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[img]https://i.postimg.cc/DyH88WMW/Kid-s-Hat-Final.png[/img]

[color=8258fa]Level:[/color] 7 (39 -> 41/70)
[color=8258fa]Location:[/color] Edge of the Blue - Carcass Isle - Trial of Purity
[color=8258fa]Word Count:[/color] 999 (+2 EXP)

[color=8258fa]Hat:[/color] Default -> Sprint
[color=8258fa]Item:[/color] Necro Smasher (Loan)
[b]Stress:[/b] 0 -> 25
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[color=8258fa][i]Look at them… fighting like they didn’t just escape from a big, scary nightmare ship… (You’re welcome for that, by the way.) As if this trip hasn’t been long enough already! Couldn’t we just skip this part? Don’t they want to get home?![/i][/color]

While her comrades eagerly entertained the interruption, seeing it as a welcomed excuse to let out their frustrations pent up from a horrifying voyage of powerlessness, Hat Kid thought to herself about the situation overall, and began more consciously considering her feelings on it as she watched her allies have their thinly disguised fun with a fight she probably should have been helping them with. She just… [i]watched[/i], all but paralyzed at first into brooding inaction, then before she knew it she was sat cross-legged at the edge of the well that she knew would take them to their target destination, cheek in palm as if bored; [i]frustrated[/i] rather. Not in the same sense that she was looking for something to take it out on like some of her teammates were. Rather, she started to ask herself: What was she even doing with these people?

While she had come to their timely aid on the Maw, the experience as a whole put things in perspective for her, if only for a moment, and leading only to questions. Questions that mostly began simply with ‘why’. Like, why did they need her help at all if she managed her entire end of the voyage on her own, as she had with all things before it? And in that case, why did she need [i]their[/i] help? Was theirs just a partnership of convenience simply for the sake of dogpiling the World’s rulers into oblivion, which she was quite literally a very small part of? Why did she go back for them considering she would likely never have ended up on that vessel if she hadn’t tagged along with them to begin with, instead of [i][b]deciding for herself[/b][/i] where she would rather go?! But most of all, [b]why did this suddenly matter to her?[/b]

So lost was she in her melancholic musings that she hadn’t noticed the conjoined, chimeric crawling its way up and out of the well until it just about brushed past her, startling her out of her stupor to stumble from the well’s edge and rear-first onto the rain sodden soil. Luckily, it didn’t seem to notice or pay her any immediate attention versus the likes of her companions, nor did any of them seem to notice her embarrassing pratfall or catch her in the dejected slump that led up to it. She might have sooner spotted the creature coming—perhaps before it arrived, thanks to her Lens—had she been paying attention to the situation before her and saving her questions for later. Consequently, to behold such abominations of the like came more harshly as affront to the senses, her perception of them now marginally more vivid than before; a curse of knowledge and sight one might say.

[center]([i]Hat Kid begins at 25 Stress[/i])[/center]

Thankfully, that particular monster made itself someone else’s to take care of. Elsewhere on the battlefield, her thus far absent support was needed. Her’s, specifically, it seemed, for the now oversized Witcher was struggling with, of all things, a small, agile pest that might have troubled him less prior to his transformation. Taking the hint to answer the mostly coincidental call for her skill set, she got to her feet, ‘wiped’ her cheerful facade back on her face, and lept into action, making herself useful just in time for the encounter to wrap up…

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Now that their collective attention was free, the party could heed the child as she directed them. In fairness to them, even unaccosted, she wasn’t exactly the most vocal type, nor of the most assertive presence. Delayed or not, what was important was that they were putting steps behind them. Steps taken along a driftwood pathway over a veritable river of what may as well have been saltwater maggots through an infested tunnel, but they found their way to the end of it quickly enough without issue to call it a plus for progress made. The end of that path marked the start of four others, with one obviously correct answer among them given away by the solid veil of unnatural fog that obscured it, as guessed by all present even before she confirmed it for them. Those among them who understood the mission they were on could feel, unmistakably, that their last great challenge at this end of the world lay just beyond.

In case there had been any doubts otherwise, the Master Hand appeared before them to stall their advance, making this, for some of them (Hat Kid included), the third instance of intervention by him. Hat Kid could only cast their disembodied nuisance an ineffectual glare in the wake of impulse attacks that fell upon him to likewise fruitless effect. What even [i]IS[/i] his role, she wondered. Did he honestly expect to deter them with ‘challenges’ comparably paltry to what they had ultimately set their sites on? Was this all just nothing more than a game to him? Or was it, perhaps, that this was more of [b]a test[/b]? With a pattern now definitively established by a three count occurrence, it might in time come to be a test of their patience, if nothing else.

This time, it called more for a sudden sense of urgency, as made clear by a strict timer tattooed into the skin, scales, and whatever else of every attendant member in Blue Team+. With a reverberant command, the Hand snapped out of space, and the countdown to death had begun for all of them. In tow with Nadia and Geralt, Hat Kid Sprinted through the second path, bounding over the water and Hookshotting in, releasing her line to slingshot onto the central platform and rolling to a stop, eyes up and ready to meet their chosen foe that awaited them…