Those Of Helios [Team KLAJ]

Location: Finnek Forest
Time: 1300

Team KLAJ was deployed into Finnek Forest to investigate a series of cases involving people in the area going missing. It was thought to be the cause of Grimm in the area, and as such, the mission would be handled like a normal search and destroy case.

An Airship dropped off Team KLAJ in a large clearing in the Finnek Forest, before promptly taking off and disappearing over the forest canopy. Not much detail was given where to search, and the team would be left to their own judgement during this mission.

Kei

This would be the first mission Team KLAJ would do together, but that thought didn't leave Kei at all excited. To him, it was just another simple search and destroy mission, just with more people. Really, it wasn't nothing he hasn't done before. A cool breeze brushed passed Kei's face, rustling the blue leaves of the forest, nicely adding to the calmness of the clear midday sky. Crossing his arms, Kei looked at Jet, Lloyd, and Avery. Was he supposed to take charge? He knew he was supposed to be their team leader, but it didn't feel right with him to do so. He usually stayed with himself, and avoided teams all together. When he first came to the Academy around a year ago, he would have never dreamt of himself in his current position. "Well," Kei started uneasily to the rest of the group, looking around on the ground for something as he spoke, "I do suppose we should decide on someway to start off." Nearby Kei spotted a small twig on the ground. He walked towards it, bent over and picked it up. He lifted the small stick to his eye level, and looked down it's shaft, judging the straightness of the small piece of wood. Satisfied, Kei returned to the group, and crouched down in the middle of them. "Usually," Kei said, standing the twig horizontally off of the ground, "People leave decisions like this to fate," As he said fate, Kei let go of the twig, and the stick fell over, pointing north-east. "Me though? I don't believe in fate, and I suggest we start off going that way." Kei said, casually pointing the opposite way the stick was pointed, suggesting the group starts by going south east.

Mood: Meh Condition: Fine Health: 220 Aura: 150

Character Profile

Status, Health, Aura, Equipment Conditions:

Avery stepped out of the ship dressed in her usual combat attire except with an obnoxiously pink umbrella that'd stand out like a sore thumb inside the blue vastness of the forest. She deemed it necessary what with the dispatch being in the middle of the day and the glaring sun out.

"Finland Forest. It's been a while," Avy said as she savoured the cool wind that breezed through, only to be interrupted by the pilot correcting her of the forest's name. Not that it mattered. She was still stuck in this boring place with a boring mission issued by a bunch of boring people. Their Team Clone whatever-its-name should only be deployed for mass destruction, not search-and-destroy. If it were up to her, she'd just nuke this whole forest down and get rid of the grimms all at once. Problem solved.

Avery looked at Kei, aka their leader, when the latter began to speak. A small smile curved on the corner of her lip. His uneasiness was amusing mostly because she hadn't seen him like this before. She continued to watch in silence as he picked up a stick and apparently used it for directions, even saying stuff about going against 'fate'. She lolled her head to the side.

"Why don't we just split up and send a flare when we find something?" she asked blandly. "There's four of us; one person per direction. Faster and easier that way," she added. Personally she just liked doing things alone but in this case it was also convenient.

Jet was cursing inwardly. That sun was way too high and way too bright for him. He could see well enough when he was under some form of shade from the canopy, but whenever light would pierce through the trees or they'd be out in a clearing like now, he could only see some shapes in a blur of what looked like smog or something. It’s not like he wasn’t used to it, it was just very annoying and made him wonder if he shouldn’t have brought his own pink umbrella. “Pfft, talking about ignoring fate but you’re still picking a direction based on the result of throwing a stick, sounds like fate wins there.” Laughing a bit at Kei who just happened to be standing right in front line with the sun, making him almost invisible, Jet attempted to playfully slap him in the back, but it was actually a tree in front of him so he slapped the trunk, his hand stinging from the unexpected hardness.

Shaking his hand off as if this was all normal and he didn’t just look like an idiot, he turned back toward the group, where Kei actually was. “Well, I’m typically a team person but Avy has the right idea in my opinion. I’ll be frank, I can’t see much right now, it’s too bright, but if I pick a direction and walk straight, I’m bound to bump into something. Negative point is while I can hear the flare; I probably won’t be able to see it, so if we do that, I hope you won’t mind if I keep track of the GPS in your scrolls or phone with mine, just so I can find you…” Jet was trying to look around and even seriously considered making himself a sort of cap with a bunch of branches and leaves to maybe get some shielding from the sun above him. One could say he should have thought ahead and they would be right, but when he got called he wasn’t anywhere near his room or even the school and had to head straight back to the airship so as to not be late.

Looking around, Jet managed to see where would be best for him roughly in the west direction. “If we do split, I call this way. Forest is more dense so I’ll see better.”

Lloyd was following behind everyone as they got out of the airship that dropped him and the other members of his team in the middle of a clearing in the Finnek Forest. He listened to the whole debate about where to go and how to proceed to search for clues about those mysterious disappearances, but he didn't took part in it as he was busy looking at the files concerning the people missing. He tried to see if anything could link them but without success. Males and females, young and old, humans and faunus, Hunters and civilians and no precise trait that could link them. Really the only thing they had was the fact that they supposedly went missing in the woods, which was sure not helping with their search.

Thinking about the plan of Avy to each go their own way, Lloyd nodded as it was sensible to pick that option, but it still felt like they should at least base their search on something. They couldn't just roam the forest hoping to stumble on something related to the disappearances. Looking back on his Scroll, he switched tab, going from the files about the missing people to a map of the woods, scanning it while coming up with a theory. "Alright, so, although I agree that splitting up is not a bad idea, we can't just go about and hope for the best. We should have a plan of action. If we go with the worse case scenario and that all the people are dead and not because of Grimms, their bodies would probably have been disposed around the same area as it would only take one finding for a full search operation to be launched. In a less drastic scene, they are all alive, or at least most but the again, they might be kept all together. Too many disappeared in these woods, so it's definitively not a coincidence. So, if we do split, lets focus our search for places where a large amount of people, dead or alive, could be hidden."

He knew that he may have sounded overly dramatic, but people may have been in danger right now, kids included so Lloyd made it somewhat personal to find them. Looking back at Kei, he awaited his decision. He was the leader after all.

OCC: It is the first time that Lloyd has his new prosthetic arm with you guys, so use that if you want ^^

Kei

Their first team mission and the very first course of action the others wanted to take was to split up? Well, in all actuality, it probably was the best course of action. Again though, Kei couldn't help but question himself, was it right thing to do? It was a team mission after all. What am I thinking? Kei caught himself, It's the council that wants us to work together, not me. Since when was I one to care about the feelings of others? His very minor internal conflict resolved, Kei nodded showing his agreement with splitting up and searching. "I suppose you're all right," Kei said, "As fun as a school field trip would be with all of you, we need to be realistic in realizing that we won't be making nearly as much as progress compared to splitting up." Kei turned to Lloyd, unintentionally glancing at his prosthetic arm in the process. The fake arm was new and made Kei curious at what exactly happened to the Vanheim since he had last seen him. As he recalled, Lloyd had both of his arms not too long ago. As much as Kei wanted to ask what had happened to him, Kei remained quiet about his curiosity. He wasn't so cold-hearted that he never took into account when it wasn't appropriate to be insensitive to the feelings of others. "I wouldn't get too optimistic on what'll we'll find." Kei said to Lloyd, "I know you know the nature of Grimm just as well as I do. They don't leave much behind." "That being said," Kei continued switching his gaze between Jet, Avy, and Lloyd, "There's no telling when or what kind of Grimm we'll run into on our own. As Jet said, let's keep contact and our location between each other with our scrolls." Kei pulled out his scrolls intending to set up a form of online chat the team could use to communicate amongst each other. He would be unsuccessful though as his scroll all of a sudden was unable to retrieve any cellular data, killing any usability it had with any software that required online usage. Frowning to himself, Kei flicked the tapped the screen of his scroll a couple of times as if it could fix his cellular problem, but to no surprise, it didn't fix anything. "Is this your doing?" Kei bluntly said to Avy, blaming her honestly no real reason.

Mood: Meh Condition: Fine Health: 220 Aura: 150

Character Profile

Status, Health, Aura, Equipment Conditions:

Location: Finnek Forest
Time: 1305
At this point, all cellular connection is cut off from each of the scrolls in the party. The reason why is unknown. On top of this, there is a sudden, faint blast of an explosive towards the North-East of Team KLAJ's current location. The actual explosion itself couldn't be seen due to the forest blocking any visuals, and as such, it is impossible to gauge the size of the explosion or how far away it is through normal, sensory means.

They sure talk a lot. Avery moved beside Jet to give him a shade under her umbrella since his sight sensitivity was both comical and sad at the same time. I guess this is their idea of 'planning’: redundancy. She mentally sighed. Avery liked her teammates no doubt, but that didn’t mean she liked them in combat. There was Jet who was always too loud, Lloyd who overanalyses everything and Kei who was, well, he’s good…

"Is this your doing?"

…at being such an a-hole. "What?" Avery’s gaze snapped to him. It wasn’t the first time he accused her of something either. "'Leader', don't go blaming your incompetence on me. Ask your stick of fate, maybe it has a solution to your problem." She rolled her eyes and took out her phone. Stupid fancy scrolls. At least her sat phone was useful in situations like these... or not.

Avery stared at the screen with a frown. Now this was weird. Both of their devices didn’t work. She'd understand if cellular functions were unavailable because they're stupid like that and fail when you need them the most, like in an island, but her sat? It was deliberate. Radio interference. A jammer? So humans are involved, like always. Can’t be far. As if on cue there was a faint sound of an explosion from a distance. She folded her umbrella and stuck it on the ground using the pointy end.

"Well, I'll head on first, ladies. Bye!" Avery ran off and hopped onto a materialised ice board which ascended to a good vantage point before zooming forward to the direction of the sound.

Squinting a lot, Jet followed the conversation without saying much. Lloyd wasn’t wrong, there was no reason to split either bodies or captives, so they’d probably be in a cave or something close-by. That being said, we have no reason the believe that it was humans, maybe just a particularly strong and hungry King-Taijitu on a rampage. As sad as this is, it’s the way the world is right now.

Sudden shade surprised him a bit until he spotted Avery beside him. Not wanting to interrupt anyone he simply gave her toothy smile for thanks. While not perfect or even good, his vision was at least good enough to check his scroll screen. He realized at the same time as Kei that they weren’t working. The light banter that followed between Avy and their team leader was pretty funny at least, Jet managing, just barely, to stifle a snort at the stick of fate comment. That was a nice one.

Not much time to comment though as an explosion was heard in the distance. Not that they could see it anyway, but Jet didn’t even bother trying to look. The sun suddenly started shining on his face again when Avery dropped the umbrella, making Jet lift his hands in the air to block the direct light. The blonde left, though he wasn’t sure how since he saw her form lift in the air but unable to see the ice board. Well, he knew she could fly with her ice, but not seeing her do it made it look strange for a few seconds. Looking at the umbrella beside him, the shrugging at his teammates, he picked up the pink umbrella of sun protection +5 and ran to follow the girl. Chances are, by the time he gets there, any fighting will be done, making him wonder when he’ll be strong enough with his semblance to fly too.