[center][h3]Sector 7 Highway[/h3]
Level 3 Goldlewis (22/30)
Goldlewis, Roxas’ [@Double], Karin’s [@Zoey Boey], Midna’s [@DracoLunaris], Pit’s [@Yankee]
[b]Word Count:[/b] 686[/center]

Though the disaster that had befallen the bus and almost all of its passengers left everyone shaken, the thought that there were more people they could save spurred them forward. Thanks to the Medicine Pit scrounged up Goldlewis was fighting-fit again, if not fully restored, and after he steeled himself he moved to follow in that policeman’s footsteps. Rather than go across the bus where the source of the red matter contamination once existed, he stepped over the cars on the left side of the elevated highway. Thanks to their inexplicably bouncy hoods and trunks he made good time, and in just a couple moments he and the team reached the other side of the blockage. From there they hurried past rubble and wreckage both big and small, the sounds of combat up ahead ringing in their ears. More police helicopters could be seen all around, and the Filthwings were in the air with them. Fresh knowledge of what was at stake pushed the heroes to travel all the faster.

After running around -or overtop- an overturned fire truck, the Seekers reached the impromptu evac zone. Two blue-coated officers were holding down the fort, both hurt themselves, and as many dark-blue police supply crates were on hand with first aid and energy cells. There were also four white stretchers laid on the ground with two medic drones apiece, ready to lift any injured persons into the sky for aerial insertion into one of the choppers, presumably so that they wouldn’t need to risk a hazardous landing. Goldlewis saw that one of the officers had lent a wounded firefighter his shoulder and helped him limp over to a stretcher, and once laid down in it the drones whisked it away toward an evac chopper a safe distance away from all the chaos on the highways. The cop looked at the newcomers, eying their weapons. “You…here to help? Hurry up ahead! The others are outnumbered!”

Goldlewis didn’t need to be told twice. His feet pounded the pavement as he hurried through the evac zone to the rescue in process. On the opposite side lay another pileup, used as shelter against any aberration incursions by the officers who set up here. Rather than try to squeeze through the narrow choke point, he clambered up the front of an abandoned semi, barely even feeling the heart of its burning engine, and thundered across the roof of its trailer. Down below, two officers -a heavily [url=https://i.imgur.com/tpEt2OK.png]armored man[/url] with dreads and a [url=https://i.imgur.com/KBZDbpq.jpg]spry woman[/url] with a long ponytail- were engaging a handful of aberrations. Two Filthwing archers and a Filthwing slugger accompanied three clawed hunters, two swordfighters, and a big axeling aberration with a huge cutting edge on the end of a terribly mutated arm. Goldlewis spotted the [url=https://i.imgur.com/MD6NjjQ.png]daredevil fro before[/url] running into join them as the man slid backward from a blocked axe swing, and as the woman backed up with her fists raised there was a brief lull as the three went back-to-back, nearly surrounded by aberrations. Their eyes were on the three civilians hiding around the area, saved by Galeem’s influence which demanded the aberrations fight the officers who hit them instead.

“You alright?” Atlas asked, his tone nonchalant. “We’re a man down, give us a hand.”

Juliette nodded, a brave smile on her face. “Let’s get ‘em!”

Then the monsters attacked; Juliette nimbly cartwheeled out of the way, Atlas intercepted a swordfighter with a mighty kick, and Hayato Howard opened fire on the Filthwings with his X-baton in pistol mode. No sign of any gates, so the battle was on. Goldlewis joined the battle in decisive fashion, expending the Tension he’d accumulated in the last fight to call down a satellite laser on the axeling. It didn’t deal a huge amount of damage, but it dragged the big aberration and two hunters it hit on the way toward the incoming Seekers. The veteran jumped down, coffin in hand, to help put these misbegotten monsters to rest.

[center][h3]Detroit[/h3]
[b]Sector 8 Lower[/b]
Level 11 Tora (131/110) Level 12 Poppi (21/120)
Susie and Blazermate’s [@Archmage MC], Geralt and Zenkichi’s [@Multi_Media_Man], Benedict’s [@Dark Cloud]
[b]Word Count:[/b] N/A[/center]

From the moment the Turk set foot in this pizzeria, Giovanna figured some sort of interaction with him would be inevitable. Even if he didn’t recognize her and no word about her new allies reached the General Affairs division after that afternoon’s high-octane highway chase, the Seekers were a strange group made all the stranger by Benedict’s presence. This man might very well know the strategist personally, after all. Still, unlike the G-men who generally assumed ‘guilty until proven innocent’, their human overseers could be reasoned with. While not the best liar in the world, Giovanna figured she could throw Zenkichi off the scent and keep things under control so long as she didn’t do anything to cast her group with suspicion. In a whisper she urged Tora and Poppi to stay calm and act natural. So far, they hadn’t done anything wrong.

Sure enough, toward the end of the meal the detective decided to pay the other diners a visit. He sauntered over after sending his small retinue of G-men on their way, perhaps as a show of good faith, and he came to Giovanna’s team empty-handed. While he looked casual enough and completely unarmed, Giovanna knew better than to assume that this man didn’t have a trick up her sleeve. Lots of people could summon either weapons or additional fighters to their side in the blink of an eye, herself included. She might not know the specifics, but all General Affairs personnel were problem-solvers in their own ways. Zenkichi opened with a quick one-two punch, revealing that he not only knew Benedict, but Giovanna herself. Or he’d heard of her, at least. This man did have a clever and by-the-book look to him. He’d probably done his homework. No matter; Giovanna could handle it. [i]Just play it cool.[/i]

“Evening, mister,” she began, lazily leaning back in her chair with an amicable smile. “Nothing too important-”

It was at that point that Benedict stole the show. Giovanna slapped her hand against her forehead. [i]Damn it, you old fart![/i] He’d no doubt spoken up because he thought himself best-suited to defuse any situation involving a colleague in General Affairs, but his choice of words implied -if not outright revealed- the existence of a ‘situation’ to begin with. He even assumed that the detective planned to perform an arrest, when the thought probably hadn’t crossed Zenkichi’s mind. In one fell swoop Benedict managed to turn a pretty ordinary inquiry into a standoff, making the team look suspicious if not outright criminal. [i]Gotta salvage this…[/i]

The secret agent trampled over Benedict’s last statement with a burst of laughter. “Pff, hahaha! Oh, man.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “You’re a real card when you’re off your meds, old man! C’mon, joking around like that could get us in -real trouble-...” With her shoe she jabbed Benedict’s ankle under the table. “For -no reason-...” She kicked him again, then with a hearty sigh and roll of her eyes looked back at Zenkichi. Tora and Poppi had remained quiet the whole time, their eyes a little wider than they should be. “He called me and my friends in to help deal with some gangs in the area. Y’know, drug dealers, amateur demolitionists dressed like hockey players. I can give you the deets if you like, buuut it’s nothing too serious. Just taking out some trash. Gotta spice up my retirement somehow~”

“Speaking of…” At that point she stood, reaching over the table with her arm extended to Zenkichi to shake, making sure to lean forward enough to give him a good view as she did. “Now that your buddies are gone, why not join us for a drink? Any friend of Benedict’s is a friend of mine! Nice to meet you, Mr…?”

She hoped that by extending him an invitation, and reminding him that the G-men were waiting on him, that he’d politely decline and do the opposite. With how sketchy Benedict had been, though, she worried that it might take more than this to convince Zenkichi that nothing was amiss.

[center][h3]Ms Fortune[/h3]
Level 10 Nadia (123/100)
Therion’s [@Yankee], Sectonia’s [@Archmage MC], Jesse’s [@Zoey Boey], Omori’s [@Majoras End], Ganondorf’s [@Double], the Knight
Level 
[b]Word Count:[/b] 1534[/center]

[hider=Result][b]Party:[/b] Ms Fortune, Sectonia, Jesse, Omori, Ganondorf
[b]Extended Encounter Reward:[/b] +25 EXP
[b]Loot:[/b] Lots of stuff. Including Tetanus, Red Plague, and Creeping Cough (everyone except Sectonia). Abusive Affliction (only Sectonia). 1 Mask Fragment. It Lives spirit (Everything not explicitly claimed was left behind)
[b]Heaven Bonus:[/b] Therion
[b]Heaven Reward:[/b] Faith +1
[b]Hell Bonus:[/b] Sectonia
[b]Hell Reward:[/b] Evil +1
[b]Rubber Cement has appeared in the Basement![/b][/hider]

With most of the Seekers in a sorry state, debilitated by disease and more or less emotionally destabilized by the Basement and its non-stop gallery of horrors, even a simple trip across a series of enamel stepping stones took some doing. That meant that when the team finally reached the jaw-like overlook on the other side of the bloody whirlpool and found no way to open it, everyone could only flounder in beleaguered disbelief. Its thick chitinous surface would not even begin to yield to the meager strength they still possessed, and no mechanism for controlling it could be found nearby.

Nadia sank to the fleshy ground, her breathing throat ragged from labored breathing. “No furrykin’ way,” she groaned. “We came all this way and it’s closed!?” She glanced over her shoulder at the giant gullet behind her, her normally-perky ears flattened against her head. “Surely we’re not s’posed to…I can’t do that! Isn’t there any other way?”

For Jesse, there was. Even if this situation looked hopeless, the others could always count on her to see things differently. To her, the concentric, perpetual-motion shimmer of Polaris could be seen superimposed over the doorway. Her guiding star meant for her to pass through, and the FBC director had just the tool (or in this case, tool gun) for the job. In a flash she could no-collide the massive shell that composed most of this otherwise-insurmountable gateway, allowing the entire team to limp, lumber, and bumble through.

Once she set foot beyond the seal, Nadia felt an instant change in the air. Gone were the sticky heat and absurd humidity that made one’s sweaty skin crawl, replaced by a cool crispness. She stood in a dimly-lit tunnel of dark stone and carved carapaces, similar to the masonry found in the crossroads of the Ruins, though less purple. Gone was the inexplicable luminescence that provided perfect visibility inside the gargantuan guts of that eldritch superorganism, so only little swarms of lumaflies provided light in this place. Nadia didn’t mind one bit though. A breath of fresh air outside those infernal intestines helped pull her back from the brink; though sick and tired, she could go on a little longer. The roar of torrential blood rapids faded into the background, replaced by a more comfortable white noise that Nadia couldn’t quite identify. Slowly the team made their way through the tunnel toward a soft blue light at its end. There, their weary procession came to a brief standstill, for in front of them lay the most immense cavern that any had ever seen, and within that vast underground space lay a city–a city awash in rain.

[center][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oj_1wAETSA&ab_channel=Eden][img]https://assets.pubpub.org/5h35dfwe/71610386738682.jpeg[/img][/url]
[i]Click for music[/i][/center]

The city sat upon the water. A vast lake of ink-dark water covered the cavern floor, and from it rose countless blue-black buildings of stone, shell, and steel. Great towers reached high into the air, their exteriors dotted with ovular windows of gleaming blue glass, but only the biggest one even got close to the cavern’s roof. From multitudinous unseen cracks in that vaulted ceiling issued the seemingly inexhaustible water that formed the city’s constant downpour, which fell in buckets upon every inch of this place. Intricate wrought iron lined every rooftop, bridge, and canal, forming fences, lampposts, signs, spires, and more. Sailboats crafted from what could only be gigantic sheets of newspaper sailed the city’s waterways in unaided perpetuity. Since the tunnel emptied out onto a small dock and there seemed to be no other way off that didn’t involve swimming, the Seekers waited for one of the paper boats to arrive, boarded it, and rode across the water toward the heart of the city.

Nadia laid flat on the boat near the prow, her eyes closed as the rain fell upon her. The gunge and drek of the nightmarish dungeon, and all that tension and terror, were all washed away, leaving the feral drenched but centered and clean. The water felt pure and wonderful, bringing her momentarily back to the beach from yesterday, and that short but sublime moment when all her worries and cares floated away into the ocean blue. While this cleansing rinse wouldn’t cure her sickness, she felt a lot better.

After a couple minutes spent sailing through the deluge, the paper boat reached the city center, ringed by buildings, where it slid smoothly from the bay into a stone-walled canal. Nadia sat up, looking around. While she couldn’t get a grasp of the city’s exact layout from here, she could really get a feel for its vastness, and its hauntingly beautiful bug-gothic architecture. It wasn’t abandoned, either. She could see a number of citizens around, almost all of them non-human, whether bugs or monsters. On the edge of this canal sat a [url=https://art.ngfiles.com/comments/341000/iu_341392_8419928.gif]bug in the rain[/url], drumming his feet, and for a moment he and Nadia made eye contact. He waved as she passed by, and she waved back. A number of ring-tipped poles protruded from the water, and the boat gently nudged them as it made its way toward a central plaza. When the moment came Nadia hauled herself up and hopped onto a little dock. Nice as the rain had been, she was beginning to get cold. Colder, anyway. Shaky on her feet, she plodded up a handful of stairs to the [url=https://i.imgur.com/c5Kk3kS.jpg]plaza[/url] itself. More bugs milled around the wide-open circular space, holding umbrellas as they traveled through the rain and lumafly lamplight. At the plaza’s very center stood a tall fountain, and atop it stood a big statue of a [url=https://i.imgur.com/886aw9S.png]crown-wearing child[/url].

Nadia stood and stared for a moment in muted wonderment, not really sure where to go from here. The blue windows that surrounded this spot felt like eyes staring down at her. Shivering, she took a look around, her gaze naturally drawn to the lights around the plaza. Most were cast by ornate street lamps, but she also found a lantern inside a sort of gazebo that stood on an adjoining promontory from the plaza, and in its glow she spotted someone familiar. With a start she realized exactly who she was looking at. “Wait, [i]Cornifer[/i]!?” Utterly bewildered by his appearance here, she darted off through the rain as fast as her leaden legs would let her, and into the shelter of the gazebo. “Cornifer! Hey” she repeated, greeting him. “Weren’t you just in the Ruins? How…” She broke down into a brief fit of coughing, then resumed speaking in a hoarse voice. “How did you get here before us? We were going a million miles an hour downstream through giant monster guts!”

Cornifer chuckled. “Trade secret, hmhmhm!” He looked around the Seekers. “It must be your first time here. Welcome to the illustrious Home of Tears! I’d happily sell you a map, but…” The bug’s brows knit together as he beheld the sorry state of his acquaintances, and he rubbed his proboscis in worriment. “Dear me, you all look terrible!”

“We feel terrible,” Nadia told him, smiling weakly.

“You should get to the Sanitarium straight away then! The Under is home to many maladies that are not to be taken lightly! Here.” Cornifer dug in his bag for a moment, then offered the group a map. “You can pay me back later. The city is divided into four districts, all accessible by bridge from Fountain Central.” One at a time he quickly pointed out different parts of the map. “The Sanitarium is in Downtown, where most ordinary folks live.” He pointed to the southern [url=https://i.imgur.com/gETMigi.png]part[/url] of the city. “Over there is the Collection, home to the city’s markets and factories.” He indicated a sprawling [url=https://i.imgur.com/pn9kEtf.png]harbor district[/url] of books and paper to the west, over which the letters blotted from the pages of history by never-ending rain floated like bygone memories. “Here is the Amusement Park, the city’s humble entertainment district. The Grimm Troupe is performing there, so pay it a visit once you’re well, it’s sure to lift your spirits!” He pointed out the brilliant [url=https://i.imgur.com/0TqxsCY.jpg]carnival lights[/url] to the east. “And the Royal Quarter, where Consul P rules over all from the great Gallo Tower.” He indicated the northern part of the city, where enormous high-class buildings bathed in pink light crowded around the foot of the city’s massive [url=https://i.imgur.com/9tlCh5r.png]clock tower[/url]. “Careful not to run afoul of that young fellow while you’re here, he’s got quite the temper! Now hurry, and get well soon!”

Nadia sighed. According to the clock tower it was quarter after seven, and the team could barely lift a finger. Anything to do with a Consul sounded like a problem for later. It was past time for an evening of rest, relaxation, and healing. “Nyeah, okay. Thanks, Cornifer!”