[center][h3]Ms. Fortune[/h3]
[b]Level 4[/b] Nadia (113/40)
[b]Location:[/b] The Maw - Main Kitchen
Koopa Troop’s [@DracoLunaris], Blazermate’s [@ArchmageMC], Hat Kid’s [@Dawnrider], Geralt’s [@MULTI_MEDIA_MAN], Ace Cadet’s [@Yankee], Sakura's [@Zoey Boey],  Link’s [@Gentlemanvaultboy], Mirage’s [@Potemking]
[b]Word Count:[/b] 2290[/center]

For a brief moment the arrival of the Tempura Wizards seemed to spell total disaster, as in a single stroke they reduced the Seeker’s biggest and strongest member to a helpless food item, moment away from a messy end. But when the shock wore off, the kids were left with a couple of rather less formidable specimens in the long string line of monsters they’d faced today, and they’d had their fill of torment. Even as Sakura fretted about an escape route, she could see everyone else on the warpath. Long before the wizard’s slobbering tongue got anywhere near the long-suffering Seaplane Tender, a defensive line formed in front of her courtesy of Peach, Bowser, and Junior. The princess used her parasol to protect her fallen comrade, reasoning that it could block at least one doughy hex, but the koopas placed themselves directly in danger as they used their own spiky backs. Under normal circumstances Peach might have marveled at what a twist of fate it was to be fighting alongside her old kidnapper and his petulant son in such a manner, but right now she cared only for the fight in front of her, and for her allies it was just the same. 

As Mirage flanked around the side, snatching some cookware with which he planned to batter the wizards’ fried limbs, and Sakura worked to drag the shrimp that had been her friend away, the koopa troop readied their own projectiles. They all took action too late, however, to stop their enemies from reaching Peach’s defenses. The farther wizard launched his hex straight into Peach’s umbrella, disarming her in an instant right as his partner reached the shield wall.  Blocked from his original target, the hungry wizard opened his eye to aim his rod, and with a globule of batter on its end clocked Bowser over the head. The koopa king transformed and fell to the floor as a tempura, but just when the wizard bent down to scoop up his prize, a volley of pans sailed through the air. The hefty metal disks, proficiently lobbed, smashed into both enemies in a series of highly amusing bongs and clangs, staggering them. A couple even hit the farther one’s bowl, spreading cracks across their dark surfaces, and when Rika loosed her shots at the farther wizard his bowl shattered beneath him. He fell to the floor atop a heap of his own rice, and he couldn’t fight the kids while fighting to stay upright.

While his allies treated the wizards to a projectile onslaught, Link made use of the trump card his and the flagging Geralt’s mercilessness had won him. When he reached out to the spirit of Larry Chiang it gave no response, showing no sentience let alone concurrence, but nevertheless it latched onto him. Like a tick to a passing deer the butcher’s soul adhered to him, using the young to manifest once more. A ghostly Larry appeared in a flash, an ephemeral carcass already in hand, and with remarkable abruptness hurled the hulking hunk of meat right at the Tempura Wizard poised to devour Bowser. The Striker’s projectile bowled Link’s foe right over, but as if that wasn’t enough, the butcher followed up with a cry of “MEEEEEEEAT!” and bulled forward in a headlong charge. He knocked down and trampled right over the wizard before finally disappearing, leaving that enemy, too, at the mercy of the children.

At that point, about ten seconds had passed. Sakura’s heroic, albeit extremely unhappy, attempts to drag Bella out of danger garnered few results when the tempura was only a little smaller than Sakura herself. At that ten second mark, however, her struggle came to a sudden end. The fried shrimp poofed back into the Water Princess in an instant, and with both taken by surprise, neither could do much to stop Bella landing right on top of Sakura. “Eep!” Though totally baffled by what had happened to her, Bella understood straightaway the danger her new form presented, and quickly rolled to the side before she could hurt her friend. She rolled onto her back, bringing the little street fighter with and on top of her, then held her tight to shelter her from the chaos all around. “Are you okay? I’ll protect you, mon cherie! Zos blaireaux will pay!” she vowed, craning her neck as she lay on her back so as to aim her leviathan tail.

Before she could accommodate Peach, Junior, and Tempura-Bowser being between her and her target, the situation took another turn for the better. A familiar set of giant metal twintails rose up from behind the second floor railing, announcing her presence with a cheery, “Eldritch eye hand things floating on rice, of course.... I'm here everyone!”

“Us, too!” Along for the ride were none other than the Ace Cadet and Nadia Fortune, and when Blazermate tossed them they sailed through the air to tackle the farther Tempura Wizard just as he was raising his staff. They brought him down beneath their combined weight and started mashing straightaway with their makeshift weapons. Nadia in particular made use of the empty tin whose sardines she’d replenished herself with on the trip back to the kitchen, although it did a lot less damage than the frying pans of Mirage and the Koopas when they swept in to beat the fallen Tempura Wizards down. The whole pack of kids fell upon the sorcerers like a school of piranhas, made even worse a few seconds later when Bowser’s own polymorph came to an end, and in just a few cathartic moments all that remained of their enemies were spirits.

When it was done Nadia stood, breathing heavily, and dusted off her hands before putting them on her hips. “Looks like we were a li’l late, but you guys made it through, anyway,” she observed, happy as could be to see everyone safe and sound. “We gave that other guy the ol’ run-around. There was this big bird, too. Hopefully neither of them are gonna bother us any more.” Her eyes landed on Bella, standing much taller than everyone else and much plumper than the feral remembered, holding Sakura like a teddy bear and probably needing to be asked to let her go. “You’re different. What happened to ya?”

“Don’t eat anything!” the Abyssal warned her and everyone else. “When ze big man fell, I lost control. I couldn’t stop myself...so don’t have any more zan you need, or ze curse will do zis to you!” She looked down at herself sadly, traces of tears still in her eyes despite Sakura’s encouragement earlier. Her eyes then fell on Geralt, and she did not hesitate to walk over to pick him up too. With one four-year-old on each arm she turned back to the group. “He’s still alive. Only fainted.”

Nadia breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, phew! I was wonderin’ for a sec there. Really had me worried.” She narrowed her cat eyes at him, brows upturned in concern. “He didn’t eat anythin’, right? Well, I had two cans of sardines plus a roll, and I’m still fine. Hell, it was the only reason the two of us were able to keep runnin’ from that fur-reak.” In solidarity with her fellow food-eater and founding member of Ace Decoys she clapped a hand on the Cadet’s shoulder. “Maybe Gerry oughta have somethin’. We can’t have people droppin’ like flies one by one for the rest to drag along, right?”

Peach seemed to agree. “Bella came to her senses, and there’s still food around everywhere, so the hunger must have a trigger,” she reasoned. “Even if the food is cursed, we can work based on what we know. Everyone needs to keep their strength up for the road ahead.”

At the princess’s words Nadia’s ears pricked up, including the one shorted a half-inch by Antoine’s knife. “Oh, about that! Downstairs there’s this hole in the wall that leads into the restaurant. We saw a sign on the wall for the Helm. That’s where ships are controlled from! It should be just on the other side of the atrium!”

“Then we can’t waste time,” Peach replied. “Everyone okay to move on? Eat something if you’re on your last legs. Not meat, obviously. We should take those spirits too. Those powers could be useful.”

When the kids were all good to go, they set off down the stairs. Taking a right at the halfway point and another right at the first floor landing brought them to the main area of the big kitchen, half of it still a terrible mess from Mirage and Nadia’s efforts earlier. Out of all the cooks and monsters that occupied it, only the scalding coffee cups and the sushi chef remained, with Stretch-face nowhere to be seen. The cups were not, however, spoiling for a fight; maybe the rather large party storming into their midst was more than their instincts told them they could handle. When everyone shot an assortment of wary and angry glances the chef’s way, meanwhile, he held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, don’t look at me! I only do seafood!” He nodded down at the prep station and hibachi grill in front of him, laden with an assortment of sushi and seafood stir-fry. Fujimoto gave no signs of hostility as the intruders made their way through and out of the kitchen. Though he had little to share, he planned to answer whatever the kids asked of him should any stop on the way.

In no time at all the Seekers entered the third floor of Grand Atrium and assembled before the railing that overlooked the expanse of stew that was its sunken first floor. To their right was the long dining table to which Antoine lay waste during his pursuit of Ace and Nadia, and on the other side of the creamy lake the bulbous form of Cookatiel could still be dimly seen through the hole it left in the wall. Nadia couldn’t make out Antoine among the wreckage he’d caused upon landing on the fourth floor toward the Atrium’s upper-right side, but even if he’d already recovered, he’d have another think coming if he thought he could take the kids now. Luckily, the sign for the Helm pointed in the opposite direction from where the fallen Guests languished, so they didn’t need to deal with that either. Nadia saw no trace of the Runaway Kid, though. [i]Hope he’s doing okay,[/i] she thought.

Now that she wasn’t on the run from a plate-slinging lunatic Nadia could actually get a good look around the gigantic room, and it was honestly pretty impressive. Spooky, atmospheric, and posh, it offered a lot of routes for nimble escapees during a game of cat and mouse. If Blazermate hadn’t come along she and Ace could have probably kept Antoine in their dust for a while. Still, better to be safe than sorry. With her keen cat eyes Nadia peered up into the room’s upper reaches, trying to get a handle on where to head next.

Instead, she saw [i]her.[/i]

There she was, up on the fifth floor, standing on a balcony, lit from behind, and staring right down at the uninvited guests. Nadia’s blood froze, her heart pounding, unsure if she was seeing things until the ladylike shape slid quietly back out of view. “Th-that was her! The woman we saw in the beginnin’!” she exclaimed, pointing upward. “She’s up there, on the fifth floor!” With wide eyes she turned to face the group. “Uh, for lack of a better plan, let’s get her?!”

This time Nadia waited for Ace before rushing off, and together the kids went left and made for the staircase. Wide and long, it conveyed them up and then past the fourth floor of famished diners, although not without a cost. Even fighting and running for one’s life wasn’t so taxing as a long flight of stairs, and anyone without the energy (or physique) for the ascent was soon left wheezing. Those better suited for the task reached the top first, and with a large enough group to inspire confidence in at least some reconnaissance, they entered through the eye-marked doorway at the top.

There they went down a short hallway and found themselves in another large room, although this one looked much more like a theater than a restaurant. Most of the room was shrouded in darkness, with the main floor empty but for cushions upon which the audience might kneel. The long wall on the side that the frontrunners entered hosted five large gallery boxes for the Guests of Honor. Her eyes drawn by those individuals, Nadia couldn’t help but glance at each one in turn. Nearest was [url=https://i.imgur.com/dR4kdxx.png]King K Rool[/url], little more than an oversized crocodile laying about in the lap of luxury. After that, however, was the ghastly angel [url=https://i.imgur.com/aCaooOO.jpg]Jamerah[/url], the scribe seated in a floating throne, his folds of corpulence stained with unknown juices, and his box lined with shelves full of scrolls. Next Nadia could see, reclining against a porcelain-white winged lion upon a lavish bed, the royally garbed [url=https://i.imgur.com/NC4RnIO.png]Lord Vauthry[/url] attended by angels of living marble. On his other side was the green-skinned [url=https://i.imgur.com/DoOwP63.png]Zora Queen Oren[/url], her face angry and impatient despite the pretty water features arranged around her. Finally, Nadia’s angle could just permit her to catch a dreadful glimpse of [url=https://i.imgur.com/iYgv5lA.png]The Evil Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed, Slug-for-a-Butt.[/url]

Her attention quickly wandered, however, to the kabuki stage situated on the theater’s far side, clearly the focal point for the Guests of Honor and any other attendees, herself and the other Seekers included. A number of dark, disturbingly Lady-shaped mannequins stood atop it, barely visible in the darkness beyond the sole spotlight.

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/PjUQKmq.png[/img][/center]