I Will Always Have A Minute For You [Ereloy]

// 6 //

She just keeps on going like nothing's wrong. She strides along her path towards The Cut -- which is still quite a ways away -- and passes a Snapmaw site, another campfire, and a Broadhead site. All of which, she had managed to avoid. Not too much farther until she'd come across one of the most deadly Machines - the Thunderjaw. These Thunderjaws were one of the biggest Machines around, and because of their size, the hardest to take down, too. It always took forever to sneak up on one, especially in this area, and with their radar. But, she was ready. Shield-Weaver armor equipped, Tripcasters and traps ready to be set, and her Focus?... Well, she couldn't do much with her Focus. Only picking up on the components she could tear off. But she was focused. Before getting any closer to said Thunderjaw, she rested yet another moment at another campfire -- the closest she could get to the big dinosaur-like Machine. There are so many in this area, but that wasn't a bother at all. She'd spend a few minutes creating more ammo, and then using her Focus, find where the Thunderjaw was and track its footpath. "It paces in one circle, on top of this mountain..." she thinks out loud to herself. Let's take it down.

She starts to climb up the mountain, trying not to make a sound. She approaches an empty spot outside the Thunderjaw, and it's turned away from Aloy. She sets up a Tripcaster wire, one of the detonating blast kind, and then hops a little ways away. She whistles, getting the Thunderjaw's attention. She crouches down behind the lip of the mountain she's on so she wouldn't be seen. Curious, the Thunderjaw walks toward the trip wire and it explodes upon it as it falls. Aloy jumps back up to the top, and then uses her spear to injure it more. She was able to take a few parts off of the Thunderjaw, but the tail was still intact. Now that it couldn't sense her, it was easier to work around. Before it could get up, she would place a few shock traps behind it, and as it would get up and turn around, it would become temporarily paralyzed from the shock. That allowed her to shoot a few hardpoint arrows, as well as a few fire arrows as well to the blaze canister that sat atop its back. It got closer and started to shoot from its cannons, and Aloy dodges out of the way to keep from being hit. She'd take a few more arrows out, aiming for the cannons to take them down. She would successfully take them off, disabling the disc launcher on the Thunderjaw. That's one less attack component to deal with -- but now, it's almost down for good. A few more arrows... or something, would do the trick. Wait, I knocked the disc launcher off!

Aloy rolls herself, dodging, over to the disc launcher she's knocked off the Thunderjaw. Grabbing the heavy weapon, she would use it against her enemy Thunderjaw. She shoots it a couple times, launching the same amount of discs out. It only had a few left after that, and she couldn't regenerate the ammo, so sadly, she had to drop the disc launcher back to the ground. She'd stick to her sticky bombs and hardpoint arrows... Or, if it became necessary, her tearblast arrows, too. The Thunderjaw should be close to death by now so this shouldn't be hard at all. Aloy pulls a hardpoint arrow to the nocking point of her shadow hunter bow, focused on the heart of the giant machine. She aims almost perfectly at her large moving target, and it moves right as the arrow was supposed to hit.

No!

She quickly dodges out of the beast's way, going for the heart again. She'd knocked as much metal armor as she could off of the Thunderjaw's neck area, which left the machine's heart exposed. To think it would be as hard to hit that as it's seeming to be making it...

She backs away from the ginormous Thunderjaw to aim for the heart - if this didn't immediately knock it down, probably nothing would. Focus... She pulls back another arrow or three, hoping one of them would at least hit. The Thunderjaw charges toward her, and knocks her to her feet. Aloy rolls, moving away from the machine to reset. She grabs onto her arrows, pulling them back again, and just letting them go. No aim, no focus, just let them go. If they hit? They hit. If they don't? They don't. She'll just try again.

She pulls out her shock Tripcaster wires, hoping to maybe paralyze it again temporarily. It continues to get harder to see the Thunderjaw as the moon continues to rise. Should she really keep trying? Duh. Of course she should. She switches from her Tripcaster to her blast sling, prepping a few sticky and proximity bombs. She sets up a few proximity bombs on the ground, then backing away to sling some sticky bombs at the Thunderjaw. Depending on the way it charges, it could either go the easy way or the hard way. And if neither, and these sticky bombs take it down? Then she could pick up what she put down and continue on her journey back to Ban-Ur. She stands back and just watches the Thunderjaw. There's only so much left she could tear off the machine armor wise, so it's just a matter of what it decides to run into. If it chooses her, she'll have to lure it toward one of the traps she set up. It didn't matter to her which, but she just wanted to get this over with. Aloy looks around her, looking for anything she could hide in so she wouldn't be its choice to go after. She notices a section of tall grass, racing towards it and ducking into it. She throws a rock toward the "arena" the Thunderjaw was in, hoping it wouldn't come toward her. As she ducks down, the sticky bombs on the Thunderjaw go off, knocking a few more pieces of armor off and injuring it more. She had a good feeling this would work. The Thunderjaw notices the rock Aloy threw, walking that way to see what the thud was. In this path, the proximity bombs went off under its feet and the giant machine fell, dying from the blast of three or four different bombs. Aloy stands up and strides over toward her Tripcaster, picking it back up, and then over to the fallen machine to collect what she could from it - a few metal shards, blazes, and sparkers, a couple of chillwaters, an echo shell, the Thunderjaw's lens and some crystal braiding. No heart from this Thunderjaw; those were a rare find. The scary machine was down, and wouldn't bother anybody anymore - for a while, anyway. Who knows what HEPHAESTUS is up to. Aloy stands up after collecting parts from the Thunderjaw and starts on her path to Thunder's Drum again. It was still a really long trek, but she's done it before and is more than willing to do it again, especially to help Aratak and Ourea. The two Banuk - former chieftain (that will become chieftain after Aloy's done) and his sister - were reliant on Aloy to figure out what's going on with the daemon and to help the "spirit" Ourea talks to. Aloy looks to the sky while walking the trail, the moon above her looking rather odd today. She squints to look a little harder at it, trying to figure out what's causing the problem - Machines, or something else? She couldn't tell just yet... If she ever could. She ignores it for now, hoping that whatever it was would dismiss itself and she wouldn't have to worry about it.