[WFRP2e] The Power of One - Part 2 - "Transire Benefaciendo"

[BananaPhone]

Taalia Giovanni

The inspection of the orc had stuck with Taalia for a while following its manifestation. Prodding at particulars of the ugly thing had felt less than wholesome, and when Bella expressed her disgust for the beast on their return to the machine, Taalia had nodded in acquieces to her thoughts. Truth be told...Taalia had seen worse. If Bella thought these things were nasty and horrifying, hopefully fate would spare her from witnessing a cage full of hungry rat ogres...and being the slave whose duty it was to throw the slop bucket to them to fulfil their feeding time.

Even when they ascended back into the mountain sky, the sketchbook tucked away safely and the wholesome images of the dogs filed within her memory, Taalia kept thinking of that green beast. For all the characteristics it possessed, each one a grotesque deformation of a more pleasing form, the girl found the jaw to be the most unsettling. Protruded as it was, brawny, thick and tough, it looked more like the base of a mountain than a functional house for the rows of teeth within its mouth, the way it jutted forward granting the creature an overbite that must have forced it to have the most loathsome of table manners. That ghastly overbite beneath those beady, red eyes...a hideous package indeed.

A hideous package Taalia would be happy to never see again - but fate was not so kind.

The wind was pressing against the shepardesses face like a cool companion when the commotion was spotted. Sailing through the air amidst the crags as they were, the world beneath them was smaller than up close, and so when movement was spotted upon a ledge, with the sun shining off of a blade being swung about in skilful arcs, Taalia noticed it immediately. Turning her head to face it, she tapped Cestie's shoulder once, twice, three times quickly and clicked her fingers of the offending hand: their gesture that he was to pass her the telescope. Having received the item, Taalia extended it and peered through the lens, the world suddenly falling away as her vision was transported hundreds of yards to a spot of conflict straight from a knights tale: a lone, tired man of the blade against a baying mob of savages, his wounded, noble steed by his side and reliant solely upon his survival.

"Cestie - hard to port!"

With his attention drawn to the event by the younger set of eyes behind him, the elder Maso drew back upon the yoke and angled the craft to come about. Taalia could see over his shoulder towards the action, the tall pines of the mountains all baring witness to this lone, gold-and-yellow heraldry-swathed knight and his lone defiance against the half a dozen of the savage greenskins baying for his blood. One of the beasts tried his luck, but his bulk and strength proved ineffective compared to the knights skill, as the armored man used the orcs momentum and mass against him with a deflection of his shield and shove of his shoulder to send the cur hurtling off the cliff behind him and down to the splattered fate it deserved.

But there were still more, and the man was visibly tiring.

"Just like the rats, I think. Transire Benefaciendo, Taalia! Yahoo!"

Taalia smirked and nodded once. Leonardo was stored to her right, and the shepardess gripped its stock and withdrew it. Riding shotgun as she was, Taalia felt the breeze run its cool fingers through her hair as she brought the blunderbuss up and pressed the butt against her shoulder - aiming down the barrel as the green figures grew and grew...

Crack!

The shot exploded from the firearm and raked across the puzzled and astonished orcs, peppering their tough, green hides and drawing blood. But it wasn't enough. It might warrant momentary fear, but Taalia doubted that would be enough.

"Bella - firearm! Reload!" Taalia yelled over the whirring of the flying machines gears and flapping wings. She held Leonardo over her shoulder with her left hand, while her right hand sat likewise, open and waiting to feel the weight of - there!

Drawing her right arm forward, Taalia brought her firearm up and the butt against her shoulder. To think that she had built this beautiful weapon with the sole intent being to preserve her personal wealth and sell it in Bretonnia or the Empire. The girl wasn't clueless: she had spoken to enough traders during her enterprising time to discover something called an "exchange rate", and how Tilean duro's only possessed approximately half of their value in Bretonnian lands. But, ahhh, material goods were worth the same anywhere! Thus, Taalia had built this firearm with every intent to sell it in the Empire. It was worth a veritable fortune by the common mans standards, hundreds of gold pieces that would take a lone peasant a lifetime to accrue. But here, right now, the power of its lead shot may just be worth even more.

Reaching forward to tap Cestie's shoulder to confirm she was read, Taalia felt her stomach lurch as the flying machine banked starboard to bring itself back around for another run.

Drawing the firearm up against her shoulder and aiming down its sights, Taalia droned the surroundings out and allowed them to become just a green-and-brown blur on her peripheries, while that small handful of orcs dominated her attention, namely, the boss - the big bastard hollaring and hooting. Doubtless he had the savvy to send forward a few of his grunts to wear the knight down, so that he may stride forward and defeat a weakened opponent and claim some item of his possession or person as a grisly trophy. Well, not today, Taalia thought to herself; her green eye staring down those ironsights, the background rushing past so quickly. She had barely a half second to predict movement, the speed of her own passing and the spot on the orc that would do the most damage, and by the time their machine drew close enough, the girl had aimed, taken her mark and pulled the trigger.

Crack!

A great puff of smoke billowed out of the machine and wisped off into the mountain air as that lead shot sailed through the distance between them and the bellowing orcs, that bullet blasting forward and carrying more kinetic energy than any arm could possess, its trajectory aligning it squarely with the orcs thick, brawny midsection...