Equestrian Radio Show's Adventure Variety Hour: Explorers of STOMP

Hector watched the changeling running away, having finally extracted himself from the rubble. His eyes narrowed.

"No. You. DON'T!" He shouted after him, beating his wings to make a flying charge towards what was no longer an opponent.

No. This tricky sabotuer was about to become a victim.

Spoiler:

Hector squawked in surprise at the sudden change of pace! He tried maddeningly to pull back and stop, but no avail; he managed to barely deflect the blow, sailing over the adversarie's head in a graceless heap. A steady stream of curses ran through his head and out his mouth in the barbaric griffon speech as he righted himself...

Spoiler:

The hippogriff had had enough. The time for tricky nonsense was over. He regained his feet, feeling the lightning coursing through him. He shifted his rear feet back and forth, like a cat preparing to pounce. He wanted the changeling to get a headstart first.

Once he had judged the critical moment, he sprang forward with unbelievable speed! Electricity cracked in all directions, all but filling the tunnel with blinding light as he hurtled toward his prey! He smiled in the split second in which all this occured.

Spoiler:

Hector sped onwards for quite sometime before he managed to slow himself to a stop, having discharged the static he had built up. He saw that he had (somehow) drug his new prisoner with him... He decided to take him back to the Keep.

Only... the fight had taken them a surprising distance away; there were no recognisable landmarks. And he could not recall which way to go. Moreover, he seemed to lack any way of keeping the changeling bound. He elected to catch his breath momentarily, and made his best guess as to which way the Keep was, carrying the changeling on his back the same way that many griffons carried freshly killed deer... He prepared, however, to quickly have the sabotuer pinned to the ground should he awake before then, and perhaps knock him out a second time...

Spoiler:

"We are only a short distance overground from our destination and we know not where this tunnel truly leads. It should just take short time to get there."

A spark passes between Grease's eyebrows. "Well, really, our destination is Horseshoe Bay, right? Did you see it from the lip of the crater?"

Grease does a quick set of tugs on all the relevant straps of his gearkit, then turns to the rest of the group. Electricity is leaking out of the corners of his eyes and dancing across his scales. "I just started running on electricity, which means I need to sleep very soon." He announces to the group with a slightly manic grin. "However, now is not the time for that. Now is the time for getting from the tunnel, on the off-chance that said tunnel is about to release some sort of fireball. I happen to be missing a giant cork at the moment." Having said his piece, he wheels around and starts running away from the tunnel, the grin never leaving his face.

Hector gratefully relinquished the prisoner to the waiting strong hooves of other ponies. He felt glad to have been such a key part in the capture; although, he did wonder why no one had come to his assistance. Perhaps, he mused, they did not realise how much control I have over my lightning, and thought they might only get underfoot. He contemplated this momentarily; now that he thought of it, they might have. His various injuries suddenly caught up to his fatigue, and he decided to seek out someplace quiet.

"Excuse me," he asked a random pony who appeared to be less busy than the rest. "Is there a quiet-nest where I can relax, maybe get some patching up done?" He ran a claw under the gash on his head, which was just now starting to clot up.

Stout Spirit dizzily wanders by his teammates "i have no real idea what is going on now can someone make the world stop spinning? I'm not used to teleportation."

meanwhile

Turquoise Tree gazes in wonder at the mechanical....thing he was inside. He shook his head. Mortals and their steel toys. Turquoise tree attempts to communicate via telepathy to Stout Spirit, assuming there is nothing blocking psychic though speech.

Hector thought carefully about the day's events as he made his way to First Aid. He had had to stop and explain what he meant by "quiet-nest", having momentarily forgotten that ponies did not keep nests in the same sense as griffons did, nor did they call them that.

He wondered, first, what the changeling was all about. Hector presumed that he was the cause of the explosions; who did he think he was!? And then there was that crazy mare who's head fell off. He made a note of it, if and when he was de-briefed. He suspected he wouldn't be; there was not much to tell, after all, but who knew. He did decide he would have to ask someone smarter what it might have meant.

He also wondered what the rest of the STOMP team was like. He felt quite privileged to have been inducted into it; he hoped that the other ponies on it would not be put off by a hippogriff.

((I find it extremely ironic that a special-ops team founded and put together by ponies, to protect ponies, with pony support (Or so I assume) happens to only have one full pony on it. Hector will be quite surprised at the racial diversity...))

He eventually found himself at the "quiet-nest"; while it was quieter, it was not precisely quiet, he decided. Although he conceded that the recent feather-ruffling made peacefulness hard to find anywhere nearby. He sprawled on a conveniently placed chair and waited patiently to be noticed and attended...

...and shortly after heard a veritable ROAR echo through the walls of the Keep and into his soul! He suddenly felt very small and afraid, even without being able to see the result outside; for the room had no windows. He pulled his wings up and covered his head; his equivalent of hiding under a blanket...

"No fireball, hm? Merely Spectral Degradation-induced quakes. I can't be right every time." Grease said as he jogged back over, still grinning. "Into the device? I doubt it. On the device? Maybe. We were aiming for the teleport beacon outside Callabuston, and I'm guessing the city off that-away is it, so this is probably, nah, was probably a keep building. Who wants to go down the tunnel now? I do." He finished, turning and walking towards the glowing hole in the ground.

"The Tunnel now seems to be the way into the cause of the problem."

"Stout, can you hear me?"

Stout Spirit stops suddenly. "Turquoise Tree? Is that you?"

"Its me."

"Oh thank the Spirits! Where are you?"

"I'm actually quite close. We're no longer in that cave are we?"

"No, we are...."

"In a machine that looks like a heart?"

Stout Spirit pauses for a bit. "You're really close to me arn't you?"

"Yes, though the exact distance escapes me. I'm on my way."

Stout Spirit turns to his friends. "Friends, Turquoise Tree is here! We must find a way to him and quickly!" Stout Spirit looks for a passage out of the room.

Grease hums "On the Road to Destruction" as the slope steepens, continuing to hop towards the tunnel as best he can.

After several moments, Hector uncovered his head, feeling uncommonly silly. A grown 'griff like him, frightened?! He looked about himself, wondering who was going to chastise him...

And found he need not worried. Everyone else in the room had followed suit, cramming themselves under tables and behind chairs. Maybe his fear was not unjustified after all.

But this would not do, he realised, deciding to try and give a morale boost. He quietly came up to a table, getting down on his elbows with his rump in the air, no longer worried about feeling silly; the sillier the better! Let them think he was at ease. He found himself peering at a cherry-coated mare with her face buried in fore leg. He nudged her gently, and she looked up revealing rich brown eyes. He was taken aback momentarily by the surprising depth behind them. He shook his head slightly. "I don't think it's going to bother us," he whispered reassuringly, not needing to clarify what "it" was. "My name is Hector," he said invitingly, offering a knuckle to her (knowing that ponies did not care for the grasping that griffons were inclined to; his knuckle, he found, more resembled the hooves that they would bump.)

She stared back for a moment, and visibly relaxed. "I'm Dusty Winds," she whispered back, pressing her hoof against his fist.

She crawled out from under the table. Emboldened by the example, other ponies start ambling out, returning to the business of healing, being healed, resting.

Hector took a closer look at Dusty. She turned out to be a Pegasus pony, thick orange hair held back by a red kerchief (which, added to her coat color did a valiant job of hiding a small blood stain that did not escape the hippogriff's notice.) He risked a quick glance at her flank, seeing a clump of feathers; a feather duster? Caught up in a breeze of some kind. He was again entranced momentarily in her eyes, however.

He was suddenly aware of the Pegasus talking to her. "...who caught the guy blowing up the building? Wow! I've never met a STOMP member before!"

He snapped out of his reverie. "Huh? Oh yeah, I caught him. But I only got accepted to STOMP about an hour ago." He paused momentarily as she giggled in excitement. "How did you find out so quickly!?"

She smiled conspiratorialy. "Travel at the speed of gossip. The janitors hear stuff almost before it happens," she explained, nodding to a bucket of various cleaners with her name written in Sharpie. "But, that's about all we do; is hear about it. We kinda get shoved aside when anything exciting happens," she sighed, drooping her head and ears. She perked up again momentarily. "But wow! A real live Stomper! Even if you are brand new! Teeheehee!" She was giddy again.

Hector suddenly had two thoughts. The first was: Here was a wild soul longing for adventure. The second was: I wonder what's down the tunnel? He weighed the idea of bringing her with him. On one claw, he could get in trouble for bringing a civilian with him. On the other hand, if something happened, she could run/fly back. And there weren't a whole lot of others available for such a thing...

"The fight happened in a tunnel under the Keep," he explained. "I wanted to go check it out, you wanna come?"

She suddenly looked wary. "Isn't it kind of dangerous?"

Hector considered it momentarily. "Mmm, no, I don't think so. If it is, though, I'd like some pony to be able to call the cavalry."

She appeared to contemplate it before nodding with a smile.

Several minutes later they were in the tunnel. It had been easier than he anticipated; nobody else had done much to investigate it yet. They marched quietly down, eyes peering for anything interesting, ears perked for any sign of danger...

OOC:

OOC Hector:

As Hector and Dusty Winds started down the tunnel, Dusty's mane, coat, eyes, and bandana all turned a dull slate grey.  Another echoing roar reverberated as the ground shook again.  Dusty tripped initially but continued on.  "So, how did you get hired for the team Hector?"

Meanwhile, the STOMP team felt the ground beneath them rise as something started to come out of the ground.  As the tremor continued, they saw something breach the soil, a colossal head in the shape of a dragon that was made of ancient clockwork mechanisms.  As the ground lurched, it looked around until it focused on the STOMP team!

OOC STOMP:

ZamuelNow wrote:

OOC Hector:

As Hector and Dusty Winds started down the tunnel, Dusty's mane, coat, eyes, and bandana all turned a dull slate grey.  Another echoing roar reverberated as the ground shook again.  Dusty tripped initially but continued on.  "So, how did you get hired for the team Hector?"

Hector raised an eyebrow in slight alarm. He had not witnessed this particular phenomena before. He glanced back at his own coat when he thought she wasn't looking...

Perception:

...However, she was not apparently distressed by the change. He decided to answer her question before pointing it out.

"Well, when I first moved here I had a job in Manehattan initially as a weather crafter. I made some pretty good money doing it too, but I felt like I had more to offer. I wanted to join the Wonderbolts, actually; but they won't take a hippogriff," he sighed with a slight droop of the head. "So I settled for the Royal Guard for a while. Eventually I heard about STOMP, and decided I'd give them a shot. And then, well, one thing led to the next. Say, is your coat supposed to turn grey like that? I'm afraid I haven't seen that happen before..."