Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 423377" data-attributes="member: 150">Tank Soup part 2As usual, things got underway quickly.  And, cogent plans would not have been obvious to an observer's naked eye.  The first thing the group did, faced by four Panzers steaming towards them, was split up.Ulric, in horse form stopped just long enough for Pah and Crys to jump up on his back before bolting right at the tanks -- and past them, -- galloping down the road back the way they had come.  Two of the tanks stopped in their tanks and spun in palce, to turn and pursue the horse and riders, while the other two continued on.Eli and Irk stood their ground, seasoned warriors not quick to run, while Minimonk and his master Uri desperately tried one last time to get the halftrack's engine started.  And, through some stroke of luck, Minimonk beat his head against the ignition button and the engine rumbled into life.  They shouted, and started to drive off.  Eli and Irk were forced to run and catch up, Eli jumping lightly into the back of the truck and pulling Irk up behind him.The hafltrack was moving -- not fast, mind you, but moving, and heading away from the outpost, in a direction exactly opposite the direction the Horse-Ulric had taken.  But the tanks, driven by experienced, trained drivers and not halfings with deep bruises in their foreheads from the ignition button, were moving much faster.  And in a few seconds the two pursuing tanks opened fire.The first few shots missed.  A third shot struck the halftrack on it's suspension, with a deafening explosion that shook the whole vehicle but did no noticable damage to it.  Uri and Minimonk fought with the controls, trying to figure out how to get it to move faster.  In the back, Eli and Irk were forced to look back at the tanks in pursuit, wondering about the wisdon of staying in the machine, knowing that being out on the ground was not much better.  Then the fourth shell struck.  The halftrack exploded in a oily diesel could of flame and smoke.About a half a mile away, the horse was not able to run faster than the tanks could cruise, and the pursing tanks were eventually able to get close enough to open up with their machineguns.  Clearly, Ulric, Pah, and Crys would have to turn and fight, they were not going to make any sort of get away.  Horse-Ulric stopped and knelt in the midst of a hail of gunfire so the two ladies could get off, then shapeshifted back into human form.  While the tanks closed, Crys quickly cast invisibility on herself and Pah, but had none left for Ulric, who was starting to cast spells as the steel juggernauts closed on them.  Quick spellcasting knocked out one tank crew, and while that tank slowly drone away from the scene of the battle, Cyrs jumped up onto the other and started shooting a wand of magic missiles through a viewport.While Crys and Ulric worked to disable the second of the two tanks that had come after them, Pah had seen the explosion coming from the distant halftrack, and ran as hard as shc could, still invisible, to try to help her friends, if she could.***Minimonk was thrown clear by the explosion.  He rolled onto the ground, made sure he was still in once piece, and them immediately looked up for his master.  His master, however, was not on the ground next to him.  Uri was still sitting in the front seat of the furiously buring wreck of the halftrack, unconscious and on fire.  Minimonk jumped up and pulled his master from the wreck, searching his scorched packs for potions of healing, barely managing to save his maser's life.  On the far side of the wreck, where he could not see, the two enemy tanks clanked to a halt.***Irk landed hard and tasted dirt.  He was still alive, still have all his limbs (so it was a good day!) but he could hear the sound of the tanks approaching.  One hand reached around for the handle of one of the grenades tucked into his belt.   He did his best to lay as still as possible, waiting for an opening. Eli aslo feigned dead, lying on top of his bow.The German tanks slowed and stopped  a few feet away.  The top hatches opened, and the tank commanders rose up through the hatches, peering through the black diesel smoke to try to spot some sign of life in the wreckage.  They could see two bodies on the ground -- Irk and Eli, neither of whom had been driving the halftrack.  As the officers looked to try to see some other bodies, Irk yanked on his grenades' fuse, rolled up into a sitting position, and tossed it at the open hatch.It was one helluva toss -- right on the money - it landed right at the officer's feetin standing in his command chair.  The commander fumbled in panic atthe grenade, trying to get it out of the tank before it detonated.  At the same mometnt Irk tossed his grenade, Eli sat up and took a shot at the officer in the other tank, wounding him, but failing to get a seond arrow into him to finish him before the tank commanded managed to get back under cover and shut his hatch.The first tank commander failed to grab the grenade in time.  The grenade went off, pulping the entire tank crew in an instant.  The top half of the tank cmmander fell sideways out of the turret and hit the ground with a wet thud.  Irk, seeing the second tank's turret turnign his way, it's machinegun spitting bullets pretty indiscriminantly, decided that he would fight fire with fire, and charged up the front of the grenaded tank and hopped inside.  He fumbled around at the controls, trying to figure out what he had seen the halflings doing tog et the othertank going before, the task made that much mroe challenging by the thick pasting of bloody gore that coated the inside of the tank.  Eli, meanwhile, bought Irk a great deal of time to figure things out by sniping away at the viewports in the tank, sending arrows in at tank crew faces until they finally gave up and close the viewports to protect themselves.  That was the good news.The bad news was that the German tanker's turret stopped pointed directly at Irk's tank.</blockquote>

Verification