[center][h3]The Under - Forsaken Land[/h3]
Level 11 Nadia (137/110)
The Koopa Troop’s [@DracoLunaris], Primrose and Therion’s [@Yankee], Sectonia’s [@Archmage MC], Jesse’s [@Zoey Boey], Ganondorf’s [@Double], Rubick’s [@Scarifar], Artorias’ [@Dark Cloud]
[b]Word Count:[/b] 1987[/center]

For a couple more minutes Nadia sat there on the cliff’s edge. Though she admired the view, listened to Barnabee, and watched some of her more-daring teammates trailblaze a way down the kingdom’s edge, she mostly just spent that time decompressing. Maybe her mornings in Smash City Alcamoth, Limsa Lominscuttle Town, Lumbridge, and -to a lesser extent the Home of Tears yesterday- had spoiled her, but she wasn’t used to fighting tooth and nail just to get breakfast. Even back in New Meridian, where she relied on guile and thievery to win her daily bread, the generosity of friendly Little Innsmouth restaurateurs like Yu-Wan made sure that even on bad days Nadia wouldn’t go hungry. Of course, her adventure in Crust Cove had been a breath of fresh air in a couple ways, but that simulated seaside would never compare to the real thing, and that whole Pizza Time deal meant her time in that level ended on a sour note. Add to that the run-in with Pizza Head, which had been a chaotic scramble even by her standards, and it had been quite the eventful morning already.

Still, Nadia might have relaxed by now if not for the occasional bit of precipitation. Once or twice a minute, a shape silhouetted against the lightroot above would plummet down through the open air, seemingly from the cavern’s vaulted ceiling. Though little more than dark blurs as they hurtled down, they looked rather like bugs to Nadia’s keen eyes, especially when one happened to land on a floating island and promptly burst into chunks of slimy chitin. After seeing Jesse meet with the Koopa Troop on the island with what looked like a giant antique gumball machine before continuing there descent, Nadia exhaled deeply and got to her feet. “Welp, I’m nyaat gettin’ anywhere just sitting here. Better get a mewve on.” Still, the extra break helped center her, and she felt a little better prepared for the challenges ahead.

[center][hider=For Nadia]New Strength:
[b]Su-purr-conductor[/b]
The Lightning type gleaned from Cat-5 helps shore up some of Nadia’s weakness while granting new strength. Now, instead of being flash-frozen by Ice attacks thanks to her purr-manent Hydro status, Ice attacks grant her Multitarget for thirty seconds, and so do Air, Metal, and Water attacks. Multitarget causes her attacks to burst on successful hit, dealing splash damage in a 5 ft radius of an appropriate type (her normal attacks ‘burst’ with blood, which is treated as Hydro/Water). [/hider][/center]

With another certified Nadia Fortune great idea in mind she turned in the direction of the giant dandelion, but before she got going her ear swiveled toward the sound of footsteps behind her. When she looked over, she spotted Ichiban on his way over. His expression looked uncharacteristically sheepish, so she crossed her arms and greeted him. “Heya, Ich. What’s up?”

“Hey, Ms. Fortune,” he replied, preemptively giving her an instinctive half-bow of apology. “Look, uh, I’m gonna be straight with you. I don’t know if I’m a great fit for the group. I mean, I’ve dealt with some crazy stuff, but that pizza guy? That was a whole ‘nother level.”

Nadia felt like she could intuit where this was going. She gave him a resigned nod of encouragement. “Yeah, I totally getcha. I mean, a guy with a face made of cheese? Un-brie-leavable. Still, we cashed out in the end, so all in all, a pretty gouda time.” The feral giggled to herself. “Best part is, that isn’t even the freakiest muenster I’ve dealt with in the last twenty-four hours. Let alone the last couple days! You’ve gotta be a special kind of crazy to put up with this whole hero business.”

Ichiban winced. “Yeah…I do wanna help out. Maybe even become a real hero. But I’ve gotta…work myself up to it, you know? And besides.” He jabbed a thumb back at the tower behind him. “I’m worried about Omori. Poor kid’s even more out of his element than me! So I was thinking I’d take him back to Home of Tears. The people there must’ve calmed down by now, right? I’ve got some friends there, too.” His face turned to one of determination. “But I know what’s at stake. Once I’m ready, I’ll find you guys and join the team for real. A real hero!”

The irony of someone looking up to her as a hero made Nadia want to laugh. Even as she approached a full week with the Seekers, with one slain Guardian under her belt, she still didn’t feel like one. Nor did she suspect that she ever would be; it just wasn’t who she was. Like many of the others, she suspected, the feral’s plan boiled down to ‘fake it ‘til you make it’. But she didn’t actually want to goad Ichiban into staying, so instead of her true feelings Nadia gave him a big smile and a thumbs up. “Sounds like a plan! You take care of whatever ya need to, Ich. We’ll keep on truckin’.”

Once the two bid farewell, Nadia jogged over to the giant dandelion. She crouched down, pressurized her blood, and launched into the air, not to seize a dandelion sprig to act as a parasol, but to grab hold of the little dangling legs of a Morbula Cave Angel. The alien creature gave a squealing noise like air escaping from a balloon, no doubt thanks to the downside of her Massachusetts Fusion, but despite its cat-eared cargo the living hang glider remained aloft–it just wouldn’t be able to ascend. That worked just fine for Nadia though, and with a huge grin on her face she glided down through the immense cavern, yowling in exhilaration. By tugging on one of the legs she found she could steer the Cave Angel in her desired direction, so she swooped and banked around to her heart’s content, her tails streaming behind her.

On the way down through the Forgotten Lands, she got a good look at the sprawling ruined city far below. Nestled within the rocks at the bottom of the cavern lay what remained of the Termite Capitol, Holograd. Very irregular in layout, its jagged roadways and clustered city blocks sculpted around its stony surroundings, the city boasted a distinctive architectural style of reddish stone, replete with arches and grand domed roofs, no two exactly alike. In its heyday the place would have been a sight to behold, but true to Barnabee’s story of sudden and utter calamity, the [url=https://i.imgur.com/u2dylUc.png]Termite Capitol[/url] lay in a state of pitiable ruin. Virtually all of the domed roofs had caved in, many buildings had been reduced to rubble, and everything of value had been looted, leaving the place a picked-over corpse. Worst of all, many of the streets and even the buildings themselves lay caked in foul-looking tar, pitch-black but alight with an evil red glow from within. From that sinister morass sprouted tendrils tipped with clawed, inhuman hands, the baleful light of their freaky palm-eyes visible even from up here. Nadia’s lip curled reflexively. That had to be the ‘fetid mire’ Barnabee mentioned. 

Still, signs of life remained. Nadia’s keen eyes glimpsed a couple odd, stone-bearing specters both [url=https://i.imgur.com/wHYXWd2.png]big[/url] and [url=https://i.imgur.com/68KHPhn.png]small[/url] haunting Holograd’s dark recesses. Within toxic purple webs lurked pairs of steely [url=https://i.imgur.com/yhR8YZU.png]spiders[/url] adorned with death masks, sometimes headed by one crowned in [url=https://i.imgur.com/jbdl8D0.png]bygone glory[/url]. Though the crumbling vestiges of forgotten dynasties trundled troops of [url=https://i.imgur.com/WBjdRbO.png]hunchbacked claymen[/url], the spears that they used to scratch and dig at the dirt tipped with fragments of glinting meteorite. Parasitic [url=https://i.imgur.com/JkO1CYl.png]Hoppers[/url], their bellies full of stolen fluids, obliviously bounded along the streets with their proboscises swinging. However, the ink-black, mostly-docile [url=https://i.imgur.com/3VKlZYB.png]mothflies[/url] seemed to be the most ubiquitous, sometimes so much so that they formed [url=https://i.imgur.com/efTTfVM.png]huge clusters[/url] that blocked off a lot of doorways and windows, though they also seemed to form bridges where the originals had fallen into the gloom-filled gorge that ran through the town.

Nadia’s lofty viewpoint also gave her a look at a few points of interest. Most prominent was the destroyed Holograd Castle, surrounded by giant green-tinged shards from what had once been enormous glass windows, possibly the site of the desperate last stand of the city’s royalty against the despot Barnabee mentioned. If anywhere in the Termite Capitol had quality loot to offer the Seekers, it would probably be there, though any leftover traces of that legendary destructor might be, too. Off to one side stood a domed [url=https://i.imgur.com/Luw7yJN.png]arboretum[/url] with a huge tree growing from the holes in its ceiling and roots reaching outward from its front door like twisted fangs. At the city’s opposite edge stood a [url=https://i.imgur.com/TbFeSdr.png]ruined colosseum[/url], its walls slick with corruption, and for a moment Nadia thought she spotted something big in there. One eatery called ‘DineMite’ seemed relatively intact, even if the bomb shop next to it had evidently exploded at some point, and not far from there, on the other side of a ransacked marketplace, stood the wreckage of an inn with burnt-out neon lights that labeled it the Dome Hotel. Faint, almost completely unintelligible music filtered through the forlorn streets from [url=https://i.imgur.com/nxN0z8B.png]Falldown Mall[/url].

After that though, Nadia needed to focus on landing. Those who went down before her had congregated at a [url=https://i.imgur.com/ww2TtIb.png]misty clearing[/url] on the city’s outskirts that sat at the very base of the stony Kingdom’s Edge. A river flowed behind it and promptly dropped away in a large waterfall, and when the feral glanced down into the gorge, she found not more gloom but a whole [url=https://i.imgur.com/SVEe5UF.png]ramshackle shantytown[/url] on the walls, built by the survivors who fled their home’s destruction and returned at a later date. With just one hut and no visible enemies, the clearing looked like as good a spot as any, so Nadia steered her Cave Angel there. She swooped down to the clearing and let go of her makeshift hang glider, and after landing amongst her allies she looked up to watch the critter flap its wings and fly away. 

Nadia crossed her arms and looked at the others, starting with Sectonia, who asked a question and then followed up with a statement the cat burglar didn’t understand in the slightest. “Huh?” Unbeknownst to her, the group had amassed four mask fragments so far: one from Silitha the Brood Mother, one from It Lives, one from Asgore, and one from Pizza Head. Four down, five to go, according to those who’d been to the Black Egg in person.

“Guess we gotta keep our eyes out for anythin’ that looks like a big, bad boss,” Nadia observed, reusing the memorable words uttered by Consul F last night.

“I can think of neither bigger nor badder than the usurper to Her Majesty Queen Vespa’s throne!” Barnabee exclaimed. “And should thee agree, thy objective is not so far away. Forsooth, it lay beneath thy very feet! Oh, to feel mine homeland within arm’s reach, so near and yet so far! How I’ve longed to taste of its sweet vapors once more…”

Nadia scratched her head. “We’d ‘bee’ able to taste them faster if we knew the way down. Do you remember the route you used to escape in the first place?”

The Hive Knight’s face fell. “Pray forgive me. I know not the exact location. Only that, in my flight from the usurper’s legions, I fled through tunnels of strange, virulent roots wont to regrow with such speed that only this fanged blade of mine could carve a path. I could not tarry long enough to memorize the spot.” He turned to stare at Holograd. “I am certain twas within the city bounds, however. I have no doubt thy heroic company will discover the path erelong.”

With that, the team’s mission was more or less clear: head into the Termite Capitol and explore its points of interest until someone found a way down into the Hive.