Round 1 Group 9

[Zook Murnig]

Walking through the forest was difficult, between he dull ache in her back, the lacerations all over her limbs, and the brush and undergrowth entangling her feet or snagging on her dress. Leaning on her staff helped, leveraging herself forward with it on each step. And her golden-haired brother walking ahead made it all that much easier to bear. Strange, it seemed to her, that though he was once her older brother, she should now be ten years his senior. Time stood still for Mal in the state in which she had left him. He spoke some of their childhood together, and remembered small moments of his time as her familiar. Simple things, like chewing on bits of dried yogurt, watching her work in her Book of Shadows, and curling up in the pouch on her hip, peeking out to see with blurry rat’s eyes the world passing by.

As they rounded an enormous redwood, larger around than the home in which they were raised, a clearing opened before the siblings. Unfiltered sunlight shone down upon the small meadow, and wildflowers blossomed away from the towering trees and tainted illumination of the woods around them. Alma felt a warmth radiating from her brother as he dashed ahead into the field, likely the last vestiges of her familiar bond with him. Trickster though he had always been, there had as well been an innocence to Malakai, that shone through now in the way he rolled mirthfully through the grass and flowers, as comfortable in this temperate forest as in the jungles of home in Q’Dosh. She took the opportunity to sit back against the redwood and tend her wounds. Spreading a thick, pungent balm over the cuts and bruises eased their stinging and aching pain, and with regular treatments they wouldn’t scar.

Just as she began to think how strangely safe the Red Forest had become since finding Malakai, a shrill voice pierced the peaceful clearing. A young blonde woman stumbled over a root across the field, falling to the dirt before turning over and backing on her heels and elbows toward her brother and away from whatever sought her. Moments later, she heard it. That grunting, rumbling engine from before. Tankita Bananas!

[Tankita Bananas]

The sounds of what natural animals remained in the nightmare forest grew fainter as the tank rolled through the lush environment.Her target quickly pulled her further and further into the depths of crimson terrain, her screams only stopped for the brief moments where she needed to catch her breath. As she stalked Tamara, the psychic war machine felt a sense of dread that would send shivers down a person's spine.

Something seemed off.

The trees of Podes home were quickly replaced with an open field, and in said field stood two figures. One of the people in the wide area was the familiar girl that Tankita met minutes before everything went to hell. The small witch turned and once she saw her new found 'friend', she quickly began to approach. In response, Tankita's cannon lowered towards Alma, then pointed at each of the other three people around them.

"Something is wrong," Tankita thought, her muzzle focused back on the young witch, "This is too perfect. Since this whole thing started when I came to rescue you, I need some answers, and I need them now. Why am I seeing myself?" The cannon 'nudged' ever so slightly to the fallen, screaming Tamara Bananas that stood with mouth agape in the field with finger pointed at her future self.

[Zook Murnig]

Almost as soon as she’d heard the rumbling crashing monster that was Tankita Bananas, Alma leapt to her feet and sprinted across the clearing, her pain, wounds, and ointment all forgotten in emergency. She swooped in to protect the blonde woman, even as her newfound brother lay dumbstruck in the flowers. There was little she could do against such a beast, to be sure, but even so, she pulled the woman to her feet even as Tankita’s cannon swiveled around to the three of them.

Then she heard it again, the ringing in her skull, shaped into word-like things. It clattered around in her head painfully, echoing to and fro before the message it bore began to come clear. One arm holding back her charge, she clutched her brow with the other. ”…rescue you…answers…seeing myself?”

”Why am I seeing myself?”

The witch’s eyes opened wide, staring at the steel creature, and then back at the blonde woman in her protection, and finally back at the barrel of the cannon. “This woman…is you?”

“Was, past tense. I died and became the thing you see today because of Pode's mercy. That girl, Tamara is the woman I used to be before all this happened to me.”

“By the gods,” breathed the witch. There was a way to test this claim, but… Screw it, she thought, grasping with each hand on the soft, flushed flesh of the blonde’s cheek and the hard, cold steel of the cannon’s muzzle, respectively. Reaching with her mind into the pair, drawing in mere tastes of their auras, she touched on their souls and felt the scars for the truth.

All at once, she felt the blood chilling fear of final death, as monstrous creatures tore at her flesh, and worried her bones. She felt her lifeblood spill onto cold soil, drank into the Red Forest’s roots. She felt herself die. Dagon, the Reaper, severed her bonds to mortal form, and she could all but taste the black approach of Mot, the Swallower of Souls, seeking yet another meal to cleanse from existence. As her oblivion approached, her soul was overcome by waves of relief at her coming fate and absolution, fear and anger stripped away by surety and peace.

But a woman’s voice, huskily singing in the distance, pulled slowly at first, and then more insistently, on her soul, tearing her away from her final rest. She was called more and more forcefully away from the site of her death, deeper into the forest, and finally thrust and bound into cold, inert, lifeless metal.

As Alma’s sense of self reasserted itself, reorienting herself, she released her hold on the young woman to hold Tankita’s cannon in both hands, stroking the muzzle softly. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered to the lost soul bound within. “I’m so sorry for what she did to you, familiar.”

She didn’t have the heart to tell her the full truth. Tankita Bananas was crude practice.

[Tankita Bananas]

The girl seemed truly sympathetic towards Tankita's plight. Humans typically were creatures far more in touch with their feelings than any other race; Dwarves focused on machines, elves on nature, and fauns on being absolutely filthy, but humans held themselves to a higher standard. Women were especially sensitive when it came to stuff such as tragic pasts, and the war machine could tell that she h\did not have to fear the orange haired witch before her.

The warm touch of a welcomed hand upon her cold steel was a feeling the tank missed desperately. How she longed to be made flesh and bone once more, to be able to feel such grazes with her own skin. The psychic woman stepped back and looked at the metallic creature with eyes that looked as though they were on the verge of sobs. She truly felt the plight of the tank.

"E-Excuse me.." a meek whisper came from behind Alma, and diverted the attention of both females to the source. Tamara stood just in front of the man that accompanied Tankita's new friend. Her clothes were different now, a blue sun dress with a print of daisies upon them The war machine would have taken a hard swallow if she could have, for Tamara changed into her favorite dress, her skinny dress. Her bare feet were remarkably clean for someone that just finished an adventure through a forest, and her hair was now up in a bun, held in place by two chop sticks. "Excuse me but....please don't let that... that thing hurt me."

It was an emotional plea, spoken with a change in tone. The former Tankita Bananas was afraid of what she would become, what Pode's alleged 'mercy' would make of her. The mechanical monster froze, unable to respond to the insult or the fear her original body seemed to have for her. Her exhaust seemed to grow louder almost as if the tank were hyperventilating.

She was an invention made for war, stopped in her tracks by a harmless weak woman.

[Zook Murnig]

Alma turned to regard Tamara, and stared as her eyes settled on the blonde. How, exactly, did her clothing change so drastically? Even as she thought it, she could feel her mind slipping off of the subject. She dug in, however, laying both hands on the girl, holding her shoulders as she closed her eyes and focused on Tamara alone. An aura was present, yes, but it began to repel her as she probed its nature. A subtle trick, to be sure, but not perfect. She focused on the aura's background feedback, scattering from past and future. But nothing changed. She, and her aura, were unaffected by the currents of magic flowing through the Lindqualme, radiating from everything and everyone. A fixed point, unchanging, and impossible to penetrate, and camouflaging itself against inspection. Opening her eyes once more, and taking her hands off of the blonde, she watched her carefully, the continued expression of fear unnerving, but telling.

"Alma, are you okay?" called Mal from a short ways off, his voice as sweet to her ears as ever. "Let's get going, we've got a long way to go, if we want to get out of here before nightfall."

"What?" she said, her attention snapping from the conundrum before her, and she felt a slow smile growing as she looked to her brother. She took a step toward him, as if pulled by some invisible force, then stopped. A tickle in the back of her mind wriggled, worm-like, just beyond the edge of her consciousness. "I-I'm not..." She searched for something, trying to remember why she needed to stay here. Something important. And the familiar, steadily growing, rumble behind her had something to do with it.

A mechanical snort from behind her broke the daze, and she turned to the woman once more, and the metallic Tankita beyond. Tankita and Tamara, she remembered, as if it had been years, not moments, since she had laid eyes on them. But something was wrong with Tamara, she knew. Something about her that didn't want to be known, hiding just beneath the surface.

In her moment of clarity, she tried the only thing she could think of, reaching for her belt, and the pouches there. She loosened a purse string and drew a pair of small pebbles, rolling them in her fingertips before hurling them at the woman.

[Tankita Bananas]

When the pebbles hit the woman, the magical stones exploded as though they were water balloons. Tamara stood with wide eyes for a few moments, her wet hair matted to her face and her sundress absolutely soaked thanks to the attack. Her gaze shifted upwards towards Alma, her eyes now changed to a hue of crimson red.

"Why would you----that?!" The blonde screamed, though her words cut out as she sort of blinked in and out of their vision. "All ---- was some help an----" Tamara's body shifted between present and vanished between her words, though she carried on the conversation as like her words were clear.

"She...she's not real?" Tankita let the question lingered as it was just as much directed at Alma as to herself.

"Of course not," Alma responded as she watched the illusion wane, "Pode could sense your want to be human again and personified it. She's no more here than she a werebat." The witch made a few more pebbles and lobbed them at the malfunctioned spectre, and again soaked the fake spirit. When Tamara disappeared again she did not return. "Podes given up using that trick..."

Malakai now approached the two and gently grabbed his sister by the hand. He began to tug at the stoic Alma as though he wished for her to leave immediately. "This is all the more reason we need to get out of ere now, Alma. If that thing was so easy to fall for such tricks, whose to say she won't do it again? Whats going to stop her from killing us both in her confusion?"

Alma pulled her hand away from her kin and took a few steps back. "Mal, what has gotten into y--"

Before Alma could finish the sentence, Malakai transformed into a hole in the ground, courtesy of Tankita's smoking muzzle.

[Zook Murnig]

It warmed her heart when her brother took her hand in his, and his urging to leave the forest drew her in. Malakai would never hurt her, steer her wrong. Her big brother knew best how to keep her safe, like he always had. And what could be better than returning home to Q'Dosh with him, bringing him home again? Far from Podë, and her forest.

Podë.

With that thought, she looked her brother in the eye, seeing through the illusion for a moment. Solid black eyes stared back, boggling in excitement and fear, the eyes of a rat. Her rat. Her brother, as he truly was now. She recoiled from him, stumbling away and crying out at him only moments before he was reduced to ash and a small hole in the dirt, surrounded by smoldering blossoms. As the smoke rose from the crater, she could see something small and furry writhing there. "Malakai!" she exclaimed, throwing herself to the grass, and digging the small rat from its grave, charred and smoking.

She held the rodent to her chest, sobbing, muttering his name over and over. Her eyes stung from tears and ash, and she brought the creature to her face, nuzzling it. It wasn't until she felt a nip at her ear that she opened her eyes to find Malakai alive, though worse for the wear. Fear and confusion washed from the familiar into his mistress, and he squirmed from her hands to scamper into his hip-pouch to hide. Alma slumped down to sit in the grass, relieved but emotionally exhausted. In the back of her mind, she berated herself as well, having fallen for Podë's tricks as much as Tankita, if not more deeply.

[Tankita Bananas]

"Just as I thought," Tankita said as she motioned her muzzle up and down, "Pode was using that guy as an illusion, just like he used Tamara against myself."

Alma turned to her mechanical ally with tears in her eyes. The witch fought back the urge to cry in front of the war machine and cuddled with the rodent, its body extremely close to her chest. "Thank you," the girl managed to eek out without allowing her voice to crack, "but that was extremely reckless. What if it was not an illusion? With you, we knew that Tamara was you, but we had no idea if Mal was real or not!"

"I'm sorry," Tankita said, her cannon leaned down in remorse, "I did not think yo--."

"You did not think," Alma retorted, her voice without a hint of anger or desperation, "you freed me from the illusion, Tankita, just as I freed you, but I do not think it wise we stay together in our endeavors."

She 'looked' up "Because of my disregard for life?"

"Because you're ten tons of mechanized terror!" she shouted, "Do you really think whoever you're helping won't become a target with you whirring and roaring through the Red Forest?! This, what you're doing here Tankita, I think it is better if you do it....alone."

The tank paused to reflect on her words. She was right. What good could she provide anybody she befriended when Pode could see them a mile out? She looked back down to her friend, then up, and then down again. She was unsure if Alma could recognize the motion, but the Lornius invention was nodding. "Thank you Alma...you are right. I think its best we go our separate ways."

The witch returned the nod and turned away as Tankita's engine roared and her massive body turned one-hundred and eighty degrees. The two left on their different paths; one to defeat Pode, and one to seek her mercy once more.

(Tankita Last post)

[Zook Murnig]

Tankita's engine faded into the background noise of the forest, and Alma crossed the clearing to retrieve her staff in the fading sunlight. Even there, without the towering trees to obscure the sky, deep scarlet light began to suffuse her surroundings, and darkness threatened more terror and confusion still. Picking up the knotched and carved rod, she turned it over in her hands, deep in thought. Her hand fell to her hip, where Malakai lay curled in his pouch vigorously grooming himself, and her eyes welled as she stroked the rat's soft fur.

"Alma," the familiar squeaked. She looked down to him, sure he barely remembered what had happened to him, if at all, and tears streamed down her cheeks. "I'm sorry, Alma. I love you, too."

She smiled weakly, and scratched his head for a moment before wiping her eyes with her bare forearm. Grasping her staff in both hands, the lead-filled knob atop it turned to the grass, she straddled it and kicked off against the tree behind her for momentum. Her sunset hair whipped behind her as she sped across the meadow, petals kicked up in her wake where she skimmed the forest floor before rising astride her staff. She barreled into the thick, twisted trees of the Red Forest, seeking shelter in the danger as she dodged once more between grasping branches, and kept low to avoid the Red Witch's crows.

She whispered a prayer to the moon god, Yarikh, that she find some safe place in the Lindqualme before Podë's night beasts emerged. Hurtling through the trees, her dress and cloak cracking in the air with every twist and turn, she glimpsed a glow in the distance, peek-a-booing amongst the timber. Tucking her torso against the staff harder still, and bracing her feet against the knob behind her, she pulled into a dive. As she approached, the glow became a fire, and silhouetted figures crossed its flickering warm light.

Fin.

[Max Dirks]

Commentary is limited. If you have concerns, please contact me and I'll be happy to share my notes.

While it was nice to see some Althanas relevant back story for Tankita and to get glimpse of Zook's new character, this thread really felt rushed and secondary to your other endeavors on the site. Editing was minimal. There were countless spelling, grammar, usage and capitalization errors. There were multiple non-stylistic sentence fragments, run-ons and tense changes. These errors obviously hurt your pacing, mechanics and clarity scores respectively.

Storywise, your greatest strength was your description of the setting, particularly Zook's take on the clearing. It was beautiful and painted the Red Forest in a new and different light than I grew accustomed to reading these threads. In terms of interaction, persona was both of your strongest categories. As both Tankita and Alma are relatively new characters in the Althanas pantheon, it was good to see you giving them a proper introduction. That said, there were a few missed opportunities. Alma's alarm when Tankita killed Malakai was bizarre, particularly after Alma had just revealed Tamara as an illusion. Some explanation was provided, granted, but it seemed trite and out of place with the rest of your character's growth. Action wise, things moved, but there was never a definite hook. On the other hand, I did appreciate the minor actions you took that added depth to the thread. For example, Tankita's mechanical "tank like" motion and Malakai nipping at Alma's face.

Overall, with a bit of editing you could have taken a mediocre thread and turned it into a great one.

Judgment Group 9 (Tankita Bananas and Zook Murnig)

Story - 5
Setting - 6
Pacing - 4
Communication - 5
Action - 5
Persona - 6
Mechanics - 4
Technique - 5
Clarity - 4
Wildcard - 5

Total = 49/100

Tankita Bananas receives 575 EXP and 78 GP
Zook Murnig receives 764 EXP and 88 GP