SEASON 1 EPISODE 25 // JUNGLE (AIN’T NO GOD IN THESE STREETS)Collaborative post between Forest State & Lunas Legion
DATE // SEPTEMBER 15TH, 2025
LOCATION // RURAL THAILAND
CAST // Antares ‘Khione’ Gray, Fayza ‘Nefertet’ Ghazaway, Lupe ‘Morph’ Cuevas
The exercise would start with Team Antares being one member down - Noelle hadn’t shown up, instead opting to stay back in her room and to ignore the summons from the producers and eat the consequences. She was happy with her odds of getting off without much in the way of punishment, and she also believed that staying out and letting the team crash and burn without her was… One of the first steps in her plan. That was to say, she believed that slashing the popularity of her newfound enemy would begin by letting her see what things were like without her and without any other experienced help.
And so, as they were dropped in the jungle by helicopter, the cameras having been placed in strategic locations already, most of them hidden from view and only able to be found if one really looked for them, they had one less member than the other team and they were at a disadvantage already. All according to Noelle’s plan… They had been dropped in a clearing, and there was a backpack waiting for them there just like there was one in the other starting area. It had a few basic things, a couple of first aid kits and some bottles of water mainly as well as some energy bars. If they wanted more, they’d have to find it in the field, which was part of the challenge. There were ‘loot boxes’ stored around the exercise zone but their locations weren’t always obvious, and if they were, they were definitely contested.
It was a live fire exercise. Just because it was a controlled environment didn’t mean it was going to be easy. And as the helicopter took off in the sky once again, they were here for likely the next three days, if things went according to the usual schedule and one side didn’t jump out to an early lead and beat the other to the flag without conflict in one or two days. With the helicopter disappearing from view, it was… Time to get started.
“Well, let’s get going I guess.” Antares sighed, her entire body still aching and sore from where Daniele had beaten her not so long ago as she moved to pick up the backpack, hauling it over one shoulder. She wasn’t in the mood for this right now, everything ached but at least she wasn’t sweating, having used her power to make an area of cooler temperature around herself to stave off the worst of the jungle heat. “Lupe, can you do camouflage, go in front of me and Fayza? We’re a person down, the only way we win is getting there first.”
“You realize it takes, uh, some time to shapeshift?” Lupe asked, looking to Antares. “Can’t exactly keep changing on the fly to match the surroundings, if we were just staying in one spot it would be possible…”
“I figured you could just do camo patterns or something, not chameleon type stuff, but whatever.” Antares shrugged, moving to leave by the trail, hovering slightly off the ground. “Let’s get going anyways.”
Lupe nodded silently as Fayza followed after Antares, none of them… Particularly in the mood for this, it wasn’t like Lupe or Fayza were out of the loop with them being down their top pick while the other team had all of theirs. Lupe’s skin shifted, a green and brownish camouflage pattern appearing as they made their way through the jungle, nothing quite showing up… Yet. But even though they had just started, it didn’t really sound like they were alone per say, there was still the sound of rustling and branches being pushed around, not too far off in the distance.
“Looks like we’ve got something up ahead.” Antares said, motioning for Fayza and Lupe to stop as she summoned her ice, small flecks of it beginning to orbit around her as she hovered there. But she couldn’t afford to waste time, not even a little. They made it to the flag before the other team, long before the other team, or they lost. “Probably angry.” Antares added, moving forwards slowly and warily, keeping her eyes peeled. Without Noelle, they didn’t have much in the way of offensive firepower. Fayza was good defensively, Lupe out here was… Not much help, which left her as their main source of offense.
Fayza simply stood back, she wasn’t about to put herself in the line of fire for a leader that she didn’t trust all that much after witnessing the saga of events that had led to them being a member down in the first place - not that she knew the full story, but she knew enough to say she didn’t exactly think Antares was competent. “And you have a plan to deal with this, yeah?” she asked, eyes glancing to the side as the sounds grew closer, it becoming apparent there were multiple contacts in the area.
“Don’t know what we’re up against yet.” Antares said, more specks of white appearing around her as she eyed the sides, eyes darting between them. “You know your power, use it however you want but keep yourself and Lupe safe. Some form of walls off to the side would be nice though.”
Letting out a slow sigh, Fayza nodded and worked on hardening the dirt and raising it up next to them, leaving them in something of a funnel which rose up to her head height. It would be harder for something to flank them, sure, but the trees already served as a natural barrier and she had the feeling it could backfire. “And if we need to run to the side?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You made them, you can destroy them.” Was all Antares said, still keeping her eyes and ears wary and rising up slightly higher, looking for a better view or as good of a view as she could find in the jungles.
“I wouldn’t have made them in the first place if I was running the tactics here,” countered Fayza, looking from side to side also to see if she could see what was approaching them.
The attack, however, came fast and furious. Eleven quick moving shapes bursting out of the trees and running towards the walls they had just created, heading towards the middle section where Antares was located as well as Lupe and Fayza behind her, Fayza taking a hard step backwards when they showed up. Their appearance wasn’t like something that had been seen before by the three heroes, not in person anyway - they seemed to be made of a black liquid, they took the form of dogs but they weren’t living and breathing animals as much as they were some kind of magical puppet, the liquid dripping slightly as they moved, their forms unsteady. As the wind brushed against them when they ran it seemed to alter their form ever so slightly, but whether this flexibility was an advantage or disadvantage or not remained to be seen.
“If there was a time to do something…” Fayza started, preparing her own power as she kept her eyes on the enemy, counting the shapes. “It’d be right fuckin’ now…”
Antares said nothing, not bothering to reply to Fayza as she launched her accumulated shards of ice at the oncoming pack in a wide spray, more shards of ice forming up around her as others were expended as ammo, orbiting around her before she added them to the spray when they were at what she hoped was sufficiently high speed.
The ice hit the… Magical dogs at high speed, ripping straight through some of them and causing the black liquid to spill to the ground before dissolving entirely once it had formed a puddle… At the same time, Fayza was moving for an attack of her own, but she was better with hitting with large projectiles than she was at hitting with a number of smaller ones. She ripped some of the hardened dirt from the wall telepathically, throwing two of the large chunks onto the incoming path of the dogs after six of them had been downed from the initial ice attack - four more of them were caught up in the path as the rock hard dirt blocks skidded for a yard or two before coming to a stop, exploding the liquid constructs as it ran headfirst into four of them.
It seemed they had been approaching fast enough that the constructs hadn’t been able to change directions or jump to avoid the attack, each one of them practically a mini car when they were at full speed… Fortunately, the attacks had begun before they had reached full speed. But, the battle wasn’t exactly done yet, there was still one that had swerved out of the way of the block before starting to run once again and accelerating in the direction of Antares, hitting near peak speeds once again - maybe about sixty miles per hour - before launching itself into the air aimed right at her face, claws forming out of the liquid as the thing aimed to land right in the middle of this little formation of Antares, Lupe, and Fayza. It slammed into Antares at that high speed, going through some of those shards which tore off some of the mass but didn’t kill the thing outright like they had the others, leaving Antares to fend for herself in close combat.
“Fucker-” Antares swore loudly as the dog slammed into her, summoning ice just in front of her and attempting to just ram it into the dog while flying backwards, trying to throw the dog off herself. The attack would work - some of the mass went flying too, the dog staggering as it went backwards before some of the mass was distributed once again through the body, leaving it stable, and it seemed the dog had recovered quickly, launching itself forward once again as Fayza took another step back to stand clear of the situation.
“You need to get that thing off you unless you want to risk me breaking something if I crush it for you!” she barked at Antares, ripping off another block from the hardened dirt wall telepathically and hovering it near the site of the battle but not bringing it down just yet. No, that would be a bit too risky considering it would likely result in the thing turning to liquid once again and the block would go straight through the dog, crushing Antares instead.
“I’m trying here-” Antares grunted out, trying to throw the dog off her with physical force rather than using her ice, briefly jerking downwards at high speed before stopping just before she hit the ground. The evasive move, however, didn’t work, and it just allowed the dog to get closer to her, pushing her on her back while it nipped at her face with its mouth, sharpened teeth forming from the same liquid the entire thing was made out of, the entire jaw shifting on the fly as the thing adapted and went from hunting mode to attack mode, now that it had its enemy right where it wanted it.
Antares just glared at the dog before slamming herself upwards, trying to break away from it yet again with her flight and put enough distance between it and herself so Fayza could finally get a solid hit on the thing. Finally, her evasion worked and as she accelerated into the air, Fayza was able to bring the block down on the head of the dog as Antares stayed out of the range, the thing dissolving into the liquid once again before the liquid disappeared entirely.
“Fucking hell, you get hurt by all that?” asked Lupe, as the one that was carrying the backpack with the first aid supplies in it. Fayza, meanwhile, didn’t move to pick Antares up but did look around to see if there were any other enemies in the area as she dissolved the dirt walls next to them and took a few more steps forward down the trail, silent as she usually was.
“I’m fine.” Antares shook her head. “Thing had to make teeth, didn’t get a bite into me. Let’s keep moving.” Antares started moving after Fayza, heading down the trail, more white flecks spinning back up around her as a pre-emptive measure. At least they now had some idea of what they might be up against out here.
“Can’t wait to get out of this place…” muttered Fayza, walking ahead of the rest of the group, keeping her distance. She wasn’t the most social person but she seemed especially distant at the moment even if she had done her part in the fight - and even though she had done her part, it hadn’t been out of any greater concern for anyone that had been picked for this team as much as it had been out of, well, a desire to do well in this exercise. Which meant not letting any teammates pick up injuries when they were already down just by virtue of not having Noelle around.
“Big fucking structure up there that looks too new to have been here before,” Lupe said, pointing out a building that they would see when they had walked down the trail a bit more, the trail still not splitting - but it seemed a split might come up soon, with one path taking them to the structure Lupe was pointing out. It looked like it was designed similarly to some of the traditional temples of the area. “Might have loot in it, are we checking it out or are we going ahead?”
Antares paused, thinking. This wasn’t the type of thing she was good at, she wasn’t a tactician by any stretch of the imagination. Someone who was more experienced might’ve had a better idea of what to do but that wasn’t her.
“We’ll take a look I guess.” Antares shrugged. “If there’s too many enemies we can always backtrack and go around.”
When they moved down the single file trail they would find themselves running across… A clearing of sorts. A lot of empty space, the temple in the middle of it, and at the other end of the clearing the trail continued. Probably a path to take them to the next part of the main trail, since it seemed like this was an optional detour. “Yeah, this has to be new,” said Lupe, looking it over. “Are we headed inside? I see an entrance but I don’t see anything around as far as, well, enemies go.”
“Expect some inside.” Antares said, more flecks of white ice appearing around her. “Hopefully this is worth it.” Antares moved forwards, hovering across the clearing towards the temple.
There was no door or anything of the sort, simply an entrance which led forward into a hallway, the walls made of stone and wide enough for two people to walk at one time. There was very little lighting, however. No lighting in the hallway, actually, and it seemed like most of the lighting was coming from within the building itself, but… It didn’t seem like there was very much light even in the room that this hallway apparently led to. “We’re not going to be able to see shit…” Lupe muttered under his breath as they continued. They couldn’t even tell exactly how long the stone hallway was for that matter, or what it was made of other than some kind of stone which was smooth to the touch.
“Stop here.” Antares said, stopping herself. “I’ll be blunt, we can’t see shit and we can probably expect something down there, if it’s more of the dogs those things will be out of the darkness before we even see them. Fayza, I’m assuming you can’t use your powers in here?”
“Not really…” muttered Fayza, trailing behind Antares and stopping in her tracks, watching for anything that might be off in the distance. Not that she could actually see much more than anyone else.
“Then we turn back, we leave and we hope there’s another chance to grab more loot later, unless you two want to continue on. We can’t fight in this darkness.” Antares said, moving to turn around. She didn’t expect the loot to be unguarded, and if it was more of the dogs… That was the very definition of bad news.
Fayza offered a simple shrug, while Lupe wasn’t sure either way. “It looks like there’s more light up ahead, but on the other hand, the final decision is up to you,” she stated. It did seem like there was more light at the end of the hallway… Not a lot, but enough that they weren’t moving in darkness.
“Well, we’ve come this far in.” Antares said, starting to move forwards again, her ice floating away from her into a line in front of her around knee height, spreading across the hall. Hopefully it might give a little bit of warning if they were about to walk into anything. “May as well have a look.”
It didn’t seem like they ran into anything in the hallway - they showed up in another room made of stone once they had gotten through it, a spiral stairway in the middle which seemed to lead to some of the upper levels, while surrounding them there were four walls lit by torches, providing not a ton of light but enough that the entire room wasn’t hidden in darkness. There were sounds, however, of something stirring now that they had entered this part of the room, and as they passed through, they possibly stepped on some kind of pressure sensor - a metal door fell down from above the hallway, blocking the path from being used again. If they wanted out, it seemed they would have to use the one on the other side, but there was no telling what that hallway held that the other one didn’t. But… Nothing was immediately visible just yet, other than the walls and the stairway.
“Well, looks like the only way is forwards.” Antares sighed, flying up to one of the torches to try and pry it off the wall. Light would help, after all, since if they could see, they could fight. “And we’ll be going up, unless you two have any objections.” Antares continued, flying back down to hand the torch she’d collected to Lupe before collecting a second for Fayza and finally a third for herself before moving to lead them up the staircase, torch held in front of her.
As they started moving up the staircase, though, they would still hear something stirring in the background - and about halfway up, they’d be able to turn around and see ten figures moving from the shadows which were made from the same liquid as the other creatures, the dogs, but took a different shape… No, these ones definitely weren’t dogs, it looked like they took a more humanoid shape, as they moved towards the lit stairwell it looked particularly like they had the form of skeletons, the liquid once again dripping slightly as they moved.
“Up!” Antares shouted, launching herself airborne to let Lupe and Fayza move past her and up the staircase. In here she was their only actual fighter, and that meant it was her job to be the rearguard as she flung all the ice she’d pooled earlier down at them in a single stream rather than a wide spray, moving her telekinetically controlled volley of ice shards across the shadow-liquid skeletons, aiming for legs and hips as she slowly moved back up the staircase.
The group of skeletons quickly dissolved form the attack, it didn’t seem they were that durable or even as durable as the dogs the group had fought before, but there were definitely more of them, they would arrive on another floor shortly after they started moving up the stairwell but even on this floor there were more noises than there had been on the last as it became apparent that this building had more traps to it than it seemed to at first, another group of eleven skeletons making their appearance known as soon as they entered the floor.
Well, at least these things were nowhere near as bad as the dogs were, Antares reflected as she spun more ice up around her and flung it at the approaching skeletons, not going for precision this time given the skeletons seemed to be far less durable than the dogs had been, she didn’t need stopping power, she needed area and more chance of hitting.
The attack took about four of them out but they were still advancing on the group, large in numbers but not exactly as strong, but still, if they ended up getting right up on them, they could pose a problem… They were at about mid range as the group settled onto the second floor and took defensive positions. “Might be able to turn back, but they’re still here even if we cleared the bottom floor…” Lupe muttered, trying to determine the best option.
“We don’t know what’s down the other hallway, and you know we heard something moving down there, that isn’t clear for sure.” Antares said in response, moving forwards slowly towards the skeletons while staying airborne, firing off ice as soon as she could make it appear around her. She could fly, so if she could keep the skeletons focused on her she didn’t need to worry about Lupe and Fayza. Stupid fucking Noelle, she’d have been more than useful right now.
Some of the shards of ice hit, some of them missed, but enough of them hit to make an impact and to thin the numbers down to where they weren’t in immediate danger, the only ones of the skeletons that were remaining being the ones that had been further from the heroes in the first place… They had a chance to move up to the next level before they were caught up with but that depended on whether or not they wanted to take the risk. And there was definitely risk involved.
“You guys want to try our luck some more and head up again, or head back down and hope to God there’s nothing in the other tunnel?” Antares asked, casually flinging a few poorly-aimed shards of ice after the last remaining shadow-liquid skeletons. “Lupe, how many floors do you think this place has?”
“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” asked Lupe, pausing and keeping behind Antares. “But we’re two floors deep, we… Might as well keep going and see if the loot is anywhere around here, I think we’e getting pretty high up.”
“You saw it first, so…” Antares shrugged. “But on and up it is.” Antares didn’t move immediately, instead pausing for a few seconds to summon more ice around herself until she was almost a small tornado of ice, but she’d pretty much reached her limit there with the amount she could hold and not risk losing control over it all. Letting out a barely audible noise that might’ve been a groan, Antares led them on up to the third floor of the temple. Really, there better be something worth it at the end. They were losing considerable amounts of time here, after all.
When they reached the third floor they would find that it was a bit better lit up than the ones that had come before it were, and there was one wall in specific which had a large chest on it - this was one they were looking for, possibly. However, it seemed to be guarded by two enemies in specific, both of them skeletons like the ones they had run into before but larger in their size and stature, having a longer reach and being more capable of doing damage to the heroes that were facing down with them. In the hands of each of them was a sword made of the black liquid material meaning… They had something of a challenge on their hands here, more so than they had before, with each of the enemies standing at about ten feet tall.
Not the best situation to walk into when only one of them had much capability to fight back right here.
The sole bit of good news was, the skeletons weren’t moving towards them quite yet. “You two go down to the second floor.” Antares hissed out, keeping her eyes focused on the skeletons before turning to eye the rest of the room. They were nearly twice her size, and if they got a solid hit on her, well, she was done for. But she had room to maneuver, to dodge and weave, and really they wouldn’t last the exercise on just what they had. “If I can’t take them I’ll fall back down the stairs and we’ll leave by the tunnel.”
Lupe and Fayza nodded and they didn’t have to be told twice to back out of the way - they did just that, both of them heading back down the stairwell to the last floor which had been cleared, waiting for the results of the fight above as the two skeletons moved into action, a bit quicker than their counterparts while still being slowed down somewhat by their large size, one of them starting to wind up for a large swing towards Antares that took some time to build up to.
Antares grinned, rather uncharacteristically for her. She normally wasn’t eager to fight, but right now two big skeletons to pummel sounded properly fucking thereputic. “Let’s dance.” Antares shot forwards, aiming to go between the pair of skeletons and dodge the very telegraphed swing from one of the skeletons as she did so, offloading the entirety of her built-up tornado of shards of ice at the skeleton’s leg joint as she passed. Step one, cripple the things. Step two, when crippled, fly out of reach and just sit there and blast with ice until done. Simple, effective, not very risky… Even if it was slow.
The attack did send some of the leg joint’s mass flying but it wasn’t enough to cripple it, probably because the thing had more mass total than the other smaller enemies such as the dogs and the other skeletons had - and it didn’t stop the skeleton from completing the wind up, swinging the sword in the direction of Antares and striking her in the side, the thing not quite being sharp enough to cut her in half but still being plenty sharp enough to injure and send her flying as it slammed into her, her weapon against the skeletons gone also because of how she had used all her shards in one attack… And it just put her in position for the other skeleton to move to make a flanking move.
Antares shot back up, groaning out in pain, not moving back to engage and instead flying towards the opposite side of the room, ice slowly flickering back into existence around her. Fighting these things was not an option. Too tough, she simply didn’t have the firepower to put them down, but she should have enough time to open the chest, at least see what was there and maybe grab something and run. Hopefully.
As she went towards the chest, though, she would just find herself in the path of an attack coming from the rear, from the second of the two large skeletons, which could keep up with her fairly decently considering the size gap between them - she’d be able to evade the attack narrowly, the sword slamming into the stone floor and breaking it a bit where it had hit, but the other skeleton was still moving to block her from the other direction… She was in for a fight if she wanted to go for the loot, a fight that was hard to deal with on her own.
“Alright, fuck this noise.” Antares swore, swerving in midair and turning back towards the staircase, flying up towards the ceiling and aiming to go over the top. These things were too fast for her, maybe if there was one she’d have been able to outmaneuver it, or if she’d crippled one with her first strike, but she hadn’t. And as it stood, she honestly didn’t think she could take both of them as it were, she’d been getting lucky so far and she wasn’t about to test that out more.
“Didn’t go as expected I suppose,” said Lupe, once she had returned to the floor below, Lupe and Fayza waiting right on the stairwell for her to get back so they could start moving without having around for too long and exposing themselves to danger.
“Yeah.” Antares grunted out, her wounds obviously hurting. “Let’s get out of this stupid fucking place.”
The trio was able to move back to the ground floor without further incident, the tunnel not having much either in terms of threats. It seemed the tunnel had been safe, but the other one had been locked to prevent them from getting away without clearing the first floor since they’d have to cross it before they could reach the exit tunnel. The only thing that was left for them to do now was, well, continue down the trail...
