The Armory

Thankfully... Robyn didn't say anything to John for the rest of the ride back to the Frozen Flame's headquarters. Despite the arguments and differences the two of them had had, she seemed to understand how John felt when he confirmed to her that he was going to actually help. She was hopeful and happy to have the help, that much was blatantly clear to John, but she also made sure not to cross any line he may have made by talking to him about it. She knew he didn't want to do it. He was on board with Otrov's plan... that was all he wanted to tell her and for the time being that was all she needed to know.

Eddie was not as silent about it as Robyn was. The redhead rushed to greet the two of them when they climbed down the stairs into her basement, her arms crossed, her lips pouting, and her brow furrowed as she came face to face with John again in another pair of panties and a shirt with a joke on it and a picture of a bone. She seemed torn between the decision to glare at John and smile upon seeing him again, something that made the Gamer blush when he realized how much of an impression he must have made on her to have her react to his presence like that. He spared a moment to read her shirt again, something that she didn't bother to block from his vision when she caught him staring at her chest, and then cast Observe on her once more.

'I found this humerus...'

Eda Zoe Deeley
Level 5 Techomancer
<Eddie>
113/113 HP
RP: +64
Effects: None.

The relationship score he had with her was up by ten whole points from the first time he had met her. When her mouth opened to question his presence, Robyn quickly shook her head. The blonde veteran rushed down the steps to steer Eddie away from John and whisper something into her ear, but the few words she managed to get out sparked a conversation regardless.

"What are you doing here? I thought you didn't want-" Robyn interrupted her and tried to answer the question for him, but John wanted to get rid of any confusion as quickly as possible.

"Otrov demanded I get involved and kill Daniel," he grunted. "She won't leave me any choice." Both girls turned to look up at John, while he averted his gaze away from the two of them, choosing instead to try and inspect the equipment scattered around the room. When Eddie opened her mouth to speak again, Robyn merely mouthed the word 'family' to her and she stopped. She slowly caught up to understanding the position John was in and frowned while he walked around the room and began to pick various objects up.

"We need you to get some gear for him," Robyn explained once the room fell into silence again. She led the way deeper into the room for the both of them so they weren't standing next to the stairs, and then dropped into a seat over at one of the nearby tables when they got far enough. "If he's going to be a part of this, then I need you to suit him up. Induct him like he's an actual member of the Frozen Flame with the good stuff," she said, and both John and Eddie turned to stare at Robyn. Eddie spoke up first.

"I thought the plan was to kidnap Daniel, not kill him," she glared at the two of them, and Robyn gradually leaned back away from the little redhead.

"No," John grunted, ignoring the remark from Eddie for a moment as he fixed his eyes on Robyn. "If I'm doing this, I will not be a part of the Frozen Flame. I will need the equipment, but if being a part of this group involves taking orders to hunt down people like Daniel Salvador, then I will not be joining." Thankfully, neither one of them seemed to pay much attention to Eddie's statement once John turned down the offer to join their little 'guild.' They both froze in place as John grit his teeth together, embracing the inevitable, but they didn’t seem ready to tell him no on the request for gear. "After we're done here, I will be going alone." Their eyes widened as he finished talking, and they stood to walk towards him, but he waved them both off. "What do you have for me?" he asked and watched as the two girls looked at each other... and then started searching the room.

It took hours for the three of them to actually find everything that he wanted. The weapons they had largely consisted of guns and explosives in some way. Very few items were actually enchanted since Cassandra had been taken and the body armor that they had on hand was usually made with very specific purposes. Most of it didn't apply stat boosts to him in any way, and when John figured out that they had lost half of their arsenal when Cassandra had been taken, he found himself incredibly disappointed with what he could find. More than that, everything that he thought looked like it might be fun and interesting just proved to be useless in his hands according to Eddie.

"If you practice magic, then you should pick a weapon that would add to your magic and fighting ability, not change or take away from it. Don't use that one," she told him. She told him that a lot. Most of what they did eventually find for John was all equipment to support him in specific scenarios. He turned down bulletproof vests, simply because it was starting to look like he wouldn't even need it at some point, and instead accepted things like a black, leather utility belt to hold emergency potions and spare magazines for firearms. It gave him ten additional inventory slots and a method for quickly consuming supplies... but that was about it for the belt. He found a pair of night vision goggles that seemed like it would be useful... until he remembered that one of his Horrible Evolutions would eventually give him the ability to see in the dark. He found some ammo for his **** Rifle, but not the grenade launcher, but Eddie insisted that he sell the weapon instead of use it. If he focused on getting better on using his current abilities, then she believed he could become more dangerous with his own powers than he ever would be with a gun.

The closest thing he found to a weapon that Eddie actually thought he should have was a little handheld spray bottle... or at least, that's what it seemed like to him. It turned out to actually be a little flamethrower that the wearer could clip to their wrist, but it had a habit of cooking the user's hand and it needed some kind of ignition to use it, something that John didn't have to deal with when using his Infused Strike ability. It didn't get in the way of his punching, so he didn't have to worry about breaking it when he hit someone, but he did have to ask Eddie to try and finish the item. The strap that was supposed to keep the flamethrower on his wrist was made of cloth and burned away the first time he tried to test it out. She promised to have it ready and usable for him in a few days, but it too was something that he couldn't take with him right away.

"A belt," he grunted, his voice dripping with disappointment after the three of them finally finished searching the room. There were so many half-finished amazing projects all around him that he wanted to try out... and they gave him a belt and a couple of flashbang grenades to put in it.

"A belt, a grenade launcher, and a flamethrower..." Robyn really tried to stress the additional weapon like it was something to be proud of. She had a giant hammer with a jet engine built into it, laced with magical enchantments... and he got a belt and a spray bottle. The only upside to be found was that he now had some kind of range to his attacks... just not a great one. If an enemy stood still at ten feet in front of him, then they were fucked.

"Forget the damn belt and the flamethrower!" Eddie snapped finally, and both John and Robyn turned to look at the redhead as she brushed her great ponytail back over one shoulder and skittered across the room to stand next to John. As soon as she got close enough to reach out and touch John, his aura started to take effect. Two thick, fat points swelled up on her apple-sized breasts, beneath John’s leering gaze and bulging through the front of her shirt, but Eddie seemed to pay them no mind. She turned her attention to the pieces of armor that John had put on to find equipment that would match it and began to poke and prod at the metal while John stared at her. The freckles on her face and neck became blatantly visible as a blush crept up into her cherubic features when she continued to stand in the range of his aura, but he didn't try to warn her of it.

"Did you get these from the Orcs?" she asked, and pulled on one of the leather straps keeping the armor held fast to his form. He grunted briefly from the discomfort but was glad for the fact that the armor fit him well enough that he didn't need to readjust it when she was done.

"Some of it..." he answered, and spared a glance over to Robyn. The blonde was watching the both of them silently, her eyes glued to... Eddie's lower half before she noticed John looking and cleared her throat. A similar blush filled her cheeks as well when she realized that she had been caught, and she moved to cover her mouth with one hand while John stared at her. The leering from Robyn seemed... not as surprising as he thought it would be when he caught it. He was more interested in the fact that Robyn didn't seem surprised by Eddie mentioning the fact that he got his armor from another species.

"She mentioned it to me already," Robyn explained when she saw the look on his face and, with a wave of her hand, she gestured to the makeup that was still on her face and shrugged.

"It's a little simplistic... hardy though. Heavy, too," she grunted and finally tried to lift the entire piece of metal fashioned to John's shoulder. It didn't even budge, but she did seem to get a good sense for how firm John's arm was in the process. She finished touching the strapping closest to his biceps and pulled her hands away... but she didn't step back. She stayed within the reach of his aura, accidentally letting him feel her hot breaths on his arm while she inspected the plating and sighed. "Its-" she paused and rubbed a thumb along the metal on his bracers. A long line of yellowish soot was immediately cleared away and a twisted, heat-scarred surface was revealed. "A lot of it has taken some significant damage though. What happened?" she asked, and John grimaced.

The answer to that was a lot to take in.

"A, uh..." he swallowed and looked over at Robyn. She was leering at Eddie again. "A dragon sort of breathed some sort of green fire at me." Both women immediately stopped what they were doing. They stared up at John and blinked hard a couple of times, but neither one of them said anything. "It missed... kind of." Almost instinctively, he reached out to rub at the branding on his chest as he talked about just one of the other times that he had been burned.

"What kind of dragon?" Eddie was the first to recover from her surprise. Robyn glanced away from John to look at her with the same blank expression, but the redhead never even noticed it.

"A, uh... big, green one?" he answered, and Eddie didn't even blink. She just moved on to the next question.

"How many Orcs are there?" The more questions she asked, the more Eddie seemed to bounce in place. The sound of her big butt cheeks clapping together as she jumped in place filled the room, and soon it was John who was the one blushing as she let her excitement overtake her.

"Somewhere over a three hundred?" he answered... and then Eddie paused. Her questioning came to an abrupt stop as she looked down at John's chest and frowned. Her thick lips squished into a thin line as she wrestled with a single decision... and then she looked up to meet John's gaze with her shiny, emerald green eyes and pouted. Her hands pressed against his firm chest as the two of them stared at each other, and John swallowed and prepared himself. He had seen the cheerleaders at his school do this every now and then when they wanted to ask their boyfriends for something expensive. His mother had even done it on occasion whenever she wanted him to do something he hated, like mow the neighbor's lawn for them out of the kindness of his heart.

"Can I see them?" she asked, and John blinked hard. It was a bad time in the kingdom for her to ask for that. John had just started a war... with another kingdom of necromancers... and Eddie was weaker than he was.

"What?!" Robyn cried out. “How is that your first reaction?! What part of fighting off Dragons and Undead makes you think that this is a place you want to go to?!” Eddie didn’t even bother answering her. She heard what Robyn said and took it into account, but the questions only seemed to feed her boundless curiosity.

“Are there undead dragons?” she asked and leaned a little closer to John. She smelled like vanilla.

“I… I really hope not!” he hadn’t even thought of that. “Don’t put that in my head! I have too much to worry about without thinking about that!”

“It doesn’t matter. I-I just want to see the Orcs at least. Those should be safe… right?”