Owner	Pose
Diana Prince	The Doomgate had been opened and a horde of Undead Centaurs had escaped on to the island. They were believed to be fully wiped out, but some had managed to make it to the Enchanted Forest. Diana had pursued them that same night, and believed she'd found the last of them, but there were rumors of a spreading 'rot' in the forest in the wake of the zombie Centaur rampage. Were the rumors unfounded? Or was there merit to it... Diana had volunteered to start the investigation in to this very claim. Cassie had been woken up and 'encouraged' to join her on the first expedition to the edge of the forest. The two had suited up and gone to the stables. Diana had elected to leave her horse in its stall and instead she pulled Jumpa out of his pen. "Horses are easily spooked by the undead, and Kangas traverse the forest terrain far better>" She'd said back in the stables. The two had set out to the east and crossed the grasslands, made their way through the foothills and to the edge of the forest. This is where they are now. On Jumpa, Diana wears a different set of armor this afternoon, one of pure leather with gold emblems marking the edges of the bodice and the tabards of the skirt.. On her back, she wears a quiver of arrows with a short bow made for hunting. She holds on to Jumpa's reigns and guides the animal in to the forest, her eyes scanning the trees here. "It was said that the Centaur's fed on small game animals, and some may have... carried the 'Flesh Rot' disease in to the woods. Most natural creatures will avoid them, if this is the case, but some may fall prey and a chain of spreading it could get very much out of control." The Princess says as she and Jumpa take a moment just within the tree line. Diana looks to Cassie and then exhales. "Let us hope that is not the case. Keep your senses spread... you will be able to smell 'Flesh Rot' on the winds... if it lingers here." And with that said, Jumpa and the Princess start to move again in to the woods...
Cassie Sandsmark	"Mrph. Gimme five more minutes I won't be late I promise..." The 'convincing' required has less to do with Cassie's willingness to engage in heroic action and more the fact that after the great and heroic battle at the Doomgate, there were considerable subsequent celebrations of their unusual new guests, complete with all the usual Themysciran revels. And Cassie likes her a good party, whether its on Man's World or here in her new second home. So there is partying. And then passing out and sleeping! And so when she's woken up, the young woman sounds a bit like one might imagine she would have as a kidding getting hassled awake by her mother for school in the morning, or, more recently, by a friend trying to haul her off to classes after passing out at the end of some college party. Thus there is some rolling over and mumbling, pulling up of covers to protect herself from the evil noise, and other general reticence about waking up! However, sleep is a funny thing, and her resistance mostly results from that state of near consciousness when waking up seems like the worst thing in the world. Once she's actually awake, although Cassie is a little bleery eyed, she doesn't complain. Undead monsters wandering the island isn't the kind of problem you want to leave hanging. In the process of getting ready and gearing up, she grabs a little local breakfast (at whatever hour!) and a bit of one of the Marvels of Man's World that she has helped popularize on the island: coffee! Thus, by the time they're out riding, she's bright-eyed and ready for the work, despite her apparent coma some mere half an hour earlier. Riding close together, her appearance is almost identical to Diana's, save the obvious: despite her fancy for track clothes, sports bras and yoga pants, Cassie does tend to settle into local garb when she's on the island for any amount of time. "They EAT?" she wonders. "I wonder why you even need to when you're undead. Although I guess... just about every zombie movie has them eating people, so maybe there was truth in it all along, huh?" Astride Hoppa, she keeps easy pace with her mentor, scanning her side of the nearby wood as they pass along. Talk of spreading zombie rot really only doubles down on the apparent dovetail with popular culture. "We definitely don't want the island going all Dawn of the Dead." Of course she knows the one with the shopping mall better than the famous original! But then there's a matter of Diana's advice. Extend her senses. "Uh yeah I'll... take a whiff." She sniffs, a little comically. This is definitely one of those areas where Diana's experience and wider mastery of her abilities shows through. But what is their relationship for, if not to learn?
Diana Prince	"They consume living flesh to keep their own bodies from decaying at overly rapid paces." Diana says, Jumpa carrying her a few feet ahead of Cassie while Cassie is back there sniffing in an over exaggerated way. "They also leave fresh kills behind for other animals to find, there-by spreading the disease when untainted creatures find it and also sample from the infected flesh.." Jumpa leaps up off of the forest floor and on to a felled tree that had been pushed aside from the small forest path. Diana, atop the Kanga's saddle, pauses the mount as they both sit atop the tall tree trunk now and look about the seemingly endless woods. Diana takes in a breath of the fresh forest air and exhales it a moment later. "My tree house is not far from here." Has Cassie ever seen that? Nope! Diana's tree house! But, of course, she said it very non-chalantly like it was nothing to think that deeply about. She looks forward and Jumpa leaps from the tree and lands again on the other side of it in taller forest flora. Diana pulls a javeling from the leather straps on the side of Jumpa's saddle and she stabs an apple hanging from a tree with its pointed tip. With a fling the apple is sent behind her back right toward Cassie's chest. "A snack!" The Princess says, up ahead of her companion in this journey.
Cassie Sandsmark	"Makes sense I guess, that you'd need, uh, flesh to maintain flesh, I guess. There's just never accounting for when magical nonsense actually follows logical rules and when it... well, leans harder on the 'nonsense' part." As ever, Cassie's life is lived in a constant process of re-evaluating past experiences and knowledge through the strange lenses of this new world. Even if she's not weighed down with ages of wisdom like Diana, her Amazonian existence still accounts for a mere tenth of her life, and yet it packs a HELL of a lot into that short time. Today, she re-evaluates high school biology lessons and the Romero film canon, among other things! "Definitely don't want them spreading it into the natural ecosystem, though." On this topic, perhaps her non-Amazon, modern education (and//or movie knowledge) arms her better: she can imagine the pandemic scenarios, the rapidly spreading plagues, the graphic they always put up of a map with spreading colored areas representing all the infected. And Themyscira isn't even that big! With all this in her mind, she startles a bit at Jumpa's sudden leap, her eyes snapping around on alert in case she might have spotted something. But with no subsequent alarm, quickly she realizes that Diana has just taken up a better vantage point to look around. And... wait. "You have a -tree house-? Haha that's awesome. Did you make it as a little kid?" It is hard for her to imagine Diana as little, even if hardly looks her age. Hard but... appealing in a way, to imagine her more like herself. "We gotta check it out!" Hoppa follows easily, and her hand snaps up perfectly to catch the apple. At least on this account, she's well trained: and if you can block bullets, catching flying fruit is no problemo! There's a satisfying CRUNCH sound from behind as she takes a big bite. "Mmfgood."
Diana Prince	A second apple was speared and brought down from the tree before the javelin was slid back in to its sheath on Jumpa's side. A moment later and the Princess is slicing it in to two halves, swiping the core out of both with a quick stroke of her small knife and then she's leaning forward and feeding half of it to Jumpa. She's leaned over like this when Cassie and Hoppa catch up. She has a smile on her face, her dark hair is tied back in a braided ponytail that has shining gold string laced in amongst the dark hair... a style she often wears when she's home, as its generally braided by another Amazon here who tends to the Princess when she's on the island. "I do, and I did." Diana says of having a tree house and having built it herself. "I was only ever told I could go as deep as these apple trees in to the forest. Much deeper than this and the forest... begins to... well, it likes you to stay within its borders, as you know. Mother was afraid I'd be consumed by the woods, never to be seen again." Diana cuts herself a bit of apple-half and slips it in to her mouth to chew on it, talking around her full mouth now as she twirls the little silver knife and slides it in to the sheath on her small waist harness. "I, of course, ventured far deeper than this." She says with that full mouth of apple. They ride onward and are soon making their way past a grove of overgrown shrubs and vines that cling to old statues well off of the pathway to the south. The statues have eerie faces like they were all terrified right before they were turned to stone.... Diana doesn't pay them any mind, like she's passed them a million times. When they come around the corner of the statues, up in the trees, it can be seen, a full on two-story tall house with a third floor detached several more feet above the first two, and connected via ladders and a rope bridge.... It is also covered in vines and leaves now, as nature has tried to reclaim it. "There." Diana says as she tosses the apple core away in to the bush and Jumpa leads them toward the large tree with the tree house up amongst its impressively thick branches.
Cassie Sandsmark	"Haha, of course." That tale of childhood mischief, even centuries old, evokes precisely the sort of imaginary version of young Diana that Cassie would have loved to have known. "I guess that's pretty much universal, here, back in Man's World, heck maybe off in some crazy alien places too," because those are definnitely a thing. "Parents set limits and boundaries and kids test and break them. My mom was pretty strict too." Although presumably these rules concerned topics less exotic and deadly than magical forests full of monsters. Bed times. School work before videogames. Boys. Gorgons and catoblepas? Not so much. However, Cassie's time on Themyscira has given her time to adjust to at least this particular new normal, and she is aware enough of some of these creatures (in fact, they encountered one on an outing with the Titans that Donna led) that the rows of terrorized 'statues' represent a known threat rather than a more mysterious one. Not that she doesn't turn to look over them as they pass along, with a certain kind of morbid fascination. It's a good reminder to keep on her toes! More importantly, the statues mark their arrival at this curious place, this relic of Diana's youth. Cassie's head tilts back, and her eyes go up. "Wow, you really do everything super, huh?" Riding to the bottom of the tree, leans forward, offering the remainder of the apple (most of it, minus a few big bites) to her own mount, who is happy to share. No fancy bladework here! And then, with just a gentle pat that reminds Hoppa to remain and wait, she dismounts. Not to the ground, but straight up, as if she can't wait to get a look around, her flight path wending among the branches and vines. "Wow, just look at all of this. It's like a tree mansion!"
Diana Prince	It isn't just a hosue in the trees either, as the two women approach on their Kanga mounts they find themselves on the edge of an overgrown area that used to be Diana's training grounds. There are training dumies, clearly handstitched by young hands, a riding area setup with metal rings for jousting and even a little wooden horse that a child sized hole sticks out through the back of... it is the full deal, the real thing... a child's wonderland. Diana smiles at it all too, even if its in a state of disrepair and speaks of being long abandoned. Her memories are still here though, and she's still fond of them. Her eyes go up to the tree and she smiles. "I had big plans, and was able to recruit a lot of help through endless ... pesterings." The Princess says just before Cassie leaps up and toward the tree house above.... Diana dismounts Jumpa, but she stays on the ground for now. She hitches both of the Kangas near to the tree and then walks toward the training area... Up inside of the first room that Cassie enters, she'll find herself in a art room. It has a table in the middle with all kinds of jars and containers still holding paint and supplies. Shelves and storage spaces are filled with blankets or art itself. In the corner is a painting stand, an unfinished Diana original still on display with the lower 3rd of the canvas still clean of paint, but aged through weather and time. The painting is of a unicorn running past a waterfall, the sun shining down upon it. Its not bad, but its definitely a child's painting too still, with lots to be desired, but still quite great for a person who was likely very young when it was started. The room is large enough for a few people, but it leads in to another beside it on the north side of the tree that has a few chairs and even a little bedroom setup, along with a cooking station that has pots and a pair of burners. Down below, Diana is moving aside vines and brush to uncover the rope ladder that ascends up in to the tree house from the base of the tree.
Cassie Sandsmark	Cassie's exploration, at least in the first instance, is more hectic than thorough, as she zips in and out of the connected spaces, although she cannot help but note the wide variety of supplies and the hobbies they reflect, even in Diana's earliest years. At some point, as she is circling back on the exterior, she catches a glimpse of the whole training area set up below and again dips down for a closer look. It is somewhat cheating to do it all flying, perhaps but the childish charm of all of it has spread a sense of wonder and excitement that she cannot easily contain. And naturally, Diana remembers the place, while for her, it is all a new discovery. "This is all amazing!" she declares, catching up with where the older woman is working on uncovering the 'proper' way up, setting down beside her. "I know plenty of people with apartments that aren't this big." Whether that one says more for Diana's architectural achievement or for the sorry state of certain aspects of Man's World is another matter... "So you, like, came and lived out here? I saw a bunch of the stuff you've got stocked up." She's imagining it all in her head, the wild adventures Diana must have had, here in and around her grand arboreal palace. "And it's so big, you could have all sorts of fo-" Then there's a flash of a sudden realization. All that 'help' she pestered, the other Amazons... but not friends her own age. Which, for all that this place is a childhood fantasyland in her eyes, turns it all a little sad in retrospect. "-fun. I mean, it must have just been so cool to hang out here, to have a place that was really your own." Cassie keeps on the outward cheer!
Diana Prince	Cassie explores the first two floors of the tree house before ending back up near to where Diana is pulling the vines and shrubs free of the rope ladder and untangling it from being twisted around itself in storms most likely. She has a pile of discarded detritus off to the side of the tree now when the other lands and speaks happily of the place. It makes Diana smile quite large toward Cassie. "Well..." She starts to say, her eyes looking this way and that to all of it gathered around. "The Queen ... was eager to try and get my ambitions to flourish in anything that wasn't combat training. From crafts, to art. Song to story. She was adamant that if she just nudged me in the right directions that I would ignore the Amazon arts of war and fighting..." With an exhale the Princess' leather armored boots carry her toward that wooden horse designed for a child to run around with it around their body. She sweeps her hand over its wooden face, casting off some of the leaves and dirt from its faded painted surface. "It did not work." Diana finishes her thought, showing a quick little smile to the horse before she suddenly looks up. Birds flutter out of the trees and take to the skies, the Kangas start to whuff and walk unsteadily in-place. Something about the forest changes, a chill takes to the air. Cassie will catch wind of something briefly, foul, but it comes and goes and may have even been nothing at all...
Cassie Sandsmark	Parents always have ideas about what it'd be good for you to do with your life, huh?" The (vast) age difference may make it a little strange,onge again, but it's definitely a topic on which Cassie can commiserate. They both know a thing or two about strict, demanding mothers, after all. "My mom really always just wanted me to focus on school. Not like I was bad at it but, you know, like... just really nerd it up. Course maybe she was just worried about the usual stuff, not me running off to be an Amazon warrior. Or then again..." Her brow scrunches in thought. There may be something to it, and now Cassie is kind of playing those pieces over in her head. "She didn't know about the Amazons back then but, well, she did know about our dad. Maybe she thought if I was just some bookworm I'd never need to know or find out. Or worse, you know, get into that kind of stuff." Because Zeus' kids were heroes and champions long before even Wonder Woman. Not just Hercules and Perseus, but a dozen warrior kings, or women as controversial and ultimately destructive in their fates as Helen of Troy. "Yeah, she probably... I don't know. Study hard, Cassie!'" Oh well. It is something to mull over, though ultimately, changes little. Because they're well past the point where Helena can convince Cassie to be anything other than what she is, and it seems like even her mother has sort of made peace with this fact. Another parallel with Diana, as she stands with her wooden horse. "Yep. It never works." She grins. They have that brief shared moment, but then, the peace of the little grove is disturbed. Cassie, as before, isn't really in the habit of relying on her nose. And a whiff of whatever it is, on its own, might not clue her in. But the thought is still in her head from earlier, and the alarm the forest creatures, and kangas especially, demonstrate is something she takes more seriously. It's not her first hunt, and you always listen when the forest speaks like that. And so, without much pause, she flashes Diana a look - less probably to warn, than to confirm in meeting her gaze what she has sensed the same - before launching airborn, swinging by Hoppa to retrieve a javelin from its saddle-quiver, and then looping higher to get a better vantage.
Diana Prince	Diana had, of course, been listening to Cassie and formulating thoughts on their shared - or similar - experiences with mothers and their expectations, or fears, for their daughters. But it all got washed to the side when the forest serenity changed to one of palpable unease. The forest worked that way, after all, the trees and fauna lived together in harmony, and when something unnatural disturbed it, everything changed like bloodflow within a body in motion. Diana's eyes sweep around the horizon through the trees until Cassie takes to the sky. She looks back to her companion in this before she reaches for the bow on her back. She pulls a white feathered arrow from her leather quiver on her back, then notches it upon the golden bowstring of her hunting recurve. Diana starts forward toward the treeline. The sounds of a running water source can be heard in that direction, one of many waterways that curve their way from the mountains out toward the sea. The Princess has her senses on alert while Cassie is watching from the sky... What Cassie will see though, isn't in the woods, she'll see movement on the 3rd floor of Diana's tree house. The floor she didn't fly through earlier because it is higher and detached from the first two floors. The 3rd floor has a balcony that goes all the way around it, with windows and two doorways to what lies inside it, shadow and darkness, but... something just moved past one of the windows.... And the smell hits Cassie's nostrils again, carried on another gust of wind through the trees.
Cassie Sandsmark	For the first few moments, Cassie stays with her mentor, taking a kind of aerial support formation above. They often fight as a pair, and has had the lesson drilled into her, that no matter how strong you are individually, a team working properly is always better than the sum of its parts. In this case, it's multiple angles of view, staggered coverage, overlapping defenses... And it pays off! Up high, Cassie sees something that is otherwise covered from the ground. Keen as Diana's senses are, as hers ever might be, they don't have that fancy Kryptonian X-ray vision so there's something to be said both for an enemy in traditional hard cover and, consequently, this sort of good old fashioned 'actually looking around.' "Got something up here! Gonna take a look." Don't ask her how or what, though. Cassie's mind is immediately doing weird twists and flips on that. Can a Centaur climb a tree? She would say 'no' if she were going to take a bet on the topic. Could it have infected something else? Or maybe it's just a squirrel and some normal kind of rot... Doesn't matter! While she takes the time to clue Diana in to the contact and the fact she is going to investigate, she doesn't wait for backup and breaks from their paired formation. Maybe that is a sign of her typical headstrong nature. Whatever the case, while she can catch a bit of movement flicker past the window, its not enough of a look to even verify a target and so she can't follow up. That isn't to say she can't hit it - she could absolutely put the javelin through the wall into the space where she expects the target to be. But it's one of those Super Hero rules, that you don't put a javelin through something you can't even see, let alone know it deserves it. So she loops to the proper entry at the top of that ladder, reaching for her lasso with her free hand while keeping the traditional weapon ready in the other, to throw or use as a makeshift spear as necessary as she springs into view and closer proximity with a shout. "Haaa!"
Diana Prince	It is unlikely that any undead creature by itself would be a threat to either of these women, but there is something to be said for the unknown and something further to be said for having the element of surprise. Diana looked up to Cassie when she called out, but had confidence in the young woman's ability to check on what she'd seen, so the Princess nods softly and continues on ahead toward the stream where she may be sensing something all her own... When Cassie lunges toward the 3rd story section of Diana's Tree House, she cries out in to the dark interior of the room... only to find nothing is there? The interior of the room is built around the trunk of the tree itself, with some of the ceiling being attached to the branches that reach up toward the sky above. The interior space of the room is filled with various types of furniture, more storage and more Amazonian children's toys, along with more of Diana's old pursued hobbies, such as a table for chemistry and one for drawing and writing, some old books still laying upon its surface. Cassie will be beckoned to walk forward, only to moments later smell the stench on the wind again... this time much stronger. A noise from behind her will send goosebumps up on the young Amazon's neck and should she turn about she'll see something unexpected. The tree trunk itself moves, soemthing shambles out from within it, like a living figure of bark and leaves. It's just as tall as Cassie herself, and the more it steps out of the shadows the more human features become visible upon it. It's a strange sight, something Cassie may not be familar with at all. A Dryad of the Enchanted Forest, not often ever seen in person. And it suddenly raises its eyelids and releases a groaning moan, before its body opens up down the middle, exposing the rotten core of its insides... a disease clearly eating away at its natural form within!
Cassie Sandsmark	Hey, she was right! Centaurs can't climb trees! (This doesn't actually prove that, but nevermind.) When Cassie's initial quick movement doesn't immediately bring her into reach of an obvious target, she does slow down a moment, although her guard is not lowered. She smelled something, she saw something. Call it Amazon training, or maybe the more modern and militarized protocols she's done with the Outsiders, but the principle is generally the same: in a hostile situation where the threats aren't visible, everything is dangerous until you've verified that it isn't. So until she's gotten a positive confirmation on the source of both those sensory contacts, the room isn't 'clear.' And if the room isn't clear, neither is the rest of the area around it. And so she lands and pads forward. Even in martial readiness, it's hard not to feel those same feelings of reminiscence and wonder as her eyes flick among the various artifacts of Diana's childhood. She can almost imagine a little Diana (an invention of her mind: the Amazons don't have childhood photos laying around, even if there may be artwork), wandering among the sations, playing, writing, or even at her scientific studies. It's almost a distraction. Almost. But Cassie is still pretty good at what she does, these days. Her movements through the space are slow and deliberate, less to hide from a foe that likely already knows she is here, but to make the room more silent so -she- will hear -them-. And she does. The strange creature emerges, perhaps from a dark corner, perhaps from the wood of the tree itself, she can't be sure in all this dim light. Although Cassie has hunted manticores and harpies, faced other denizens of the island, she knows dryads only by legend and art (some fairly interesting art, in some cases!), both Amazonian and from her prior mythological familiarity instilled by her mother. In legend, they are not dangerous unless some harm is done to the trees they are so closely associated with. However, this one looks quite intent on harming her! In the moment, Cassie cannot be fully sure if it is beyond some measure of redemption, how deep that 'rot' might go. So in the instant where she reacts to defend herself, she chooses /not/ to put the javelin through its head or its corrupt heart (assuming either of these would necessarily even kill a zombie version): instead, she throws at its shoulder, whether to stagger it or perhaps just make it react to defend itself, and uses the moment earned to finish yanking out her lasso and make a toss in the same motion. And as soon as the loop snags around one limb? She goes. That is, Cassie flies straight backward out the door behind her, remembering the position rather than even looking back. The motion is part of the same jerk that tightens the loop, and so as she flies out into the open air, the corrupted dryad is pulled out with her, swinging below. Everything she knows about dryads, which isn't terribly alot, nevertheless fails to mention anything about them flying and suggests they might be weaker separated from their trees. And so it will be, just hanging there in the air. "Diana! What... what do I even do with this? Fry or no fry?" Whatever the boss says, goes!
Diana Prince	Cassie's training is sound and her quick-to-act and quick-to-judge spares the creature's life, at least for now. The infected Dryad cries out a mixture of what sounds like its natural voice and what really really sounds like whatever the corruption is doing to it, an internal war being fought within the creature's life essence.... As they emerge, Diana looks up from the stream where she stands over something on the edge of the water. She'd put an arrow in to something, and as Cassie flies toward the Princess with the infected Dryad in tow, she'd see that Diana had put down a large Buck with some kind of black ichor coming out of its mouth. The Princess stands up and looks to Cassie as she lands with the Dryad. she walks toward it, a look of concern strewn across her face, her bow clutched in her hands still. She stares at the face of the Dryad as it looks back at her and reaches a hand out. It starts to speak in a strange language that is a continued mixture of it's natural voice versus the 'evil' that is trying to claim it. Diana, standing over the Dryad, crouches down beside it and reaches out to take its uninfected looking hand. She gives the Dryad's hand a gentle squeeze while she listens to what its saying. A second or so later and Diana looks back to Cassie. "I know this Dryad." The Princess says. "They came here to find me..." Her eyes go back to it as it lays its head back on the ground and closes its bark-like eyelids, shielding the deep green eyes from the sun shining through the forest canopy. "We need to go to the Dryad grove." Diana says then. "We have to check on its people..."