Description: Juri, having been captured by the Soul Bees is in major trouble. The Dancing Spider, Aranha still continues his search for the whereabouts of his little sister. His search hits a dead end but it wasn't all for naught. Maybe the rescue of Juri could work to his advantage.
Many of the Metro city tunnels had collapsed horribly, isolated and drawn further into Majigen with the Soul Bee's infestation they formed a very broken foundation thus far navigation of the tunnels would be difficult for most but those that manage to get about through the darkness start to find things very.. Very wrong. Walls shift in both texture and substance from metal and concrete to stiff waxen hexagons, some dry cells and others oozing golden honey- These shapes eventually leading to the construction site of a hive on a tremendous scale!
In the middle of the floor a stranger sight in that a smaller anthropomorphised female bee lays dead. Casualty of the battle that had taken place here not so long ago, Soul bee workers continue to bumble about hard at work and on task; ignoring the presence of one sedate and pacified human, or one of their own dead equally well, neither were a threat.
Adhered to the wall with a hardened glob of brown honey and creeping wax with even more of the wretched stuff still pouring down on her from the wall above the woman might even blend into the area if not for the fact she had been pinned to an already formed wall like a trophy.
Juri had been sleeping so soundly since her defeat, her wounds weren't troubling her while she was restrained, the environment felt unfathomably hot and she was already exhausted, how long since she had even seen food or water? Even when she had started to wake the droning and heat lulled her back to sleep, the only thing that kept offending her nose was the sickly sweet and cloying stench of the honey. It rankles her nose, she hated sweet things.
And then there's the not so sedate human being wandering the underground. These tunnels were no longer the tunnels he knew when he grew up in Metro City. If the capoeirista had to be honest with himself, this city wasn't the city he knew any longer. It would be downright depressing if he actually had time to think about it. After his first introductions to Majigen, he was beginning to get better about compartmentalizing. When he finally knew the fate of his sister for better or worse, he would be free to have his impending meltdown.
As he wandered the tunnels and navigated the detours from collapsed tunnels, he began to hear the hums of worker bees and that's when he gets the feeling that he's not quite headed in the right direction. He's absolutely quiet. He stays away from line of sight but there's a problem. Soul Bees don't quite operate under the same sensory rules as humans and so he's spotted right away.
Realizing that he's been made, Aranha backs off for a bit to see who follows and who'll continue their work. Then he takes stock of the situation... He may or may not have them on speed. He's sure he has them on knowledge of the underground as changed as it is due to spending most of his life in Metro City. He unfortunately had to concede manueverability to them due to air superiority due to their flight ability. They also had numbers superiority
He then saw Juri encased in a hardened honey shell. He didn't trust her from his first impression of her but maybe... Just maybe she could be useful. She could be the chaos that if introduced, it would make it easier to continue his search undetected.
When he's no longer followed he unshoulders his black drawstring backpack and searches for something that might be useful.
Meanwhile in the hive the workers continue work unabated. If it wasn't a threat to the hive itself then it posed no threat to anything they cared about. The more aggressive Royal Guards were concerned with protecting the Queen and the hive from intruders, like the deceased guard laying untended on the floor should be, in the midst of so very much work to do cleaning it up or noticing there were no defenders wasn't a concern. It's not that they're unobservant, they see but choose not to interfere as it's not their role to worry about tasks like this, They're just busy enough already.
Three of the soul bees peel away from the walls into formation and angle around to advance on the same tunnel the intruder had originally emerged only to land on one of the celled walls and all begin working to try and patch one of the streams of precious honey draining away, moving with military precision and co-operation.
(Reinforce, repair and expand the hive. So much to do.)
Furious activity, while distantly the woman the queen had captured was being nourished and well fed, Honey the Queen was giving to sustain and keep body strong. The interest in of their monarch was such that ensuring a steady supply of honey kept them well fed was accepted into part of the routine, higher priority than overwhelming need to plug up the leakages and preserve the honey.
Juri Han meanwhile sleeps with head bowed forward and a constant stream of it falling against the back of her head and shoulders, not so much being fed as glazed in an endless coating, her body slathered almost completely in the stuff it's fortunate she wasn't conscious; else she would most certainly be livid and furiously struggling to extricate herself.
Metro City tunnels had a history of homeless people seeking shelter from the elements and the police officers attempting to clear them off of the streets. Where there was homeless, there was often trash. If Aranha could find the right type of trash, it would make things so much easier for him.
Picking through trash wasn't something Aranha imagined himself doing but it was a necessary evil.
He grabbed three empty aluminum cans and then he grabbed whatever paper products he could find. Newspapers, papertowels, napkins, food wrappers, paper bags. He then proceeded to pack the paper into each can tightly filling it up. He then slashed holes in each of the cans the size of a nickle near the bottom. He took out a lighter and as he returned, he then lit the first improvised smoke bomb placed near the edge to confuse their senses and fool them into thinking that there was a fire in the area. He lights the second one and places it. The smell of a campfire filling the area.
He then looks at where the trapped Juri Han is and then gives the honey shell a kick, careful not to penetrate to the fighter herself but still good enough to crack the shell a bit and make things a little easier for her to escape.
Juri lifts her head in response to the jar; with the same groggy bewilderment as anyone shaken awake she starts scanning the room without truly taking anything in. The shell around her cracks audibly and shifts, the jellied contents oozing out and beginning to afford her a little move breathing and wriggling room. One arm pinned against her body and front she reaches up with the other, fingertips probing at one of the inside edges she explores and then forces her hand through, splitting part of the seal, the rush of cool air as even more of the honey begin to spill.
Ugh, disgusting stuff.. even the smell of it was enough to make her feel nauseous. Or was that- smoke?
The worker bees are all in a fury flying about intent of finding the source of the fire, those who aren't overwhelmed; having had their fill of the smoke and are settling onto the ground and walls confused, some even feeding on the honey leaking from the walls rather than attempting to stop up the gaps.
Tearing her arm free of the confines she lifts a gooey, honey coated hand toward Aranha, she hadn't taken in who he was.. Only that she wasn't the only other human here and probably an unlikely rescuer. Honey drips from her hand and as it hangs in the air open, she half-turn her head in his direction and croaks out a little more weakly than she would have liked.
"Help me up."
Sounding in no way grateful for the rescue this wouldn't even be the time for it. If the other guy wanted to be a big goddamn hero that was his business, this was survival and she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth if it got her any closer to getting out of here.
How's that for gratitude?
If Aranha was bothered by her lack of gratitude, he doesn't show it. If anything, it just gave him more information about her. Fiercely independent, hates needing to get their fat pulled out of the fire. It also meant if she should come after him, he wasn't likely to have a posse coming after him unless it was after the first combative encounter.
When he helps her up to her feet, he's not exactly gentle about it. She struck him as the type that viewed things like consideration, gentleness as qualities that would not endear her to him. If he wanted a goal for his interaction he'd say he wanted it to be neutral.
"There. This smoke won't last much longer so I suggest you start moving. You can do whatever want but if your ass gets captured again, you're on your own."
Aranha did not want to give the impression that this rescue was motivated by heroics. But he also needed to walk the fine line making it look like he would be using her. The fiercely independent types are also the types if they got the sense they were being used, they were more likely to push against it. He should know. He was one of those types. As a result, if she was going to be of use to him, he needed to make sure the chaos she would cause would be for her sake and make it seem like he wouldn't be using it to his benefit.
"Hghk!"
The Korean woman bites off a scream and her hand tightens at her side as she is helped up to her feet. She emerges from the honey in slightly better shape then she went in.. Honey is an anti-bacterial agent or some other crap right..? She wouldn't need to worry about any of these cuts getting infected. Ever as she slides a stickily slimy hand out of Aranha's with a sliding motion and wiping some of it off in his grip she gives her free hand a flick and dislodges even more of the mucus like honey.
Ug--h.
her hand on her abdomen hides the tip of the stinger lodged there but not the black of the blood pooled around the wound there, or covering that one hand that maintains its hold.
"Yeah, yeah I get it.. A reluctant hero incidentally saves the pretty girl. Good for you! But which way is the closest way out? Neither of us wants to be here if she comes back."
She takes a step to test her legs, with all the brown honey gloop still splashed all over her it's not as easy to spot all the dried blood; right now she would have settled for that over the honey. The stab wounds in her back were starting to ache again and even though she was favouring her injured side it wasn't the most pleasant of feelings.
Not that she wasn't amazed someone came stalking though and saved her, the luck of it alone! But this was a pretty crazy place to be without a good reason, she was just too selfish to care what his reason was, just that he probably saved her life from whatever the queen wanted to do to her 'cute' body.
An answer to that probably wouldn't be pretty.
Log created on 18:27:44 04/23/2015 by Aranha, and last modified on 18:03:19 04/24/2015.