The Devil You Know

[Hemlocke]

A Long Time Coming

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Months had been spent in isolation, planning, observing, and yet, when the time came to set the stage, and trap the prey within inescapable jaws. Another would claim first strike.

A celebration had been called, and though Ashwood had rarely left Alcatraz in her time as its steward, and even less so, the Innocent Slaughter, inherited by an untimely vanishing. Today, she had set out to make an appearance for what one would hope to be a serious affair, aboard the old vessel. Though she found the particular rogue indecent, even more so uncouth and blunt as a stone, the Big Box, a Bullmastiff with quite the "established" captain currently accompanied the Innocent Slaughter in formation, filled to the brim with gifts and luxurious items to add to the festivities of the planned gathering. Serving as the Big Box' personal escort, a smaller vessel, a Hellhound Gunboat, with a similarly blunted rogue captain, the little box, followed along the other side of the Bullmastiff, as the two were nigh inseparable.

Two Barghest flew to either backward flank of the Innocent Slaughter, one, well known to belong to Fuze. While a bloodhound flew far ahead of the formation, watching for interception from a cloaked position, belonging to Madcat, a peculiar rogue, that never seemed much like a rogue at all, yet his past known to a few within the pack, made this discrepancy less confusing. Ashwood, unlike her previous superior, had made no habit of knowing those under her, and this would prove her downfall as this was even true of her current escorts, the moment closed in, an invisible clock ticked away as the convoy maintained a steady cruise through the Tahoe Ice Cloud, bound for the Cortez anomaly that would bring them to Montezuma.

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