The Hunted (Inactive)

[GamingLord]

Quote:

It is not often that bounties cross dimensions, especially when the originating realm of such an item is under-developed and unable to post these requests through time and space. One could theorize that when this happens, a dimension hopper decided to take advantage of their powers and went after a quick and simple job. Normally this would stand correct, but this case was different.

This case was posted directly, and without origin directly on the floor of all of the bounty hunter guild floors at the same time across all the dimensions.

It said simply "Bring back the silver-haired creator, and you will be rewarded."

These simple instructions came with two images: the first being a large circle, surrounded by three smaller circles that were connected by a rough triangle pattern. The second image depicted an slitted eye that appeared to be on fire.

There was nothing more posted, but it was assumed by some of the more cleaver folk to mean that, once they find this individual they would receive the next set of instructions. It appeared to be a game more than a job, and the notion of such was an intriguing one.

"It's a waste of your time, Quinth... There's nothing to go on by."

Quinth looked over the video that had recorded the event, the words just magically appearing along with those strange symbols.

Quinth: "It's odd though. That symbol is eerily similar to Limbo's, isn't it? You did run a search for them like I asked, right?"

The officer sighed and showed the bounty hunter his computer screen.

Officer: "The triangle's a symbol of the world of Sivoa. As for the eye, we got nothing."

Quinth: "Hmm.. Sivoa. Haven't heard of it. They in our alliance database?"

Officer: "Only as of a little while ago, we just started relations with them. Things are off to a shaky start, they're a bit put off by our appearances and culture in general. Been a few clashes here and there. Look, if you're going on this wild goose chase, you'd better take the stock gear. Nothing fancy, or you'll likely set off a panic with some of our more advanced weaponry. We still don't know the full extent of their tech and magic, and they don't know ours. Like I said..."

Quinth: "Shaky, I know. I'll be careful, 'Dad'. I took care of my quota for a while, so I'm going to check this thing out. Besides, I just have this strong gut instinct that I don't normally get. I have to see what this is about."  

[Flag Del Morte]

It felt like years since Flag last saw the palace of Libirs Del Sol and at rare times - like now - he found that he missed the place. He liked the idea of sleeping in a bed like he once owned, but a series of events that had since passed ended up with him here... as if he knew where this was.

The Sivoan had come to understand that this place was commonly referred to as "Gaia" and it took him what seemed ages to get a hold of the language the locals spoke and even longer before he started being able to pay for things of his own. When he first arrived he was taken in by an elderly woman that needed asitance around the house and up until last week he was content with that...

... and then something felt off.

There was a shift in the energies of the world and he was not the only one that sensed it. The old lady had as well, and she passed away because she was unable to adjust to it. This was what brought Flag here, to this inn about half a continent away.

He was a stranger to a tight family, but he was one to respect it when it happened. It was something that he's always wanted after all. The lady's son owned this location and he was sure to be heartbroken to hear what happened to his mother. Flag was not sure what he would be able to do to help alleviate the shock of such news, but he also found that he didn't really care. He was simply here to deliver a message.

The Sivoan pushed his way through the large double-doors and asked the first staff-member he saw about as to where the owner was. The staffer then decided that instead of getting the owner for him, that he would instead deliver his message.. Leaving him off the hook for the rest of the afternoon.  

[GamingLord]

Only a day or two was spent in Sivoa, and Quinth basically came back with only a little bit more information. What Sivoans were and the fact that he wasn't even in Sivoa. In fact, whatever strange, perhaps cosmic force that had alerted bounty hunters across the universe saw fit to write more text in the place he was staying, and basically knock him upside the head saying, "Hey! Idiot, you're looking in the wrong place."

So, Quinth transported himself back to Limbo, back in the Travel Center in Dalos City. He had nothing else to go on, and yet, it was driving him crazy that he had to find whoever this "silver-haired creator" was. It was then that he figured, he started on a hunch, why not continue that way? So he walked around, glancing at the various dimensional portals, trying not to feel stupid as he tried to feel for a vibe from any of them. He must have spent at least half an hour walking around the large center, when something twitched inside his gut.

Gaia. So that was it? He'd have to blindly go into that world that was allied over five years ago? Shrugging, he purchased a ticket, went through security, showed his bounty hunter's license for his equipment, and went through...

Those events were about four days ago. Since then, Quinth had shacked up at an Inn while doing his searches, basically just randomly roaming the world for anyone with silver hair. There was one person at a place called Romance House or something, but that was a bust. He was just some sword wielding person that happened to have silver hair, and if the rumors about him were true, he was more a destroyer than a creator of anything.

Making sure all his equipment was in place, Quinth headed out of his room and walked out into the lobby. He caught a flash of something silver go out the double doors, and he paused momentarily. Was that him? He hadn't exactly seen a lot of silver haired people around, and the few he did hadn't stood out like this one did for some reason. Moving quietly, he opened the doors, and walked out, trying to catch up with this person.  

[Flag Del Morte]

Once outside, Flag had realized that there was virtually nothing to do... or rather that there was nothing in particular that he had in mind to do.

This was a first for him.

For the first time, in all of his not-so-short life he felt that he had total freedom to do whatever it was that he wanted, and it was a nice feeling. However something else about it felt wrong.

Everything since he miraculously ended up here felt like a bit like a dream. Things seemed out of place and he was certain that he was forgetting something rather important.

As he dwelt upon the idea a vision of his daughter flashed across his mind and he remained a little dumb-founded at the idea.

Since when did he have a daughter? Why did that vision make him tense up so? Why would he remember the place in which he had previously lived if he had not remembered her?

Flag unclenched the fists he had subconsciously made and shook off the negative feelings that vision induced. Now was not the time to reflect on what had been, and to instead focus on what he was going to do now.

The idea of visiting the towns library suddenly came to him and he felt that it was a good enough way to waste the day as any, and proceeded to leave the Inn and make his way towards what he recognized as the center of town.  

[GamingLord]

It was times like these that he wish he had the elite version of the yir armor suit the Limbo military used. The cloaking definitely would have come in handy in being stealthy. Mentally sighing, he resigned himself to use his natural skills to avoid being heard, and just tried to blend in with the crowds without seeming like he was following Flag. It helped that a green clothed reaper headed out of a store in front of them, holding purchases for his girlfriend... it made Quinth seem like less of a sore thumb. It wasn't as helpful though when they whisk themselves away into a portal. Shortly after, Quinth ducked off into a side street, and manuevered around to where he could keep an eye on Flag and follow him from behind buildings and such without being as easily noticed, both by him, or by people that might report him as acting suspcious.

He had just tracked him going into a library of sorts, and since he had him stuck in a building, was about to confront him, when something strange happened. The ground in front of the doors suddely shifted, and shot up in, forming a sturdy, thick wall. People backed away in fear and confusion.

Quinth: "What the hell?!"

Next thing Quinth knew, there was a needle jabbed into his hand, thrown from an invisible attacker. The needle had a red glowing orb at the end of it, and the reaper bounty hunter knew from who it came instantly.

Quinth: "Oh damn it, not that whacked out son of a..."

*B O O M !*

The explosion from the needle bomb plastered Quinth against a building. The explosion wasn't big enough to kill him, and the heat from it was enough to heal his wounds with his natural energy absorbing abilities. However, the sheet of ice that stuck him to the wall was less kind.

Quinth: "Damn it, Crazy! Stop doing this crap, you're causing panic! And let me out of this frozen s**t!"

A small, black armored yeshlag dragon floated out of the sky and laughed. In one his grip was a nasty looking assault rifle of some sort. Moving down in front of Quinth, he waved a claw and unleashed another sheet of ice, further binding the bounty hunter.

Crazy: "I'm nuts, not stupid you shadowed freak! We're both after the same bounty!"

Quinth: "What bounty?! I'm here on vacation!"

Crazy: "Stop underestimating my intelligence! We both know what bounty, Quinth! You think you were the only bounty hunter to get that special message? We all did! We've all been hunting him down!"

Quinth: "And you're the only one here?"

Crazy: "Not really. Not unless you count being alive as being here. I took care of the competition on Gaia real quick and easy."

The yeshlag dragon, apparently named 'Crazy', laughed in a manner as his namesake suggested, while firing several rounds of his rifle into the air. He then took out a glowing red orb, and froze it on the wall, next to Quinth's head. It gave off a barely audible beeping noise.

Quinth: "Figures, another explosive. How come you never kill me directly?"

Crazy got real close to Quinth, the barrel of his gun pointing at the underside of the reaper's jaw. The dragon grinned, a manic expression on his features.

Crazy: "It's always fun to have at least one victim to screw around with. Damn shame I caught you so offguard this time. Have fun figuring out how much time is left on that explosive. I'm not even sure when it's going to go off myself! Hell! I forgot how much solution I put in it even! Enough to splatter you, or enough to blast you to dust? I'll find out from my hidden recorders later. Off to get my bounty now, bye!"

Quinth grimaced and struggled against the slowly melting ice prison as his life ticked away in unknown seconds. He tried to focus on freeing himself and getting out alive to get his bounty, instead of thinking about how he'd be blown to charred bits.

Well, on the upside, Crazy was a psychic. He always KNEW who his perp was, and eventually managed to track them down through mental trails or some crap like that. So at least Quinth knew he was on the right track.  

[Flag Del Morte]

Not even seconds after Flag had entered the building there was a cacophony of noises that accused him to whirl around in full defensive. He was even ready to turn around and attack whatever the source was, but he saw nothing. Only the fact that the library doors were closed indicated that the sounds had happened outside.

Still weary, the Sivoan backpedaled enough to try and open the doors that he just entered, and found that although they opened inwardly, there was no going back out that direction.

"Odd..." Flag mumbled under his breath as he observed the large wall that now stood in front of the library, preventing anyone from either getting in or out of the small building.

It seemed to much of a coincidence that this would happen after he darkened the library's doorstep, but he couldn't really understand why he would have set this off. He tried to recall if there were others that walked in with him and found that nobody came to mind.

The other's in the library were running now towards the other side of the structure and rather than stick around he decided that he would follow. He prepared a spell in his head as he did so in case something strange happened - like the wall deciding to take a whack at the architectural structure that he was in.  

[GamingLord]

Outside, Crazy was briefly contemplating how to make his way inside after blocking the entrance. Idly tossing an explosive pack up and down in his claw, he pondered, then sighed as he made up his mind.

Crazy: "No, don't want to give the suckers an exit. Better just blink right in then."

One teleport later, and the dragon was inside the structure. At roughly 3 or so feet in height and with a slim build, he didn't seem that imposing, but the explosives and weaponry he carried helped greatly.

Crazy: "LISTEN! I want anyone with silver hair front and center, now!"

When nobody responded at first, the yeshlag fired a few rounds into the air, causing the people to scream and scramble into hiding. Not satisfied with the results, he shot someone in the head who he was sure was not the bounty perp, laughing at the mess it made.

Crazy: "NOW! Silver-haired people, up front! Or I start killing more people!"

In the distance, there was a muffled explosion that shook the ground. Crazy gave a nasty grin... It had been fun having scuffles with Quinth now and then, but it felt good to finally kill the b*****d off. Shaking off the euphoria, he knew he had to be quick. Seeing as Gaia was a Limbo allied planet, they could have officers and soldiers here soon. He was more concerned about them than the local police force, which still didn't quite have the tech to stop the armor he was wearing.  

[Flag Del Morte]

Flag hadn't really made an attempt to not be seen when the floating... thing appeared, but when he was noticed and the thing started making demands, the other patrons in the library ended up shoving him forward onto the floor below it.

There were only two other people with silver hair in the library: A younger-looking girl that was covered in tattoos and looked like she was about to take down the world for being disgraced, and another elf-like gentleman who also decided to wear his hair long.

Once again more puzzled than anything else, Flag glanced at the other's in his predicament and then back at the people holding them all down. He honestly wasn't surprised at how quick the crowd turned against member of their own in order to save their individual skins.

The Sivoan then glanced at the floating thing again and wondered briefly what it's mental malfunction was. To get the answer however, he would just have to observe for now.  

[GamingLord]

Crazy: "Well now, this narrows it down by quite a bit. Which. One. Of. You. Is. The. One. I'm. Looking. For...."

Emphasizing each word, the dragon pointed his gun at one of the trio. It stopped on the gentleman.

*BLAM!*

Crazy: "Not you! Annnd not you."

His gun moved over to the girl. Thankfully, Crazy's aim suddenly shot straight up, sending plaster raining down, thanks to chunks of rock slamming into his carapaced and armor covered back. Siad chunks of rock came from the wall of earth in front of the library doors where Quinth currently stood, sopping wet and unsteady with what looked like a crystallic sort of rectangular colorful shield emerging out of his arm. It was covered in hairline cracks and was missing little chunks here and there.

Finally noticing that the dragon was stunned, Quinth bum rushed and backhanded the dragon with his "shield" at high speeds, shattering it to pieces, and sending an incisor flying out of the yeshlag's mouth. They then both struggled for the assault rifle for a while, the yeshlag not shy about letting out stray shots for the hell of it.  

[Flag Del Morte]

The mere fact that the floating arsenal bundle had - without pause - obliterated the elvish character in his captive party made Flag very uneasy. He was pretty much certain that looks taken into account, that the talking critter was after the girl. This meant that he was probably the next to go.

He wasn't going to stand for that.

His spell had had enough time to grow and develop as it needed, and now was about time to cast it... even if he would regret it later as it was not one of his normal arsenal.

In a single fluid movement, the Sivoan stood up and threw his hands forward and drew a circle in the air. This movement somehow caused the air around his target to bed, fold, and disperse in a way that formed a rather solid, but clear bubble of repulsive energy around the fighting duo.

Once the force field was in place and everyone in the library was safe from excess - whatever, he walked over and looked at the annoyance from before and an unknown, vaguely humanoid-shaped black blob.

"Now that I have your attention... stop it."

The sorcerer held up his hand and clenched it a little. In reflex the force field closed in on itself slightly to indicate that he was rather annoying with their fray.

Rather than continue his discussion, however, he decided to help the silver-haired tatoo artist up and walk with her outside. His intention was not to help her so much as it was to make sure that he would be able to get outside.

Once they escape the library, he let her go and took off running in a random direction that would ensure that he would at least have some time to himself. He did - after all - have to pay back the energy that he borrowed.  

[GamingLord]

Quinth: "A bubble, a friggin' bubble. That's what he trapped us in?"

Crazy: "No, that's what he trapped YOU in."

The dragon bounty hunter had simply teleported outside of the spell-created thing. Figuring two could play the same game, Quinth rummaged through his pockets to search for his portal charms, only to find them missing. Crazy held them up with a claw and snickered.

Crazy: "Mine now. And so's the bounty. Stay put, I'll come kill you later!"

And then the dragon was gone, teleporting easily off after his prey in the blink of an eye. Quinth cursed his lack of ability to do such a simple thing, and punched the 'bubble'. He then tried several other things, such as kicking it, cursing at it, stabbing it by manifesting a blade made of his own energy essence into a crystallic form, and repulsing it to try to stretch it until it burst. None of which worked.

Slightly exhausted from his efforts, Quinth sat down to absorb the ambient energy from the air around him. It was then he noticed that he was drawing energy from the force field itself. He smacked himself on the forehead for not thinking of the obvious sooner, and started draining away the energy of the bubble.


Meanwhile, it wasn't long before Flag suddenly found himself in the shadow of that crazed dragon thing again. Except now, he was taking pot shots at the Sivoan's legs.

Crazy: "Damaged goods are still good!"  

[Flag Del Morte]

Apparently a bout of dizziness was how the bubble spell decided it wanted to exact it's revenge. Flag had in part expected more damage than this, but apparently the spell wasn't worth much of anything anyways.

He missed his pendent.

The inability to stand up completely straight while the projectiles caused little explosions on the ground around him cause him to get completely fed up with whole thing. Apparently this abhorrence that followed after him was in fact AFTER him.

Flag stopped, thinking that this would probably be the best for him and he turned around to meet the eyes of his pursuer.

"What... pray tell... do you want from me?"  

[GamingLord]

Crazy's glowing, blueish-cyan eyes met Flag's fiery, sunset-colored, slitted ones. The dragon gave a very sharp toothy grin, with one clearly missing from the earlier blow struck by Quinth. He never did lower his aim on the Sivoan.

Crazy: "Simple. I want your total surrender, so I can get my reward. Now hold still while I shoot out your kneecaps..."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he fired his weapon at the now non-moving target, taking swift aim at Flag's right knee cap.



Quinth barely got out into the streets when he heard the gunshots. Muttering to himself that the damned dragon was going to kill his bounty, he rushed in the direction of the gunfire, taking out his own sidearm and loading it with deadly piercing ammunition. Making sure to be silent when he got near, he was greeted by the sight of Crazy mentally dragging Flag up off the ground and into the air upside down, in a very undignified manner.

Crazy: "Hmm, maybe I need to put a few extra holes in you. For insurance"

Quinth thought that was an ironic statement, since he was about to do that to the little floating b*****d.  

[Flag Del Morte]

Perhaps standing still wasn't the best of ideas because before he knew it a searing pain exploded up his right knee and down he fell as his leg collapsed beneath him. It was at this point that he expected to hit the ground but instead found himself floating as well.

How does one miss the ground?

Eventually his hair - which was now all over the place trying to strangle him - fell away and he could see the Floating creature from an upside down point of view. He heard the statement that it made and decided that he didn't want what it offered.

"How about I just agree to float here?"

He suspected that he didn't have much of a choice in the matter anyways, but figured that conversation would at least distract the vaguely reptilian thing from whatever was about to happen behind it.  

[GamingLord]

Crazy: "No deal. One quick reload, and you can say goodbye to..."

Quinth: "Goodbye."

Quinth fired off a series of rapid shots, causing the dragon to arc in pain as they damaged his suit, and then at the last pair of rounds, pierced through and into his body, causing a spray of blood.

Crazy: "DAMN YOU QUINTH!"

Those few shots made the dragon drop both his weapon and Flag. Acting quickly, Quinth rushed for the assault rifle. Crazy fell to the ground, gripped the weapon, and teleported out of sight.

Quinth: "That is so freaking cheap..."

He then looked over to the injured Flag, and walked over.

Quinth: "That looks like it hurts to stand on, obviously. Here, let me help you with that.

He paused for a moment, his hand open as if waiting for something to fall into it. Suddenly, a small vial of red liquid seemed to beam out from the belt, and materalize into his palm. A second vial, this one looking more like an injection filled with a dark green fluid, also came into existance out of thin air.

Got to be sneaky about this, I can't apply the tranq first, and then the healing potion. It'll cancel the drug out.

Quinth: "The red stuff will remove the bullet that's probably lodged in your leg, and stitch up your wound. After that, I'll have to inject this other stuff to keep you from getting infected."