship's descent. The reason why becomes more obvious even as the freighter makes a landing on the beach, crunching into the sand a bit for lack of any real docks to moor at.

At least she remembered an anchor to hold the thing in place.

____

You are on the northeast side of a C-shaped island on the SHORE. The FREIGHTER you just came in on is directly under your feet. GRASSLANDS are visible to the southeast, complete with trees, hills, and all sorts of oversized animals. A MAN wearing a roughed-up military vest and cargo shorts is huddled behind a broken airship wing with a machine gun. A WRECK is smoldering to the east, somewhat submerged and crammed right into the sand.
Hibiki Tachibana     Hibiki brings her walking shoes. They're big and thick Capsule Corp-lookin' violet boots, more than adequate to handle all kinds of rugged terrain. Between her thick jacket and comfortable and easy to wear shorts, there's no island in the multiverse she cannot hike, no danger that cannot be overcome. Probably.

    Naturally, she's coming to help Cantio. Honestly she would've in almost any case outside of their usual encounters up to now, but given the circumstances, that's tripled up on. People need help, her attempt at doing things another way can't afford to go wrong before it even gets a chance to be tried...and imagine all of that wasted food. It makes her sick to her stomach, and not just because she still remembers the smell of spoiled meat.

    She expresses as much on the sail to their destination, more or less, until they make landfall on the sandy shore. She promptly goes to HOP the railing and come down on the beach with a 'hup', brushing herself down a bit and taking stock of their surroundings.

    "This must be..." Between the crashed wreck and the displaced wing, Hibiki immediately makes the decision to engage with the MAN. She's actually pretty tactful and approaches slowly, waving him down on the approach even though she looks anxious to get over there as fast as possible. "Oi! Are you a survivor!? What happened!?"
Yang Xiao Long     "Looks like we've got a survivor on the beach." Hibiki seems to have that in hand, so Yang leaps the handrail and lands with a crunch in the sand under her boots. "Be careful, Bikki, shout if y'need help, 'kay?" The blonde instead heads over to the WRECK to see if she can figure out what happened. Weapons fire? Storm damage? Catastrophic Mechanical Failure?
Cantio Cantio, too, is dressed in her exploratory best! It's a white sleeveless thing with purple trim, matching shorts, and even her boots have that same white-and-purple-trim thing going for them. Her hair's up in a ponytail to help beat that awful tropical heat, too!

With the team beginning their investigation, Cantio remains on the SHIP to get it secured while Hibiki goes to check on the MAN and Yang goes to check ont he WRECK.

MAN:
Upon hearing Hibiki approaching, his first instinct is to point that machine gun her war. Thanks to her not looking like she's about to run up and rip his face off, though, he lets out a tired sigh before slumping against the busted wing.

His hair is a vibrant mat of red-orange, he obviously hasn't been washed with proper soap in days, and he's actually kind of average-looking buildwise. Definitely not army material despite the vest. "Someone..? Oh. Y-yeah,  I was hoping someone would finally arrive. The..."

He waves at Hibiki to come closer, shifting over to give her some hiding space behind the wing as well while gesturing out towards the GRASSLANDS with his gun. "The airship... Uh. We were attacked. Something hit us from behind, a bunch of stuff flew out, some of the guards just got vaporized... And I've been stuck on this hellhole with all these giant that want to eat me."

He looks like he's seen some shit. He's also eaten a fair amount of those animals, if the number of LARGE BONES scattered further away from the wing is any indication.

WRECK:
The wreck is a mess, to say the least. One of the wings is broken off entirely, likely the one that the MAN is huddled behind. There's a HOLE in the partially submerged bottom back of the airship, looking like it was scorched by something big. Cleanly, too, as though it might have been from some kind of plasma weapon instead of a regular explosive.

The hole is large enough for several people to fit through comfortably, or even some larger crates. It's fairly empty inside of the hole save for three identical crates, one of which has already been broken open with some kind of crowbar. It's likely that many of the crates that had been in this plane had fallen out through the hole. The walls are also somewhat scorched, with a few people-shaped spots on the walls cleaner than the rest of the walls.

The ground rumbles faintly, but things are peaceful for the time being.
Yang Xiao Long     Yang explores inside the hole. "Oi, Cantio, got a couple crates still in here. Something /powerful/ hit 'em, maybe some kinda energy weapon from the scorch marks... some of the crew didn't make it either." The blonde peers into the opened crate, then goes to grab one of the sealed ones and hauls it outside before heading back for the other one.

    The rumbling of the ground makes her tense up a little. "Behemoths? No, something big though..." she muses to herself.
Hibiki Tachibana     "I'll be sure to!" Hibiki calls back to Yang with a wave back to her too, before she approaches the MAN in earnest--when he proves himself to not be jumpy enough to actually shoot, of course. She furrows her brow and frowns at the state he's in more than anything else, and as she gets close enough to do as gestured and bunker down behind the cover of the wing with him, can definitely tell he's been through Some Shit.

    "Giants?" After a moment of confused blinking, she glances over towards the GRASSLANDS and takes another one to appreciate that those are /definitely/ bigger than normal. Definitely not unkillable, if even this guy could gun down a few for meals to get by, but she can understand why being stuck alone with them for days on end would get to his nerves. This is awful.

    "You look like you've held up, at least," she says, with a slow nod towards the bone pile. "So you didn't see what actually attacked the ship? It doesn't look like it'd be the animals...do you know if there are any other survivors, or did all of the guards...?" Slowly, she shifts to take closer stock of the LARGE BONES to get a better idea of the scale of these things, without needing to approach the likely dangerous GRASSLANDS just yet.

    That ground rumbling is probably not good though. A few moments after, she glances back over her shoulder to the redheaded trooper. "...What was that?"
Cantio WRECK:
As expected, the crates are filled with prepackaged food in Cadenza's usual white and purple color scheme along with small energy drink cans with a yellow and red color scheme. The remaining crates are pretty heavy, but easily movable enough with some effort. Thankfully, the food is still fresh/preservative-laden enough that it can be salvaged, and the energy drinks are... Well, energy drinks.

It'd probably be healthier for the intended recipients not to drink those things.

The opened crate, however, is probably not going to last nearly as long due to being opened already, likely from the MAN having to survive for however long its been since the airship crashed. There's bullet holes around the latches, too, as though it had been forced open that way instead of with a crowbar or something. Once Yang makes it outside with that crate, Cantio steps off the ship to start dragging and shoving it back to the ship, albeit with far more difficulty.


MAN:
"Giant animals, yeah. Bugs, snakes, birds... I even saw some mushrooms jumping around further out." He explains with the barest of chuckles, perhaps realizing how stupid that sounds. "I only heard it when it happened. By the time anyone could figure out what was going on, we were already going down."

He shakes his head lightly at the question about other survivors. "By the time I woke up, everyone else was gone. I thought I saw some of them heading deeper into the island, but I lost track of them when those things started coming."

He points at the LARGE BONES. They're certainly not human bones, but they're large enough that whatever they belonged to was probably about the size of a human. One of the skulls looks like it belonged to a person-sized frog, and another looks like it belonged to a bird the size of a small child.


ALL:
The source of the rumbling becomes more apparent as the MAN gets up, his breathing quickening rapidly as though he knows what's happening. "Speaking of... They're coming. I hope you all know how to fight." He speaks calmly, but it's fairly clear he's anything but as he levels his gun towards the GRASSLANDS.

On the horizon and moderately closer, animals start to appear. Snakes, bats, and birds start approaching slowly at first. There's a good dozen of them, though, and they all look like they want blood as their slithering, running, and flapping (respectively) grows more intense with each passing second.

They're all about three to four feet tall and even wider than that, too, which probably accounts for why the MAN's been so wary of leaving this place. Unfortunately, the wildlife is attacking with fang, claws, and acidic spittle!
Hibiki Tachibana     "That's not good..." Hibiki mutters back. They'll need to find where the rest of the airship's crew went, and hope they're still alright. But if there's a hope...they have to try. Looking at these bones, though, she's not sure how long some ordinary people could've survived whatever lurks in the depths of the island if this kind of stuff is just at the outskirts.

    Then the source of the rumbling is revealed, and she follows the MAN's lead in standing up and turning towards the sound of approaching wingbeats, slithering, sprinting, and other movement-related things. Wait, are those bats running? That doesn't even look normal! She moves to stand a few meters in front of the ragged guard defensively, though not enough so to get in the way of his shots.

    "Wouldn't be here if we couldn't!" With a chant and a golden sphere of note-encircled light covering her, which the acid splatters against harmlessly before it all explodes outwards, leaving her armored up in her Symphogear. This guy has been through enough, and she's definitely going to keep him safe...and, you know. The boat. And everyone on it. Thus, she promptly lunges forward into the fray to meet the creatures before they draw in too close!

    Where she engages in animal violence - knocking aside sharpened limbs and letting teeth dig only into metal, before retaliating with heavy hooks, elbow strikes, and snap kicks to send the oversized animals flying and knock the fight out of them. "But I can't imagine putting up with this for days...!" And when it comes to giant snakes, the best thing to do is sock them in the face, grab them, spin them, and throw them. Far, far, far away.
Yang Xiao Long     "Not Grimm, but ugly enough for it!" remarks the blonde as her gauntlets extend out along her arms. She then crosses them to brace against a swiping claw, taking it square on and skidding back a half foot. She then steps forward into the beast, shoves it back and then goes in to punch it square in the mid-body with a haymaker punch backed with an explosive blast.
Cantio Of course they have acid spit. They always have to have acid spit. And yes, the bats are straight up sprinting at the group. Thankfully, for as large and threatening as these creatures might be, they're still ultimately animals. They're startled by Hibiki's transformation, but they still charge her all the same, getting battered aside easily enough by those mighty punches and kicks, and getting tossed clear into the distance.

"The gun helps! And they actually go pretty good with the drinks!" The MAN shouts in return, his machine gun mowing down several of the wildlife down in one volley. One of the large creatures turns its attention towards him thanks to all the noise, but Yang intervenes quickly enough and sends it barrelling into another group of animals that leaves them either still or fleeing from the apparent danger.

Cantio, meanwhile, is busy fending off animals from another direction. It's a good thing, too, since the ground rumbles again as more of those animals start to appear. In addition to the snakes and bats and birds, hornets also begin to join the assault with a combination spitting acid (because why not) as well as firing stingers at the group that regenerate back onto their bodies moments later!
Yang Xiao Long     Yang glances over her shoulder. "Keep your head down, dude, we'll take care of this, when there's an opening, head for the freighter." When the acid comes splashing down, she fires her gauntlets to disrupt the goop, making it spray around her instead of over her entirely. She still gets splashed, the acid eating into her Aura, causing it to flicker fitfully. The stingers come in next, and the brawler punches at the stingers to deflect them away from her and the MAN behind her.

    "I've had just about enough of your BULLSHIT!" she bellows, hair flaring golden as she stomps a foot down, then starts punching up at the hornets and firing explosive bolts at the flying enemies, which explode like flak projectiles amongst the swarm.
Hibiki Tachibana     "Do they...?" Hibiki wonders out loud mostly to herself, though she has not the time to ruminate on the taste of giant animals and energy drinks. The moment she's cleared out the immediate area around her of beasts, more danger strikes. The ground trembles once more, and her footing is momentarily unsettled by surprise as the next wave washes over them. These things have a lot going for them besides their size, too...!

    Like these stingers! She rushes to restabilize herself and block, but several of the things lance themselves into unprotected parts of her body deep enough to draw blood. Combined with splatterings of acid she hurries to avoid, there's a definite pained clenching of her teeth. She can only hope these things aren't bearing poison as she hastily grabs onto and throws them to the ground, bracing herself in the face of the next volley...and all of the rest of the animals!

    "Ngh--but none of these look like they're responsible for taking down the ship..." The girl notes to herself, right before she swipes out with both hands when the next couple of stinger-projectiles come in. One by one, she catches them between her fingers like thrown knives until she has a full collection - then flips the lot of them around and sends them flying back towards animals and insects alike to give them a taste of their own medicine. Faster than going up and punching them out one by one, too!
Cantio The hornets, too, are dispatched of easily enough between Yang's explosive punch-blasts and Hibiki's return-fire with their own stingers. Despite Yang's warnings to hide, however, the MAN holds his ground, taking only a few moments to reload his machine gun before unloading on another swarm of the fliers to bring them down in a heap of crunchy bug parts.

"Acid wouldn't leave marks like this, no... If it was some kind of heat-based attack, it'd have to at least be something like... Lava!" Cantio suggests, but she doesn't sound entirely convinced about that mere seconds later. She does look a little hopeful as what appears to be some kind of lion head emerges from behind a tree, the head also somehow managing to just fly.

No wings, no wind, no anything remotely conducive to flight. It's just a flying lion head. Like the hornets before it, it starts belching out trios of fireballs at the rescuers and the MAN, the latter scrambling for cover up until the wing he had been using as cover melts along with several parts of the airship wreck behind him. He lets loose with another volley of bullets into the flying lion head, causing a second head to appear and vomit fire all over the place with the first one like some kind of weird fuzzy flying sprinkler!
Yang Xiao Long     Yang sets her feet as that lion head appears. "That is one ugly mother fu---." Flame sprays down around her, obscuring her from view for a moment. It's almost like she's gone down for the count, until she strides out of the flames, her hair wafting like it were alight itself. "You made two fatal errors." she says, her eyes hidden by her fringe. When she looks up, her lilac eyes are burning red. "The first was attacking me. The second was using fire. Cuz, I. BURN!" she sets her feet, then launches herself up at the floating lionhead monster. She's aiming to punch the thing directly between the eyes of the derp-faced side, her gauntlet firing off an explosive pulse at the apex of the strike.
Hibiki Tachibana     "Lava, or..." After a moment to get her breath back, Hibiki trails off in reply to Cantio, only to fall into open-mouthed silence as the FIRST BOSS floats out of the treeline. The fact that it's /just/ a floating head with nothing else attached is a whole lot weirder than all of the other wierd animals up to now, and basically confirms that yeah, there's probably some seriously weird crap the deeper in you go.

    For how untrained he looks, this MAN is getting more and more credit for surviving here by the moment.

    Fire comes down everywhere, and the Gungnir girl isn't as lucky when it comes to evading the wash of FIRE going absolutely everywhere. Her armor is plenty enough to hold up against it, but the rest is still singed as she leaps to avoid getting incinerated directly...though wearing superheated metal isn't very fun either! "That's sure hot enough to take down a ship...!"

    Overcoming her surprise, she lands back down and digs her feet in, with the pistons on her knee-high boots turning and extending forward. The lack of solid ground is made up for when she jumps and they slam back in, throwing her forward quickly as the shockwaves created behind her kick up a serious amount of sand. While Yang goes for the extremely weird-looking face, Hibiki closes in from the opposite side, letting out a roar as she flips herself down into an axe-kick! The pistons extend once more mid-motion, only to slam back in if her heel manages to smash into the thing's forehead--adding a second impact right behind the initial one to floor it!
Cantio Between the Semblance and dust-fueled punch explosions on one side, the piston-doubled axe kick caving in the other, and the absolutely excessive (yet immaculately controlled) volley of hot lad in the middle, it's probably of little surprise to anyone there that the double-lion goes down like a...

It's not too grotesque, thankfully. It feels pretty gross on impact, but it falls apart rather tamely, leaving behind a giant double-faced skull as evidence of the creature's demise. Seeing their 'boss' defeated so soundly, the rest of the remaining animals scurry off to lick their wounds, or just to hide outright.

With the dust cleared (more or less), the MAN with the machine gun finally settles down on the sand with an exhausted groan. This might have been the first time he's really relaxed in days, judging from how absolutely boneless he looks right now.

Cantio: "It's okay now, Mister Jackson. Once.. .Um. Once we get you back on your feet, we'll take you back home, and-"
Jackson: "No. Not yet."
Cantio: "... Eh? No?"
Jackson: "There's some weird crap going on around here. I... I can't just leave and forget about all this. I need to find out what happened to the rest of the crew."
Cantio: "But you saw what we're up against. It's... I mean, it'd be useful to have a firsthand perspective on all this, but..."

Cantio looks towards Yang and Hibiki, as if trying to get their help in PERSUADING him. That is, if they're so inclined to do so instead of ASSISTING him in his personal goal.
Yang Xiao Long     Yang lands, letting out a huff as her hair drops back down and loses the golden sheen. A moment later, her Aura fizzles and crackles, before giving out. She thumbs up to Hibiki, and wanders over towards the MAN and Cantio. "If I was in his shoes, I'd wanna see this through too." she remarks, offering him a hand to stand back up with. "One condition, though." she says to him, face stern. "If it gets too much for you to handle, you back off and let us deal with it. Deal?"
Hibiki Tachibana     Landing back on the ground neatly, Hibiki also takes a good few seconds to double over with her hands on her knees and let out a long groan slash sigh. With all the animals retreating and even the legendary survivor of a MAN (now revealed to be JACKSON) letting his guard drop, she can afford that, soon taking one hand off her leg to return the thumbs up back to Yang. Though the turn of the conversation gets her to straighten back up and turn to look between him and Cantio.

    She folds her arms and closes her eyes, seeming to think...then opens them back up with a resolute nod behind her scarf.

    "I think Yang is right. Making him go back now would be the crueler thing. Between all of us, I think it'll be fine," she says, expressing her desire in ASSISTING him before looking to Jackson himself. "And I think he's pretty good at fighting the things on this island as is. We'll rescue everyone if they're still out there. Together."
Cantio Cantio sighs lightly as both Yang and Hibiki encourage Jackson's quest to investigate this matter and find closure, giving in fairly quickly with a disapproving frown of her own. "Alright, I... I guess that makes sense. I know I wouldn't be able to sit still in this kind of situation, either... Mm. As long as nobody's dead, I should be able to patch everyone up as we go."

Jackson, meanwhile, claps his hands together as he gets back up. "That settles that, then. I know some of the survivors went into the forest to check things out, so that'll be our next stop." He's already taking the lead despite his haggard state, even going as far as taking a few steps forward before nearly collapsing just from the weight of the machine gun."

"... M-maybe you should take a break first." Cantio suggests, getting a low grunt from the red-haired delivery guy as he finally lets exhaustion claim him and closes his eyes. "We'll gather here again soon, and in the mean time... Um."

"We can probably get him cleaned up a little back home, too."
Yang Xiao Long     Yang shifts and catches JACKSON as he collapses. "Rest on the ship for now, you'll be no good to anyone if you're literally walking dead on your feet." she remarks, shifting to carry him into the FREEIGHTER to get a few hours of sleep. "A break sounds good, I need to do some maintenance on Ember Celica after that, something got knocked loose when that thing hit me at the start."