<HTML>   A short section tonight :) Please feel free to make comments ans uggestions :)   Chris *** "Everyone get back behind the front counter! MOVE!" The kids do not need Any convincing at all. It doesn't take much thought to realize that anyone who is pounding on the door like that and scaring the grownups is a Bad Guy. Nobody wants to be around for when the Bad Guys get in. Jono already has his whip out and is running for the back door. Nothing's showed up around it yet, so he's willing to bet it'd be a safe(r) means of escape. Currently the front door is being held back from being broken down primarily by Kirk. And while Kirk is certainly qualified to hold something like this back, the door clearly isn't. Which means they have to get out now. Dana, by contrast, is heading towards the front door. "Kirk! Get out of the way! I can deal with these things!" She's already got her sword out. Dana's experience focus has traditionally been in single combat. But she's capable of handling multiple foes under certain situations, most of them pretty simplistic but effective nonetheless. That's a fair description of her move when Kirk steps aside, allowing the door to fall down. All she does is swing as the Lutin who was banging charges through unexpectedly. He doesn't even get a foot into the room before he's bleeding dead on the ground. The same goes for the second immediately following the first. And then Dana is there, holding the doorway against two Lutins at once while Kirk is yelling "GO! Get out of here!" *** Perry is the first one out the back door. This is a good thing, primarily because he was prepared for the ambush. All he has to do is drop to his belly as the Lutin drops from above. He gets a bit of a shock; the Lutin gets impaled. Then next comes Jo, with both daggers flying to take down the next two Lutins moving in. Then Perry is running forward, swinging his sword to nearly decapitate a fourth Lutin while Jo leaps out of the way for Jono's exit, who instantly moves to the side and starts keeping watch as kids start streaming out from the back door. "Perry! Kevin! Take the kids and get them to the nearest shelter!" Jono screams as Kevin runs out, doing his best to chant the warming spell on the fly. Jono, if he felt like he had time, would be mentally kicking himself for this whole fiasco. So far everything has held together primarily because he's anticipated scenarios and set up plans for the kids ahead of time. But he didn't think to include a plan for this, and so gods know what all the kids are going to do. Fortunately most of them seem to be following Kevin and Perry, but... He shakes his head clear, then quickly runs around the building, Jo following close behind, just in time to see another Lutin fall back from the door. Jono can't use his whip here; the weather is still very hostile, and the winds would badly throw off his attempts to use it. Normally in conditions like this he'd fall back to using his claws and engage in a bit of melee. But there's far too many Lutins for him to be able to pull that off effectively, and so he has to go for a different tactic. Fortunately, Jono does have a very nice curved sword, which he's gotten a lot of practice in. He's very quickly reassured that he hasn't lost any of that practice when he whips the sword out from his scabbard, flicking the blade outward as he does so and dropping the first Lutin who had the misfortune to notice him. He shifts into the ready stance he's been practicing for years ever since his first few lessons with that old master he and Jo met on the docks of Elvquelin, and takes count. One Jono. One Jo. One Dana, presumably at the door. Fifteen Lutins. This is probably going to be a bit of a stretch. * * * That bit of a stretch is exactly why Derek and Sammy are separate from the rest of the kids right now. Derek, of course, has his nifty bag thingy with him, which he showed to Sammy. There's, like, an endless supply of the little spiked ball things in there, so they can prepare as many as they want. Derek didn't really want to show anyone the bag; the lady who told him about it was pretty specific about telling very few people. But then again, she'd said to make snowballs with them (which is an exceedingly obvious thing to a talented snowfields warrior like Derek; just pack snow around them so they look harmless). And Sammy is by far the fastest snowball maker in Metamor. And she did say that he could tell people who were helping him out. There was even an extra pair of gloves in the bag for him to use. So he showed it to Sammy, and told him about how he's supposed to make snowballs out of them. Sammy, being a clever and capable fashioner of snowballs, caught on very quickly, and even prepared two in advance; one for each of them. And they're sneaking around the Other side of the building to help out Uncle Jono, because once again a Comrade In Arms is certainly in trouble, and this time Derek is not going to allow himself to run away. They're very prepared for the first Lutin that comes around the bend; it grunts in surprise, then grins evilly and starts to slowly advance on them. Sammy is the first to get his snowball off; it crashes into the Lutin's chest and causes it to scream out in pain. But only briefly, for Derek's shot smacks it right in the center of the head, and it falls. And Derek and Sammy are grinning at each other as Sammy passes Derek another snowball, having already fashioned two replacements. "Ohh, YEAH!!!! * * * Jono, in the meantime, is busying himself with the several Lutins in front of him. One swing downward at a head, then a snap back upwards to another's chest and throat, then across to another's throat, up to parry a falling blade, twist and to the side to parry another, step back, while behind him Jo keeps her daggers flying, dropping Lutins left and right. What hasn't encouraged him is that the count isn't going down any. It's going up. * * * Derek, in the meantime, is feeling absolutely exhilarated. He still retains all-too clear memories of last night, back when Uncle Jono had to stop that one Bad Guy, and he wasn't able to do a thing, and in the back of his mind he's been partly frightened out of his wits still over that event, and partly yearning for a sort of vengeance. He's getting that vengeance now. Because THESE snowballs stop the bad guys. They've just about made it to the corner now, Derek having already dropped two more Lutins with precise throws of deadly snowballs. And from here they can see that's Uncle Jono! And he's fighting the bad guys big time! But there's too many bad guys. Derek gets a very big grin on his face, then, and gets ready to start throwing. Not going to be too many bad guys soon enough... * * * Jono is just about to dodge an expected thrust from a Lutin that has slipped past his sword when to his astonishment a large snowball SMACKS against the back of the Lutin's head, splattering snow and blood in a finely mixed spray, leaving a small spiked ball that looks to have nearly crushed the back of the Lutin's skull. It falls before he can react. Then, while he's staring at that one, the Lutin that was just about to take advantage of his momentary lack of attention takes another such snowball to the back of it's head, and he has to leap out of the way to insure that it doesn't fall on top of him. "What in the..." Then his eyes flick up to see... "Derek?" And then his eyes go even wider as he sees what's immediately behind... * * * Derek starts to turn. "Sammy! Need anoth-" His words drop off as he catches a quick glimpse of what's behind him. To his immediate back and right is Sammy, being held up by a very big and nasty-looking Lutin. His feet are dangling off the ground, and he can't reach the Bag at all. Said Lutin has got a knife to Sammy's throat. But Derek's more immediate focus is on the Lutin right behind him. It too has a knife in its hands, and it's looking down at him with fiendish glee. He can easily see the scars along his face that seem to correspond almost exactly to those on the Lutin that he'd hit with the ineffectual snowball that frigid night that seems so, so long ago. This, of course, all registers within less than a second. Because Derek doesn't even have that much time before the Lutin snatches him up, drawing him up off the ground and shaking him until he drops the snowball, then puts the knife to his throat. ***   End part 34</HTML>