Bigger, Better, Blacker - Zarbyoshi

[start Day 6]

Zarbyoshi Equipment:

The trio wandered out into the forest once again. Yoshi directed Ursa eastward, back towards where it all began, where he started his fist adventure. It seemed, somehow fitting. He didn't know why, or what made him choose to travel East, but something pulled him in that direction. After a bit of traveling and putting some distance between themselves and the burrow, Yoshi and Snow dismounted. I'm going to forage, we're out of food. Snow said coldly, wandering off to be alone while still in view of Yoshi. The large, black lizard frowned and stroked the side of his Hind Cub. Snow was angry, that much was clear. Yoshi understood her anger with Ursa, even if he thought it was misplaced. While there were no physical wounds left on him, Yoshi could still feel phantom pains from where the Red Hind Bear had struck him. He shuttered for a moment, hoping, even in his improved state, never to run into that creature again.
Keep an eye out for us. Yoshi said with a pat as he went off to carve some more bark from the trees in the area. Ursa grumbled in acknowledgement, sniffing the air for signs of trouble while his friends gathered supplies.

Spoiler:

This time it seemed like his ability to carve was unfortunately shot, as perhaps her Zwardsnow's tone of voice had him rattled causing him to break the bark he tried to carve making it pretty useless, on the other hand not only would Zwardsnow find two fruit she would also find an Iron Shield seemingly stuck in the tree branches. It was a good find and did cheer her up as she had missed the security of a shield and honestly she had been feeling weaker for quick a while, it was like every decent amount of levels she would end up losing a stat rather than gaining one. Judging by her status such was the case which was actually pretty terrifying, perhaps her rank-up choice wasn't a good one after all.

Spoiler:

Yoshi grumbled as the brittle bark snapped in his newly oversized hands. This body was taking some getting used to, even if it wasn't much bigger than his previous one. He was stronger than he had been before and that came with a bit of a learning curve, clearly not designed for the fine motor skills of carving. He looked up to see Snow approaching with some fruit and a strong looking shield. I didn't know those grew on trees. Yoshi said with a laugh, but Snow mostly ignored him, instead marveling at the fine craftsmanship of the shield. It was the best she had ever seen, although to be fair the only other shield she had seen had been a poorly made Tanuki shell. Yoshi frowned but rose from his place on by the roots of the tree, We should head North. Fruit is good, but we need more food for three of us. With that, the trio would continue North in search of better prey and more food.

As they continued to head north they would stumble upon the juiciest of prey, a Stamp Hog, which was grazing on grass and minding it's business. Though it would stop grazing when it heard the stomping of three sets of feet and would swivel before seeing the Hind Cub and squealing in challenge as it was smaller than it but wouldn't go down fighting not in the least. It would keep squealing making loud noises for some reason perhaps it was calling for back-up or something.

The trio made of lizards and bear weren't exactly designed for sneaking up on prey, so by the time they came across the Stamp Hog, the creature was well aware of their presence. Yoshi looked from the Hog to Ursa and shrugged, He doesn't seem to like you, go get him. The cub grunted in delight, his long tongue lashing across his lips as he charged the squealing hog. Ursa would open his mouth, aiming to bite down on the Hog's neck if possible, but based on the size difference between the two he'd just as easily chomp down on the Hog's back or midsection if that's what presented itself. Yoshi moved forward to intercept the Hog if it got away, but allowed Ursa to get the first shot at it, while Snow hung back, shield strapped to her forearm and her gaze sweeping across the forest. The ambush by the bears the night earlier had put her even more on edge than she had been previously. In her experience, caution kept you alive out here.

Ursa:

The Stamp Hog would get bitten on it's neck and would try it's best to tackle the Hind Cub from it's position and would squeal in dismay as it's blow connected with one of the Hind Cub's forearms but didn't do anything for letting it free. This was because Cubursa would only clamp down harder and shift it's position so that it wouldn't be at risk of getting tackled, all the while leaving the Stamp Hog's flanks open for attacks from Zarbyoshi or Zwardsnow.

Spoiler:

Ursa would grunt, continuing to bite down on the creature’s throat, hoping to bleed it out and slow it’s struggling. He would use his large paw in an attempt to scratch at the creature’s midsection and get it under control as well, fearing it would somehow escape his grasp. After tasting the hog’s flesh, Ursa was committed to seeing this creature die. Meanwhile, Yoshi would circle around to the Hog’s hind section, extending his claws and slashing at its back legs in an attempt to dismember the creature, or at least injure it enough that if Ursa did lose hold, it’d be unable to run.

OOC: sorry, short post from my phone, just trying to savage this thing at this point

Spoiler:

The combination of the two allowed them to deal with the Stamp Hog in sync with one another, though it was clear if not for Cubursa's power this would of taken much longer to execute, still Zarbyoshi contributed as well and the end result was that the Stamp Hog would quickly be slain. Cubursa would stop biting it and let go before looking towards Zarbyoshi as he knew he liked to do stuff to the corpse before divvying out the meat from the kill. Fortunately for Zwardsnow her antics were in vain as nothing seemed to be trying to attack them in this particular location. She would walk over to take part in the meal as she was quite hungry, thankfully this should be enough for the three of them to eat comfortably.

Spoiler:

OOC: Characters updated at this point.

Satisfied that the creature hadn't called to others, or at least that nothing else was coming, Snow joined Ursa and Yoshi around the carcass of the Hog. Yoshi separated the head of the hog with his claws, while the three split the meat of its mid section. Hmm we should make you a helmet to go with that shield. Yoshi said to Snow while she watched him patiently. As Ursa slurped the marrow from one of its leg bones, Yoshi looked the head over carefully before slowly attempting to carve it. He took his time, allowing a full hour to pass as he gingerly cut away flesh and muscle sinew. Regardless of the result, Yoshi would hand Snow the new helmet, or whatever he managed to make, and the trio would move on, continuing Northward once more. Yoshi would ride atop Ursa while Snow brought up their flank, unwilling to mount the bear.

Spoiler:

As night time came around they would run into something they hadn't seen before probably because it was a roaming monster which typically wasn't seen just anywhere, it bore some resemblance to a Poison Viper albeit sleeker with a hood which had the pattern of the night sky. The Night Cobra would hiss as a warning as it slithered into the area. It was an impressive specimen larger than Cubursa and it clearly was one of the most dangerous predators within the great forest, just below that of the various bosses, though in her opinion she could have easily killed the Black wolf Leader, and maybe even that annoying spider. Still with succulent prey in front of her she merely wanted them to be aware of what was going to kill them and she would hiss again her fangs emerging and dripping with noxious venom.

Yoshi heard her body before he saw her, the sound of a massive sneak slithering through the underbrush was far from silent. Regardless, the creature clearly wanted to be seen, hissing and baring its fangs at the traveling trio. The three paused for a moment, assessing the situation. He could feel Ursa tense behind him as he looked back to Snow who simply nodded, ready for whatever he wanted to do. This wasn't a creature Yoshi was familiar with, but its sheer size and aggression was enough to tell him it was leagues above the Stamp Hog they had just slaughtered. Yoshi had no intention of running though, this wasn't going to be like the bears from the night before. He was the predator now, and the forest his prey. Yoshi let loose a triumphant Battle Cry as Ursa charged forward and leapt at the Night Cobra. Yoshi would jump from his back, inhaling before letting loose a stream of black energy point blank in the Cobra's face.

Ursa would leap at the snake beneath Yoshi, slashing at its body and aiming to bite the area beneath its head where the neck should be...though on snakes where does the neck start and the body begin? Based on previous hunts and success with other creatures, Ursa used his best judgement. Meanwhile, Snow allowed Yoshi and Ursa to draw the creature's attention while attempt to sneak around the side and slash violently at the creature's tail with her claws.

Spoiler:

The Night Cobra would hiss lower as they approached before it would dart out unflinching before the Battle Cry and the failure of Zarbyoshi's breath in order to bite Cubursa on it's neck getting bit in turn but rather than panicking it would just coil around the Hind Cubs body to make it difficult for it to fight back. It saw the Hind Cub as the biggest threat and as it injected it's poison into Cubursa's body the cub would growl in pain as the poison did it's work. Fortunately he was resilient enough to throw off most of it's rehabilitating effect and would be find in a moment but it was pretty potent and thus the damage was felt. Meanwhile Zwardsnow's attacks would merely inconvenience it but wouldn't do much to prevent it from immobilizing Cubursa as they were merely flesh wounds due to the hardness of it's scales.

Spoiler:

OOC: Characters updated at this point.

Yoshi cursed under his breath as his attack completely failed, he shouldn't have tried something new. The old ways had gotten him this far, so they'd continue to work just fine. Ursa would growl in anger more than pain, though the bite flashed white hot through his body. Sensing Ursa's distress, Yoshi would climb up the bear and slash at each of the cobra's eyes with his own claws, attempting to blind the creature, or at least cause it enough pain to disengage from his cub. Ursa in turn would continue to bite down, attempting to bleed the snake out as had worked so many times before. He would slash at its body once more, attempting to break free from its constricting force. Although frustrated with her inability to cause any real harm, Snow continued her assault on the creature's tail, hacking and slashing at it with reckless abandon. She was tired of being the weak one, the one to hang back and watch carefully. She wanted to deal the death blow, to be the one seen as the predator and not the prey.

Spoiler:

The Night Cobra would bite harder as well while injecting more of its venom into Cubursa who would react to such pain by biting down harder on it but it was obvious that in a battle of attrition, chances are that the cub would be the one to lose out. Fortunately he had allies who weren't slacking off, Zwardsnow would keep annoying it but Zarbyoshi was the one who really changed the battle as it's blows to it's eyes would cause it to writhe in pain before tightening up around Cubursa clearly trying to get the Hind Cub to let go so it could break free and deal with these interlopers in their duel of death. However after dealing the blow Zarbyoshi would fall off and would end up partially pinned underneath the bulk of both predators as he wasn't able to effectively climb the two of them.

Spoiler:

OOC: Everyone updated.

Ursa was determined, unwilling to let his prey escape. However, when the cobra tightened its grip, it compressed the cub's lungs, squeezing the breath out of him so suddenly it made Ursa gasp and release his hold on its neck. The snake would disengage from Ursa, the two larger creatures separating and freeing Yoshi from his place beneath them. Ursa was breathing heavy now, the poison taking its toll on the bear, but he was determined to see this through. Yoshi however, wasn't willing to risk his friend dying and would pick himself up from the ground and release another battle cry to draw the snake's attention to him. His anger and adrenaline spiking as he charged forth, attempting to slash the creature across the neck once more with his claws. Ursa, now painfully aware of both the snake's poison and strength, would settle for leaping at the Snake's exposed body, slashing with each clawed paw.

Meanwhile, Snow would use her inability to do any real damage or bother the snake to her advantage. As the cobra disengaged, Snow would attempt to sneak around the back of it, jumping to slash at the back of its hood, an area she assumed would be more vulnerable than its scaly body. Ignore that! She'd mutter as she slashed at the back of the creature's head.

Spoiler:

Zarbyoshi would manage to release a battle cry which would cause the Night Cobra to pause momentarily, causing it to lash out with a bite to Zarbyoshi's midsection trying to take him out of the fight for daring to release such a pathetic cry towards it. Cubursa would use that distraction to land two strikes with the Night Cobra's resilience being lowered from the battle cry. This would cause not only Cubursa to land more powerful strikes, but likewise Zwardsnow with the Night Cobra being forced to let go of Zarbyoshi and would slither around the group trying to keep all of them within tongue "sight".

Spoiler:

OOC: Everyone updated.

As they sensed the weakening of the creature with each successful attack, the trio wouldn't let up. As the Night Cobra attempted to slither back, putting distance between itself and its former prey, now predators, Ursa would charge forward first. Being the largest and thus the most likely to be able to trap it, Ursa would lunge forward, attempting to slam his claws into the snake's body and pin it in place. While this happened, Yoshi and Snow would run on either side of Ursa (Yoshi left, Snow right), and attack themselves. Yoshi would jump at the Snake's upper body/neck area, biting where Ursa had before while trying to pierce the snake's scales with his claws to steady himself. Snow would attack an exposed section of the snake's body between Yoshi and Ursa, once again slashing with her own claws. The snake was on the ropes now, they had tasted blood and were looking to end this.

Spoiler:

The Night Cobra would lash it's tail at the approaching Cubursa with the blow being used to parry his first paw swipe but this left her open to an attack from both Zarbyoshi and Zwardsnow. Zarbyoshi's bite would target the already injured portion of her body and thus would deal more damage than what he would of done normally causing her to hiss out in pain while Zwardsnow's formerly annoying attacks were now whittling down her already shrinking health. Cubursa's follow-up paw strike would be the beginning of the end as it would jostle Zarbyoshi who would clamp down a second time which would finish the fight. As the former predator fell to the ground as defeated prey a hush of sorts would come over the forest as it wasn't often that such a powerful monster would be sighted much less killed and this was sure to anger her parent...

Spoiler:

Yoshi let out a long sigh of relief as the snake fell, twitching and then finally unmoving on the forest floor. Finally. He said, looking around at Snow and Ursa, the latter beginning to lick his wounds clean. Snow had thankfully made it out of that fight relatively unscathed and Yoshi himself, while sore, had been through plenty worse. As they packaged up the meat with the fruit from earlier, Yoshi sat down near the head of the snake and began studying the fangs. I'm going to try to get these out, why don't you two- He paused, frowning and thinking for a moment, Actually Snow, come here. I'm going to show you how to carve and then you should try to get some of its hide. Those scales were pretty tough, could end up being useful later. Snow nodded as Yoshi began walking her through the fundamentals of carving. Ursa, keep guard, this might take awhile okay? The bear gave him a bored look but grunted in acknowledgement while the two Lizards got to work taking the snake carcass apart.

Spoiler:

It was truly unfortunate that their carving exploits suffered so much, not only did Zwardsnow fail to learn how to carve properly, but by trying to teach her and perhaps due to the stress from the fight Zarbyoshi would ruin everything he touched save for one thing namely the shabby loincloth he managed to make from it. Fortunately they didn't fail completely or do something horrible like rupture a venom sac and contaminate the meat, but it was a close one and Cubursa would look at Zarbyoshi waiting for him to give the go ahead so he could dig into the fresh kill. While this was going on, something else would creep into the area, namely a lone four colored bat who would see the situation and decide to not drop down to attack them but would instead remain in the air circling them.

Spoiler:

Here. Yoshi grumbled, tossing the Night Cobra Rags to Snow. He wasn't angry at her, it was his own failing as a teacher that she couldn't learn to carve from him. The mangled corpse that had once been the Night Cobra was evidence of his failure. Both fangs had snapped in his hands and the skin that Snow had tried to carve was shredded. The only reason they had anything was because they had worked together on the last patch to try and salvage at least something. Snow nodded in thanks as she put the loin cloth on while Yoshi indicated to Ursa that he could snack on the rest. They had all just shared the Hog only an hour or so before, but Ursa was a feeding machine. Yoshi made sure to keep the bulk of the meat with him for when the Cub became hungry later, but for now, Ursa was free to snack on the remains. Brittle snake bones cracked and snapped behind Yoshi as he stared up at the night sky. He spotted a bat gliding about, watching them but sighed, he wasn't in the mood anymore. After so many failures salvaging anything of use on this hunt, he simply wanted to go home.
Come on, let's go. He said, after giving the Cub some time to pick apart the carcass, Snow, keep an eye on that bat, Ursa and I will watch in front of us. Yoshi said as the three headed back towards the burrow.

The Four Color Bat would keep circling but when it saw them leaving it would start circling the area that they had fought the battle due to the blood remaining on the ground from the carving process. Eventually when they were gone it would head downward to lap up whatever blood it could get to that hadn't been sucked into the ground as it wasn't trying to fight a group of things that it had figured killed something that dangerous. It was fortunate that they left when they did however as what seemed to be menacing hisses would ring out around the area, it seemed that something felt like it was being challenged, and thus would begin to roam a lot more frequently to cull that which managed to kill the other forest bosses...

------------------------The Next Time you enter this topic it'll be Day Time-----

[Enter Afternoon - Day 7 (due to training in the Burrow during the day)]

The sun was sitting low in the sky by the time Yoshi, Snow and Ursa made it to the Southern part of the forest. This area was widely unexplored by them and thus opened up a whole world of hunting grounds. I'm going to look for some plants we haven't seen yet. Snow said as she went off to forage. Ursa settled down in the middle of the clearing, resting his head on his paws while keeping one eye on Snow for any potential danger. Yoshi made his way over to one of the trees, bending down to begin carving the bark from the trunk as he had so many times before when an idea struck him. He stood up and looked at a low hanging branch thoughtfully. The branch was thick around the base, where it met the tree and, after taking off some of the smaller spindles of branches and smoothing it down, it could possibly make for a useful weapon. Reaching up, Yoshi seized the thin end of the branch, pulling it down while attempting to slash/carve his way through the thicker end to detach it from the tree. If his plan was successful, he just might be able to end up with a new club.

Spoiler:

Zarbyoshi would manage to cut the tree branch although it wasn't as easy as he thought but he would manage to do it and thus would now have a new tree branch for him to potentially use as a club. Meanwhile it seemed that Zwardsnow wasn't able to find anything today, perhaps they would need to venture farther away rather than trying to forage in a familiar location. It was unfortunate, but it happened when one didn't venture far away from the Lizardkin Burrow considering it was in the middle of a wasteland. Cubursa would get up in anticipation of them moving away from this spot, whether they were headed to the north, east or south as he personally wanted to stay out of the west forest for the time being.

Spoiler:

Well, alright then. Yoshi said with a toothy smile, happy to see something finally go his way. He tested the weight of the new club, swishing it through the air several times. It felt good, a simple weapon, but effective none the less. Should we keep moving south? There's not much here. Snow asked, coming back empty handed. At the sound of the question, Ursa rose to his feet, scratching his bag leg with the other. Yoshi looked around, realizing there really wasn't much out here. He could see marks and worn paths through the tall grass from where other creatures had traveled multiple times. They were still relatively close to the den, so most of the tracks were probably from his own kin truth be told. Yoshi nodded, Yes, let's go. We'll keep traveling south for now and see what we come across.

Yoshi's Equipment:

Snow's Equipment: