A group of wostriches almost 200 strong were blocking the road, and they didn’t seem to have any plans of leaving.

Slightly ahead, a group of people were sheltering in the trailer of an overturned semi. I couldn’t see them, but the wostriches’ aggression was a testament to their presence.

The trailer had seen better days: not only was it on its side, dents and contusions were proof that it had gotten plenty of attention from rams. The larger gaps in its siding had been barricaded, but the monsters were crowding around, trying to stick their small heads into the openings that remained.

“What now?” Kurt asked, thumping a hand into the wall.

No one had an immediate answer. Whoever was in there needed help, but we couldn’t fight that many monsters. Maybe - maybe - Byron, Kurt, and John could take them down with ranged abilities if we had a week. Maybe not. It depended on how quickly new monsters arrived.

We’d taken the time, far from any large packs, to familiarize ourselves with the monsters better. They weren’t actually that fast. Our best guess was that they usually moved at around 10 miles per hour, maybe as much as 15 if they had prey in their sights. As we’d noticed, they could jump really well. Barriers less than five feet tall weren’t really barriers at all. The monsters preferred biting foes, but would happily leap on top of them and rake them with the massive talons on their feet if the opportunity arose. They were pretty maneuverable too. I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on with their anatomy, but they seemed to be able lift part of their torso like the airbrakes on a plane’s wing, rapidly bleeding momentum to swiftly change direction.

If there was one saving grace, it was that they were fairly fragile. A solid blow to the neck would put one down in short order.

That was an advantage when fighting a handful, but against a pack this size? I could only swing my weapon so fast. Even if I killed a dozen in under a minute, there would still be dozens more available to rip me to shreds. They were hard to fight in large numbers, too. The monsters' plumage took a variety of patterns, with the only consistent aspect being that each wostrich had a minimum of three different bright colors spread across its hide. Even when watching calmly from the safety of the truck, I made mistakes sometimes, assuming one long neck went with a different lumpy body until the pack shifted and I realized that each belonged to a separate monster. My infrared vision was no help at all, with each wostrich being roughly the same temperature as the ones next to it. We'd fought smaller packs, and found the confusion about which wostrich was which made it difficult to predict their motion and land lethal blows. A pack this size was death. We couldn't take them head-on.

We couldn’t get around them, either. If it had just been monsters, we might have been able to slowly and gently creep through the crowd. The wostriches seemed to ignore Frank, and as long as we shoved them aside carefully, they likely wouldn’t have reason to jump on his hood or damage our fragile windshield. It would have been risky, but… probably possible. Unfortunately, the road was blocked by the fallen truck. We couldn’t move it without leaving the safety of Frank’s cab.

I rubbed my face, then reached for the increasingly-worn atlas. If we were south of Raton…

“Alright… if we turn around and head back north, we’ll be able to detour around this to the west.” I looked up. No one looked happy about the suggestion. I shrugged. “We can open our windows as we leave. We know the road behind us is clear, so we should be able to outrun the pack. Maybe we can draw it away from them.”

Byron pulled the atlas out of my hands, turning it to inspect my suggested route. He sighed. “Guess that works. Don’t see what other options we have.”

John carefully started wiggling Frank back and forth, getting the truck turned around and heading the other direction. He was the best of us at handling the massive vehicle, and he was getting better, but he was still far from an expert at maneuvering.

It was a slow process.

Finally, ten minutes later, John completed the turn. Kurt rolled down my window and I stuck my whole torso out to shout at the trailer and the people presumably trapped within. “Do your best to block any gaps! We’ll try to draw them away!”

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The entire crowd of wostriches turned toward us as I shouted, creepily coordinated. They’d never reminded me of Earth birds more than in that moment. “Ohhhh shit. Step on it! But, uh, not too hard. We don’t want them to give up immediately.”

Our exit was awkward, with stops and starts as we tried to keep the monsters from losing interest. A few, those nearest to the overturned truck, didn’t join the pack, but we managed to draw the vast majority after us, and we managed to keep out ahead of them.

Two miles down the road, we had to assume that we were either far enough away that the monsters would leave the other group of people alone, or we never would be. Kurt closed the window, cutting off the rumble of whipping wind. Into the silence he’d created, he spoke. “Alright. Fine. Damn you for jinxing us, Vince, but you’re right. I’m in.”

“You’re…in?”

“Team Airship, or whatever you want to call it. Blimp Buddies. Steampunk Psychos. This mob is a total pain in the ass, and things on the ground will probably keep getting worse.”

I grinned. “Byron, Davi?”

Davi was sprawled on the floor of the cab. “Against my better judgement, I’m in as well.”

“Only if we can come up with a good plan,” Byron said. “Not just for the ship, for the abilities we all take to make it possible.”

“Sweet! I-”

“You,” Byron interrupted. “Need to keep taking Biological Augments.”

I frowned. “No objections here, but why?”

“Propulsion. I’ve been thinking about it. Relying on my fire abilities to provide lift? That might work out, especially if we can get some other abilities to reduce our weight or something. But even if the wind is traveling in kind of the right way, calm days will probably be the easiest to travel on, and those days will be slow. If we’re limited to that speed…” He frowned, spreading his hands. “Anyway, we’re all unrealistically strong. Best guess is five abilities gives somewhere in the ballpark of 250 extra pounds of lifting capability, and then you seem to have a little extra on top of that. Probably your sprinter augment?”

I shrugged. “Could be reinforced skeleton?”

“Could be. Anyway, if you take a few abilities to bump that up further, increase your endurance, and maybe we won’t need fuel for propulsion either. We can put you on some kind of gear chain to the propellers. It’ll be hard work, but if anyone’s motivated enough…”

“I’m definitely willing - and Rapid Regeneration seems to have increased my endurance somewhat already - but wouldn’t it be easier to just use Kurt’s machinery ability?”

Byron hesitated. “Maybe. But he hasn’t been able to power Frank yet. I’d rather have you guys able to swap back and forth.”

Davi interrupted. “Plus… I think Kurt should take Repair. He’s the one with the best synergy for it right now from what I can tell, and even if John says the hellbats slicing up the envelope won’t be a death sentence, I think we can all agree that we want any holes fixed as fast as possible. He should keep energy back for that.”

“Okay… so where does that leave you? And John?”

Davi shrugged. “Gravity stuff for me, maybe? I don’t know enough about it yet, but I have seen some people with the Flight ability, and the synergy with the things I have isn’t abysmal. I definitely want to take Flight. I can maybe run mobile defense and be on, um, human parachute duty?”

Byron’s dark skin looked pale. “Hopefully we can find actual parachutes, but I guess redundancy is a good thing. Then, that leaves John on, uh…”

“Scouting and steering,” John said definitively. “Maybe we can have Vince take Healing Touch so I’m just a back-up healer. We’ll want someone who can see the way the winds are blowing and figure out what’s happening on the ground even when it’s blocked by clouds and or too far-off to see.”

“That’s at least three more abilities for me,” I said. “That’ll take a lot of points.”

“It doesn’t leave John in a good place, either,” Davi said severely. “His synergy will be terrible.”

“Well, that may be, but maybe it ain’t how big your numbers are, but how you use them,” John said.

His eyes twinkled, and Davi shot me a disbelieving look. That had been dangerously close to a dirty joke! From John! I shook my head, sharing her surprise.

Byron leaned in, either missing or ignoring the incident. “I’m not sure I agree. Alternatively, we could-”

With that, the debate and brainstorming started in earnest.