Survivalist Plot: And Now We Just Try to Survive

[meat_mooks]

In the middle of one of Stacy's nights, a distress beacon comes in. A desperate S.O.S. shows up on the screens. Source: one of Stacy's mission shuttles, the one that went to the small colony planet 'Eden' to answer a distress call.

|| Crematia, Goliath and Jorge. Please report to the Observation Deck for a rescue mission. ||

The rescue crew has little time to react and prepare. Within a matter of minutes, the available hands on deck are equipped and stuffed into an unarmed shuttle, then sent down to the planet surface. The shuttle lands a few hundred yards from the radio tower, the source of the beacon. The original crew is still inside the tower.

And between the tower and the shuttle, fifty strange, malformed beasts loll about in the baking desert sun. They're the pinkish color and texture of uncooked plucked chickens, the size of bears and armed with mouths large enough to fit a dog in. Drool dribbles from their fangs in thick ropes. Their hands are unsettlingly humanoid, with six long fingers that taper into a needle point. They don't look even a little concerned about the shuttle.

[OOC: I will be traveling tomorrow, so please feel free to NPC your own monsters and cause carnage. This is your chance to get your character mutilated, or have them save the day with a heroic gesture! Threadjacking and teaming up is encouraged! The monsters are intelligent enough to learn from imitation, but otherwise just lunge at you and bite you. They can also mimic sounds, but they are no longer flammable. Alas. If you want me to NPC for you, drop me a line or tell me in the subject title.]

Comments

[meat_mooks]

The monsters sense something in this one. Cedric isn't running, and escape doesn't seem to be the first thing on his mind. They read that as prey. As such, they're surprised when Cedric responds to their circling him with a loud noise and fire. They don't burst into flames, but it does hurt. The squeal and the ones caught in the flame fall back and to the ground in their death throes.

The others take this as an attack. Two of them, one to each side of Cedric, rush in at him, teeth bared and needle claws prepared to impale him.

[theboywhodied]

Bring it on, he thinks. All the better that he take them out, all else be damned.

He leaps back and casts a Hurling Hex, attempting to knock one off course and into the other. That's followed by "Deprimo!", an attempt to flatten them with a ghostly downward pressure.

The horde's much bigger than their little group is. He has to keep it coming.

[meat_mooks]

The Hurling Hex finds its target, sending those two sprawling and squished, but the others see this attack and come at Cedric with a unified force. One of the largest ones leaps straight at Cedric's chest - the force alone, if it hits, will be like being hit by a car. Now that they see that Cedric's attacking them with lethal force, they're not toying with him, either.

[theboywhodied]

Oh hell. Cedric instinctively casts a shield charm, creating an invisible wall in front of him. That won't buy much time, though---next plan of attack!

He pointed his wand at the ground and hollered. "Defodio!"

It created a gaping chasm in the ground in front of him, hopefully right under a few monsters' feet.

[meat_mooks]

The monster bounces off harmlessly, but some of the others fall into the hole in the ground. As before, they are not strong enough to pull themselves back up, but that doesn't help Cedric when he's surrounded on all four sides.

[theboywhodied]

Cedric's attempts to keep them at bay are getting desperate. No one's coming to help him, he's probably all but dead, but he wants to take as many of the monsters with him as he possibly can.

He turns their legs to jelly and keeps bouncing them on barriers, but it can't last forever. There will be a bigger group, and then...

..well. He clutches his wand tightly, gathering up the courage for the spell it will take to win.

[meat_mooks]

The monsters have managed to isolate Cedric from the others, and now a group of them rushes at him, attacking from the front and from behind. They smell fear. They relish in it.

[theboywhodied]

The moment's come. Cedric chooses one of his attackers from the front to focus on, the last face he will ever see. It's a representative of everything they've suffered through, all the unfairness of the world, all the days they won't see. The light at the end of the tunnel's gone, only oblivion awaits.

But hey---he evaded it for a few months. And he wouldn't be hurting so much right now if all that time and what he'd seen hadn't meant something to him. It really did: he'd found new friends (Kaya, Clef, Fuu, Maxine, Sirius, Remus, Atom...Howard), a new mission, and learned new skills. It could've been great. But they have to fight the rest of this mission without them now. He hopes they win.

"Bombarda Maxima!"

In the split-second before the explosive force turns his body into particles scattered across the field, he has one last thought:

This is for you. I'm sorry.

When the second passes, all that remains of Cedric Diggory is an indiscriminate bloody pile, mixed in with the ugly piles of the nearby monsters. Somehow, though, a thin wand rests atop the pile, unblemished---apparently protected by the last of its owner's magic.

[meat_mooks]

Cedric, unfortunately, will never know the extent of the damage he did to the creatures. While many are ripped to shreds instantly by the blast, the concussive force fells many of those still intact, and even further away the remaining creatures lose their keen hearing to the noise. Many retreat right then, unwilling to fight such dangerous foes while deafened.

The tide has been more than turned. Cedric's life may have just bought his crewmates'.