Eastern Sanus
Fox wove between the trees, near enough to the path to know he wouldn't lose it, but far enough to avoid being easily seen. He flitted from shadow to hollow to stone, stopping and evaluating each movement ahead of time for any potential risks he might be taking. It didn't take him long to spot the first lookout.
The man was in a purpose built hide about twenty feet up in a tree, overlooking a bend in the road. It was well built, with blue paint on the main structure beneath sticks and dead leaves that had been applied over the top, imitating the randomness of winter branches against a clear sky. The rear, however, was open, allowing access. An attempt to disguise it had been made, with a camouflaged tarp, however the current occupant had thrown it over the top, leaving it completely useless.
Fox shook his head as he watched the man piss through the opening, not bothering to move to a position that guaranteed that the stream wouldn't get blown into the ladder.
Sloppy, he thought to himself. The hide is good, but the sentry in it is careless.
The hide was well positioned to be able to watch the road, aligned so it could look down long, straight stretches coming off of the bend in either direction. Anyone coming or going would be spotted well before coming close, allowing the sentry to provide whatever encampment lay further along a detailed warning long before anyone got anywhere important.
The question for Fox was, did this represent the entire security arrangement around whatever encampment these bandits might have, or were they paranoid enough to keep a watch out for someone just like Fox? The nearby village might not have been large enough to represent a threat, and the convoys would be determined to get by, not sweep the area clear of trouble, but that didn't mean the bandits couldn't potentially attract trouble anyway. Any good band of bandits would guard all of the approaches for that very reason.
Well, if they were large enough a group to be able to. Spotting additional perimeter defences would tell Fox quite a bit about the encampment even before he found it. With that in mind he waited until the man had finished his business and was back to watching the road before beginning to slowly and carefully skate around it from behind.
The second sentry post was harder to spot than the first. This one wasn't up in the trees, forming a disguised bulk in the barely budding branches of spring. Instead it had been dug into the ground on a small rise, overlooking a small stream. It wouldn't have nearly the view that the first had held, but the stream formed a break in the cover an infiltrator like Fox would be using, and this little dugout was well positioned to take advantage of that.
This was a problem for Fox. Just as it was meant to be. He couldn't be absolutely certain anyone was actually inside of the viewpoint. The front only showed a narrow opening made of carefully stacked branches meant to look like naturally fallen detritus. Anyone inside could remain completely hidden unless they moved far enough to make it obvious even through the small gap. But so long as there was the chance that someone was in there, Fox couldn't risk trying to cross there, no matter how crafty he was at sneaking about.
Eyes narrowed, he sat down behind a small boulder that provided a good vantage point for him. The fact this second sentry point had been built not far away from the first told him quite a bit. It let him know that the bandits were, indeed, adequately paranoid to be a problem for a group as small as Team CFVY. It also told him they had sufficient manpower to build a defense in depth. And that meant…
Better head back, he thought. Coco needs to know that this may be beyond us.
He wasn't far along on his return path when he caught a motion out of the corner of his eye. A flash of pink darted out of sight behind a tumbledown tree's roots, and Fox jerked his head around to stare at the location. For several seconds nothing moved, and he slowly rotated to fully face the position.
"Neo?" he asked quietly. He was fairly sure no one else was near, but there was no need to advertise his position just in case.
He heard a small giggle from behind the roots, and then a diminutive girl slipped out from behind them. Her hair was dual colored, one side pink, the other brown, framing a pale skinned face before disappearing behind her back. Eyes that matched her hair, but in mirror position contemplated him as lips quirked in a mysterious smile. Her white bolero jacket and corset both showed the same dirt and wear as Fox' own clothing, the result of a month of traveling with little chance to properly clean anything, and rested above curvaceous hips that put paid to any thoughts her lack of height was the result of being a child, rather than the adult she was. She cocked her trademark parasol over her shoulder and smirked.
"Care to talk?" he quipped, carefully leaning against a nearby tree.
She stuck her tongue out at him, then brought the parasol down so its tip rested on the ground, and both of her hands on the handle. The amusement in her eyes belied the displeasure of the rest of her expression, and Fox couldn't help but quirk his own lips in a wry expression of amusement.
It was a strange thing, he thought. Here they were, two enemies on the flanks of a dangerous bandit encampment, teasing each other about her inability to speak and his inability to avoid poking at the fact. One might even mistake them for friends.
Shyaright, he thought.
They contemplated one another a moment, and then he shrugged as she put her tongue back where it belonged. "So, here you are. You've never come out when I've called, before. What's different this time?"
She cocked her head to the side a bit, smiling. Her hand came up and she pointed a small, shapely index finger back towards the sentry posts.
"The bandit camp," he stated, framing it less as a question and more simply as confirmation that he understood what she was trying to tell him.
She nodded, then held her hand up, showing four fingers. A half a second passed, and then she rolled her wrist in an elegant way, revealing the back of her hand as she popped up the three fingers furthest from her thumb.
"Forty three of them? You've been able to scout it out?"
She nodded, and let her hand come back to rest atop the other on the parasol.
He glanced that way, careful to keep her in the corner of his eye, and thought about that for a moment. Forty three was a fairly sizable bunch for four hunters. Their ability to survive outside the protection of civilization meant each one of them was a dangerous character, and combined they were a hefty threat. But the number could have been much larger.
He turned back to Neo. "So why tell me? We are kind of on opposite sides, after all. Weren't we gleefully trying to kill one another last month?"
She laughed again, and then shrugged before turning to look towards the still unrevealed encampment. She brought her hand to her stomach and rubbed it.
Fox found himself chuckling a bit. "Ah. We take them down, and you loot their supplies for food."
She gave him a thumbs up.
He grinned and shook his head. "I suppose I've heard of worse reasons to help someone out. Back as a kid I worked with some people I really didn't like just because we had a mutual need and could help one another with it, temporarily."
A frown crossed her face, as though something he had said bothered her, but he couldn't quite figure out what it might have been. He mentally brushed that aside and fixed her with a serious look. "That's still a lot of people for four to deal with."
She nodded, then made several complicated hand gestures. She contemplated him a moment after finishing, then seemed to realize he hadn't understood and sighed. She then made a few boxing throws before miming running.
"Hit and run tactics?"
She nodded.
"What's to keep them from simply taking their supplies and running off?"
With a smile she made a flapping bird with her hands, then shook her head.
"They have no means to fly?"
She nodded again.
"Meaning any attempt would have to be made on the ground, in the spring time mud."
She quirked a grin.
"It might work." He shrugged. "So, if I head back towards the rest of my team, are you going to jump me?"
A strange look he couldn't interpret crossed Neo's face, and she slowly shook her head no.
"But you won't come along, either."
She nodded, her expression a bit rueful.
Fox sighed. What was it with all of the women he found himself around lately being so complicated? "Alright then. I'm going to go back then."
Neo gave a small sigh, then jumped into the air and disappeared from view.
Fox shook his head, then began carefully moving back to the site of the ambush.
A bit later he sat inside the back of a not-quite rolled truck. "So that's the gist of it," he said. "She gave me the info, and expects us to somehow bust this situation up enough for her to be able to take advantage of it for some fresh supplies."
He saw Yatsuhashi's head turn to look at his own pack, settled towards the back of the truck bed. "Our supplies are a little low as well. That town we passed really didn't have much to spare for us."
Fox nodded.
"Are we sure it's not a trap?"
Fox turned back to Coco, who held a thoughtful expression beneath her sunglasses. "You mean there could be quite a few more than she told us, and hopes they can take care of us for her?"
Coco nodded. "We ARE trying to help the person she wants vengeance on."
Fox nodded. "It's a possibility," he acknowledged. "We are definitely a hitch in those plans. But something tells me she's being truthful here."
Velvet stirred from where she had been sitting quietly. "Why?"
Fox sighed. "I don't know. I can't put my finger on it. But something just feels genuine. This time."
Velvet watched him a moment, and for just a second something in her eyes spoke of life. It passed quickly, though, and she turned back aside to contemplate the floor.
Fox looked at her a moment, concerned, and saw the similar worry etched in Yatsuhashi's face.
"Alright," Coco sat up and slapped her knee. "We'll go ahead and operate on the assumption her numbers are correct. But if anything gets dicey, we cut and run. Agreed?"
Fox saw Yatsuhashi nod, and rocked his own head in agreement. A moment later Velvet, too, nodded, her lips fixed in a grim line.
"Alright. The first thing we do is confuse them. Fox, can you get us to that second lookout? The one that kept you from going further?"
"Probably," he nodded, thinking about the approach. "There weren't any others between us and it aside from the one on the road. That's easily avoided."
"Then we take that one out, and before they figure out that one of their people is missing, you get us a better idea about how honest Neo's being."
Fox nodded. "And while I'm doing that?"
"We make sure Neo isn't actually planning to jump you while you're distracted."
Fox frowned. He remembered the smile she had when trying to kill him in Farmdale, and how genuine it had felt as well. "Yeah," he muttered. "Good idea."