"Hrmm... A ritual perhaps? Maybe something trying to cast magic? I always thought the magical properties were in blood however, not skin... I don't know, the more I learn, the less I am sure of what this is..." Charles mused.

While the Search and Destroy team sat around discussing things about the monster near it's food in the middle of the night, the creature had spotted them.

In a single leap, the monster jumped fifty yards and landed directly in the center of the group.

None but Vincent could make out the monster in the darkness of the night. It appeared to be a large, humanoid creature, but was pitch black. It had four legs that held it's body five feet above the ground. It's torso was large and about three feet long, with two arms sticking out of the sides. The right arm looked like a claw, while the left looked almost human, but the wrist was extremely large. It's head was impossible to make out in the night. Behind the creature, a long tail dragged behind it (Tail is no where near 7 feet wide).

With a loud screech, the thing lundged towards Blair.

OOC: Detials are poor because none of you can really see it, just some outlines in the darkness.

"YAAAAAAA!" Charles yelled. He fumbled in his jacket and pulled his pistol out, pointing with a shakey hand in the direction of the loud thump. Then there was a screech, and he saw the massive form move forward. He shot blindly at it, hoping to hit it with mass of fire instead of any accuracy, as he back away from this beast.

Ben whipped his Shotgun around with his right hand, taking aim as he popped a flare on his leg, tossing it beneath the creature and illuminating the 10 feet around it.
watch your ass!
He pulled the trigger twice, the semiautomatic action of the weapon sending two explosive loaded slugs into the upper torso of the beast before he hopped back, out of the reach of its arms and tail

As the flair landed beneath the creature, it's tail bent below him and wrapped it's large mitten like tail head around it, then tossed it back. However, before the flare was gone, it was noticable that the creature was pure black and had small spikes all over it's body.

The pistol shots that actually hit the creature harmlessly bounced off of it's torso and one of his legs. The first shotgun slug missed, but the second one hit the creature in the torso. It stumbled back from the side of the hit, but after a moment it turned and lept at Ben.

Seemlessly, Blair swapped his normal slug for his explosive rounds.

He took aim, and dropped two clips into its back, tiny explosions marking where each it.

"Crap, I need to get a bigger gun one of these days!" Charles said, noticing the bullets bouncing off the things hide. The clip was empty, so he ejected it and put a new one in as more of a reflex then anything else. The hard hide would be immune to normal bullets, so it was Armor-Piercing all the way with this thing. "Use Armor-Piercing or Explosive rounds, it's hide is too thick for anything else to penetrate!" He began to get back out of the way, but stayed close enough that he could hollar advise, and keep an eye on the monster and the battle in general.

The explosives that hit the creatures back just shot it at Ben faster. However, this was faster then the creature expected, so it rammed right into Ben, then rolled off of him several feet away. It slowly started to get itself back up, unharmed it seemed.

Ben however was cut all over by the spikes on the creature.

Harrison stumbled back, ducked behind the others, and sorted frantically through his items.

"I'm not sure how much I can do without knowing what this thing is!"

shit!
Ben cursed under his breath, pulling a black spine from his arm and circling around the thing before taking aim at the tail

edit- I'm going to bed, so, ummm...don't kill me.

From high atop a canyon wall a sharp flash of light erupted. The glowing red light of the flare left a trail in the air as it fell upon the group bellow.

Thunderclaps sounded furiously as hot lead rained down on the hulking beast. Chance from the advance recon team let loose a volley of twin fisted death upon the valley floor below, careful enough to keep his aim centered on the monstrousity.

Marke stepped back from the beast, pulling out his silenced pistol instinctively and fired away, bullets flying off the beast. Then, after running out of ammo and throwing his weapon to the side, he clicked open his briefcase to reveal four parts of two heavy artillery machine guns. He quickly clicked two parts together, eventually ending up with a machine gun in each hand. In a split second, Marke was opening fire upon the beast with explosive rounds ripping across the small distance between him and the monster. "Get out of my line of fire!!!" he cried out, since a few were still around the creature, and he had limited control over the guns he was holding, so he could hit somebody if they didn't get out of the way. "MOVE!!!" he shouted over the roaring gunfire.

Blair combat rolled backwards, and simontaneously swapped his empty clip for a tracer clip. He sighted as one of the wounds, and popped his shot inside of there, then swapped that clip back to his explosive rounds.

He brought his fire farther forward, trying to hit the damn thing's head.

Ermack Fired his grappling claw, snagging a tree and retracting, pulling him away from the beast and the line of fire. he whipped out his Silenced DSK's and started firing explosive silent death at he monstrosity.

First, the fire shard things landed on everyone in the area, burning everyone. THe creature put it's tail over it's head to protect it, the fire things bouncing off of it.

The pistol shots all hit the creature, but did nothing.

When the automatic guns started to shot at the creature, it jumped and ran. However, the tracer did get stuck to him.

Blair stood, and whacked some cinders off of himself. He dropped the empty clip, and shifted to splatter rounds.

"Dammit! Oh well, I got the Tracer in! Once everyone's set, we follow."

Ermack braced his foot against the tree and pulled his claw out, landing flat on his ass as he did so. "Goddamn that stings!" he yelled as he smothered a small flame on his coat before reloading.

Charles had fallen over at one point, ducking to dodge the heavy machinegun fire. He now stood up again, and prepared to follow along with the others.

"If you'd turn off the goggles, Blair, I can make some light for the others."

Harrison pulled out a brass lantern and a tuft of white horsehair bound with a rubber band, which he promptly removed and discarded as he fumbled for a match.

"Harrison, Charles, any ideas on how to kill that thing?" Jordan asked, keeping pace with the others.

"I barely know what it was, much less how to kill it. I think I said, it has an incredibly hard hide, but I think Armor-Piercing rounds could penetrate it. As for what it is, beats the heck outta me. Looks like a new mutation in my opinion, with partially unknown powers at this point." Charles concluded.

Marke unclipped the rounds from the machine guns, latching two new clips into the bottom soon afterwards. He then clicked a switch with his thumb, making each gun fall into two pieces and placed them back in the briefcase accordingly. "Let's keep on moving. That thing couldn't have gotten very far after the shots fired at it. We need to run. Let me lead, some of my bullets might nip someone if they get in the way. I suggest we keep in a straight line and don't surround it, so we don't risk friendly fire. Let's go." He glanced at the one who landed a tracer on it. "Where did it go?"

"I can't tell, either. It's like nothing I've ever seen."

This is all nice, but from what I can see, it doesn't really like heavy gunfire, so I suggest we follow Blair, if he's taking the lead.
Ben added, loading two heavy slugs into his shotgun

Gabriel walked up from behind them. He had still had his thermal vision on while the monster attacked. "Well now, that sucker was ugly. I would have shot had it not been for the flare practicly blinding me. I saw dots for that entire battle." He said rubbing his eyes. "But I think the two weak points would be it's head and tail." He checked his ammo for armor piercing rounds, didn't find any but his normal ammuniton would still do the trick. He shouldered his rifle and walked of after Blair.

Blair kneeled and looked at the green sticky slime that had been leaking of it.

"Follow the breadcrumbs."

He rose quickly, and waved the team forward, taking off at a partial jog.

As he did, he freed a flare from his pack (There's a hole in the bottom) and ignited it, given himself some better light.

"Looks to me like the tail was protecting it mostly." said Jordan as he ran with the others. "I think the head is the best bet."

OOC: You're lucky I wanted the things you did to happen SS, otherwise I would be getting annoyed by your choosing if the monster is hurt yet things.

IC:

The group followed the tracker (You follow the thing you shot into it for that purpose, not a dot of green stuff). Splatters of green ooze dotted the path, but none could see it (No one has night vision goggles on).

Eventually they caught up to the monster, 30 minutes later. It was on the ground, not moving, lying in a puddle of green ooze. A hole was in it's back, inside was more green ooze and what looked like the remains of organs.

Jordan started wiping green goo off his clothing as after reholstering his weapon.

"Now that; was disgusting! Nice shot there Marke."

Harrison sighed as Blair lit the flare, and shoved the lantern and the horsehair back into his pack. So much for help from Helios.

"Are we sure it's dead? Some monsters have incredible recuperative powers, and unless harmed a special way can regenerate things that would kill any lesser being..." Charles said nervously.

"Well, it would have to find its bodily organs before it could come get us again. So I think were safe for a little while." said Jordan as he sat down by Harrison.

"Or... what if we didn't kill it? What if something else did? Something that's still hungry?"

"well, considering that we were the ones who shot it till it stopped thinking consious thoughts, I doubt that there's anything else that could have killed it ." explained Jordan.

"So? That didn't seem to do much before."

Harrison walked over the the creature and turned on his flashlight, attempting to get a better look at the nature of the injuries on the beast, or what it was, for that matter.

"Well, now that it's dead, do you have any idea what it is, or would you classify this as a new entry in the trusty handbook of weird shit?" asked Ermack as he poked the oozing monster with a stick.

The wound looked as though it had been dissolved. Inside was orange gooze with floating pieces of grey and tan in it.

OOC: ... "Gooze"?

Charles was slowly coming closer to get a better look at it, and to try and decide what had happened to the monster. As had been brought up, it seemed like the bullets had little to no effect, yet the monster seemed very dead. However, the wound looked wrong for the damage they had done. He didn't know what killed this thing, but he didn't think it was them...

Marke nodded in thanks to the compliment of his shots. After hearing the group eventually decide it wasn't them that killed it, he sighed. "Damnit. Something stronger's out there, and the first one almost got to us. I just hope it doesn't have a good reaction time. I suggest now the ones with heatseeking goggles or nightvision goggles or whatever puts them on now. Things may get messy though, so let's get our weapons out now." Clicking open the briefcase, he snapped his two machine guns into place. "Does anyone know how to get this thing lured here?"

OOC: IHMN, about the ooze part...that is the tracer bullet. Don't you remember when hellboy shot Samael with the tracing ruonds, it started leaving that green trail behind? Because that's what the bullets do. Not your typical tracer,

IC: Blair waved the flare around, knocking the fire out, and slid his night-vision goggles on. He glanced around the canyon, more than a little disturbed about the fact that there'd actually been two monsters.

"Anyone hear, smell, or see anything?"

"nothing yet," said Jordan. "But this whole second monster thing makes a little more sense. I mean this thing doesn't seem to have any way of inserting acid into someones brain, or eating the contents.

Blair's blood was turning chillier by the moment.

"Charles? What can you possibly think of that could take it down so quickly?"

He glanced above him, just to make sure a reapeat of last time wasn't happening.

"I don't think I could speculate well. The damage the second thing did to this one is far more extensive then anything we saw doen to the people. Perhaps there is some sort of gate or rogue summoner bringing things through, for so many to appear at once. As for guesses, until I see it I can't guess really, but it would be along the lines of m previous estimates; large, thick skinned, most likely with a proboscious or perhaps spikes for the poison injection, and strong."

"sounds like my mother in law." said Jordan sarcastically. "The question is where is it?"

Not sure, but the last time we hung around something's food for too long, it got the jump on us
he added, a little more quietly

"I say we get downwind of this carcass. lets get the jump on it rather than the other way around." Ermack suggested.

"Let's fan out, see if we can track this thing down before it decides it's hungry again."

I dunno, I'm getting a feeling that whatever it is that killed this isn't here anymore. Something too strange about this thing being given free reign to kill by another thing...it's not even like a type 5 to do that.
He surveyed the canyon wall around them

"Well, what say we call the plane and get this nasty ass carcass back to the Lab so we can run some tests. maybe then we can figure out what to do with it." Jordan suggested.


Ooc: this would be a good time to end the Chapter boys.

OOC: Yes, gooze. Full of both fiber AND vitamin C. Comes in 4 delicious flavors in a mini-mart near you.

IC: Harrison shook his head in disbelief. "Maybe if we can find out what this thing is, we can get an idea of what went after it. It's unlikely, but what else do we have to go on?"

"I say lets ID it. We need to find out what sort of thing this is and what sort of think could kill it."

OOC: CRAP! Sorry for the lack of posts. My brother has been hogging the internet the last few nights and its the only real part of the day I can find time to post.

IC: Kalland nodded "sounds like a plan" he slammed another clip into HIs G36K and glanced around. That bloody thing was still close, he could smell it and the stench was beginning to become overpowering.

"I think we need to kill this thing here and now. Charles' done on the fly work before. And we can probably subdue it until we're sure."

Harrison shrugged. "It doesn't need to be alive for us to examine it. Short of obliterating it entirely, do what you have to."

"I don't mean the thing that attacked us, I mean the thing that took it down."

He looked around, and said, "I don't like the idea of leaving before we've gotten this thing. Calls votes now people. I'm for staying."

"I say we leave." Jordan suggested. "This thing is probably long gone, and we have a better and safer chance of finding out what the other thing is by dragging this carcass back to base and examining it."

"I say we stay for now. Now get over there and ID that thing alright? From the looks of it, that wasn't what killed the people. Vincent, any ideas now?" Gabriel looked out towards what he could only assume was the opening of the canyon. He looked into his scope and noticed a small cave a little ways to the north. Well now, that looks interesting. "I can see a cave up the ways a little bit. Guess we are going to need another vote."

"What are you guys, nuts? If there's something out here bad enough to take down this thing, there's no telling what it can do if we leave it to its own devices. I vote we stay."

"Civilians will panic and riot when we give them no passageway through here. We can't leave, we have to make sure whatever killed it is dead. And that's that. Let's find it and give it a body full of lead." And with that, Marke pointed both guns in the air and fired off a few shots, to alert whatever was nearby. "Anybody got a flare gun? Chances are that that thing will come to us if it sees a disturbance coming from here."

Harrison's eyes widened in disbelief at the suggestion. "Brilliant. Hey, while we're at it, why don't we strap chunks of raw meat to our bodies? That'll lure a bloodthirsty monster to us real fast."

OOC: Skipping ahead with a new thread.