Lycus Montag, Axel Graf

Axel walked towards the bag containing his things.  "No, I don't think we have met," answered Axel.  "I'm Axel Graf, of the Grafs of Aetera."  He dressed himself in more combat-appropriate clothing before checking his equipment.  Specifically, he made sure that Laughter had enough dust to get through any dangers that might occur down the tunnels.  Axel read the note left for them by the academy staff and looked down the cave.  "Hmm... Pools of deep water, looks like we have Sangueteeth."  He tried to peer further down the cave.  It was way to foggy to see anything.  "I'm not sure if we're going to be able to guess anything else in this tunnel.  This persistent fog is going to be a real trouble. What do you think?"

"Looks like we'll be groping around in the dark for this one." said Axel. "Just give me a little bit of time to adjust my weapons. I don't have too many bullets in this bag, and I think I'm going to need my gun a lot." Axel field stripped Spite and quick changed its firing and feeding mechanism with a several pieces drawn from the bag. Good thing the academy personnel included my aura adapter in the absence of the ammo box. Soon, Spite was re-assembled, and the removed pieces were dropped into Axel's bag. "One more moment," he called out. Axel took a metal chain from his bag. It was a rather long chain. He wrapped one end securely around his forearm and fastened the other end of the chain to the bottom of Laughter's haft. It was a small pre-combat ritual that Axel picked up from his time at Signal, and he always made sure that he honored it.

"Well, I can't see much," Axel said, peering off the distance and following the arc of the flare. "Can you?" Axel heard the a rumbling sound in the distance. "Wait, you hear that?" he whispered. "Could those be ..." he took out his Academy initiation description and scanned it briefly. "Could those be Burrowham rumbling in the walls of the cave." Axel cocked Spite.

"Alright then."  He followed Gustave's lead around the puddles.  "You know, I'm not sure.  I was thinking of just disturbing the puddles before we walk around them.  I don't know if my assumption is correct, but I'd guess the leaches react to motion felt through the water, seeing as how there aren't many other senses that would help them well in a place like this.  If shooting the water is too loud and is likely to attract other Grimm, then perhaps we could just pick up some rocks along the way and toss them in.  We might be lucky enough to catch a couple of leaches as they're jumping at us, but in all likelihood, we won't really be able to defend ourselves against these jumping leeches once they're out of the water leaping, so we just have to hope to find them first and avoid them."

Lycus stopped to think. 'This could backfire really easily but... I can't think of anything better.' "Alright but... I can barely see anything down here, let alone know when the puddles are coming up." Lycus reached down to his weapon. 'can barely even see my own dust canisters...that's gonna be a problem if I need to swap them...' "If you can figure out where the puddles I'd be fine with you leading." He said before carefully moving away from the wall to allow Axel to pass

Axel moved past Lycus, and together they walked along, trying to best to keep away from the puddles. Just as Lycus had said, it was difficult to see anything, just as it was impossible to find anything to toss into the puddles to trigger any present leaches.

"You know what? This isn't working, just like you said earlier. We have no way to deal with the leaches before they jump...unless you have enough freezing dust to freeze the surface of the puddles. I'll shoot the puddles with my pistols if we really need to, but that will probably attract Grimm, and I'm only going to do that if there's no way to navigate around the puddles." Axel started moving down the tunnel again.

"Well, now that the flare has died out, it's tough for me to see where to put the ice bridge. Do you feel comfortable firing off another flare so you can check your canisters and we can see where to place the ice?" Axel asked.

Axel and Lycus had been moving down the tunnel before reaching the crossroads. Once at the crossroads, they stopped. "Do you hear that? It sounds like fighting down this right tunnel. I can't be sure, but I hope it is. It'll mean Grimm, but at least we'll also find others, assuming that the sounds are indeed of fighting, of course. Right tunnel, then?"

As the pair continue down the righthand path, they eventually spot the bodies of two Grimm, one with a sword sticking in it, and shortly after they spot a woman, seemingly annoyed that her sword is stuck.

((OOC: It's this topic.))

Axel and Lycus spot a woman, and they hurry on over to her. "Good job with these Grimm. We heard some fighting from down the tunnel and hurried over." Axel looked more carefully and saw the woman's sword was stuck. "Salabinder, huh?" He shrugged. "I'm Axel, by the way." He extended his hand forward to shake hands. "This is Lycus."