Powder Miner

"Morgan, thank you for going after those officers, if one or two more people want to take shots at them I wouldn't mind, but everyone else, keep pouring your fire into Lancer! Now is the time for us to just start beating the life out of her! If you want to hit her harder, I recommend trying to hit here, or maybe here, or..." LOTUS uses Weakness Pinpoint on Lancer again, granting 10% *2-crit chance on attacks made against her this turn! Also, Isobel and LOTUS have a passive 10% dodge chance, and if stunned physically or chemically LOTUS' moves can still be used. Constitution: 3, Dexterity: 8, Intelligence: 11, Resistance: 2, Strength: 2, Synergy: 0

"Roar at me, fuckin' space alien, you think I'm gonna back down?! I'm not gonna give you that chance to kill me!" Expressing his outrage at the very idea of these things trying to intimidate him, the man in the blue-and-red mangalloy plate also took the chance to let his paranoia and instinctive anger flow a little bit more physically: he charged at the aliens that his new ally had caused to float in the air and stick together, and drew his arm back to deal them both a blow... then landing one foot forward to pivot as hard as he could five feet away from the beasts, a pivot that brought the heavy tip of the Horsekiller's barrel hurtling towards one of the thing's head. Nader uses Heavy Metal Blow, dealing 1d20+Str (6) damage to the Gravity'd Mutons!

It seemed that Navin was in his zone. As the five men with swords came to try to put an end to him, Navin let years of combat instinct and martial arts training guide his body, spinning away from one strike to manage to slap another one away with the back of his hand. A quick explosion from his other hand fouled the advance of a third strike, sending the man stumbling backwards, and then Navin turned to the other two attackers. One of them had his sword raised high in the middle of a strike, so Navin (looking to his Aikido skills) executed irimi, taking a rapid movement to barrel right towards the man (suddenly far too close to hit) and shove him away. Finally, Navin pivoted away from the fifth man, who had been struggling to find an opening, and quite simply took a couple of leaping strides to book it right from him. He traced a path towards the heavily wounded flying beast instead -- he could feel from the way his internal energy was ebbing that he'd used his powerful attacks a bit too liberally, and he wasn't going to be able to muster that kind of energy for a few seconds. Instead, making his way over to the grounded creature, Navin brought a single fist down towards it in a quickly-crouching hammer blow, paired with an explosion that was less directed and less intense than the others he'd produced so far... but which was likely still damaging enough! Navin uses a basic attack on Bel Lahmu B, dealing (3d6+STR+SYN) damage! Additional Notes: 12% chance to dodge melee attacks with Aikido, from his Fistfighter Perk Constitution: 2, Resistance: 1, Dexterity: 4, Intelligence: 2, Strength: 10, Synergy: 10 Cooldowns: Flurry of Explosion, final turn, Piercing Strike, final turn

Nader had stood there in still silence for a while while the others spoke, shocked and disgusted into a furious wordlessness by the sight of what he'd come across. Not only were these space alien colonialists invading and, well, colonizing, but it turns out that they were kidnapping people, experimenting on them, and killing them. There was no mistake about it: these things were evil, and they had to be brought down. Nader was glad he'd come over here, now: as much as these aliens might be a danger, he would look greatly forward to helping XCOM punch a great big hole in them. "Damn space aliens..." The armored man shook his head and his voice came out in a growl as he mirrored his thoughts: "Another reason to ruin their fuckin' day as much as I can while I'm here, I guess." Then, of course, that entire train of thought was messily derailed as a certain someone's request for help against three enemies came over through the radio. "Damn it Aquila!" Nader let out that curse into the room, not the comms, and though he managed to keep from shouting at the top of his lungs, it was kind of a close thing. "Of course, if there's anyone who was going to run into a fight..." Nader let out a grunt, and immediately turned about-face and started to move back through the hall of the ship in order to get to the middle area of the ship and thusly enter Aquila's fight. "Come on, this is a situation where we should stop Aquila from getting killed." Nader gestured for the others to follow him, even if he was unhappy about the whole situation.

LOTUS uses Weakness Pinpoint on Lancer, granting 10% *2-crit chance on attacks made against her this turn! Also, Isobel and LOTUS have a passive 10% dodge chance, and if stunned physically or chemically LOTUS' moves can still be used. Constitution: 3, Dexterity: 8, Intelligence: 11, Resistance: 2, Strength: 2, Synergy: 0

Nader turned briefly before entering, to look at and answer Rachel. "If I felt like I could get away with it, I'd be joining you, but unfortunately I think that if I DON'T enter and it's a trap, then that would mean the space alien colonialists would mulch the first person to go through; I may be the best suited to being on point, what with my armor. Either me or I guess Aquila, but I would definitely rather it be me. If I walk into a trap, I'd rather be the one in control of my progress."

The highly-armored gunman caught the explosive out of the air, something which actually drew a disgruntled noise from him; Nader muttered as the Reaper disappeared from sight: "Allah. Just tossing explosives at me... Still..." He carefully turned the device over in his hands. "I can probably make some use of this. Not this moment, though, if I'm gonna be setting up a fuckin' claymore I want to be sure not to waste it." With his train of thought spoken, Nader slipped the claymore carefully into an enemy pouch, before advancing along with the rest of the team, his Horsekiller and Sorraia both pointed forward as he took up a position near the front, ready to fire if he got jumped.

Satomi curled a lock of her orange hair around her finger as she started to go deep into thought. "Hmm... well, this is actually something of a difficult situation. Because of the level of the other side, we can't just bypass them since they'll attack anyway, and because they're in water we can't burn them. I suppose that we have three options from my point of view... we have the time-consuming option, the destructive option, and the difficult option. The time-consuming option is just grabbing a rope somewhere and having one of us fire arrows which you then reset so we can fire them again; enough time with that, and we can just kill them all. The destructive option would be to find something that floats on water and is flammable, but even if we tether that we'd be putting burning things upstream and that might end poorly. The difficult option is to try to set up a block or drop a container of some sort to crush or contain them, but we'd have to hit and building it would require some strength. ...of course, I could just try to build a device that expedites the first option, and then perhaps take inspiration from it to mount on top of the wall, but that would take resources and time too. I think I like that option for its own reasons, because I love making these devices~ ...but, um, it'd be an undertaking of its own." After getting a bit sing-song at the idea of inventing a specialized siege weapons, Satomi gets a little embarrassed, blushing slightly, but she nevertheless turns back to Kusuke to get his input.

As Nader walked with the XCOM operatives, he felt a dull ache in several of his muscles... but it was the good kind of ache. Nader unfortunately didn't get the feeling that the endurance training he'd put himself through had had much effect, but he did think that his time spent furiously working out (still in his armor, at that) in the gym had had other effects. That familiar throb in his musculature was the sign that he'd at least strengthened himself, his muscles rebuilding the microscopic little tears that exercise granted and that led to greater capacity. He felt like he could deliver a more resounding punch, and keep his big guns steadier. Excellent. Nader also watched as Aquila charged off with his shield up, and let out another disgruntled sigh. He didn't make to speed himself up, however, and instead simply made sure his four guns were all attached and loaded properly. "I'm not going to back him up this time. I'm going to continue at my planned pace, and if he gets himself shot then that's what he does. While I am here, though, it occurs to me that if any of you have extra weaponry, I can rig a trap or two to secure our perimeter while we're in there."

Satomi put a hand to her chin when Kusuke arrived and when the Mason and Blacksmith spoke, thinking things through before replying to them or even greeting Kusuke -- it was clear the gears were working in her head, so to speak. Slowly, a very pleased grin spread across her face. "...yeees, hummm, yes, I think this all works out!" She suddenly straightened up and then gave a quick little bow to the time traveling boy, her hair flinging outwards from the speed of her frenetic little head-bob. "Let's see, with that metal, with some more stone and limestone, with the wood... yes, I'm getting an idea! I can build with stone and concrete, then reinforce with wood beams at the back, perhaps string some wires up them to keep the beams together better... ooh, that's good, heh heh. Maybe I can give my swords some long-deserved upgrade, too! And then your knives, too, Kusuke-san, thank you very much for the metal." She looked back and forth between Kusuke, the Mason, and the Blacksmith, hand back to her chin, and then she clapped once. "Well, while the blacksmith works on that ore, Kusuke-san, you said that you wanted some help exploring the mine? We could take a jaunt down there to gather some materials, like stone, which I can then use to make those walls... um... not bad. I think it works for both of us!"

The masked paranoid pointed a finger at the Reaper to emphasize with a gesture his point and then began to speak. "Turning off the signal is smart, but the risk is always going to be there now that you've been detected. Perhaps the tyrannical space alien colonialist government is too incompetent to find your ship, but I've already worked with someone (who thankfully isn't present) who had some sort of interdimensional biomechanical death island track him down to the middle of nowhere in the Australian outback. These interdimensional assassins are out there, they're malicious, and they're out for blood. You have to be prepared once we're gone, especially because there's also an apocalyptic threat out there eating dimensions and removing them from existence. Mark my words, multiple dimensions is a scary place." He dropped his finger, then. "While I'm here, though, I am serious about the training. I'm facing these things as well, plus the space alien colonialist tyrants here, so I'll want to get into better and better fighting shape. That last rocket almost killed me, too, and I'd rather not get killed by armor-piercing munitions. I want to take advantage of your facilities to get stronger, and to get tougher; can you help me find what I need?"

If Kusuke were looking for Satomi, it's highly likely that he would find her at the smelter (a convenient place for someone carrying all that ore anyway), where the diminutive Kaiu samurai had gone on the advice of the Guide. She had decided to visit the Mason that she was told was present: not knowing the size of the blocks, and therefore most certainly not having done the calculations she would need to do in her head to estimate if she had enough material to make one or both replacement walls primarily out of stone, she needed to get the Mason's opinion on if she needed to get more stone made. She approached the Mason in a businesslike manner, flipping through her notebook (though she had folded and stored some of the paper the Guide had offered her in her obi) and reading some of the notes she'd put down asked her question rather simply: "I intend to replace the village walls with stone, which is one of your best bets if you want them to survive the siege, but I need to know if in your opinion the stone you have here is enough to replace those walls with. It's about a three hundred feet and four hundred feet total for north and south respectively by my reckoning, though I suppose you'd likely know that already."

"D-- uh--" Perlita began to hem and haw a little, but considering that she was in a rather inspired and encouraged mood, that bit of hesitation lasted only for a split second before Perlita came to her decision. If everyone was starting to take some dents, then Perlita would just have to finally whip out a Media! She didn't expect it would bring the goddess back to full condition, just from eyeing her, but Perlita also didn't want to have Gabriel and Soryn start really accumulating injuries... "Crawford, come forth!" With another pull of the string only visible to her and Gabriel, Perlita brought forth her significantly glitzier, more visible Persona, who wreathed Soryn, Gabriel, and Mitsurugi in faint auras of pink, healing light. "Media!" Perlita uses Media, healing Gabriel, Mitsurugi, and Soryn for SYN (11) health each! Constitution: 6, Resistance: 4, Dexterity: 7, Intelligence: 0, Strength: 2, Synergy: 11 If dealt a non-stun Ailment, Perlita's Justice Arcana perk afflicts its dealer with the same Ailment, and her Dark Jacket protects her from sleep effects and confers 25% resistance against darkness attacks!

Nader stared at the Russian man for several moments after he left the closet without initially saying a word: had he been waiting outside the closet? Had Nader failed to perform some sort of paperwork ritual and was thusly going to be watched around their supplies? Was it coincidence? Nader was wholly unsure. But after a few awkward moments, Nader began to reply. ”...yes. I repaired my armor; I have no intention of being caught in a moment of vulnerability when the space alien colonialists or the interdimensional assassins come, so I made sure I wasn’t vulnerable. Next I plan to do some strength training so I’m prepared for combat, if I can find where in here to do so, at least.” Another pause, before: ”You should really prepare your base for if somebody teleports inside, you know. You found interdimensional friendlies, but the dimensions are crawling with all sorts of hostiles who mean harm and they’re probably watching this base too now by tracking your... interdimensional signature since those devices were sent out.”

When Satomi woke up, she was still tragically unbathed thanks to the fatigue immediately following the previous day's battle (something she'd have to commit to fixing tonight). The Crab, of course, vigilant keepers of the watch on the wall and brave explorers of the Shadowland that they were, were no strangers at all to spending days on end without any sort of bathing, but Satomi was starting to feel a little bit disgraceful, not to mention filthy. Plus, it would be an absolutely heavenly experience to get to unwind in a bath, even if it probably wasn't a proper bath house... Except now Satomi was getting ahead of herself! She couldn't get lost in imagining luxury when she had a job to do, and Satomi knew for a fact that she most certainly had a job to do. After having a quick breakfast, she headed out of the tavern to confirm what she'd seen earlier; she remembered only getting a bare and blurry glimpse or two of the walls earlier, seeing as she'd been busy, but from what she remembered they were simple wooden walls at the passes down to the valley, with the exception of the narrow pass to the east, which she would have to turn her attention to as well. When she actually got up to the northern wall after a little walk, Satomi squinted at the wall, getting an actual detailed look... and then stepped backwards in shock, putting a hand to her mouth. "Oh, kami! This is terrible! This is the worst wall I've ever seen in my entire life!" Satomi semi-frantically went from one end of the wall to the other, prodding at it and observing it carefully, taking about a half-hour in doing so, muttering things like: "Wouldn't even stand up to a squad of goblins..." and "I'm sure even the Crane could knock this bit down with a little effort..." the entire time as she did. When she concluded that, she took the marching gait of somebody who was some mixture of furious and determined and marched on down to the Guide's office. The petite engineer had some questions to ask, because she fully intended to have those walls torn down and fully replaced. When the Guide let her in, and greeted her, she immediately barraged him with her inquiries, and a couple of statements besides: "The walls at the passes are awful! They wouldn't stand up to a determined group of people, much less an actual siege! My first priority will have to be fixing these -- no, not fixing them, tearing them down and replacing them totally. But I need to know two things before I can do that: first of all, who from the village can I get to help me assemble the walls? Secondly, does the village have a stockpile of materials? I will need wood and stone to deal with this problem."

Nader wasn’t planning on wasting any time now that he knew where the fabrics were, because his armor had to be back at peak condition as soon as he could manage it — giving potential surprise enemies the chance to pull off the armor near his shoulder in melee combat would be a terrible risk, and he didn’t want to take it. Accordingly, the Forenian walked into the armory, perused the crates, grabbed a couple scraps of fabric (one blue piece of civilian cloth, and a grey piece of military-grade fabric), some sewing tools, and proceeded to walk out of that area of the armory, looking for a small room to isolate himself in. Once he found what he was looking for, a tiny little storage closet, Nader entered it, shut the door, locked said door, and propped the Horsekiller against it plus a corner of the room, so Nader could grab it out of the air if someone burst in. It was dimly lighted in here, and maybe he was being a bit suspicious, but privacy and safety were paramount for the task he was undertaking. After all, if he was going to render himself vulnerable at all, it wouldn’t be in front of other people. Slowly, he unhooked the chest plate of his armor, and then the back plate, shuddering as he deposited them on the ground. ”Urgh...” Then he removed his gloves, the muscled man carefully working his fingers out of them, then the plates around the damaged shoulder of the armor. Now, his bare hands and the fabric backing of his armor (looking like a thick jumpsuit of military fabric around the torso where the plates were now gone, with a zipper around the hips and one down the front) were visible to him, and he frowned behind his (still on) helmet, but he’d have to deal with it. Unzipping the zippers, he removed the torso section of the jumpsuit to reveal his purple undershirt, with a ragged hole around the shoulder in it as well. Sighing, he first took the blue scrap of civilian fabric and sewed it (very very carefully) to the undershirt (which he was still wearing so that he didn’t have to take his helmet off). Then, with that patched, he moved on to fixing the hole in his armor backing, a lengthier process that saw a couple of extra straps down on with the military fabric he’d taken, in addition to patching it. He put the backing back on, then reattached his plates, then tested his motion and its integrity... Perfect, it was back in working order. With that done, Nader put his guns back onto his back, clutched the needle and thread between three fingers, and walked out of the closet he’d been in for the past several minutes.

The eye split open and revealed a gigantic maw of humongous, horrible teeth. This was simultaneously a good sign and a bad one -- on one hand, it was a pretty clear indication that they were driving this thing to reveal whatever abilities it had hidden, but on the other hand it also meant that they had to deal with whatever those abilities were, and Satomi didn't like the idea of getting trapped in those teeth, for example. Still, since at least they'd killed the smaller monsters around it, that meant that all they had to do for now was to focus on killing the damned thing. And with the fantastic success she'd had with this (silver...) bow so far, Satomi figured that she could help. Now, given the debacle the blue fire had become, and given that she wanted to conserve some of her ordnance, here, Satomi wasn't going to use either of those two remaining gel arrows. Still, perhaps she wouldn't need them... pulling a normal arrow out of a pouch by her side, Satomi attempted to send it flying straight towards the Eye of Cthulhu, and then fired another couple of arrows more quickly but not aimed to try to actually hit it... instead, the wildly-fired arrows were aimed just below it, to inhibit its movement and ability to attack. Satomi fires the Silver Bow at the Eye of Cthulhu, dealing 3d6+DEX (6) damage, and then uses Fend Off on it, lowering its primary attacking stat by DEX (6)!

Nader will head to the Armory to (figuratively) sniff out the military fabric supplies so that he can repair his armor backing.

In the Firebrand For the remainder of the flight in the Firebrand, Nader's attention (except for a small smirk behind his mask at Harry's annoyance) was focused on the primer that he had been given by Rachel. He flipped through the other sections of the primer quickly, as he only had a little interest in skimming them, but they did provoke a couple of reactions nonetheless; the fact that he recognized some of the tunes in this futuristic empire's hymns made him softly chuckle, and the bits on battlefield fortification and sanitation got a quick "hmm" out of him and nothing more. They seemed practical enough, he supposed. The bits on aliens made him laugh a little bit more derisively, with a mutter of "So that's a constant, huh?" and then, as he read on, a nervous pat of his Sorraia -- the existence of these creatures wasn't very comforting, especially with the possibility of certain multiversal threats and all. "...will have to keep this all in mind for if the interdimensional assassins decide to bring any of these beings along..." The bit that he was the most interested in, though, was obviously the bit on the lasgun, which he had wanted to see in the first place. Though a lot of it was essentially Greek to him, seeing as he was an engineer, not a scientist, and most certainly not from the future, Nader noted that once you got past all of the machine-spirit nonsense and the stuff about the "Emperor" (a godlike emperor? Nader couldn't help but disapprove) it started to make a lot more sense. Underlying the bits that he couldn't understand or that made him roll his eyes was a remarkably simple approach to putting together one of the Empire's lasguns; he wouldn't be able to make the components, but Nader was willing to bet that if he got his hands on some he could apply his own training and what he'd seen here to put one together, and that he could repair some. Really, some of the structural insights and pieces of modularity in here were useful for all purposes, and Nader felt a distinct satisfaction in the thought that he was improving. Nader's Gunsmithing trick has been upgraded to: Gunsmithing (Trick): Nader has years of experience with working on guns, it wasn’t a huge surprise that he started to apply it here. Nader adds an extra 15% to INT during checks involving making or upgrading guns. Outside of the Firebrand The first thing that Nader did as the Firebrand landed was to walk up to Rachel and extend the Primer towards her -- for all of the nonsense that even she admitted surrounded it, the book has actually been profoundly useful to Nader, and his tone reflected this as he spoke to her, as he spoke with respect in his voice. "Thank you for this -- I genuinely got something out of it. The section on the lasgun is as useful as you said it would be," even if that usefulness took some rereading to glean on occasion. While the commander and her staff introduced themselves, Nader held back from comment -- he didn't have any negative thoughts about the commander being a woman, since his own country had the legendary female air general Tereshkova in charge of much of its military, and though he found the woman's diminutive height admittedly a bit funny, it struck him as likely a terrible idea to actually bring any sort of vocal attention to it. When they finished their introductions, however, Nader decided to follow Aquila's example (words he hoped never passed through his mind ever again) and reiterate his own introduction for their benefit. "I'm Nader Jabal. Weapons engineer for the Republic of United Forenia, and recently some sort of dimension-traveling soldier... slash... helper? Whatever you call someone who fights insane bomb men, horrible cyborg koalas, fixes pipelines, and apparently also now fights space alien colonialists." He put his hand to his shoulder, lightly moving around the loosened armor and damaged backing. "...do you have any basic supplies such as military fabric? My armor's taken damage and I'd rather it be at peak condition in case of attack by interdimensional assassins or angry flying alien things or, well, whatever I end up fighting. I do not like the idea of going around with reduced structural integrity on this if I can at all avoid it."

Satomi had been charged and rather painfully attacked by the eyes, the soft areas of her body not protected by the armor (such as her stomach) taking a serious thrashing from the monsters... but the fact that Kusuke had very quickly come in and brought her back in time meant that this was but a momentary distraction -- she would have to thank him again, perhaps. By doing something for him? If she had access to a forge, she was sure that she could give those knives of his a bit of an upgrade. Maybe try to make some especially light armor, but she wasn't as confident in that. Of course, she was in the middle of a battle, and that did deserve her attention. Satomi's eyebrow quirked upwards when she saw the strange blue flame spreading all over the enemy team ... and even to her allies. "Well, our new companion has most certainly complicated things..." the short orange-haired girl muttered, but since her primary target was already aflame, Satomi didn't see any harm in worsening its condition by continuing to use those special gel arrows on it... plus, this would have the obvious benefit of hitting it with two more arrows! Reaching for the arrows, Satomi twirled one off of her shoulder, and promptly sent it flying at the gigantic oni with a twang! Then she followed the act up with a second arrow. Satomi fires a Flaming Arrow at the Eye of Cthulhu, and then does it again, dealing 3d6+DEX (6)+INT (12) damage twice... without the icefire stealing the flames, anyway!

Nader turned to look at Harry, and though his mask prevented any scrutiny of his facial expression, the nonplussed and rather caustic tone in his voice probably communicated well enough his response: ”A stunning deduction, future-man. I may have a baseline, but it’s the electrifying conclusions like “it has a good battery” and “it doesn’t actually instead have several very small and incredibly silent jet turbines in it” that take us to new and undiscovered heights. Now, I think I’ve got what I can out of this on this plane.” Nader handed Harry back his rifle, and rounds. He then turned to Sister Rachel and extended his arm towards her. ”Could I take a look at that primer? The more knowledge I can get about these various types of futuristic guns, the better I can do myself.”

For the largest part, Nader paid little heed to the conversation about psionics, excepting the bit about rearrangement of brains, which saw him putting his hands to his helmet, making sure it was set on securely, and muttering about ”...space alien colonialists messing around with brains...” Nader simply had things more relevant to him to focus on, after all. He had the strange rifle he had been handed by Harry, along with a couple of rounds going with the weapon. At first he scanned the weapon for various inputs and ports, answering Harry as he did so. ”Well, you’re from quite far out, aren’t you? But I wouldn’t be surprised if Forenia simply doesn’t exist where you come from; from what I’ve heard so far, most of the variants of Earth the others come from don’t have The Archipelago at all, much less United Forenia.” Noting a lack of a gas input port, Nader closely inspected a particular section of the gun as he spoke a bit more. ”And, yes, this means I am from Earth, and yes, the Second World War, though they got involved in our war rather than us in theirs.” His attention turned towards the rounds in his hand which he rolled a couple of times, and then brought up towards eye level, closely inspecting its sheen. ”Yep, this isn’t lead. Ferrous, I do believe. Combined with the lack of any sort of input for gas, I am sure this isn’t some sort of air rifle, and I am sure it is not a regular gun, seeing as these rounds are just bullets. You wouldn’t have ferrous bullets unless you were trying to make an electric cannon of some sort, either. What I find particularly notable here is that this doesn’t seem to have any kind of socket that I can recognize, which may mean it is self-powered, and considering that the only versions of electric cannons I’ve heard of are a theoretical design by a crazy Frenchman, and a theoretical design by one of Forenia’s more unique and less successful engineers that would have been designed to be powered with multiple jet turbines... well, even though this thing is handheld and not building-sized, that would be a lot of power.”

The masked-and-heavily-armored man (rather, the one not in XCOM) took this moment to chime in rather sardonically: ”I would personally suspect that Contagion here has most of his expertise in applied neuroscience.” It’s then that he turned towards the doctor. ”Name’s Nader Jabal. I’m from 1942, and it’s an easy wager that this place is a few decades in the future from that at the least so I may not be able to be certain about it, but I’ve been a weapons engineer for the glorious nation of Forenia (and its less glorious predecessor) for thirteen years, so I know my guns, especially because they’re one area of my expertise. If you hand that rifle to me for a moment, I can take a look at it and take a crack at figuring it out.”

Much of the team reacted with open disgust and horror at the appearance of their present enemy: a truly massive eye, trailed by red wavy things that might have been veins, a sea of red to Satomi's vision. But Satomi's only reaction was a quick grimace; although she had never been on the front lines in any of the truly horrible Shadowlands battles back in the Crab Clan lands in Rokugan, that didn't mean she hadn't got a glimpse or two of some of the more disgusting oni. It made sense to her, really -- a land twisted and haunted by terrible blood magics would have twisted and terrible oni to match. They would just have to do their duty and kill it, simple as that. First, the diminutive samurai whipped her crossbow off of its temporary storage position on her back; with the weapon loaded shortly after leaving the walls of the village, attacking was as simple as taking the weapon into her hands, bringing it up to eye level as she aimed at the gigantic, vaguely blurry oni. Then she squeezed the trigger again, and again, and again, loosing her volley of bolts one after the other. Around this point, she noticed and heard that an apparent ally had arrived, something clearly not human but wearing somewhat familiar garb; if she had questions, though, she would ask them later. Satomi had been getting very familiar with the movements of drawing and firing her ranged weapons, and this familiarity made her faster, and ensured that she could smoothly transition into another attack. Putting her crossbow back onto her back, Satomi slid her hand to the side and drew the... silver bow from her back, going to grab one of the ignitable arrows from where it was stored on a strap she'd put on her shoulder. Then she used the silver ribbing of the bow to drag the arrow across and set it alight, brought the bow up in a horizontal position, and fired the flaming arrow as best as she could towards the pupil of the gigantic eye -- if it caught in there, the eye would surely have a very poor time of it. Satomi fires her Perfection Crossbow at the Eye of Cthulhu, dealing the 6d6+DEX (6) damage attack, and then fires off the Silver Bow at the Eye of Cthulhu, with a Flaming Arrow, dealing 3d6+DEX (0, extra turn)+INT (12) fire damage to it!