Be Wary The Wolf Scorned

Shiruba had made her way back to Shibuya, and gotten one of the Alliance medics to deal with her arm. Really she was less worried about the injury and more making sure being bitten by an undead wolf wouldn't have other harsher consequences. But that was also the least of most of her concerns. As soon as that was finished she had disappeared into the HQ in an unusually stoic mood and retreated to her so-called office. And that, after her outburst over the chimlinks with unusually colorful language (that she probably learned from Gwen's Texan family and their military connections), was all anyone had heard from her for some time. And being quiet like that was almost as unusual as the swearing.

You know, Kaydon was always in a bit of a weird place when it came to the guild and the alliance. He still sees himself as a mercenary at heart, but it's been almost a year that he's been with the group and maybe they're growing on him.

At least enough for him to go check on Shiruba.

Assuming the door's not locked, he's going to just let himself right into her office. He'll knock if it is, but either way once he's inside, will take a moment to look over Shiruba, "If you're that bad off I'd hate to see the other guy."

Shiruba looks up from behind the wooden table that serves as her desk. "I -did- kill three of the undead dire wolves before they managed to chew me up," she remarks. "Headshots are effective kills, even on something that probably doesn't have much brain left... If only it had been that Huntress and not her pets!" She smacks a fist on the table. "This is why I kept telling her not to wander too far from the towns!" Which is followed by a sigh as she slouches back in a chair. "Not that I don't appreciate her looking out for me like I was here, but now..." Despite the fiestiness for a moment her mood has deflated again.

"You must have really pissed them off with that stunt you pulled last time." Kaydon says, as he sits down across from Shiruba, "I mean honestly I'm kind of annoyed. I've tried to piss them off every time I've run into them and they just ignore me half the time. Maybe if I can land a blow on the boss lady they'll come after me."

"Do you think I -want- them after me?!" Shiruba snaps. But she doesn't have the energy to keep the prickly outbursts going, and just slumps back to her table desk. "I knew I was being stalked. There's a status marker that appears when she was stalking me. The whole reason I went out into the wilderness alone was to keep her from following me into town, into a populated area, or where we were prepared to deal with the Wave... and then this happens!" Ears flop foward as she buries her face in her arms. "How I can try so much to protect this world and our people... and yet someone still manages to get hurt. Or worse..."

"Going alone is the problem." Kaydon replies, sounding a bit more terse when he does, "You're in a leadership position. You can't just run off all willy nilly, ESPECIALLY when you're being hunted."

He puts one of his hands on the desk, "You should have had a team with you. At least some bodyguards. Trust me, while I know you are /more/ than capable of taking care of yourself, it never hurts to have backup."

Erufu has heard what happens to her friendly rival. The elf was concnered to say the least as she would enter looking concerned. "Shiruba I thought i'd come check up on you after what happened." the green haired woman seems to mean is as she'll come over near Kaydon and Shiruba. "I hate to say it but he's right, you are now a poltical target given your rank."

Shiruba sits up and inhales a long breath, as if to go into some manner of triad... but then just flops back in her chair. "No, you're right. I thought I could help by dealing with it myself, but I caused as much trouble as I helped anything. And now a friend is right back in the very position I was trying to protect her from." Yes, she did just call Gabriela her friend, rather than 'a Lander' or anything like that. "Oooo, how could I not see it. I thought I was being clever, outhunting the hunter, but in the end I got her right to the other thing she was probably after!"

A sigh follows, but Shiruba looks up with a meager smile in spite of the sour mood. "Thanks, though. For looking in on me. I do appreciate it."

Kaydon frowns a little bit, "Look if your friend is in trouble, you know we've gotta go save her." He says, matter of factly, "Do we have any idea where they might have taken her?"

Erufu thinks for a moment "So they grabbed her? We'll need ot be smart but quick. I would not be shocked if they try to turn her." She seems this could be a possible thing to happen. Though she odesn't know as much as she should on the situation. "You can lean from this, right? Let's make sure this isn't a fatal mistake!"

"I wish we knew more... and yes, Erufu, I've tried not to think about that. That's what Author wanted to do, too. But he tried to convince her to choose it herself. The other generals..." Shiruba visible shudders. "No, sitting here skulking over my mistakes isn't helping me, or her." Shiruba gets up from her chair and walks over to the shelves. She leans down a moment to pet her bun-bun in his pen next to it, then stands and pulls a rolled parchment from a spot and walks back to the table.

"This Huntress has been able to follow me all over Yamato. She's been tracking me... testing me. Trying to learn the best way to deal with me... but she called her beasts off because she wants the kill for herself. But that's not important right now." She unrolls the paper atop the table, revealing it to be a map of Eastal. Though it still has a lot of unmarked areas because of how thick with monsters the deeper forests are. "But now that she has a living person with her, I'm hoping she can't so easily move about. She's either going to use her as bait... or try to take her home. And to do that, she's going to need to cross from one continent to the next, which probably means going towards one of the coasts."

"If she knows where you are.." Kaydon says, "Don't take this the wrong way, Shiruba, but we could totally use you as bait." He hates putting it like that, but it's the best way to put it, "But we have to find a way for her to come out herself and not just send her minions."

Erufu says "He wants her to join willingly...strange. They seem pretty much dead set on the death of all flesh." The Elf muses this and seem to be thinking. "So we need to hunt he and take her out. I might need to take a few ... ideas from Orcbalg." She notes with a grin. "The question is does she want you or her more? We might be able to bait her..."

"Author wanted her to willingly convert because she's his granddaughter. The only family he has, per say. But she wanted nothing to do with the monster he's become. That's why we took her in. She deserved to choose for herself what her life would be... And now that's being taken away from her again."

Shiruba stopped, staring a long moment at Kaydon. "That's rude!... But you're not entirely wrong. She -had- me dead to rights. Is that the proper saying? It's one of those things I've just heard others use." Much like her triade of cussing earlier. Shiruba sat back in her chair, steepling her fingers. "But she said she wasn't going to kill me now, because it wasn't a 'fair hunt'. Then Gabriela showed up...." Shiruba put her face in her palms. "And in hindsight I realize the Huntress ran not because of the interruption, but because she saw another oppritunity." Pause. "... Though she used the underground movement to grab the girl. Why didn't she just use that to jump me before, honor amongst hunters aside... It must have some kind of limitation we don't know about, or they'd use it to move all over the place instead of marching into places under night and fog when the undead is stronger..."

"Yeah speaking of which.." Kaydon mutters, "We're absolutely going to run into a problem with those assholes over the next week." He shakes his head as he gets up from his seat across from Shiruba, "You need to heal up fully before you go hunting her though." He hmms a little bit as he thinks, "Though if they're going to be coming out a lot more over the next little while..Maybe we could use that to our advantage somehow.." He snaps his fingers, "Can we capture one of them? I have no idea if we can hold them.."

Erufu thinks "So we have some time but we don't know for how long. Huh undead right? How about we find a shrine maiden or someone along those lines to help us make some sort of spirital trap for the undead. Come on think about it." This is a table top grade plan and she's running with it..

"Setsuna has. I don't know how much -control- he actually has over the undead warrior, but..." Shiruba frowns, and opens her chimlink menu. "I should let him know what's happened." She pauses to look over, particularly at Kaydon. "I know, I know, he's a Scale... But he and Amalthea are two that have been trying to help with problems like this." She goes back to scrolling down the contact list. "And he's the one that helped rescue her, and helped me get away with that map from the cabin. He should know." She ahs as she finds it. "I'm not going to hold the stupidity of an Alliance against the individuals that are actually trying to do more than find the end of the Tower..."

"My issues with Scale are..." He pauses to think of the best way to phrase it, "It's less of an issue now, because they aren't trying to just power their way through the tower with no regard to what was going on outside..They seem to have slowed things down to give us time to prepare..But I wish we knew more about what causes the waves. I mean.." He makes a motion with his hand, "They happen when the levels get cleared..But there has to be more to it."

Erufu says "We work with who we can get to help right now. We can worry about Scale later. It will come to blows someday but not for the moment." She muses darkly. She chippers up real fast though. "They have slowed things down a bit, and lets be honest. If they had not? They'd be facing the Landers too before long."

"I've been saying that for a while now, Kaydon. If there wasn't another connection, the other world intruders wouldn't be using them the way they do." Shiruba shook her head, and gathered her map up. Trying to not wince at her arm still being tender. "Speaking of, I'm not going to Dukedom. I need to try and get a lead on this before she does find a way off the continent. Even if I'm not going out in the field until I heal, I can put my other skills to use to figure out where to look. Check in with our field patrols... the natural beasts tend to act weird when the Undead are about."

"I am going." Kaydon replies, "In fact I should probably get going soon in order make it in time.." He frowns, "I'll kill a few for you, Shiruba."

Erufu says "do you want me to help in the hunt once you have recovered Shiruba?" She looks to Kaydon "I should as well or at least help with the scouting of the area..."

Shiruba nods after a moment. "We can cover more ground... and trying to handle this alone, even with good intent, didn't work out."