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Priscilla     The usual sight expected for a safari slash hunting trip slash totally scientific wildlife stuff is a well-stocked all-terrain van, a local guide, a crate in the back, a shortwave radio, and the rolling savanna and/or wetlands ahead. In a more archaic setup, it'd perhaps be a riding elephant with a palanquin on its back and a handful of trainers. Apparently both of these situations and locations were deemed too boring

    Arriving to go on safari takes one to a series of wide, flat grassland uneasily sharing space with rocky plateaus, mysterious wind-worn columns, and hexagonal patterned stretches of fracked ground where water from the coast, a silver sliver of which is visible in the distance, has run through the ground table. The bright blue of the sky is tinged pink on one horizon where a second, more distant star is starting to set, leaving a very large moon hanging out in midday.

    Striped mineral formations dot the landscape, alongside groves of broad, spiral-trunked trees with branches that fall back into the soil again, and stretches of thick, jungle-like plant cover crowding out smaller creeks and pools, while larger bodies of water are all but choked with buoyant kelp-like plants and floating flowers. Despite the sea not being all that far, it mostly just smells like fresh rain, and large patches of ground are wet underfoot, where they aren't hard rock or something like salt crystal. The vegetation grows thicker between the pink and blue horizons as it heads towards what is probably 'actual jungle'.

    The setup is around some sort of small industrial outpost, almost more like a camp than anything else, with large vehicles parked all around for carrying gas, transporting supplies, cutting trees, clearing rocks, excavating wells, and drilling core holes. There's a big satellite dish, a few labs, a bunch of empty holding cells, but none of it particularly matters because you're here for the big stonking 12-wheeled APC thing with a rear compartment the size of a dining room, wheels half as wide as you are tall, and a rough finishing job that looks like the just basically waterproofed a tank and made sure it could float.

    There is precisely one driver, and one ecologist riding shotgun in a sealed front compartment, from the government-sponsored company that is set up here. There's also a storage locker filled with, medical supplies, positioning gear, ropes, floaties, emergency supplies, sample containers, water testing equipment, a small refrigeration unit (empty), camping gear, and about two dozen weapons, alternating between big, heavy, industrial rifles, and big, heavy, industrial tranquilizer guns, alongside big/heavy/industrial things on poles, half of which are large electrical taser things, and the other half of which are explosive-loaded spearheads. The top hatch of the vehicle opens up to two different portholes, one of which has a camera, radar, zoom lens, weather monitor, and scanner, and the other of which has a fuckoff huge machine gun.

    A loading compartment at the very back, with its own loading ramp, separate from the passenger area, has a pair of motorbikes, a small buggy-like hovercraft, and a hang glider for some reason, as well as wetsuits, masks, and a pair of heavy flamethrowers and circular saws that must weigh 50 pounds each.
Priscilla     The premise is very simple and easily explained. An interstellar company is documenting the area of a new planet for all potential uses of the territory. Valuable minerals, habitable living space, new and exciting medical compounds; even just basic map and weather knowledge is nice. Due to a rich atmosphere and lowish gravity, everything living here tends towards being kind of huge, and also often very aggressive. The journey is two legs: one is across the grassland, and another is into the jungle, to a science outpost owned by the same guys. The jungle especially is known to be an absolute shitshow, which is why the APC is so over-equipped. It's supposed to be a two day trip with a stayover. Appreciate nature. Rough it a little bit. Have a fun safari road trip.

    You also basically have permission to shoot whatever you feel like. Very intact critters get bought off you for study. Big and aggressive creatures get a bonus for exterminating the dangerous wildlife, and you can keep them. Captured and sedated ones of either kind get an extra bonus, and can be tagged for pickup. Any other kinds of samples are good as well, but they've obviously already checked out anything common.
Sarracenia      Princess Sarracenia isn't really a hunter, but a wildlife safari and some exploration sounded like a fun time. The princess arrives in her personal aircraft...a wooden twin-rotor VTOL. Bringing an entire ship with a whole crew just to sit around somewhere would be silly, even for her, and she likes flying the Dyna. After requesting landing clearance the princess lands wherever is appropriate. If clearance is not granted for some reason, she just lands a short distance outside the outpost.

     At first Sarracenia isn't sure how to actually get to the APC. There is mud and water everywhere! But, she pulls out a cute frog plush and in a puff of smoke she is wearing a full body frog suit instead of her dress. And she proceeds to hop froggishly to the APC, thereby saving her dress from getting dirty! When she reaches it, she stands tall and rests a webbed frog hand on her chest. "Greetings! I am Princess Sarracenia Sundew, crown princess of the Sundew Kingdom. And I am here to join your expedition!"

     Once allowed onto the APC, she makes her way toward the load out compartment. "Ooooh. What fun-looking toys!"
Haguro Despite her existence as a ship with her own cannons and armaments of war, Haguro still finds herself amazed by the collection of guns filling the storage lockers. They might not be as convenient as her wrist and shoulder mounted guns for convenience and general use, but...

Honestly? Holding a pair of machineguns still makes her feel kind of like a badass. She's displaying good discipline, of course, as she keeps them aimed low and her fingers firmly away from the triggers. Now all she needs is a bandana to go with it, but she has to settle for her usual purple and white uniform that keeps literally everything except her head covered in some sort of fabric or steel plates.

"Ah, Princess Sundew. It's good to have you here." She smiles softly and salutes Sarracenia before climbing onto the top of the ATC. "I'm.. Ah. Haguro, Fourth of the Myoukou Class Heavy Cruisers and Vice-Admiral of the Luthan Fleet." The cruiser braces each gun against a leg while she stands there watching guard over the vehicle, glancing around steadily to keep her eyes out for the biggest things she can shoot.

It's not like they'd be hard to miss, but having an early warning spotter never hurts.
Gilgamesh      Hunting is Mankind's oldest ingenuity. Before fire, before the wheel, before language, mankind hunted. Mankind learned to hunt in packs, to kill like the beasts of their lands in order to feed and sustain their tribes. In many ways, the evolution of hunting and the evolution of humanity are one and the same - as tools to hunt became more complex so too did social construction. Those tools became weapons of war, turned to hunt man itself.

     It is therefore no surprise that the King of Heroes, the oldest of heroes, is a practiced hunter. From the simplest beasts to the mightiest leviathans, the King has chased them all down and brought them to bear with his strength like a star from Heaven. Nothing in his own world posed a challenge for him save the Cedar Forest, the nightmare Humbaba, and the Bull of Heaven, the great god-monsters of Babylonian mythology that were his kith and kin.

     It could be said that he enjoyed it, but in truth, hunting was simply part of adventure, and adventure was part of his core. His soul was drawn to chase treasure like a whale drawn to migration. It was an instinct rooted deeply in his own nature, a desire for things of value. Pleasure was an extension of that instinct, and he, the Great King, had already experienced every pleasure in the world.

     He was not here to hunt. He was here for Priscilla.

     The King pays no attention to the driver or the ecologist. He pays no attention to the technological marvel that he's found himself in. He is, in fact, beelined entirely on the motorcycles.

     Motorcycles are like horses that don't poop. They are wonderful and Gilgamesh is quite fond of them, in part because of Yang Xiao Long, in part because it's something he doesn't recall owning. He probably has a magic item that does roughly the same thing, but not with that satisfying grumble, that growl of the engine. So, disinterested in wetsuits, masks, flamethrowers, and the ship itself, Gilgamesh spends a substantial amount of his time fixated on the motorcycles.

     It would look hilarious if it wasn't for his inherent, ridiculous perfection. A shirtless man in a white robe slung over one shoulder, with primitive (but fine) golden jewelry on his neck, arms, and ears, fawning over a motorcycle like a grease monkey.

     He pays no attention to anyone else present at the moment. He's busy sitting down on one of the bikes and playing with it like an overexcited teenager.
Maricel Thorne      Maricel, despite her hypomanically cheerful demeanor, seems distinctly uninterested in the geography. She seems uninterested in the giant APC, in the heavy-duty macho rambo weapons, and even- to an extent- in the unique flora, once she verifies quite thoroughly that the grass isn't some kind of animate planimal. But they have one thing to keep her focused and busy before arrival.

     The excessive-bore tranquilizer darts.

     Immediately on spotting the tranq ammo, Maricel stuffs her labcoat pockets to bulging with it like a kid who's run out of room in their basket for Halloween candy. She spontaneously generates some kind of cartoony meat-gremlin and starts bickering and haggling with it "in the background" over whether she can drug it up to test the effects. The words "obey me! You are my creation!" probably come up somewhere in the one-sided polemics.

     One can only hope that the Counter-Kaiju she starts building a few moments after that will be more compliant. The staticky, rainbow-colored rift that sporadically appears on her back seems to supply an endless amount of slick, undifferentiated biomass for her expert craftsmanship. She sculpts, carves, and articulates a twenty-foot-tall saurian beast of raw muscle and gleaming bone in a flurry of surgical motion spanning less than twenty seconds. It'd likely be half that time if she didn't fuss about getting the eyeless, jagged-toothed skull just right. In place of canines, it bears saber-toothed syringes bubbling with the tranquilizer concoction.

     She scales its back, dramatically impales its heart with foot-long electrode spikes. With a thunderous boom of electricity that highlights its bespoke skeleton and a tonic writhe of muscles, the creature shudders to life. Maricel sits on Gorezilla's shoulder with a near-smug smile of accomplishment, her legs crossed daintily.

     It's good to be a doctor.
Stella     Stella is just here to fight things. There's nothing else. It's experience. It's what she knows how to do. It's something she has in common with people, unlike a lot of her other traits.

    "These weapons do not seem useful," she comments, awkwardly holding a machinegun entirely the wrong way. "This is heavy and poorly balanced. The metals used to make it are not especially high quality."

    She puts it back into the pile.

    "I believe I will pass on using any of these armaments." She's not even sure what half of this equipment is for, owing to having never seen any of it before.
Maricel Thorne      Maricel is reclining in Gorezilla's palm, draw-me-like-one-of-your-French-monsters style, when it lowers her down towards Stella at eye level. She casually reaches over and picks up one of the smaller guns, nods to herself, and then tosses it back into the pile. "I think those are crude projectile weapons, Shiny," she says. "Volatiles ignite, launch pointy metal down the tube via Newton's shenanigans." She looks to her mini-kaiju for confirmation; it nods back at her.

     (She definitely just made it nod. There's no way that thing's smarter than a carrot.)

     "I guess it's functional. You know, if the other guy actually minds being full of holes."
Nie Li     It's hard to say exactly how Nie Li made his way to the meeting place. He wasn't seen coming through the warp gate, nor was a single plant rustled up until the very last moment where he takes a flying leap from one of the nonsensical trees, sailing easily through the rest of the distance and coming to a surprisingly stop on a landing near the departure vehicle. He's dressed in his usual attire - and given that its a mixture of oranges and reds, it might be a wonder that there was no sign of his presence until now. Is he maybe some kind of ninja? Nah, ninjas don't wear orange. Right?

    "The wildlife here is simply too strange. I've never seen anything like these trees!" The youth announces conversationally to the group as he takes stock of who else is present for the trip.

    Note one self-proclaimed princess dressed as a GIANT CARTOONISH FROG. Lacking any sort of context for the Frog Suit, Nie Li can't help but turn to look. If he's skeptical of this claim though, he doesn't show it at all. The presence of Gilgamesh is noted next, with a healthy raising of his eyebrows. Then there's the Definitely a Doctor and her altogether too ridiculous beast that came out of nowhere. His eyes are increasingly wide throughout the entire process of its spoontaneous creation.

    For all the crazy stuff he's seen, there seems to always be something to add to that in the Multiverse. Then, of course, there's Stella. His memory is sharp. He remembers her quickly from the golem incident...

    "It seems I've yet to make acquaintances with some here. I am Nie Li of the Heavenly Marks family, Partner of the Concord! This expedition is getting to be quite something, and we haven't even departed yet."
Priscilla     Priscilla is indeed here, having arranged and paid for the expedition itself in a curious mood after the whole kaiju incident. She has one of those very rare changes of clothes on, with that sort of white linen/silk-esque-but-not-really fabric, in a simple crossed over shirt, short(er, to mid forearm length) sleeves held to the upper arm with gold bands, and a gold edged waist sash tie cinching a short(er, to mid-calf) skirt. Eminently breathable wear that isn't liable to drag in water or dirt. She seems to be deliberating over whether to wear a hat or not. The one she has seems like it'd be mildly silly, brimmed and canvas and all that.

    Even though the APC is a Mars rover monstrosity, the motorbikes are actually pretty sick. The wheels are thick and obviously filled with rolled steel wire like military vehicles, but the torque on the engine is fantastic, and would churn through three inch deep mud at fifty emp-pee-haych easy. On flat ground they'd go crazy fast. There's also a retractable brush blade on the front wheel cover, and twin little guns embedded in the sides of the windbrake, because apparently those are considered necessary. It's heavy and steel and very growly, not light and aluminium.

    The bigass rifles are also probably meant to be held by burly dudes in light power suits. They aren't for shooting people, and seem to be primarily built for shooting lots of really big bullets very fast rather than accuracy, prioritizing stopping power. The taser poles are more like polehammers by that token. The blast-haded spears are like crocodile or shark spikes, but bigger. The tranquilizer darts are of course filled with obnoxious amounts of sedatives that'd be lethal to a human being in seconds, but loaded for single shot accuracy and excessive penetration; they'd easily go through a person at point blank.

    "I hath heard a great deal about the variety of life one is expected to encounter here." Priscilla says to Ni Lie, unmistakably twitching a smile as equally rare as her change of clothes at Gilgamesh on the way past. "It is rare to locate a venture such as this, where one may do as one wishes to it as well, admittedly. There is an overabundance of it by all accounts."

    When everyone's all set up in their vehicle spots (the passenger compartment is actually sorta nice, with big cushy chairs and little window portholes, albeit more like harnesses than seatbelts for bumpy parts), the driver gets the signal and rumbles off. The APC attains a surprising speed, and churns off into the grasslands.
Priscilla     Not too far from the base, out of earshot of the loud industrial noises and their far-carrying echo, the landscape already teems with life. Groups of great big trunk-legged bipeds with broad backs, thick stubby tails, and eyeless heads replete with massive tusks and whale-like dorsal holes congregate in grunting herds, each the size of a large therapod dinosaur. Crowds of fleeter, stallion-sized creatures run along on a pair of legs that look like they were originally four, fused together at the front and back, turning on weird, gyroscopic dimes, with flat, aerodynamic heads. Odd little swift, flying, eel like critters flit about and alight upon bigger creatures like tiny birds do with rhinos and elephants.

    Packs of bull-sized quadrupeds with segmented, armoured shells flashing with bioluminescent crevices gobble plants at the choked watering holes --which splash with aquatic motion-- and then flee from pairs and trios of things that prowl swiftly on spindly legs like ostriches, swiveling heads with knifelike bared skulls on flexible necks, and backs bristling with spines. All sorts of winged things fly high overhead, circling like scavenger birds or darting about like fishers, probably from the ocean, with huge organisms floating on glowing blue gas bladders much higher above, drifting long bunches of tentacles through the sky and propelling themselves slowly on flipper-like fins. Scythe-limbed things rest atop rock columns, sunning themselves like lions. A pair of excessively broad-winged and swift things with heads like lances cut overhead at extreme speed, giving the tentacles a wide berth.

    Even the vegetation changes up as the vehicle goes, following the flatter, harder ground, occasionally bumping over a sharp change in elevation table, or splashing through a deep creek. Groves of what look like blue fungal pods coat the ground like fields of flowers. Building-sized teardrop shaped structures rise up on systems of roots with the overall texture of tree bark, frequented by buzzing clouds of insects as large as human heads. Patches of grass turn black and sharp, glowing with bright ominous purple flowers. Odd red growths crop up on bare salt rocks.

    There could hardly be any more of an opposite of lack of things to see, gather, and possibly shoot, even just along the trip.
Sarracenia      Sarracenia smiles as she is greeted by Haguro with a salute. Used to dealing with military to a degree, she returns the salute. "Vice-Admiral! Quite an impressive rank!" she says, then smirks lightly at the machine guns. "I prefer missiles myself, but still not a bad choice." she says, motioning toward the guns.

     And then, there is Gilgamesh! She makes her way over to him and smiles brightly. "Hello King Gilgamesh! It is nice to see you again." she says cheerfully, curtseying despite not being in a dress at the moment. "I would not have suspected you of such affection for a piece of technology, but then I can hardly blame you. Fondness for vehicles, especially loud and powerful vehicles, seems to be as universal as music or war."

     She is distracted from Gilgamesh by the giant meat dino forming outside the APC. "...well...isn't that just...a bit sickening..." she says quietly.

     She also recognizes Stella. Though it has been a while, one does not forget a crystaline golem that once tried to kill you. She peers at Stella suspiciously, but as they are here to fight dangerous beasts and not take sides with rebels she doesn't do anything more than make sure Stella can easily notice the 'hmph' and upturned nose she gets from the haughty princess.

     She looks toward Nie Li as he introduces himself and curtseys similarly to how she greeted Gilgamesh. "Hello Nie Li. It is nice to meet you."
Haguro "Missiles... Hm. Maybe that could be a worthwhile upgrade." Haguro muses after Sarracenia's comment, a thoughtful hum escaping the Cruiser as she glances at her turrets. "They might not fit these right now, but maybe..."

It's only a matter of time now.

Gilgamesh's presence has Haguro a little more on edge than the rest of the crew. She's thankful for the presence of the motorbikes and having not died in recent weeks, but she's going to be giving him a wider berth juuust in case.

A shame, though, since that robe doesn't look awful on him.

Maricel's meatY monstrosity has Haguro somewhat nervous, too, between the lack of FREAKING EYES seriously what is wrong with that thing and also the syringey teeth. Between those two people and that monster, she's starting to feel a little out of place.

With Stella seeming disinterested in the machinegun, Haguro does find a way to distract herself from the everything else freaking her out. "It is, but... Humans aren't built to fight the same way we are. They have to use weapons like these to compensate for their weaknesses. Although..." Haguro raises her machineguns to each shoulder, looking a little awkward holding those giant things from the aforementioned poor balance. "Does this look impressive, at least?"

Please clap.

Nie Li's probably the most normal looking of the bunch to the shipgirl, even with his bright colors and lack of weapons. "Mister Nie Li, welcome. Do you want to try using something different for a change?" The Cruiser raises one of the machineguns slightly, soon turning her attention to the APC as it starts to move. Her choice to stand on the thing quickly becomes a bad one as the acceleration of the APC forces her to stop standing just to avoid flying right off the back of the thing.

Unsurprisingly, Haguro scurries into the passenger compartment. Once inside, though, she can get a better look at the strange creatures the vehicle passes by. After a good minute of too many things to look at, the Cruiser even sets her guns down to instead bring out her HANDY DANDY CAMERA to start snapping pictures of everything. She mostly snaps pictures of the larger creatures and the flying stuff, but scenic shots of the landscape also can't hurt with the company's need to document things.

"It's quite amazing out here, isn't it? We can't get too comfortable, but it's nice being able to just see things like this and not.. Erm. Risk dying or getting maimed, isn't it?"
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh finishes being fascinated by the motorbike as Priscilla smiles at him. Sarracenia mentions that something more worthy of his attention has arrived, and she's right, though not quite in the way she thinks. He does, however, give her one of his brief, charming, knowing, and thoroughly ruthless smiles, the sort of smile one might see on a predator about to devour a sheep, as he passes the Princess. "Indeed. A pleasure to see you again as well, Princess. I've been looking forward to this hunt."

     The King sits down next to Priscilla. He doesn't bother strapping in. The APC will probably take more damage from him than him from it. As he sits down, a ripple appears under him, and an opulent golden pillow lands. It's a bit too big for the harness, but Gilgamesh nonetheless sits inside it. Anyone looking at it can tell that it's stupidly magical. Even without magic senses, it's clear that that thing he's sitting on is some kind of ridiculous artifact or another.

     It is noticable that he is not shaking at all as the APC goes over terrain, no matter how rough. The sharp bumps don't even seem to move him; it's like the APC moves around him, and he just remains perfectly still.

     What a /jackass/.

     A weird crystalline spider also lands in his lap from the hole in space, like a giant, disturbing dog. The King of Heroes pats the creature fondly as they ride. The beast, too, is unaffected by the bouncing of the APC.

     "I see why you thought to come here to hunt," Gilgamesh says to Priscilla as they ride, "It's certainly...unique. And unexplored, I would imagine. I'm sure someone is living here, but such is their own misfortune."

     He drums his fingers against the wall. Maricel's weird meat monster is ignored, because it is ugly, and more importantly, because it is not a thing he needs to shoot, ride, or desire; it is at the moment so much nothingness. Nie Li is also barely noted; vaguely Gilgamesh recalls him being present in his brief Lunar vacation home, but...ehn. If he becomes a problem he's a problem. This is a hunt; Gilgamesh is focused entirely on his own pleasure.

     Haguro receives a thin stare and nothing more. He probably won't kill her on a hunt. It might upset Priscilla, and he may not fear her wrath, but he doesn't want her angry for entirely personal reasons. So Haguro is probably safe. Stella, being a valuable gemstone, also gets Gilgamesh's attention every few minutes, where he looks at her with the greed of a man whose greed is literally hardwired into his soul, and then goes back to playing with his weird little gem spider.

     Every so often, outside the APC, a blade goes firing out of thin air, pinning some interesting creature and then vanishing (with the corpse) into a hole in space. The creature is then deposited on the floor of the APC, where Gilgamesh looks at it before throwing it back into the hole.
Stella     Oh. Firearms. Right. those are a thing.
    Staren uses them.
    Seifer's sword has one.

    The golem looks at the strange nodding critter at the doctor's side, evidently either curious or distraught by the sight. Possibly both. Stella couldn't tell you what she feels exactly if you asked her.

    "Is that... a pet?"

    She doesn't have much of a sense for taste and it's still odd. But before she can say any more, Priscilla arrives - and almost by reflex, Stella kneels, and then sharply remembers she got told she didn't need to do that.

    Once the APC gets moving, Stella having settled into the passengers' section, she looks out the window, the unusually colored sights and monsters catching her attention somewhat. It's certainly the brightest world she's been on to date. And all of this is supposed to be dangerous?

    Oh, nevermind, the landscape and monsters lost her interest. Sensing a being akin to her, she turns to look at the spider by Gilgamesh's side, noticing neither his greed nor Sarracenia's huffing.

    "What is that?" she finally asks.
Maricel Thorne      "Oh, this?" The good doctor raises an eyebrow at Stella; gestures up at the oversized beast holding her. "Just something I put together from spare parts. Flesh of my flesh, brain of my brain, you know the gist?"

     Maricel isn't bothered by Sarracenia and Gilgamesh's snubs- she knows her creation is gorgeous, and a mad doctor who can't face the obloquy of stuffy disapproval isn't fit to be a mad doctor at all. She returns to perching on Gorezilla's shoulder like a conscience-devil as it trudges along behind the APC; there's no way the IKEAju would fit inside. Every now and then she makes little perfectionistic 'edits' to it while still in motion, snipping and re-connecting muscles in the instants where they won't be missed.

     Her handiwork finally gets to be seen in motion when the oversized reptiles come into view. A green psychic halo radiates from Maricel's head, wiring her directly into her bio-monster's rudimentary nervous system.

Subject:      Gorezilla.
Impose:      Emotions: Focused rage, flow state. Memories: Those lizards are your enemies.

     It roars- a wet, gurgling, boneshaking noise- and rushes in, tearing at the megafauna with its whickering claws and chomping down with tranquilizing teeth. Where it lacks in self-preservation instincts, Maricel compensates by dashing around its body like a spider getting under someone's clothes, rapidly sewing up injuries and jabbing it with healing medications!
Nie Li     "I'm hoping that some prove to be Demon Beasts." Nie Li explains to Priscilla. "Or something similar. My gut says they aren't... but either way, there's no telling what we'll find out here. I settled some minor problems at home so I have some time for trips like this again!" Minor, whatever they are. That means he'll probably need some help if it's major...

    He bows slightly to Sarracenia, executing a friendly right-fist-covered-by-left-palm salute. "Likewise, Princess Sarracenia!" Though with Haguro making the offer of different weapons... he glances her over... and replies after boarding the APC and settling in. "You mean the guns? Weapons like these don't suit me very well. It might be fun to try them in practice, but making a mistake around beasts like THOSE is just begging for death. I'll settle for seeing your skills in action, miss!" He shows an eager smile at the end there, hoping to soften the blow of that rejection.

    He takes note of Gilgamesh's brief glint of what might be animosity at what might be one of the strangest girls he's ever seen. One he knows is an ally.

    But seeing what the King of Heroes has chosen to do with his strange golden portals, Nie Li smirks. "Interdimensional storage. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one with that for this journey. These beasts are ENORMOUS."

    Nie Li doesn't wait, though, for permission or even for the vehicle to STOP. He carries himself over to an open window and just VAULTS OUT, sailing through the air, sailing out into the foliage and quickly vanishing from sight. That's not a metaphor either - at some point, he just can't be seen anymore!

    But if one's looking out into the fields, periodically, signs of his presence show up. A wailing beast that's silenced almost instantly. A rustle in distant foliage. Creatures hitting the ground dead with a THUMP. No corpses are left in his wake though.
Priscilla     The APC goes on for quite a ways at a brisk clip, the fresh air filtering in from the portholes and the equipment nests up top and making for a pleasant atmosphere. Due to the APC's sheer massive bulk and its weight being distributed over so many wheels, the ride isn't actually as bumpy as one would expect, and mostly comes in as more lengthily distributed tilts and rocks of the whole cabin. Haguro can climb up and use the camera pintle if she wants, getting high quality video and zoom as well, much more powerful than her own.

    "Indeed it is." Priscilla replies to Gilgamesh. "Supposedly, it is moreso within the jungle itself, albeit more dangerous, so I hath heard. Men infrequently traverse past the spaces they hath burned and cleared there." she says with the barest hint of excitement being her otherwise always still voice. She looks to the crystal spider. "Where thou obtaineth these things, I shalt never be able to keep track of."

    Every so often, an excessively golden and fancy blade goes flying out of the air and stabs through one of the smaller animals. Most of them, however, are too large to actually fit inside the cabin. One of the shelled creatures falls through a hole in space and crashes onto the reinforced metal floor, its weird biolights dimming and oozing purple-red blood (thankfully into the little drainage holes expecting wet people clambering in and out). One of the two-legged sprinting things is dropped in too, albeit almost cut right in half, exposing a very light, flexible cartilage sort of skeleton, and the fact that it does indeed look like its legs used to be four, with weird little sensor tendrils probably for balance drooping against the side of its head. The little flying critters would just go splat if Gilgamesh hit them with anything though.

    Maricel's 'gorezilla' settles on a target, and tackles one of the elephant-legged tusked eyeless reptiles, causing it a bellowing, partly subsonic grunt of pain as it rips into its three inch thick hide, dripping blood down its flank. It turns and thrashes and attempts to headbutt the equally sized creation, ramming it with its gigantic bulk aimed to put its tusks through it, but starts to slump and stumble from the tranquilizer's effects. The others in the herd, instead of running off, circle up and form a wall of outward facing tusks. One comes running at Gorezilla, flipping its massive head to try and basically launch the monster away with a hit like a train, aggressively fending it off. A couple more seem emboldened by the idea. There's a risk of Maricel just being stampeded.

    With that situation unfolding, Priscilla makes a hand motion, and the APC rolls to a halt. Smelling the blood staining the broad-leafed ground vegetation, small, slick-skinned, kite-winged things begin circling overhead, tasting the air with long, flickering tongues. A wolfpack of those running bird-shaped creatures, with spiked backs and heads that look just like polished black skulls with knife shaped fronts, circle around, waiting for signs of weakness. One of them makes a loud clicking noise by separating its bottom jaw and rattling it against the top, revealing that part of its neck is like a smaller, second neck supporting the lower blade, and the two pieces aren't connected at all.

    Priscilla briefly asks the guys up front if they know how to spook the herds off, and the reply that they haven't really figured out anything they're afraid of. It seems to be something of a trend, wherein the local wildlife hasn't learned fear for anything unfamiliar and fire and loud noises don't seem to faze them much.

    That is in fact apparent when one of the pack predators breaks off and wanders over to the APC, strutting back and forth to examine it, its shoulders level with the top, and its neck reaching high overhead. Spotting Haguro taking pictures, the lower 'jaw' snaps down in an instant skewering motion, seeking to stab through her and lift her into the air with the hooked tip.parently what they mean by basically any and all of the wildl
Sarracenia      Sarracenia blushes and giggles like a teenager when Gilgamesh speaks to her, and is quick to sit on Gilgamesh's other side. She looks around him at Priscilla and smiles. "Lady Priscilla! It has been quite a while since we have seen each other. I still owe you for keeping me from falling off of that tower in that dreadful undead world. If there is anything I might do for you, simply let me know!"

     The cushion makes her blink, and she reaches to poke at it curiously. "Ooooh. How decadent! I do not suppose you have a spare one of these?" she asks Gilgamesh. The spider though, that makes her recoil a bit. "Uwah?!" She is frozen for a moment or two, but when Gilgamesh pets it she relaxes a bit. But only a bit. Where she comes from, bugs are quite dangerous. And spiders are just creepy besides.

     She looks over at Haguro after a few moments and giggles a bit. "It does look impressive. But, if you would like to try some out..." She finally pulls off her frog suit in a puff of smoke that returns her to her normal look, then pulls a multi-rocket missile launcher out of her purse. "Here, you may try this! The missiles are seeking, so simply lock onto your target, fire and forget! But, they can also be fired manually in straight lines if you want a bit more satisfaction~" She pets this weapon much like Gil pets the spider and even gives the barrel a little nuzzle before holding it out to Haguro.

     The princess seems to be more interested in seeing the sights than shooting the sights as well, and joins Haguro in taking pictures. "I doubt we are completely safe in here considering the size of the beasts outside. It would hardly be a safari if we were. It reminds me of the Sundew Kingdom a bit except that one cannot drive vehicles through that thick foliage." she says.

     This is about the time that the situation seems to go a bit bad. "Look out!" she exclaims, ducking back into the APC. She doesn't stay down there long though. Not attacking innocent critters is one thing. Attacking dangerous critters that would as soon spear you as look at you...that's different. She hops through a hatch up onto the top of the APC, then goes into a spin. Grapefruit-sized black metallic orbs with little yellow boots and big black eyes start flying in all directions, aimed at the terror birds. Each one unleashes a powerful though compact explosion upon impact with either a bird thing or the ground. And Sarracenia miiiight be laughing a bit maniacally. She really does enjoy explosions~
Haguro Haguro winces each time she hears something plop on the floor. She only catches small glimpses of what gets brought in, but it's enough to make her know not to turn around. It's not as if she doesn't have something to focus on with the picture-taking, anyway, eventually swapping to the GOOD SHIT since that's open to use.

Note to self: Ask the company for a copy of the recordings later. It'll be a fun souvenir and useful research material!

Now that Haguro's mostly away from the splash zone of things being brought in, she keeps those recordings going while keeping the machineguns resting against her legs, largely focusing on Gorezilla. After the giant reptile goes down, she turns to Nie Li with a thoughtful hum. "I suppose using something new could be a risk, but it can also be useful for the experience. Learning where your weaknesses might lie outside your usual expertise, new strategies... Hm."

She ponders briefly after her reply to Nie Li. What could she learn from using such weapons aside from her general fear of loud noises, anyway? When the pack of fliers draws closer, Haguro keeps her camera trained on them to take in all that SWEET SWEET FOOTAGE. "Wonderful... I wonder if the way these move could be incorporated into other gear. Between their physiology and this..." She pats that missile launcher offered by Sarracenia and heft it on a shoulder, inspecting it closely before setting it against her leg with the other guns.

This can't possibly go wrong. It does, of course, since Haguro doesn't even notice right away when one of the wolf-like things breaks off to draw closer, turning her pintle towards it only when it's right about to clamp down on her.

Of course, it clamps right down on her. It's only through honed reflexes that she grabs one of those machineguns and the missile launcher as she's lifted off the ground, turning the former towards her sudden captor. "S... Say hello to... To...!" It's too embarassing to try quoting a movie out loud like that. It's barely even the right context! Sure, Haguro's spewing bullets at the thing at close range, but this isn't a last stand, she isn't cracked out, and these aren't even the right guns! The machinegun is fun to fire, at least, although she can't help but feel like she's not fighting at her best using it.

Stella was right. This thing is kind of horribly balanced. As she keeps unloading bullets into the wolf-thing, she aims that missile launcher at the rest of the pack in the distance and starts firing at those as well to see just what kind of damage those missiles can do!

And also maybe not get abducted by the entire pack, if she's lucky.
Gilgamesh      The 'spider' is a weird, beautiful crystalline *thing*. Calling it a spider is somewhat inaccurate; it has weird legs ending with a sharp point, and it doesn't appear to have any eyes. Gilgamesh laughs at Sarra's reaction and at Priscilla's as the 'spider' leans forward to 'stare' at Stella intently. "This one I found when someone set its monstrous parent upon my land. It's a delightful treasure, isn't it?"

     The 'spider' rises on all its legs, clambers out of Gilgamesh's lap, and leans over to touch Stella's leg curiously.

     "Another? No. I recovered this from a temple in a deep jungle. A lump of gold rested atop it, but the gold was a deception to protect the pillow. When I noticed it, I took it, and drew the ire of the monks who lived there." Gilgamesh waves his hand idly. "Its power is such that even in an earthquake it would not be moved so long as it has even a small amount of mana. A Noble Phantasm of absolute comfort. Perhaps in these unexplored jungles similar treasures await," he adds to Priscilla, "It's usually the case that something unexplored isn't, really; it just hasn't been explored by anyone but the natives."

     The spider is more interested in Stella than in the attacker, which is fine; Gilgamesh is completely disinterested in the attacker, too. The gleaming golden jackass proceeds to do absolutely nothing as Haguro is attacked.

     It is entirely possible that he does not mind if she dies.

     More generously, he might just assume anyone along for the ride can at the least take care of themselves.

     The spider clambers onto Stella's shoulder and bites experimentally before it clambers away from her and back to Gil's lap.
Maricel Thorne      Maricel and Gorezilla operate like two halves of a whole, probably because that's not an analogy and just what they literally are. When the triceratops-esque creature charges in, her bio-monster meets it with both arms outstretched. One arm gets impaled through the palm on the horns and shatters with a noise like a felled tree a second later, shards of pearly bone sticking out through its muscle.

     Now that the lizard's robbed of its momentum, the kaiju twists its torso to de-emphasize its wounded side and grapples using its good arm while gnashing with its terrible jaws. Maricel swoops in and changes off its damaged arm for another one while reclaiming the biomass, like a one-surgeon pit-stop crew.

     She's no tactician, but she knows when the situation's untenable- rather than push the offensive further, Maricel jabs her war-beast in the neck with a glowy green syringe, to which it responds by breathing a gout of green-burning oily aerosol in a sweeping jet to ward off the charging lizards for a moment. Grabbing the incapacitated ones, it leaps back behind the APC with her in tow, taking cover behind her teammates and their guns!

     Maricel herself has seemingly already lost interest in the fighting- she scales down her kaiju's side and starts working on the maimed dinos, patching them up as best she's able for future study. She is, of course, very, very able.
Stella     "I do not know the deal. I do not have flesh. Or brain," Stella states simply, because no, she has no idea what anything Maricel just said means. Besides the fact her horrifying pet is flesh. That much she could tell at a glance.

    Another look at Gilgamesh and his spider, then. "I see. It is 'delightful' yes. I had not encountered a being this similar to me until now. Though it does not feel to be the same at all, in other respects. I suppose you would call it a living being. I am not sure that applies to me in the same sense."

    A living being made of crystal versus animated crystal. It's just a matter of how you phrase it. She makes no effort to keep it at bay, though.

    Even as it bites (and meets her impossibly hard skin), she doesn't gesture to stop it. Her attention instead turns to the incoming stampede, the vibrations in the ground alerting Stella long before Maricel's call.

    "I will halt the creatures," she states simply to Gilgamesh, excusing herself. Stella leaves the safety of the vehicle, and once her feet are touching the ground, spreads her senses outward.

    Crystal cracks travel along the soil and grass from her feet, crystalizing everything in their path. They rush towards Maricel's position, forming a network of shiny, prismatic crystals around her and her adorable fleshling.

    Then the crystals start bursting out of the ground in jagged, pointed walls, as if covered in sharp swords. The goal's not just to halt the stampede, it's to force it into the walls of crystal blades and impale the lot of them.

    No, she doesn't understand why they want these things intact. It seems counterintuitive to her.
Nie Li     Nie Li, rather suddenly, is just THERE. Those with very quick eyes might notice that for a brief moment as he comes out from behind a tree near the APC, he's only HALF there... whatever that's about. Or was that a trick of the eye and the strange foliage?

    Whatever the case, he's wearing a desperate, angry scowl and his forehead's furrowed with intense concentration. Strange shadowy energy protrudes from each of his wrists, the darkness taking forms that resemble long and wickedly barb-tipped but razor sharp blades.

    With a ferocious kiai, he swings one of those arms out forward...

    And the shadow blade LASHES OUT LIKE A SNAKE and DIVES in at a weird angle for the bird-thing's... well, braincase. The hell kind of fighting style is that? How does one even DEFEND against it, too? "Damn, these things are just swarming already!"

    It's probably a good thing this kid's on your side.
Priscilla     The big predatory critter handles a hail of everywhere-bombs and Haguro's (still Sarracenia's) missile launchers surprisingly well for being a big agility-based pursuit predator. Better than its frame would suggests. It makes a clattery, hissing clacking noise when it's pelted with exploding bob-ombs, reeling away with Haguro still wedged between its skull halves, bleeding freely from multiple points on its side. Haguro emptying the big machine rifle into it at point blank and blasting its front with missiles while hanging from its jaws gets it to thrash her in its jaws like a piece of meat, trying to quell her loud and painful resistance by shaking her on the serrated spikes on the inside of its 'mouth', until all the blasting starts to show through too much burnt, glistening, sinewy muscle, and it decides to wisely retreat, speedily limping off . . . still with Haguro.

    Priscilla thinks to say something on the jungle commentary, before deciding one of her subordinates being kidnapped and eaten is probably bad, and so says "Pray, a moment." and then clambers up to the second dorsal swivel and pintle mounted gun. She outstretches a hand, then apparently decides she came here to try something new, and so grips the heavy machine gun holds with both hands, and lets it rip. The pounding, metallic chatter of the thick, shrouded gun barrel is absolutely deafening, and at first she accidentally sprays scorching brass back down into the cabin before figuring it out, flexing willowy arms that shouldn't be able to control the gun whatsoever, almost more like an autocannon. She wildly sprays about thirty rounds into the retreating predator before it stumbles and crashes, missing about half her shots, but putting a few into at least its lungs, where it falls over. Nie Li suddenly leaps out of the brush by surprise, and stabs it through the head, shadow blade protruding from both sides. It twitches, then its jaw goes limp, and lets Haguro tumble out.

    The arrested herd giant that Maricel catches and judo tosses doesn't seem to be able to get up very well, rolling back and forth to find its legs. The tranquilized and wounded one falls over completely, succumbing to both, and is rapidly dragged away. The gout of green fire seems to hold the other chargers back, reeling away from the pain of it more than fright, but seeing one of their number being pulled off, they react completely unlike bison or elephants and charge right after her, possibly smelling that the captured beast is still alive, given those huge nostril-vents and lack of eyes.

    They're straight away met with a field of exploding crystal spikes, stabbed in dozens of places deep into their bodies due to their own momentum. A couple of them become instantly stuck, grunting and bellowing in agony as they thrash around on the razor sharp crystals trying to get free, just increasing their blood loss. The others back off, wounded all over, but still able, finally sensing that they aren't getting their herd member back after a ton of violent abuse.
Priscilla     A shadow passes over as one of the gas bladder-floated giants drifts overhead. Its myriad, poplar trunk-width tendrils stretch and extend even lower. Where they brush over one of the impaled tusked giants, some feelers or tasters recognize it right away, and there is a wet thwacking sound as giant stinger barbs fire into it. Paralyzed, the creature is lifted in coiled tentacles, and then the crystal snaps off completely, dragged in tow with the corpse, as it's reeled slowly back into the sky.

    Priscilla makes a quiet little contented noise with the results, and then cranes her neck back and shields her eyes to watch the huge aerial monster drag off such a gigantic prize. The rest of the herd scatters in fear of the thing, even. Unfortunately, the smell of blood seems to have attracted more attention. More of the pack predators circle around, though they keep a wary distance with one of their own dead. Instead, they focus on Nie Li, assuming him to be some kind of corpse scavenger (the little flying eel things alight on the dead creature instantly) and rush him from multiple angles, looking to kick him over and slash him to ribbons with their talons first, if not at least scare him off with their clacking and loud hissing.

    Since Sarracenia has clambered out onto the roof, there's but a moment before there is a roar of something like fire, and one of the huge, winged things swoops down at tremendous speed, sideswiping her like a car and trying to impale her on its gigantic head lance. Its parner swoops down from another direction to try and hit Stella, and carry her off into the sky. The lance appears to have a hollow groove designed to funnel in all the bodily fluids that bleed out, though Stella doesn't have any.

    Even when Haguro just got to roll away. Something slithers through the grasp at high speed and snatches her ankle in its grip, then tries to rapidly drag her all the way back to the pond beyond it. It's extremely strong, like an anaconda, and further tries to dig all kinds of hooks along its inner surface into her leg. It's like a feeding frenzy going on now, eager to get in on all the fleshy morsels and the wounded herbivores.
Sarracenia      Sarracenia likes explosions and fighting. But fighting for your life, that's a different story. Her teeth clench in surprise and worry as she realizes that she was actually right and they actually -could- get overrun by these overly aggressive creatures. She barely has time to pull her hammer from her satchel before that flying lance creature comes diving toward her. She tries to bring her hammer down on it before it can skewer her...but that doesn't quite go as planned.

     The princess lets out a shriek as she gets skewered, but with her swing already in motion her hammer should land squarely on the head of the flying creature. Hopefully that will ground it, because otherwise the princess is going to get carried off into the sky! Very rarely does she actually need rescue as compared to just pretending like she does, but in this instance she just might. She doesn't really have time to worry about things like Nie Li appearing out of nowhere or Haguro being pulled toward the nearby water. "Nnng! I-I have to agree with you!" she shouts to Haguro, still beating on the creature that has her impaled.
Haguro This would be a very embarassing place to die. Haguro would like very much not to die. Doing so is easier said than done, what with the predator swinging her around like a piece of steel-plastered meat. She's still holding onto the jaw piece impaling her even as it limps away, trying not to move around too much so as to not worsen the big gaping hole in her torso.

Maybe breaking it? No, that'd require more leverage. Shooting it off? No, that could just make it threash more and worsen the wound. Still, between the options of being taken to who knows where or having to spend some time in recovery...

Looks like Priscilla and Nie Li make that choice for her. Just as well, since the combined gunfire and stabbing save the Cruiser from being dragged away for eating!

"That was... Uh. Y-yes, maybe experimenting in unknown territory isn't such a good idea." She laughs lightly and hisses sharply a second later, pressing her palm over the wound and sitting up slowly to try and get her bearings back. She sits there for a moment to just let herself rest, watching the giant jellyfish thing yank its prey into the sky not far away from where the rest of the convoy is.

"... I think this is a good time to go, isn't it?" Just as she's about to get up, something else shows up to make matters worse! Haguro yelps as she yanked right back to the ground, then dragged towards the pond rapidly. Losing her grip on the borrowed weapons, Haguro starts clawing at the ground desparately to try and slow its progress! What's a cruiser to do in such a pickle?!

Actually remember things she can do, for once. Mouthing something quietly to herself, she focuses on what she's learned. The new abilities imparted on her from her recent endeavors. She turns her turrets towards the slithering beast, fires a burst of anti-air flak at it, then fades out of existence.

A second later, she reappears! Hopefully, she reappears outside of the monster's grasp instead of right back inside its giant maw.
Stella     Stella can't sense things that aren't on the ground. She's struck by the flying creature, which rams its head lance through her torso. It was probably very unpleasant for the creature, given Stella's hardness, but now she's airborned and can't do anything about it.

    Luckily she does in fact lack any kind of blood to funnel into that. Glancing down at the head-lance, it does give her an idea, though.

    A crystal blade forms in her hand, bursting out of her skin like growing crystal. She attempts to plunge it into the lance, forcing the crystal to travel down the path blood would normally follow, and then erupt into nasty thorns and blades once inside the creature's head. Or however far it manages to go.

    It's not like she's tried this before.
Gilgamesh      Priscilla steps away to deal with the problem. Gilgamesh continues to sit and be a useless bastard. Well, he did tell Priscilla that he's hunted to his heart's content, and that he wasn't here to hunt, just to spend time with her. Not *exactly* in those words, but it was pretty strongly implied by his tone and attitude. So instead he watches appreciatively as Priscilla takes up the machine gun. He's not really a fan of machine guns but there's something about seeing someone step so far outside their comfort zone that makes him smile.

     Maybe not a *nice* smile, but a smile.

     Everything going on around him, and the King simply produces a glittering golden goblet of some ridiculously sweet-smelling liquor. He brings it to his lips, watching Haguro struggle, watching Sarracenia fight, watching Stella draw her blades and Nie Li face off with his foes. There's a sense of deep entertainment on the King's face - it is the look of contentment plastered across the face of lords watching men die for their amusement in the arena, the look of delight of old men in lodges reminiscing over past kills while gruesome trophies sit at hand. The King was not really here to hunt. The King was here to spectate, because watching people struggle is *far* more interesting to him than fighting monsters.

     Sip.

     And it is probably kind of fucked-up.

     He's also watching Maricel curiously. He dismissed her earlier but now he's occasionally flicking a glance her way, because while that ugly abomination was indeed hideous, it was also effective, and the King may scorn ugly things, but he does not scorn talent.

     The spider continues to sit and be content.
Nie Li     Nie Li's not super concerned when Haguro's grabbed and DRAGGED.... or at least he doesn't show it. Instead the boy just quietly leaps into action, chasing after her by leaping through the low branches and trying to get ahead of whatever's slithering off with her! "Really, this place is just too dangerous to travel as a big noisy group..." Well. Maybe. Dangerous? He's yet to see anything he couldn't handle, but there's plenty of stuff he doesn't want to be trying his luck against if he doesn't have to!

    But with Haguro somehow breaking free of the thing, he ceases pursuit and instead...

    Instead, he just starts pulling knives seemingly out of nowhere - they form out of wisps of colored vapor streaming from a ring he wears - and hurls them every which way into the brush with pinpoint precision at other lurking creatures, even ones that most wouldn't even have known they were there. Each knife is poisoned, though whether this leaves the target dead or alive-but-crippled is largely up to their individual biology. For some, it might have no effect. He hasn't exactly studied these things yet so doesn't know what things are most effective against them!
Priscilla     Smashing the high speed flying thing on the head with a hammer is pretty effective. Largely because it's going so fast, and also because it's necessarily very lightweight, and also apparently filled with some internal bladders to stay afloat. It crunches nastily when Sarracenia hits it, flinging her free of its smooth and tapered lance off into the brush (where, thankfully, nothing tries to eat her yet). Stella finds much the same success in ramming a slender lance down the tube that inevitably has to go to its stomach and stabbing it to pieces from the inside out, sending the thing's jet plane-like flight spiraling out of the sky and crashing into the ground along with her.

    Haguro escapes the slithering something's clutches, but she can hear it rustling rapidly through the grass after her, probably seeking the smell of her blood or her body heat. Ni Lie's precision knife throwing catches it in the side however, and the both of them hear a lot of extremely loud splashing and thrashing before the animal, or extrusion of one, whips right back into the water. Flicked blades fall into the brush and strike other lower, squatter, stalking things, driving them off with the burn of poison. Fans of knives strike the huge predators circling around him as well, not even slighly fazing them with such small impacts, forcing him to fight the circle all around him for what could be a couple of minutes before the lethal toxins start to take effect, rendering their movements sluggish and awkward, stumbling to either side when they take talon blows at him.

    The ground frosts over beneath him in a flash, grass snap freezing and crumbling away. Lethal spikes of glittering, opaque ice erupt from the spiderweb of dread cold radiating outwards, erupting with the sound of crashing glass and skewering the still-aggressive monsters menacing him from several sides, casting off embers of hissing blue light, and then exploding into so much of blue-white cold magical blaze, flash freezing their internal organs and killing several on the spot, while the rest slowly succumb to poison. The latter try to stagger away, the former fall transfixed in gruesome, frozen agony, their bodies slowly crystallizing. Priscilla improved a lot since he last consulted with her a while back.

    Priscilla herself flops back in the seat beside Gilgamesh with that taken care of and mostly winding down, breathing a puff of faintly luminous frosty air. "And what precisely didst thou do with the unwise soul who didst so?" she asks Gilgamesh, continuing the discussion as if it hadn't been interrupted.

    The driver and ecologist exit the drivers' cabin and come out to examine the damage, hauling out the medical kit to treat the wounded with biofoam filler and regenerative plastic bandages, as well as lots and lots of painkillers (probably until Maricel fends them off with a metaphorical crowbar). The scientist also starts taking blood and tissue samples of the (not fucking mangled) bodies and transporting them to the refridgeration unit, and the driver radios in the base to come airlift the intact giant reptile Maricel had captured, tallying up the kills on camera already.
Priscilla     There's a bit more of a drive ahead, before making it to a cleared space around a river fragment snaking off from the dense jungle not far away, trickling down a sheer rock waterfall a couple of people lengths high and making a nice pool, filled with little glowing starfish things, odd crustaceans, and pleasant-smelling flowering plants. There's not really much in the way of sleeping accommodations aboard the ATV, unless one wants to fold the seats down into cushioned benches, but there's plenty in the way of slightly sci-fi camping setups for sealed and climate controlled tents, as well as comfy fold-out chairs, firestarting materials, actually pretty decent food to cook instead of MREs (apparently some of the stuff they'd killed is edible and really not bad), plenty of lights, and the huge vehicle itself easily makes a barricade on one side, with automatic sensors and the gun set to sentry mode. There's all night for chilling out, drinking, telling stories, probably roasting marshmallows, and watching the wildlife.

    Save at one point, the sun is completely eclipsed by an even greater shadow, further above than even the jellyfish things presumed apex predators. The one that has hauled up the huge beast hundreds and hundreds of meters into the air to slowly digest it in a translucent acid sac is cast under the shadow at what must be a couple of miles, vaguely shaped like that of a giant manta ray, and a mile off in the distance towards the ocean horizon, wildlife spectators get to see something fall from the higher altitude flier above at extremely high velocity, pierce right through the giant jellyfish, turning it completely inside out, and slamming into the ground with a geyser of rock and a thump that reaches you several seconds delayed. The huge shadow settles onto the slowly drifting corpse, and carries both the predator and its prey away towards the ocean. The scientist is giddy through the whole thing, getting it on camera for the first time.
Haguro Now that Haguro's actually safe, she can finally relax! She leaves the gathering and harvesting to the professionals after having done her part in subduing the creatures/distracting them long enough for her companions to handle the actual extermination and capture.

That's not to say she's content with that, of course, but she'll have time for introspection and self-loathing later on when the meds and treatment wear off. For now? It's time to eat, drink, and enjoy the show! Even after nearly being eaten twice, she can't help but watch in awe as the giant jellyfish gets eaten by the gianter manta ray, and she can only assume that something's going to end up eating that one day as well.

With any luck, she might get a taste of all of it some day. Just not today.
Sarracenia      Sarracenia makes her way back to the APC as quickly as possible. Her entire plan for not ruining her dress is undone! Now it has a big hole through both front and back, is covered in mud and some blood, and is tattered all around the edges where she slid across the ground. She lets out a long, pouty whine of a spoiled princess when she is once again in safety. But, rather than use the emergency foam she pulls out a green mushroom and after squeezing it a sparkle of energy flows over her and closes up the hole in her belly at least.

     She is then left to gaze up in wonder and a bit of fear at the massive thing that has flown over and spearfished itself up a jellyfish monster. "W-what is that?! I want my next expedition to by in the sky!" She doesn't see all that deterred despite losing a dress this day.
Gilgamesh      "I tore them apart, of course," Gilgamesh says as he produces another goblet for Priscilla, holding it out to her politely before swirling his in hand, "What the King wants, the King gets. I wanted it. They didn't wish for me to have it. Unfortunately, I am the King, and therefore, I got it."

     Gilgamesh roughs it in style. He brings out the hot spring, he brings out the luxury tent, he brings out the whole nine yards. The King is the ultimate glamper, except for the fact that he really could survive in the wilderness alone and unaided if he wanted to, he just doesn't. After a certain point it can hardly be said to be roughing it - he's basically got five-star service out in the jungle.

     But, when the huge thing in the air passes, it's the first thing Gilgamesh takes notice of that isn't someone on his team. His eyes turn upwards towards it. His red eyes glimmer with the light of an unconquered ego and a rapacious greed. His fingers flex as the spider vanishes back into the Gate of Babylon to resume its guard duty.

     Okay. *That*. That, he wants to kill.
Stella     Stella's predator crashes, and since she can't fly, she goes down with it. There's no grace or technique involved in the thunderous crash, and it takes a few moments for anything to emerge from the battered body, as Stella crawls out from under it, slowly reforming broken or cracked parts from the impact.

    She lets someone else handle the body, because she still isn't sure what the point in conserving it. That thing's internals are probably ruined and full of crystal, but hey, the rest of its body is... intact.

    Discounting the crash.

    Stella wordlessly regroups with the rest of the party. She is kind of boring, really. But she does make for that crystal spider again, because it makes for nice company that doesn't expect her to know things.