Lugubrious

World of Light

Blue Team

Location: The Maw - Main Kitchen
Koopa Troop’s @DracoLunaris, Geralt’s @MULTI_MEDIA_MAN, Sakura's @Zoey Boey, Link’s @Gentlemanvaultboy, Mirage’s @Potemking

Without the time to quibble about acting skills or babble apologies, Rika and Sakura did their best they could to play their part in the Seaplane Tender’s scheme. They were by no means perfect, or even particularly talented in the art of deception, but the girls had an ace up their sleeve. Over the span of a few moments, what began as obvious and totally unconvincing fraudulence quickly turned to real sadness and anguish, spurred on by the physical and psychological pain of the journey thus far. Everyone bottled up their suffering for the sake of getting through this, but now they could get through this by letting loose. As such, the sobs that wracked their bodies were genuine, and even cathartic. A good cry could do a world of good.

It wasn’t long before the commotion reached the point where Larry, intent on cleaning and gutting his fish, couldn’t ignore it any longer. Grumbling, he wedged his knife in the bloody surface of his wooden cutting board and waddled over. “Shut up, shut up! What is it with you? I’m only gonna make you food!” he chuckled, positioning his enormous frame in front of the cookfire. Barely batting an eye, he slapped Sakura and Rika with the back of his hand, one after another. When he got to Bella, however, he did a double take at the way her head limply lolled around. It was then that the little girls’ words really sank in with him, and Larry Chiang cracked a broad smile that showed off his missing teeth. “Ooh, hehe. Clocked out a little early, eh? Well, I’m not gonna waste fresh meat!” A wiser man might have checked her pulse, but this brute cared only for his butchery. After poking her a couple times in her slightly protruding belly and receiving no reaction, Larry nodded, reached up, and unhooked her. With a leering expression he held her by her bonds, swinging her back and forth as he plodded back to his table, and carelessly he laid her out among the piles of fish gunk. The impact must have hurt, but still the little Abyssal maintained her composure, giving no outward signs of life. She even stayed still as Larry sharpened his knife’s edge on a honing rod, filling the upper floor with the disagreeable sound of sliding steel. Such was Larry’s fixation that he took no note whatsoever of Mirage, Geralt, and Link, all having hidden themselves close by and readied themselves for a surprise attack.

Just a few moments later, the first potential chance came. From downstairs issued the terrible ruckus of metal tureens crashing against the floor, mingled with the blurted scream of the stretch-faced chef and followed by Antoine’s vitriolic outburst. Standing over Bella and poised to start carving, Larry glanced with a sadistic curiosity toward the railing, but only for a moment. Chances were it was just another kitchen disaster on the part of that blowhard Antoine and the walking sacks of suet he tolerated as underlings. Making fun of them could wait; for now, Larry had something much more enjoyable to attend to. With a grin he aligned his cleaver over Bella’s neck, then drew the instrument back to make the first chop. Now or never. Bella’s eyes flashed open, and for a brief moment the butcher paused, taken by surprise.

Then the door exploded. A sudden, deafening blast of white flour and roiling orange flame blew through the remnants that Bowser, Junior, and Blazermate had battered and pounded against the cupboard that barricaded it. The top-heavy object obligingly fell over to hit the ground with an immensely loud slam, creating for a two-for-one cacophony of chaos. Larry couldn’t help but look, and in that moment of distraction Bella struck. The little Seaplane Tender rolled over as fast as she could, allowing her leviathan tail to lunge at Larry like a killer crocodile at a watering hole. Its jaws clamped shut around Larry’s neck, provoking a strangled cry of alarm and pain, but those uncannily human teeth couldn’t seal the deal.

Larry struggled for his life, hacking the tail again and again with his cleaver while his other hand sought to pry the Abyssal maw from his bloodied throat. Bella’s eyes widened, sure that she’d be able to kill him immediately. In her dismay Larry might have even dislodged her, swatted her tail away, and finished what he started if not for Mirage, Link, Geralt, and Mimi. Since Bella went for the head, the others converged on his ankles. Larry wore simple white rubber boots over his green pants, and though they prevented the little legend inflicting a bite of his own, it was a different story for Geralt’s nail. With a Witcher’s deftness he pierced straight through the rubber and into the crucial tendons. At the same time Link drove Larry’s own stolen knife into the butcher’s other ankle, sawing viciously through. The well-targeted critical damage proved to be more than Larry could bear, and he fell over backwards, gurgling blood. His weight dragged Bella off the table after him, revealing to the boys that the somewhat bigger Abyssal was still very much alive.

As the butcher thrashed and the boys moved to help, Bella gathered her strength for a final effort. Filled with anger at the bloodthirsty lunatic for daring to hurt her, and even worse, daring to hurt Sakura, she issued the command without restraint or remorse. The maw of her tail loosened its vice grip for a brief moment, but only so that it could fire its miniature railgun shot straight into Larry’s blood-soaked chins and through his throat.

Yet the man did not die. A superhuman psychopath capable of surviving even shotgun blasts and chainsaw slashes, he endured the magnetically-propelled payload, but lay powerless to do anything but weakly flail his arms as the boys closed in. The smell of blood was in the air.

Something about that smell awakened something in Mirage, and especially Bella. All of a sudden, Mirage’s early plan of biting into Larry seemed much more appealing, and though he might resist, the rage and hunger of the Water Princess felt compelled to chow down once more. As Link and Geralt went to deliver the finishing blow she allowed her leviathan tail to lash out once more, digging into the meat of Larry’s chest, and as she did the lights in the kitchen flickered dangerously.

Wildwood Glades

Location: Frozen Highlands - Alpine Skyline
Linkle’s @Gentlemanvaultboy

Though she wore a gentle expression, the unknown woman took in every detail about the two blondes in front of her, including every facet of how Linkle acted and reacted. She could discern the conflict and even the shame that festered within the young archer, and treated the Skullgirl’s retelling of past events with utmost seriousness, no matter how audacious her claims. Bending no truths and omitting no details, Linkle dispensed the dark secrets of her current state, giving the stranger everything she needed to know in more ways than one. Albedo found himself ever-so-slightly envious of his new friend’s genuine, forthcoming manner. If he were in a similar situation, he imagined that he wouldn’t be able to prevent himself steering the narrative in a way that this potential Witch of the Woods might want to hear. He’d done it already in fact, feeding her no real falsehoods but totally hiding his and Linkle’s true intentions in coming here. Marvelled as ever, the alchemist kept quiet while the Skullgirl laid everything bare.

At the end of Linkle’s account, the woman gave her a warm, sympathetic smile. It was an almost motherly expression, the caring look a woman might give her son after he trudged in from playtime outside, having scraped his knee on the road or tripped over a root. Just that one expression held a certain kind of power, not the strength that helped one to push others down, but the gentle and loving sort that allowed one to pick them up. “I’m glad you were honest, hiding none of the things you might have thought would scare me off,” she told Linkle. “I have no need for your crossbow, nor your…’gun’. Your sincerity is enough for me.” For a moment she looked at Albedo, her expression more curious than warm. “Isn’t it a wonderful thing?”

The rhetorical question put Albedo on guard, making him wonder if this woman knew he was keeping information from her, but she turned away a moment later to focus on Linkle. She approached slowly, one step at a time. “After hearing your story, and seeing its truth in your eyes, I don’t believe I have anything to fear from you. All manner of mud may cling to us as we travel, but the person beneath is the same. And beneath the stain of death I see a wonderful little soul, more brilliant than even the wildflowers.” When she reached Linkle she drew the rabbit-eared girl into a heartfelt embrace. Her warmth chased away Linkle’s cold, and her compassion filled the Skullgirl’s emptiness. A moment passed of beautiful serenity; how long it lasted, neither they nor Albedo could really say. When it came to a close, the woman backed away, her hands on Linkle’s shoulders. “As for this Witch of the Woods, I know just where she may be found. If you want to see her, let’s take a leisurely stroll to her house together. What do you say?”

To that, the alchemist figured, there could be only one answer.

A few moments later, the three were on their way, headed away from the autumn-red lake toward the deeper part of the glade’s forest. The creatures of the forest seemed to come alive at the woman’s passing, appearing at the edge of the wildflower path to watch her as she led her guests along. She did not regard this as anything unusual, but engaged Albedo and Linkle (mostly Linkle) in conversation. “I’d love to hear more about you from before your troubles in the place you called the Dead Zone,” she said. “About your world, I mean. What made you into the fine young lady you are today, able to stay so true to yourself even through the machinations of a heart-eating parasite.” Albedo wondered what her intentions were, but he’d be lying if he told himself he didn’t want to hear more about Linkle, too.

Persona - Soldiers of Fortune

Barney Rynsburger

@SilverPaw @alexfangtalon

In desperation Barney hoped that by the time he opened his eyes, he would be staring at the wooden ceiling of the gazebo on Stoutland Pier, or maybe that of his dorm room. Already he’d endured not just the shock of witnessing this messed-up netherworld, with its brutish guards and horrific prisoner abuse, but also the attack of the demonic creatures at the hand of the university president’s lunatic doppelganger. Add to that the trauma of getting gaslit and psychoanalyzed by his own evil twin, only to watch it become a twisted conglomerate of scuttling insect legs, and it was really getting to be too much.

If only that meant that Barney’s sudden collision with the cart of offerings didn’t hurt so bad. Thanks to both the force of the abomination’s claws and his own weight, he plowed through both its tribute and its solid wood construction before coming to a most uncomfortable rest, his body awash in pain. He didn’t need (or want) to look himself over to tell it was bad, and as if all the bruises, slashes, and punctures weren’t enough, the smashed jugs of sacrificial wine among the keepsakes and riches left him a dripping mess. Worse still, when cracked open his eyes he could see that thing, that repulsive mockery that claimed to be him. A part of him reacted on impulse, wanting to run, fight, anything, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. Another part of him, louder and clothed in logic, told him that this nightmare was fast, that the doors were locked, all sorts of sensible reasons why he was doomed. The only reason he still lived, he rationalized, was that this hideous wretch wanted to savor its prey.

But maybe...there was hope? Even the act of craning his neck sideways hurt, but he did so anyway, casting Mila and Caelum a pleading, piteous look. “H-hey...hey!” Yet even as spoke out, his hollow cry for help died on his lips. Not for one second did he expect either or the strangers to actually come to his rescue. How could they, even? They were just human, and this caul-wearing, many-legged monstrosity would rip them apart. No, it was selfish for him even to ask. Caelum had already fled behind a shrine. Good, Barney thought. He was already dead, and in a much, much more immediate sense than how he felt earlier today. If the others could live, that would be the most he could hope for. So instead he decided he’d help them on their way, and gasped, “Run. Run!” Pain, despair, and dread held him in their grip. As the loathsome bug advanced, its countless limbs scrabbling across the tile floor, Barney let his eyes slide closed.

A moment later there came a noise right beside him, and his eyes shot open again. Caelum was right beside him, working to free him from the wreckage. Wait, what!? Barney wondered, dazed and alarmed. He should have run! “W-what are...you…?” A rivulet of wine stinging his eye cut him off, and as he lifted a hand to wipe it out he took in what the other student said. You can’t stay down. Well, why not? Hadn’t he suffered enough? No matter how strong, everyone caved under the pressure eventually. But...here Caelum was, risking his own neck in the face of an actual, honest-to-God horror movie monster to help him, a stranger who he didn’t even know. The guy was even grabbing things he could throw, a move that the pragmatic part of him reasoned couldn’t possibly harm the nightmarish centipede, but it meant something. A total stranger was willing to risk his life and even fight to save Barney. It was an act of courage and compassion, showing the very strength of character that he himself aspired to. I can’t let him down, Barney realized. I can’t let it be in vain. But that wasn’t all. The reminder Caelum gave him, even inadvertently, ignited a spark of self-reflection. Barney slicked his wine-soaked hair back off his face, grit his teeth, and planted his hands to rise. “I’m gonna live,” he said aloud, offering Caelum what reassurance he could. I want to live, he repeated to himself. It was time to stop feeling sorry for himself, and start actually demonstrating the strength of will he’d been telling himself about all along. If he died here today, it wouldn’t be because Barney Rynsburger didn’t feel like living.

With a concerted effort he got to his feet, standing alongside his rescuer. “Thank you.” Though six years Barney’s junior, Caelum possessed the fortitude and presence of mind not just to come to a stranger’s aid, but to start coming up with a plan, too. Following his comrade’s direction Barney took a look at the statue, noting both its size and instability, before glancing at the incoming abomination once more. “Maybe if it charges around blindly,” he suggested. Any plan of attack, he knew, would hinge upon how this thing behaved. That nagging rationale insisted that he had no hope, that a couple unprotected, unarmed humans couldn’t beat a grizzly bear let alone an anthropoid horror like this, but something was drowning that voice out. Was it...excitement? Barney couldn’t help but wonder. He was still afraid, sure, but he couldn’t deny that some fiery, primal part of him wanted to crush this thing, to wipe this gruesome bug off the face of the earth and repudiate its unacceptable claims. When Caelum took hold of a broken board, Barney did him one better. He heaved a deep breath and closed his hands around one of the wagon wheels, one in the central hub and one on the outer ring. It was heavy, but the exertion helped mitigate the pain of his injuries, and its weight paradoxically gave him strength. With this, he could do some damage--and maybe even kill this thing.

A moment later the Shadow crawled into range. Caelum started throwing things, quickly working his way through the pile, but one after another the hurled objects glanced right off. The forest of legs stopped anything that flew in between them, while stuff just bounced off that membranous white caul that covered its head. After only a moment the teenager let fly his last ditch attempt, a decently weighty candelabra, but the monster lashed out with its scythelike arm and sent it spinning away. Barney clenched his jaw, wheel at the ready. Time to try his luck.

Before he could charge one more object, apple-sized and shiny, bounced off the monster’s head. Barney paused, figuring that Caelum must have found something else to throw. He threw out that guess, however, when the grenade detonated the next second, staggering the Shadow with its concussive blast of flame. As it reeled, shrieking, Barney looked up to see a familiar figure descend from the second floor balcony of the cathedral, rappelling via the use of a glinting thread. “You again!” he cried as the police girl touched down.

She waved cheerfully at the young men. “Me again!” she agreed, although she couldn’t keep the pain out of her smile. Elation turned to worry in Barney’s heart as he witnessed the bloody scar on her face, crossing right over her left eye. The left lens had been smashed. Her good eye quickly turned to the monster. “Looks like y’all got yerselves in another pickle, huh?”

Amazed at the police girl’s casual manner, he could only give a helpless shrug. “Sorry! Thank you so much for saving us. Uh, again.”

“Ain’t a problem!” she assured them. “I reckon it was gonna happen no matter what.”

“Do you know what’s going on? Who are you?” Barney asked, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. Even if it wasn’t the best time to be asking, he couldn’t stop himself. If this stranger could make even a little sense of this situation, his mental state would be a lot better off.

“Heheheh, ooh, ow.” The police girl laughed, although it ended in a gasp as she used the slashed muscles on the left side of her face. “Call me Spindle if ya like. We can gab all ya want later, but fer now…” Raising her needle, she pointed it right at the twitching monstrosity as it readied itself to attack. She backed up, and the students around her followed. “This thing’s a Shadow. Your Shadow. Everythin’ aboutcha ya hate ‘n try to hide. If it gets ya, you’ll become jus’ like it. So ya gotta put this varmint down.” She nodded approvingly at his and Caelum’s makeshift weapons. “Ready?”

Though still not totally sure of himself, Barney tightened his grip. “I guess we’re doin’ this,” he agreed, with her words sinking in only after another second. “Wait, you said we gotta do it?”

“Uh huh!” the girl called Spindle grinned. “Thing is, I kinda, uh, suck at fightin’. No matter how hard I try, I barely even scratch ‘em…” Her smile turned a little self-conscious as she scratched her head.

Barney gulped, staring at the monster coming toward them. “Uh…”

Spindle raised her hand to try and calm him down. “B-but wait, don’t worry, I still got your back! With jus’ a li’l help. Now, come on out...” She span around and slashed the air behind her with her needle, once horizontally, and then vertically. They left behind brilliant streaks of light, and from the rifts a wave of pressure seemed to expand. In the radiance Spindle’s glasses shone, hiding her eyes to leave only her toothy grin. “ODRADEK!”

There came a burst of blue flame, welling up from the streaks, and the pressure gave way to a roaring wind. Barney steeled himself, and in the center he could see something forming between the lines. A moment later a diamond had taken shape, and in its center opened a single gazing eye that dispelled the momentary hurricane. When Barney looked again, he found a huge, ghostly kite woven of thread, its nexus an eye with a shining star for a pupil. Given his nerves, his first impulse was naturally one of alarm. “Another monster?!”

“Hold your horses, this ain’t a monster!” Spindle declared, putting pride into her voice despite her wounds. “This is a part o’ me! Watch and learn!” At that moment the Shadow hauled itself forward, swinging its brutal arm at Barney. He held his wheel up like a shield to block, but the police girl extended her sword arm. “Wrap ‘em up, Odradek!” At her command the kite-looking thing performed a spinning flourish, its eye glowing.

Almost instantly the centipede's arm stopped dead, bound by silken threads like a puppet tangled in its strings. It shook angrily and intoned, ”You dare oppose me?!” With a windy shriek it swung its other arm, only for Odradek to stop it, too. Spindle stepped forward and hurled her needle like a javelin, piercing through the caul that covered the monster’s head. With a single, fluid motion she wrapped up the thread in her hand and yanked, tearing part of the membrane loose. A good pull exposed the nightmare’s face, a collection of seemingly randomly-placed eyes inside a cagelike array of mandibles. ”Lowly worms!” it keened. ”You cannot see my face and live!” It struggled terribly, but Odradek’s strings held firm, even as sweat beaded on Spindle’s forehead.

It was gross, but that wasn’t the first thing on Barney’s mind. Though not an avid gamer by any means, he couldn’t help but feel this looked temptingly like a weak spot, and he didn’t need Spindle to tell him that her threads wouldn’t last forever. He could think about the kite-thing later; he needed to take care of this ‘Shadow’ now. “Let’s do it!” he called, hoping that Caelum would help him out again. With the monster’s face too high for now, he went for the body instead. Holding his wheel by the outer rim, he swung from one side to the other and back with reckless abandon, spurred by adrenaline into a feat of surprising strength. The spiky but stubby insect legs couldn’t outrange his wheel, either. Again and again he plowed through them, tearing several free at a time like shelling a shrimp. Caelum got just as good an opportunity, whether with his board or a better impromptu weapon.

After a few moments, Spindle’s voice cut through the chaos. “Alright y’all, it’s breakin’ free! Get to safety!”

Barney heard and obeyed, trusting his savior to call the shots. Sure enough, the Shadow lurched free of its binds and scythed across the ground right in front of it with both arms, narrowly missing its assailants. After taking a few deep breaths Barney was surprised to see the destruction he and Caelum had wrought on the abominable creature’s front. “It’s not as tough as it looks! We’re actually doing it?!” He dodged away again when it unleashed a wide slash, and circled around to hit it from the side, only to get whipped by its long tail. “Gaoww!” he grunted, wiping blood from his cheek, but when all was said and done it wasn’t that bad. The monster unleashed slash after slash in a heedless rage, but it just moved slowly and predictably enough that the humans could mostly avoid it. Its final swipe just about bent it sideways, and with a squeaking gasp it leaned back. “Now’s our chance!”

“Nuh uh! That’s a trap if I’ve ever seen one!” Spindle cautioned him. “Keep away a minute and see what he does!”

A moment later, right at the time when Barney would have smacked the horror with his wheel again, it bent forward and unleashed a torrent of neon-blue energy, somewhere between liquid and flame, into the ground. It expanded to fill an area around it, bubbling viciously like acid. “Phew…” Barney breathed, more grateful to the stranger than ever. Seeing the Shadow bent over sparked an idea in his mind. “I’m circling around!” As the attack continued he made his way toward the monster’s back end. Though mindful of his tail he needed to work fast, so just as he’d done with the Shaxes he protected his head as he waited. Finally, when the stream died down, he ran forward and jumped into the monster’s abdomen. “This is crazy, this is crazy,” he breathed, but every fiber of his being was now propelling him forth. Screaming wildly, he ran up the verminous thing’s arched back, planting one foot after another in the sticky caul, until he stood upon its shoulders.

Though the Shadow craned its arms they could not reach, and though its tail struck again and again, Barney endured it. ”Brainless doormat!” it piped. ”What do you think you’re doing?! I am your strength, your pride! You’re nothing without me!”

“Shut up already!” Barney yelled. “I’m sick of listening to you!” Try as he might to raise his wheel and bring it down on the monster’s head, however, all the bucking and twisting meant he couldn’t keep his balance. Seeing Spindle and Caelum, he called down to them. “Hey! Can...can you give me a hand?”

“You got it!” While Caelum moved to help however he could, Spindle called forth Odradek once more. She jumped, took hold of its spikes, and soared around the side using it like a kite. After Caelum got his shot in, she steered back toward the Shadow and leaped off, plunging her needle into the side of its head. As her momentum stopped held tight, and swinging with her full weight behind the needle twisted the monster’s head sideways, causing its whole body to seize up.

“Good work! Now...” Barney raised his wheel, aiming its bottom straight for the center eye. “...Screw you!”

His makeshift bludgeon struck home, and a sound rang out like many chains, snapping all at once. The Shadow bucked wildly, throwing Barney to the ground, and he landed in a heap with the wind knocked out of his lungs. When he looked up, he saw the nightmare convulsing, black tar spewing from its wounds, but it wasn’t finished. Instead it started mutating explosively, sprouting more clusters of legs and limbs. “This...stupid thing…” The joy that Barney felt for a moment began to slip away, but this time he did not sag down. Instead he got to his knees, reaching for his wheel once again.

"What a demanding job you’ve chosen."

At the sound of a heartbeat Barney froze, struck by a sudden pain in his heart. A voice reached him, both familiar and unfamiliar, from everywhere and nowhere. It was a growly, guttural grumble, and as he clutched at his chest, the voice continued to flow through him.

"Day in, day out, nose to the grindstone. The stresses of your trade, much greater thanks to those carried upon your back, in addition to the problems of education, the worries of insurmountable debt, irregular bad food, temporary and constantly changing human relationships that never come from the heart. TO HELL WITH IT ALL!"

A cry sprang from Barney’s throat, and he clenched his teeth. With one hand clamped against his heart, the other could not shoulder the wheel by itself. In front of him his berserk Shadow contorted as well, wracked by agony. But every second that passed, the pain became more manageable, the terrible strain feeling more natural.

"...In the end, none are happy. Not you, nor those who glut themselves on your efforts. And not I. Are you really content to waste away beneath debts and deadlines? To cynically discard your longing for good, and idolize your own suffering as virtue!?"

Barney had grown still. In, out. In, out. He filled his lungs with oxygen, and pumped his veins with blood. His eyes opened, shining gold. “...No.”

"Then change," came the voice. "Transform. Squirm and struggle! Become something vile in the eyes of your hangers-on. Disgust those sneering faces, reject those crushing boots. Wallow no longer in the darkness of despair, but call my name, and together, we’ll craaaawl our way back to the light!"

“Okay.” Standing up before the monstrosity of his own darkness, Barney raised his wheel with one hand. The other sank into his chest, somehow reaching below the surface. When he withdrew it, he held onto a heart-shaped clump of tar, spiky and beating. “Then show yourself...Gregor. SAMSA!”

With a final cry he crushed the heart, disappearing in an explosion of darkness. Even as the maelstrom broiled, however, blue flame lanced through the cloud, until like fog on a rainy day, the shadows dispersed. When they cleared, they revealed a new monster, a cross of centipede and lobster with six spike-tipped legs and two pairs of scythes, and a mouth of sharp teeth beneath a collection of sky-blue eyes. This one, however, wore no caul. Instead, Barney stood upon the creature’s back like a skateboarder, the fixed-up wagon wheel over his shoulder. His dirty clothes were gone, replaced with crisp, flowing clerical attire: a loose dark blue cassock with iron buttons down the front, over a collared shirt, heavy-duty work pants, and boots, with a dark blue greca complete with shoulder cape on top, and a matching wide-brimmed hat.

Having gotten up from where she fell flat on the ground, Spindle pumped her fest. “Heck yeah! That’s we’ve been waitin’ for!”

As he scowled at the convulsing remnants of the monstrosity in front of him, Barney extended his hand in the way that Spindle did. “Samsa, waste ‘em!”

”It’s history!” The creature below him thrashed, a blue power building in its open mouth. A moment later a surge of caustic power burned forth, streaming into the Shadow. A hollow shriek rang out as it was consumed, melting to tar and cinders. Samsa gave an awful smirk and lowered its body, allowing Barney to climb down. Numbly the young man allowed his wheel to vanish, and after he touched down Samsa disappeared into blue flame. ”Neheh. You’ve done well…”

Barney just about collapsed, but luckily Spindle was already on hand to catch him. “Whoa there, hoss!” she joked, fighting to keep him steady. “That was your Persona. Feelin’ alright?”

Blinking, Barney looked around slowly, as if waking up from a dream. He glanced at his new clothes, confused but also impressed. “I...guess? I mean, I feel okay. Pretty good, actually. But I have so many questions.” Realizing that the police girl was holding him, he did his best to right himself, reddening.

“Like I said, later,” Spindle laughed. “First, we gotta help your friends. There’s a buncha you and only one o’ me, so we oughta hurry. I’ll navigate ya from up high usin’ Odradek.” Her own Persona manifested once more, held at her side like a massive kiteshield.

Of course it’s not over, even after all that, Barney bemoaned, but if what Spindle said meant that the others were going through something like this, he couldn’t let them get killed. “Alright. I’m still kind of out of it, but if I can save someone else with this weird power, I’ll do it.” He glanced at Caelum. “You doing okay?”

Once everyone was ready, they could get going, back into the Prison of Indictment to find the others confronting their Shadows even now.

World of Light

Yellow Team

Location: Al Mamoon Northeast - Rocket Inc.
Midna’s @DracoLunaris, Sectonia’s @Archmage MC, Mao’s @Potemking, Jesse’s @Zoey Boey, Primrose’s @Yankee, Yoshitsune and Sora’s @Rockin Strings, Tora and Poppi, Joker, Skull, Mona, Panther, Fox, Necronomicon, Braum, the Dragonborn, Fuse, Mordecai, Reinhardt, Shadow, Es, Ciella

Thanks to Midna and Mona both Seekers and former Resistance members were regrouped and restored, allowing the bolstered forces of the heroes to rally while the ranks of the bad guys shrunk even further. Sectonia was still in bad shape, the Twilight Princess herself could be better off, and everyone but the newly healed and hearted sported a couple wounds, but the knowledge that the core group was more or less okay set Joker’s mind at rest.

It also allowed him to refocus on the troublesome trio on the other side of the battlefield. With Nastasia and Ciella both down for the count, only one elusive, egotistic edgelord remained--a problem that Mao planned to correct. Leaving the freed Resistance members to their confusion, he led the charge across the arena to engage Shadow head-on, in more ways than one. Joker and Fox took off after him, one to either side, while the little overlord’s new buddy Gunnar joined the charge with an inspirational holler. As they ran a handful of well-placed shots rang out from Jesse’s service weapon behind them, narrowly missing her allies on their way to silence Nastasia for good. Joker could offer no objections on that count; though he got the sense that the short secretary’s story was a sad one, she had so much blood on her hands at this point that the World of Light was better off without her.

Together the runners leaped over a rift in the arena’s floor to land on the other side, close enough to Shadow to get his attention. The hedgehog smirked as he adjusted his aim, having held his Chaos Spear for so long that Joker felt sure he’d never meant to execute Ciella with it in the first place. “You fell for it!” he announced, but as hurled his attack forward another bullet from Jesse struck him, throwing off his aim. “Gyah!” The round, aimed for his big head, had only hit his spikes, but it meant that his Chaos Spear missed the incoming Mao by a country mile.

He locked onto Jesse with an indignant, furious glare. “You shot m-!”

She shot him again. This time he put his super speed to work dipping out of the way, avoiding the attack on instinct while barely actually moving, and the FBC director’s subsequent shots prompted the same reaction. Nevertheless, Jesse kept him busy long enough for her allies to close to melee range, at which point common sense demanded that she hold off to prevent more friendly fire. The rest was up to the Phantom Thieves, the Dragonborn, and Mao.

The demon was the first up to bat. He leaped up to come down with a meteoric punch right to Shadow’s dome, and what happened next told Mao a lot about his prospective opponent. By all accounts he could have zipped out of the way just as he did with Jesse’s gunshots, but he did not. Instead he wound up and threw a punch of his own, clashing with Mao’s fist in an impromptu power battle. The arena shook from the shockwave of the terrific impact that left both at a standstill. For a brief moment the two pitted their strength against one another, each seeking to blow their opponent away. This was the first time Mao got this close to the opposition’s number-one powerhouse, and from here could see that Shadow was breathing heavily. He was sweating, and he looked unwell. Shadow wasn’t just tired; he was exhausted. It made sense, too. For the entire battle he’d been showing off as much as he’d been fighting, constantly throwing out teleports, time stops, and chaos projectiles even before he committed to using his destructive Chaos Bursts. Pumping out so much power without any replenishment, or even a break, had clearly taken its toll. And that didn’t even account for the punishment dealt to him by Ciella a few moments ago. Against all odds, the hedgehog was on his last legs.

“Jinx!”

“Goemon!”

On either side of the power battle a Phantom Thief appeared. Energy swirled around Shadow as he prepared to unleash another Chaos Burst as an emergency countermeasure, but his opponents were one step ahead of him. Joker’s new Persona plugged him with a bolt of paralyzing electricity from her stun gun, while Fox’s other self flash-froze him in ice. Somehow Shadow held firm against Mao, pitting his incredible resilience against the double status effects, but the Seekers had one more ace up their sleeves. Gunnar arrived on a sheet of his own ice, and as he slid beneath Mao he summoned the power within. “Fuuuuuus...RO DAH!”

A wave of unrelenting force blasted Shadow at point-blank range, finally breaking his incredible poise. Electricity arced and ice spread across him as he reeled back, giving Mao just the chance he needed. With a final mighty effort the little overlord struck true, his star-powered punch beaning Shadow right on the noggin. The next second he smashed into the floor, then flew sky-high in the mother of all ground bounces, flipping end over end until he finally came back down. He bounced once more, then came to a stop on his side, stunned. The fight was over.

Joker let out a long, heavy breath as he straightened up, barely noticing as his new Persona vanished with a wink and a wave. Mona’s healing had closed his wounds, but the fatigue of such a chaotic, drawn-out battle wouldn’t be so easily wiped away. It was even worse for Fox, who possessed less stamina thanks to his stick-thin physique and cooped-up lifestyle. Unfortunately, they weren’t out of the woods just yet.

That last impact had set the floor of the colosseum rocking, and it had yet to stop. The whole thing teetered wildly, rocking like a boat on the high seas. With the columns and walls all damaged or destroyed by the battle, the task of holding the floor up was split between the architecture that remained, and as continuous jerks and rending sounds suggested more supports were giving way every second.

Necronomicon said what everyone was thinking, although she mixed in a little support. “We did it, everyone! I know it sucked, but it was well done. No losses on our side. We’ll have to celebrate later though, ‘cause this place is coming down any second! It’s tough to get an accurate read on everything, but by my calculations we’ve got just a minute or two until the bottom falls out!”

“Then we oughta haul ass outta here!” Gunnar suggested emphatically. Not knowing where to go, however, he looked around wildly until his gaze happened to land on Ciella. “Wait, what should we do about her?”

Joker had already been thinking about it. With her mask broken, her orange-brown eyes were visible even in her human form, and though half-conscious she kept a prideful silence rather than beg for her life. That extra annoyance made his decision even harder, but he made it anyway. “We can’t kill her,” he advised. “Even though she attacked us. If we do, any chance we have of reasoning with Validar dies with her.”

“But she believes we’re all her enemies,” Fox pointed out. “Bringing her back may only make things worse.”

“I got it!” Necronomicon announced. “We’ll just tell her that the people who attacked her were brainwashed! I mean, she’s obviously nuts. As long as everyone plays along and toes the line about despair and whatnot it’ll probably work!”

Gunnar cut in, his shout a little panicked. “Alright already, we’ll let the long-eared bitch live, but how are we going to get out of here?!”

With the group gathered together, plus the uneasy former Resistance members, Mona got everyone’s attention by poofing into car form. “No sweat! You can make me and Necronomicon bigger, Jesse. Then all you’ve gotta do is balloon me and we’re good to go. Hurry, everyone!”

Scratching his head nervously, Fuse spoke for the nervous former Resistance members. “Hey uh, hate to make demands after we just, uh, tried killin’ you and all, but any chance you can save us, too?”

Joker waved them over from the Mona-car’s driver’s seat. “Yeah, we hearted you, didn’t we? Get in!”

The Thieves quickly piled in, and whether from past, present, or future everyone else had little choice but to do the same. Everyone’s survival came down to Jesse, who luckily had a quick trigger finger and a decent feel for the Tool Gun. Though still hurt Midna and Sectonia could fly themselves, so Jesse, Joker, Fox, Mao, Braum, Fuse, the Dragonborn, Mordecai, and Reinhardt all either stowed aboard the Mona-car or climbed on top of the enlarged flying saucer. Necronomicon held Ciella and Shadow tight in her tentacles, but spared one to drag the otherwise directionless Mona-car behind her through the air. All around them the supports started chain-reacting, the weight of the arena floor tearing through vast swathes at a time, until finally the whole thing parted ways and plummeted down into the dark void below.

With a sigh of relief Joker withdrew from the window and plopped down in his seat. Nobody seemed to have fallen. “Well, we’ve done it again folks,” he deadpanned, removing his mask to wipe the sweat off his brow. “Let’s get out of here.”

---

Once back on solid ground Jesse could undo all her emergency modifications. A couple uneasy and cramped elevator rides later, the whole gang was back in the basement of Rocket Inc. By then Ciella could walk on her own, albeit with a lump and in sullen silence, too weak for now to object to the hypnosis-based explanation fed to her. Since Shadow would definitely teleport away if restored, the group kept him unconscious, and once Braum tied him up in ropes produced from the Dragonborn’s inventory and tossed him over his back, everyone was good to go. The tile puzzle that gave the Seekers some trouble on the way down now served to hasten their exit, unpleasant spinning aside, and before too long the weary procession trudged up the final set of stairs and into the ruin that was the office building’s first floor. As destroyed as it was, it was nice to be out of tight spaces for the first time since their sudden flight from the arena, and they found a surprise waiting for them there, too.

As they threw open the door to the stairwell the frontrunners just about clobbered Tora, who’d been reaching for the knob right that instant. “Mehmeh?!” he exclaimed, falling backward in surprise. Poppi reached down both to help him up and pull him out of the way of the door, and those behind her followed suit to give the others room. It was the other half of Yellow team, brought here by the unknown swordswoman only Mao recognized as Es following the conclusion of their own raid to help out those who had yet to finish. Everyone spread out over the wreckage, sitting, stretching, and exchanging greetings. Acolytes waiting in the wings rushed in to make sure that Ciella was okay and to bandage her wounds. Yellow Team was reunited.

Tora was thrilled to see a full headcount from the other team, plus a number of freed Resistance members to boot. “Hello, friends and new friends!” he sang. “Just as Tora thought, everyone okay! Even when half and half, nobody can stop this team, meh!”

If she possessed the means to do so, Necronomicon might have sprawled out tiredly over the carpet. “Hey, it was pretty close, man! We had to fight the boss! She could hypnotize people! And Shadow the Hedgehog with all his crazy powers!”

“Yeah, some of our guys had some bullcrap, too,” Skull told her. He and Panther were sitting together on one of the few intact desks. After a moment the Persona’s report sank in, and his eyes went wide. “Wait, you fought Shadow the freakin’ Hedgehog?! For real?”

Joker nodded, jabbing a thumb at where their most bothersome enemy had been plopped down. “Yeah. It sucked.”

“Dude! That’s awesome!”

Fox narrowed his eyes. “It was not in the slightest!”

As the other Thieves conversed Es gave Mao a status update on who among the Resistance members survived the raid on the Temple of Khamoon, Mona checked in with Tora. “Hey, buddy. I assume they’re okay since you’re all cheerful, but where’s Big Band and Fox? The other Fox I mean, not ours,” he clarified, indicating his companions.

Tora nodded as best he could without a neck. “Yes, yes, meh. They head to palace, keep eye on prisoners and other Grimmypons along with new, very big friend.”

“We shouldn’t keep them waiting for long,” Poppi gently suggested to the group at large. Through the broken glass of the office’s front windows reached the yellow tinges and long shadows of early evening. “Once everyone catch breath, we should go there too.”

Joker glanced over at Ciella, wondering just what was running through the Agito’s mind right now. Her expression betrayed little, but he felt as though she must be suffering from the inner turmoil of a prideful individual not used to possibly being in the wrong. Given her philosophy, the idea of being deceived by the enemy into attacking allies surely distressed her. Once she realized that others were waiting on her response she gave a stiff nod. If her longbow had not been broken by Reinhardt she might have leaned on it like a staff, but for now she relied on a couple of (much shorter) acolytes to help her along, fighting to scrape together whatever dignity she could.

Ms Fortune

Level 4 Nadia (103/40)
Location: The Maw
Blazermate's @Archmage MC, Bowser's @DracoLunaris, Ace Cadet's @Yankee, Sakura's @Zoey Boey, Mirage’s @Potemking, Link’s @Gentlemanvaultboy
Word Count: 1639

Rather than foolishly forge onward, Nadia waited by the stairs for her friend, but as the seconds passed her worries mounted. Had he not followed her? Maybe she hadn’t been thinking straight, but she’d assumed that when she started springboarding off the Guests, Ace would simply follow suit. Yet when she’d looked behind her, she found only the slavering feasters who’d tumbled down the stairs after her like live wrecking balls. In the still moments that followed her heart beat palpably, a chill creeping down her spine. “There’s no way,” she hissed to herself, ears flattened against her head. No way in hell that he’d gotten eaten. He would have cried out for her, and even if escape was in her grasp she would have turned to help.

...Right?

Her fearful conjectures came to an end when she heard a commotion from above. A panicked shout from a familiar voice made her heart leap into her throat, telling her that her worst fears had become reality. He needs help! In that moment, Nadia didn’t think about survival or heroism; her body moved on its own. Like a tiny bullet she zoomed past one of the fallen Guests, so fast that his gribby mitt closed on nothing to eat but her dust, then leaped onto a stair. At her size she needed to take them one at a time, but she made quick work of them, her bare feet pounding against the wooden steps. The whole time she kept her eyes fixed on the second floor, which meant that when the sound of water reached her ears and Ace hurtled down into the curved stairwell, Nadia was right in the splash zone. She saw nothing of his friend’s strange new power, only catching a brief glimpse of his red hair and surprised expression as he tumbled straight into her. “Oof!” Together the ball of flailing limbs rolled straight to the bottom, landing in a heap on the first floor. Luckily for them, it looked like the guests had already moved off, crawling and flopping like beached seals in search of their next meals.

Nadia got to her feet first and quickly regretted it. She was dizzy and sore from the fall, and a little red from landing right on top of her friend. She steadied herself against the banister, watching as Ace picked himself up. Naturally, he was good to go. “R-right!” she agreed, a little breathless. Just one more dining hall, and they were back in the kitchen.

She felt a little tug on her raggedy garment, and looked over to see the Runaway Kid. “Oh!” In all the hubbub she’d forgotten all about him, which wasn’t ideal, but apparently he’d done just fine. Nadia found herself wondering where Bowser, Junior, and Blazermate had gotten to; with any luck, they’d found a better route. More than likely they just smashed through a dividing wall somewhere. Well, they could reconvene later. For now she had a mess room to cross, and unlike the cramped dining apartments of the Japanese-themed restaurant above, this room featured actual aisles beneath the tables. Of course, the floor space was replete with windfall and Guests doing what they could to clear it away, but so long as they picked the right path it would be a much faster and less heart-pounding trip than the first leg of their journey. As Ace set off in the lead, Nadia followed, with the stealthy Runaway bringing up the rear.

This time the little feral did not separate from her friends, although there wasn’t much need. Ace’s new strategy of collecting food for emergency offerings was a clever one, much less risky and much more sustainable than her Guest-based acrobatics. Even after collecting a few scraps to offload into any gullet that wandered too close, Nadia was glad that nothing excited her hunger. If this gruesome feeding frenzy robbed her of her appetite for the time being, so much the better. With a plan in mind and the wind at their heels the three runners crossed the restaurant, dodging Guest after Guest, until they drew near the entrance.

A couple Guests lurched from a nearby table to come after them, but tackling an overburdened Volbonian scattered such a heap of food between the would-be predators and their prey that it would be a while before they got through it all. Ace and Nadia raced through the entrance to find themselves in a four-way junction. To the left a straight hall extended for a long way, traveling beneath the bridge that the kids crossed earlier while on the second floor. Based on the decor, Nadia couldn’t help but wonder if it led to the parlour she and all the others ended up in when first entering the Maw. It was easy to picture a slouched line of Guests trundling down this corridor toward the restaurant, watched from the second floor by that damnable Lady or her ghoulish chefs. That didn’t matter though, since the dumbwaiter that was their ticket into the kitchen lay just ahead. Nadia couldn’t stop herself looking to the right, though, and what she saw took her by surprise.

It was a huge, open space, spanning at least five floors, probably more. By her best guess the one this junction connected to was the third. Though unexpected she would have continued if she didn’t happen to follow the pointed finger of the Runaway Kid, aimed at a plaque on the wall. Grand Atrium, it said, and below that, Helm. “Hang on, paws just a sec,” she punned, eyes wide. “Helm as in, the place that controls the ship?! We might be able to get off this thing after all!” The Runaway nodded, and took off into the Grand Atrium

For now though, she needed to worry about the dumbwaiter. A few Volbonians had queued to wait for the next food delivery, but she and Ace jumped right to the front. They jumped and climbed into the dumbwaiter. She slid the front door closed, and like clockwork the second opened to reveal the stretch-faced chef, his arms laden with piping-hot stew. Nadia flashed him a fang-toothed grin. “Soup’s on!” Her leg shot out, kicking the tureen like she would a football, and its contents splashed across the chef’s face and chest. A little extra help from Ace and the loathsome creature staggered backward, wailing in distress.

His departure gave the new arrivals a good view of the kitchen’s first floor. In addition to stretch-face, Ace and Nadia could see the mustached Antoine, angry-looking coffee cups, a couple of strange sorcerers with tempura for heads, and a weirdly normal sushi chef. No little boys or girls to be seen, which could be either good or bad. Their attention fell on Antoine as his hair-trigger temper flared in absolute outrage at the new disturbance. “WHAT NOW!?”

“Uh, special delivery! We’ve got somethin’ for ya!” Nadia squeaked, flipping him off with both hands. She didn’t have a plan going in, but since she and Ace got detected immediately, she figured there was a way they could help. And that meant getting these guys mad. “I mean, we’re the health inspectors! Heard there were rats in the kitchen, but we didn’t expect them to be balding! Wha-hey!”

Antoine sputtered like a grease frying, unable to articulate his anger. Instead he issued a roar of anger, seized two cleavers from the chopping block, and scuttled forward like a cracked-out cicada. Nadia span around fast enough to whip her tail against the side of the dumbwaiter. “Ow, okay, time to go!” She slammed shut the kitchen-side door, and as Antoine’s footsteps thundered closer the other door slid open. Before the kids could slip through the door behind them exploded, the King of Cuisine having lodged himself into the dumbwaiter head-first. Luckily the impact launched Ace and Nadia clear of his knives as he flailed around, with one cleaver taking an inch off the tip of Nadia’s ear. “Yowch!” She and Ace landed in a pile of splinters and looked up to see Antoine pushing himself through the dumbwaiter. “Uh, knife to meat you!” she told him, a hand on her bleeding ear. “Sea ya later!”

Click for music

She scampered in the direction the Runaway had gone, crossing into the Grand Atrium and running up to the railing that overlooked the place. The third floor seemed to be a dining area that ringed the lower central area, which itself looked like yet another cooking station, manned by yet another bizarre chef. This one seemed to be a big pink bird, which left Nadia wondering how she actually managed to cook anything. Either way, an enormous vent occupied the vertical space above her, an array of pipes spanning the whole space to connect multiple floors and areas. “Even better than I thought!” She turned to Ace, noting as she did Antoine already halfway through the dumbwaiter down the hall. “We’ll take the heat off the others, right? Just like with fish sticks. This place is perfect to run ‘em around. Think we can do it?”

Antoine hitting the floor behind them meant that it was time for action rather than words. Taking a deep breath, Nadia gave Ace her fan (even someone from a past age could figure out ‘press the button for wind’) and prepared to run, her half of the magnet still in hand. In a way it was funny, being on distraction duty again, but it was fine. If she couldn’t solve the problem, either through positioning or brainpower, she could open the way for the people who could. Besides, she thought. I’ve been on the run my whole life. This is what I do best. The killer chef got to his feet, murder in his eyes, and like the wind Nadia ran.

---

It was more than a little frustrating that even with Larry distracted with elation at the misfortune of his colleagues, the three girls could do nothing to improve their situation. To Sakura’s credit, however, even though beset by both the pain of hanging from her arms and intense hunger, she continued to offer idea after idea. Unfortunately none of them could really think straight in this awful situation, the small street fighter least of all, and Bella had to reluctantly agree with her friend’s self-assessment. “I don’t think we can reach him through talking. He doesn’t see us as people. All we are to him is fresh meat.” She squeezed her stinging eyes shut, causing them to tear up.

A moment later they blinked open. “Wait. Zat’s right. Fresh meat. Both he and the other human chef mentioned it. That’s why we’re still alive.” Suddenly inspired, Bella glanced at the others. “What if I played dead? Zen I’d start going bad, so to speak. I’m also ze biggest. He might take me down to chop me up.” She gave a sharklike, fanged grin, and the teeth of her leviathan tail gnashed. “Zen I can bite him. Or shoot him right in zat ugly mug.” The most important part of the plan, however, wasn’t hers. “But I need you two, oui? After I go limp, I need you both to start bawling. Really cry your eyes out, and scream at him. Say I died of heatstroke or smoke breathing or something.” Something else occurred to her. “Even if it doesn’t work, ze others will hear us and know where we are, at least. Can you do zat, mon cherie?”

When Mirage and Geralt poked their heads up by the railing a few moments later, having used sausage links as an arduous but extremely unanticipated mode of travel from the first floor, a distraction to keep Larry’s attention off his surroundings became all the more necessary. Ready to play her part, Bella went limp, allowing her head to loll to a funny angle. Hopefully the new arrivals would see the ploy for what it was and not go ballistic when Sakura and Rika started wailing.

Wildwood Glades

Location: Frozen Highlands - Alpine Skyline
Linkle’s @Gentlemanvaultboy

Just as Albedo hoped, conferring with Linkle allowed the two to consider any potential plan of action from both a pragmatic and emotional standpoint. Though he figured from the beginning that hunting a local animal would draw the witch out, he did not consider the potential extent of her anger. As someone who couldn’t imagine the pain of seeing one’s own child hurt or killed, he believed Linkle wholeheartedly when she cautioned that the witch might be too furious for conversation and skip straight to deathmatch. “I see,” he murmured, more grateful than ever for another perspective. Trying to imagine what animal he’d become lay beyond his abilities, but he did not like the prospect of not being able to use his hands one bit.

Still, that meant that the two needed to come up with a different strategy to find the witch of the woods before evening’s shadows started creeping across the scarlet valley. Linkle recalled something Albedo told her earlier, although he didn’t remember saying what she mentioned he did. “Oh, did I say that?” Absently the alchemist scratched his neck just below the ear, his expression mildly bemused. “<My choice of words likely gave you the wrong impression. Although Elemental Sight is indeed a power that exists in my world, I do not possess it. I merely meant that my long-term handling of and exposure to raw elements has given me a feel for them. Since arriving I have been studying this ‘light’ element, being both powerful and without an analog in Teyvat. Because it is anomalous and quite new to me, even after all this time, I could feel it when we were close. Unfortunately, this ‘feeling’ of mine extends only a very short range. Rather like temperature. Or perhaps an odor.” He blinked, frowning. “I do not mean to imply you are odorous, of course. And even if you were, the Hydro-dispensers in the hotel we stayed at almost certainly took care of it.” After a brief pause, he looked at her sideways. “I...assume you used them?”

Clearing his throat, Albedo continued. “Back on topic. One other factor is that this element of ‘nature’ you describe, which is analogous to Dendro in my world, is endemic to all plantlife. Even those with Dendro visions tend to register less than actual plants. As such, if this witch possessed more Dendro than a vision user it would still be akin to seeking a single seashell on a beach at best. At worst, a single grain of sand.”

The alchemist had no problems with his new friend’s other suggestions, though. “Even though we may not be able to see much under the canopy, it would be a good idea to get up high. Trying to go up and down the flagline would be too frenetic for a good look. Let us find an especially big tree to climb before we use my flowers, or your...ah, way to jump high.”

With that in mind the two waved farewell to Tuley and started their trip off with some reconnaissance. An initial solar isotoma from Albedo allowed Linkle to peer above the local canopy for a few moments and identify a suitably large tree that the pair could use as a lookout point. Once she descended back to the forest floor, the two began in that direction. As they strode down a highway of vibrant wildflowers, the fresh breeze that teased their hair the only reminder of the wintry wastes and frigid mountainsides far above, they could take in the beauty of nature in peaceful reflection. After finding a good stride Albedo found the walk almost meditative, in fact. Could this place really be a sanctuary, free of the vagrants, monsters, and other enemies that lurked behind every corner and under every stone in this perilous World of Light? Though he stayed alert for any sign of danger, Albedo found nothing to suggest otherwise. Wherever he looked he saw only pretty plants and agreeable animals. Whether papercraft or ponderous, or perfectly normal, they went about their business without the fear that came with the ambient danger of disaster or predation. More than once Albedo suppressed the urge to stop cold and scribble down a quick sketch, knowing that Linkle could capture the scenery far quicker than he. Whether or not she found the walk as nice as he did, however, depended on how viciously the voices in her head tried to fill the autumnal silence.

Intermittent checks using Albedo’s flowers kept the two on track, and it wasn’t long before they reached their destination. This time a solar isotoma would be only the first step of the climb, with Linkle’s jumping ability on call for the rest. Ancient and gnarled white like bone, with clumps of hanging burgundy moss, this tree was a fine specimen but not ultimately that large. A trip to the top would be no trouble for his spring-heeled companion, the alchemist predicted. From its boughs Linkle could see much of the Wildwood Glades, across miles of rolling red canopy and meadows of pristine flowers among the copses. Going south the forest got thicker, but on the north side, right before the valley came to an end against the icy cliffs, lay a lake as scarlet as the leaves. A tree-covered island lay in its middle among the mists, and one one side rose a colossal face carved from stone, its expression as serene as the blood-red water’s surface. Though the view’s incredible splendor defied description, the camera-wielding onlooker need not rely on words, but could take a magnificent photo to show the waiting Albedo down below.

Once presented with the snapshot, he considered it for a moment, thinking. “Curious. It almost looks like architecture from Sumeru. Not what I would expect. Of course, I can hardly speak to the cultures of other worlds, but given the gardener’s account I would be more inclined to search the thicker forest.”

A woman’s voice called out from among the trees. “And what, might I ask, are you searching for?”

Albedo turned to see a red-haired lady standing among the foliage at a respectful distance. He wondered how long she’d been there, or if she’d been following them. She wore simple hide and fur garments, with a few adornments here and there like her pendant and hair clasps. Simple geometric tattoos ran down her arms, but nothing about her stood out in particular. Able to conclude little, Albedo could only conjecture based on what little knowledge he did have of the valley’s only confirmed human residents. Given his idea of the witch being someone who didn’t want to be found, giving away his and Linkle’s objective willy-nilly might scare her off. Then again, the two had been put on the spot here. He needed to appear trustworthy.

“Good day,” he told her after a moment. “We came to see the sights, since we have never been here before, but after arriving we met a little gardener. He mentioned a kind lady who lived around here and we thought to pay her a visit.”

Wearing an amused expression, the woman crossed her arms. “Did he, now? Tuley’s a little too trusting, bless him. As for you…” Her gentle eyes scanned the two, especially Linkle, on whose own eyes she lingered. “Well, I must admit I’ve been following you for a little while. Out of worry, really. You seem like nice kids, but there’s something off-putting about you, miss. I’m sure you know what I mean?” She looked genuinely concerned. “I might be able to lend you a hand, but only once I know you’re not a threat to the forest. Life and death don’t mix. Would you mind telling me a little about yourself?”

Albedo slid his hands into his pockets. And looked to his companion. If this was the witch, it was a lucky break, but one that made total sense. Naturally she’d both be able to sense the malfeasance of the Skull Heart and be wary of a potential threat to her domain. No doubt Linkle would be enthusiastic about honest cooperation; he just hoped she fully understood the stakes of this interaction. Either way, the ball was in her court now.

Infactorium: A New 4Xpansion (Overlord RP) [DISCONTINUED]

I can see the benefits of one. Would like to see how things advance.

Persona - Soldiers of Fortune

Barney Rynsburger

@SilverPaw @alexfangtalon

At this point, all the horrifying, supernatural, and downright weird stuff that Barney had witnessed over the course of the last half hour or so was beginning to dull the shock value of each new revelation. He’d been appalled, terrified, and startled by the near-constant barrage of impossibility--one man could only be stunned into silence so many times. Even so, he could not help but be unnerved by the silver-crowned lunatic in front of him. Alarm bells were going off in his head, his brain a live wire constantly buzzing with twinges of pain and, in all probability, delirium.

Just what was this? For a moment there Barney really thought this was headed in another direction, but the oily, pompous, oh-so-human hubris of the priest’s pronouncement brought the expectations of the student who shared his face right back down. This crown-wearing cleric, Barney realized, was not someone worthy of his respect.

While Barney got his thoughts together, Mila spoke first. She thanked the priest for letting the three of them inside at least, and though her gratitude was not quite emphatic enough for her savior’s taste, he accepted it with a smile and a bowed head nonetheless. When she launched right into something he could have done better, however, the grace washed right off his face. His expression turned to one of disdain, and his chains rattled as he crossed an arm and put the other hand against his chin, like a scholar deep in thought.

“Hmm,” he mused. “Are you not home? Of course, not in here specifically, for filth has no place in my immaculate cathedral. But rather in this dark, dingy realm. After all, how could you be here, if you really had a place among humanity? Just like all the rest. Unwanted, unloved, lost and adrift, defeated and doomed to fade away into obscurity with not a soul to mourn your passing. From dust you came, and from dust you return, eh? No wonder you showed up on my doorstep!” The priest clasped his hands together, closing his eyes with a soft, understanding smile. “But fear not. No matter how low one has sunk, I will show you love and mercy. I am, after all, the saint upon whom the wretched rely, he of whom is demanded so much without anything in return.”

During the course of the speech Barney’s scowl had grown more and more intense, leaving distaste behind and diving deep into the realm of repulsion. The smug pretension packed into every word leaving this guy’s mouth rubbed him the wrong way. Just like when some butthurt acquaintance felt like playing armchair psychologist, making insulting stretches and assumptions in an audacious attempt to get to the ‘root cause’ of why nobody else seemed to like him. It stank of unchecked egotism, but that in and of itself wasn’t what was distressing Barney so much. If it were anyone else he could maybe accept it as just another absurd element of this nightmare realm, but the fact that the priest said that he was him threw Barney off. That made him think twice about all the perceived nonsense the priest spouted off, and it filled him with unease. What is this?!

Caelum had the answer. When the other guy hissed at him, Barney took a moment to internalize not just what Caelum said, but what he meant. It started to sink in. Of course. That masked judge in the courthouse looked like President Myron Pondwater, but it wasn’t him.He’d been some sort of evil doppelganger, here for the express purpose of tormenting the people who’d fallen into this place, and it was the same with this prideful priest. He didn’t have any guards or monsters around, though, and Barney was sick of being the victim. Whether because of indignant anger or some sort of primordial aversion to his ostentatious doppelganger, Barney wasn’t going to stay quiet any longer.

As Caelum stepped back, wary of the shadow’s wrath, Barney stepped forward. He put an arm out in front of him and Mila, shielding them in a more symbolic than practical sense, but it succeeded in getting the priest’s attention on him. “Hey, shut up,” he heard himself say. For all the conflict and trepidation swirling inside, he managed to put out a decently deep voice and imposing figure when he tried. That was the side he wanted the others to see, and the idea of standing stall against this persecutor emboldened him. “All that crap about inferior, filthy people? You can shove it. Everyone runs into trouble and needs a little help now and again. It doesn’t make them worse, or the people who help them better. Especially people who just do it to shore up their own egos!”

“Oh?” With tented fingers and a tilted head, the priest smirked out his reply. “Is that what you really think? Or is it what you want people to think? Well, answer me this. Why do you help people?”

Barney bristled. “Because it’s the right thing to do,” he said, firmly as he could.

The priest shot him with double finger guns. “Exactly! Because it’s right. You and I always do the right thing. That’s what makes us righteous, compared to the wrongdoers. A cut above. Cut from a different cloth. Wouldn’t you say? That’s why we’re the exception to your little rule. Your line about everyone needing help. Not us. Because we are strong and righteous, we need help from nobody. That is why we can bear the burdens of all others!”

“You’re full of it,” Barney insisted, his rejection guttural. “Stop lumping me in with you!” He looked back at Mila and Caelum, trying to garner their support despite not knowing either of them. His insecurity, however, came through his voice. “Look, this crazy guy’s gaslighting me. I’m not some holier-than-thou egomaniac. I’m no different from anyone else.”

“You and I both know you don’t believe that.” The priest frowned, crossing his arms. “But since you insist, I have another question. Are you okay?”

Barney gulped, turning back. “W-what?”

“Are you okay?” The priest repeated. “You’re here, where people fall after being driven to the brink and over the edge. In the midst of a living nightmare, attacked by monsters and trapped in a prison of human sacrifice, can you look at the people around you and ask them for help?”

After flashing another glance back at Mila and Caelum, Barney thought of Felipe and Maria, of his mother and father, of his sister. He considered the homeless and starving, veterans tortured by their pasts, and victims of heinous crimes. Their pain was more real than any of this cartoon nonsense. He had no right to complain.

“Look, I’m fine,” he said. “I don’t know what this is but it isn’t real life. There are so many people out there, in the actual world, who have it so much worse than me. It’d be selfish to try and get other people to worry about me. And it’s not like they’d help me, anyway.”

He spoke from the heart with a full understanding of the bigger picture, sure that the truth would make this charlatan understand, but to his dismay he found the priest grinning ear to ear. “Finally, some honesty! You’re absolutely right. We’re fine. We’re totally okay. We don’t need anyone’s help. Because we’re stronger, more compassionate, more generous than anyone else! There’s not a soul out there who’d reach out to us in kindness, but that’s alright, because we don’t need it! So it falls to us to demonstrate to the worthless peons what being a good person really is! Come, let us rejoice in our suffering!”

“SHUT UP!” Barney bellowed, his voice echoing through the cathedral. He had a hand on his head, his fingers in his hair, and his other arm was raised with a balled fist. “That’s not what I meant! Stop twisting my words, and stop saying we’re the same! There’s no ‘we’. There’s no ‘us’. You’re. Not. Me!”

The words seemed to spark something in the priest. His expression grave, he tilted his head again, cupping a hand to his ear. “Sorry, what was that?

Barney fumed. “You heard me. I’m not what you say I am. And you! You’re just a fraud, and this is...is...a hoax! A setup...!”

“The only deluded one is you,” The priest told him. “But very well.” Seemingly giving up, he kneeled with his face on the ground, allowing his klobuk and robe to cover him. “If you will not come to your senses, it’s no use. I will grant you mercy.”

Breathing heavily, Barney allowed his arms to fall to his sides. “Finally, jeez.”

The priest continued. “...I will put an end to your misery, and take your place!” Alarmed, Barney tensed up again, but before he could do anything the shape beneath the robe convulsed. A murky red spray blasted out from beneath it in every direction, provoking an instinctive step back. Flummoxed once again, Barney could barely wrap his head around what happened. He...exploded!? A second look, however, suggested that wasn’t the case. Much of the visceral slime appeared to be in motion. Bending. Squirming. Wriggling. It wasn’t just fluid. It was legs. Insect legs.

Beneath the robe, the body of the priest bubbled, twisted, and rose. It lifted upward on a forest of flesh-colored, arthropodal limbs, spread like the roots of the mangrove tree. As the sickening thing continued to swell upward the robe stretched and receded, growing ever thinner, wetter, and more translucent. Scythelike arms pushed out from beneath what now looked hideously akin to a caul, and a whiplike tail extended from a bulky abdomen profuse with pulsating blood vessels in strange patterns. The abhorrent thing reared back, easily twice as tall as Barney himself, revealing a beard of twitching legs but nothing one could call a face. In a strained, barely discernible squeaking reverberation only loosely describable as a voice, the verminous shadow pronounced, "Only self-destruction awaits those who reject salvation and foolishly elevate themselves. Therefore the worthy one must cast them down!”

Barney turned to run, but like a mantis the vermin lashed out with a forearm and struck him. He soared through the air and smashed into one of the offering wagons, plowing straight through its shoddy construction. In the pile of wood splinters and produce he languished, fresh bruises aching, but he could not divert his eyes from the horror before him.

World of Light

Geralt, Link Mirage, and Sakura

@Multi_Media_Man, @Gentlemanvaultboy, @Zoey Boey, @Potemking

With the communication and preparation of the three boys coming together into a solid plan, Mirage took hold of his dart gun and began to bide his time. All waited for the perfect opportunity, eyes glued to the shining silver carts propelled in perpetual, cyclical motion around the kitchen by the sorceries of the Tempura Wizards. The movements of the other chefs and the sounds of food cooking provided ample distraction, but with the high stakes of his friends’ lives on the line and a snack of cheese to stave off the pain of hunger, Mirage’s focus was razor sharp. When Antoine transferred a fresh load of meat from the trough beneath the west-side chute his grip on the dart gun tightened, but only after the cart rattled and clanked all the way around the kitchen and the stretch-faced chef snagged a hunk of chuck steak did he take action. With the instinct and eye of a seasoned gunslinger masked by his childlike form, the illusionist took aim at the wheel and fired.

After a quiet but portentous pop dart flew silently and stuck against the inner fuselage of the cart right behind the wheel, so that the next second its turn ate the rubbery projectile up and lodged it right between the metal. It stuck fast and hard, but the cart did not stop when the wheel did. A human pushing it around would have felt the disturbance in an instant and ceased pushing the moment he realized something was wrong, but the autonomous spell driving the cart lacked any kind of awareness. Instead the whole thing jolted and, aided by the weight of its burden, tipped right over. A tremendous crash echoed throughout the kitchen as it hit the tile, scattering its contents to splatter and roll across the floor of the entire northeast section, right to where an aghast Antoine stood with his hands against his head. The malformed chef let out a strained, inhuman blurt of frustration and alarm, but it was the bellow of the King of Cuisine that bounced off the kitchen walls.

“You ABSOLUTE BUFFOON!” he yelled, thundering over from the ovens. Scared by the sudden clamor he’d accidentally jerked the four-meat pizza he’d just been putting in, spilling a bunch of its toppings into the oven’s blackened depths. Even the sushi chef over in his corner looked over, irate. “You worthless clod! Not happy just screwing up your own garbage, huh? You’ve got to bring us all down with you!” He grabbed the smaller chef by the doughy cheek and pulled, stretching out his face to an unnatural degree as his arms labored to prop him up against the counter behind him so that he wouldn’t fall into the fire. “If this were my kitchen, I’d have you fired, literally! The first and last time anything of yours is ‘well done!’ Disgusting imbecile!” With a final wrench he shoved the chef into the counter. Groaning hideously and rubbing his cheek, he slumped to the floor. Antoine, meanwhile, whirled on the Tempura Wizards. “You two, pick all this up right now! Its a damn good thing the guests don’t care if it’s been on the floor.” Still mad, Antoine surveyed the disaster one last time, but found no trace of outside interference and returned to his own meals with a huff.

At that point, however, came a weedy laugh from above. An unexpected complication peered down from the second floor with a wide smile. “Hahahaha!” Larry cackled, leaned his bulk over the upstairs railing. His unfortunate positioning delayed anyone’s ascent via sausage links--a trip made extremely difficult in the first place by the sheer exertion of hungry children being forced to lift their own weight at least a whole story straight up. “Everything okay down there? Oh, but don’t mind me. I’ve got a job to do! Hahahaha!” Larry gave a mocking wave and returned to his fish fillets, leaving the mess for everyone else to take care of.

Antoine scowled and bent to the task of salvaging his pizza. “Ingrates, every last one,” he muttered bitterly. “Not an ounce of cooking skill among them, except Fujimoto. Grragh. I’ve gotta get out of this hellhole...I’ve been working my ass off. She’s gotta appreciate all the quality I’ve put in by now. Just gotta go right up to her, tell her how it is…”

During the disturbance, which the captives upstairs knew must be the work of their friends already attempting a rescue, Bella kept her eyes peeled. Even as the smoke stung them and made them water, she stayed aware so that she could consider every aspect of the situation. The hubbub had put all of Rika’s hushed suggestions momentarily on hold, but now -and especially when Larry stepped away from the table nearby- she could afford to answer. “Extinguishing the fire would be great, but it would take a lot to douse this burning wood. And I’d rather not descend into the fire either by falling or growing.” Being taller than the other girls now, it was her feet that the flames licked every so often, forcing her to spend extra energy by bending them up and out of the way. Another attempt to wriggle her tail confirmed its extra length and weight. Even tied up she could sense the difference. At full size her leviathan tail weighed much more than she did even as an adult, and it was already on its way. Unfortunately her bonds put its head above the bar and hook she hung from, and firing at the ceiling served no purpose in her mind. Bella gritted her teeth. “If not for that man, we could figure something out. But he would notice and stop anything we might try.”

World of Light

Team Mao

Location: Al Mamoon Northeast - Rocket Inc.
Midna’s @DracoLunaris, Sectonia’s @Archmage MC, Mao’s @Potemking, Jesse’s @Zoey Boey, Joker, Fox, Necronomicon, Braum

Shadow and Ciella, all too eager to tear into one another, launched into an all-out bout without delay. Throughout the northern half of the arena the duel between harpy and hedgehog, a cat-and-mouse chase in constant motion, made for quite the spectacle. It took the Agito only seconds to get a grasp on her opponent’s strategy, but stopping it was an altogether different beast. Again and again Shadow launched himself in a homing Spin Attack, quickly closing the distance on Ciella no matter how she dodged and easily evading her arrows. Well before he entered the range of her conjured wing-arms, however, he and Nastasia vanished into a vortex of distorted space, becoming an untargetable crumplezone of brutal damage to chew through anything in his way. Even a glancing blow from the mobile anomaly shredded skin and feathers, spraying blood into the air to shower down on the sand below.

Yet even in the midst of her mad fury, Ciella still possessed her cunning streak. A well-timed burst of speed right before the Chaos Burst hit her would bear her to safety, allowing her to charge an arrow or summon an ice boulder to try and hit Shadow as he emerged. After taking one too many such opportunistic strikes (which is to say, one) Shadow began warping and throwing Chaos Lances after re-appearing. Though Ciella possessed impressive firepower of her own and did not mind a shootout, Shadow’s efforts kept her on her toes. “Grr!” the Agito growled, wiping blood from her lip after a lance’s explosion scarred her face.

“What’s the matter?” Shadow taunted. “Having trouble with my strategy?”

“Your ‘strategy’ is as brainless as it is repetitive! Cease this insipid flailing and fight me,” Ciella threw back.”

Shadow smirked. “You’re calling me a spammer? Well, if it’s so cheap and easy, why can’t you do anything about it?”

Trading such barbs every so often, their fight raged on. Their single-minded focus on one another at the very least gave the victims of Ciella’s devastation time to regroup and rearm themselves. A little too eager to return to and end the battle, the Phantom Thieves paused at the edge of the destroyed section of colosseum floor. Looking back, their team seemed to be in pretty bad shape. Most of them needed healing before they could fight again, and not the gradual, piecemeal regeneration offered by Sectonia’s items, either. If the Thieves rejoined the fight right now, they realized they would be alone. Mona and Fox turned to their leader. “What’s the plan, Joker?” the feline asked.

The young man had already decided. “This is too serious for us to go it alone and leave them high and dry. If that lunatic does another wave attack, our allies might be done for. We’ll help ‘em out.”

Together the three headed back to the others. Mao lay front and center, seemingly on his last legs, and Mona hurried to heal him. “Joker, all the way?” When his leader nodded, Mona understood his task and called upon his Persona. Zorro manifested in a burst of azure flame, his dancing blade whipping up a restorative Diarahan. Unlike Diarama, this spell offered a full heal, but it consumed so much mana that Mona would be completely unable to participate in the fight itself. In just a few casts he’d go from a refreshed reinforcement to even more drained than his friends. Nevertheless, he moved between his fallen allies, casting one Diarahan after another. Gunnar and even Fuse, brought to near death right after his friend hearting by Ciella’s Veil Piercer, were quickly brought back to full. “You newbies better make the most of this!” he told them, having assumed by gleam-free eyes that Fuse was a newfound ally just like the Dragonborn.

Mona paused when he came to Jesse. The redhead seemed only lightly hurt, thanks to her barrier, but she was in intense conversation with the remains of Sven. “Oh right, that might work!” he murmured, watching as the spirit resonated with Jesse’s words. It reached out with threads of prismatic light, binding itself to her, and in the span of a few short moments a new Striker had been recruited.

For Jesse

New Striker connected:
[url=http://]Uncle Sven[/url]
A zany old soul who blends chemistry with chaos. He’s forgotten more about alchemy than you will ever know – and maybe more than he remembers. Able to toss out a few offensive or supportive vials whenever he appears, he offers Fire Flasks for burst of up-front damage, Acid Flasks for lingering pools of corrosion, Elastic Ooze to make a super jump puddle, Healing Waters for a zone of continuous restoration, and once things have really gotten mixed up, Chaos Quaff to polymorph all targets in the area into harmless animals for about six seconds

For the moment, however, Mona couldn’t reach Midna. He’d assumed she would avoid Ciella’s onslaught by hiding in the shadows, but even with terrible injuries the imp was determined to make a difference. She gathered up her magic to hurl her shifting sands across the battlefield. In just a few moments a screen of sand gathered around both Ciella and Shadow, buffeting them with minor but constant damage over time and obscuring their vision. As incredibly annoying as it was, the Agito knew that to ignore Shadow for the sake of her indignation would invite destruction, and tried to focus on her enemy. There was just one problem--she couldn’t tell where he was. Suddenly on edge, Ciella whirled around in an effort to spot him, but her enormous wings and feathered hair made it difficult enough to see even without the sand. It quickly dawned on the Agito that it was taking her too long. She was going to get hit.

With all her might she twisted herself around a full one hundred and eighty degrees, spinning just in time to witness the sand-wreathed locus of distorted space bearing down on her from above and behind. Her intuition had been correct; Shadow’s pattern of attacking from behind whenever possible held. But it was too late to dodge now. She clenched her teeth and braced for impact, bringing her legs and arms together into an almost fetal blocking position, manifesting a Karmic Shield, and the next second Shadow made contact.

“KYAAAAAAH!” Ciella shrieked, feathers and blood flying as the Chaos Burst ground like a spatial blender. Thanks to the Karmic Shield’s reduced damage and her general toughness, however, the Agito persisted where Sven succumbed. Shadow pushed harder, digging deeper, and Ciella’s life drained away like water through a sieve. As she fought desperately to withstand Shadow’s brutality, Ciella brought her Siren arms around, their ethereal hands closing in on the distorted space itself. It was a terrible agony, as the harpy’s screams attested, but against all odds she endured. One hope kept her going: that no matter how bad it got, she needed to hold out only one second more. Just one...more...second…!

Shadow’s Chaos Burst ended, and the hedgehog disappeared from distorted space. Instantly he launched himself forward in an Air Shoes-propelled kick, smashing Ciella right in the eye, but then her hands closed around him. “Grah!” Five great arms of enchanted water snapped shut around his limbs and head, with the last yanking Nastasia off to squeeze her like a stress ball. “I am...the wings!” With a final pump of her wings Ciella rose higher, then fell backward. With her enemies in her clutches she hurtled downward in a deadly spiral. “Of DESPAIR!”

From within the Agito’s grasp howled a desperate, pleading cry. “BLEEEEEEEECK!”

Then the three smashed into the ground in a typhonic explosion of water. The whole arena shook beneath the impact, swaying wildly, and sand poured through the holes in the floor as the runoff washed most of the colosseum clean. Thanks to Midna’s efforts, Mordecai and Reinhardt had been retrieved and brought to safety in the lower part of the arena along with Braum. Shayne and Orendi’s spirits, caught up in the flow, drifted almost to the edge but did not descend. When the maelstrom died down it revealed Ciella back in her sylvan form, her arms and face very badly injured. All around the arena her Feral Shroud, the barrier cutting off escape for anyone in the terrible skirmish, broke down.

It was hard for Joker to imagine anyone surviving that, but at this point, it barely even surprised him that Shadow remained.

The hedgehog was down on one knee, his Chaos Boost dispelled. In front of him lay Nastasia, unmoving. Necronomicon reported her findings from a quick scan. “Unbelievable. She’s still alive. Although, I think her neck’s broken…” The morbid realization caused the Persona to trail off for a moment. “I’m not detecting any unusual brainwaves from Shadow. But he’s still-!”

Joker didn’t need her to say it. Even from her he could still see Galeem’s influence burning sunset-red in the hedgehog’s eyes. The fight wasn’t over. Shadow floated up with a smug look and began summoning a Chaos Spear to finish Ciella off for good. “Alright, rabbit stew!”

He and Fox were already on the way, but they had a lot of ground to cover, even just to get close enough for a shot from Joker’s Leena. Any allies with greater speed or long-range attacks, be they magic or technological, would be able to take decisive action.

Ms Fortune

Level 4 Nadia (100/40)
Location: The Maw
Blazermate's @Archmage MC, Bowser's @DracoLunaris, Ace Cadet's @Yankee, Sakura's @Zoey Boey, Mirage’s @Potemking, Link’s @Gentlemanvaultboy
Word Count: 1269

Nadia, taken aback by the sight of so many ghoulish, bloated restaurant patrons, scooted over to a crouched screen. Until she got her bearings she wanted diner and server alike to see neither hide nor hair of her. Naturally, just a moment after taking cover she did get spotted, but for once she was glad for some unexpected company. “Ace!” she beamed, just about hugging the boy. Instead she settled for bonking shoulders with him, just like on the docks before the day’s whirlwind adventures began. In the conga line of trials and tribulations since the Depths she’d lost sight of her new pal, never even getting the chance to check on him after his unsafe and unpleasant flight courtesy of Moreau. Since then she’d been mostly concerned with either dying of hunger or the chefs determined to make kids food in a different way, and she felt bad for instinctively looking out for number one again. But here he was, pretty okay all things considered, and with the Koopa Troop back in the sudsy washroom it was just Ace and Nadia against the world once more.

Having gotten a couple extra moments to view the stomach-turning scene ahead of them, Nadia shared what she’d seen. “They’re packed wall to wall, like sardines,” she told him, the deliciously salty, oily fishes still on her mind. She could feel the weight of the tin she’d snatched, but just as with the Cadet, witnessing the grisly feast evaporated her appetite. “Its dark under the tables but we might be able to sneak under, between the legs of the benches and stools. I don’t think we wanna go up top. Those things aren’t picky about what they eat.” In fact, the guests reached for whatever happened to slide or plop down into arm’s length, scarcely even looking at what they mindlessly shoved toward their gullets. They didn’t even seem to notice when morsels got caught on one another or slid back out of their mouths onto the table, and just tried to push it in once more. It was a slovenly, morbid, almost dispassionate act of excess, without taste, without need, without end. Nadia shivered. “Its like food is their whole existence. If this is the curse, I’m glad I stopped when I did.”

Sooner rather than later, however, she and the Cadet needed to confront the feast. Observing for a few moments rewarded the pair with a realization. The Volbonians who regularly replenished the Guests’ interminable meal could only come from and return to a single food source: the kitchen. All Nadia and Ace needed to do was follow them.

Nadia led the way, scampering over to the tables. She ducked out of the lantern-light and into the shadows beneath, only to find after a moment that her plan had a flaw. The guests, messy as they were gluttonous, had allowed an incredible amount of food to drop to the floor, and a few of the eaters had followed suit. Like slugs they pulled themselves around on their bellies, sucking up and slurping down everything in their paths. “No good,” Nadia hissed. With poor visibility and no room to move, the kids could just as easily get lost as cornered down there. Sighing, Nadia climbed up onto an empty stool, and onto the table itself.

The guests didn’t really react. Nadia doubted they even saw her. As long as she and Ace could stay out of the way of their stubby little arms, she figured they’d be okay. That just left what route to take. From here she could see the route the servers took across the tables, although she wondered if they brooked no response from the guests because they weren’t edible in their eyes. Either way, it gave her a pretty good idea, and once she saw a Volbonian head down some stairs she pointed a silent finger in the direction she and her friend ought to go. Then, they had nothing left but to get there.

Nadia walked quickly to avoid making too much noise, staying close to untouched food where possible in the hopes that it currently lay beyond the Guests’ reach. She didn’t think twice about climbing on top of the loaves, fishes, cutlets, and stacked dishes to get a leg up. The first time she got a little too close to a Guest and the horrid creature reached out to her with his grubby hand, wheezing and whimpering in desperate lust, she just about had a heart attack and fell off the table. A little help, however, would get her back on track. “Thank you,” she whispered emphatically, and pressed on.

Caution gave the two steady progress, but not quickly enough for Nadia’s liking. Not with lives on the line. Before long she couldn’t suppress the thoughts of her friends getting cooked and butchered any longer. To hell with safety. She needed to rescue Sakura and the others now. She clenched her teeth and changed tact, suddenly jumping off the lid of her stewpot onto a Guest’s back. The beast of habit, hunched over her meal, straightened up in surprise, grunting as she flailed her arms. Nadia jumped to the next one over, and though it reeled like a stepped-on seal when she landed the feral moved on long before she could fall off. Then an idea hit her. Once she landed on another diner she slid her claws into the flesh of its neck, and with a gurgling cry the guest bucked backward. Nadia allowed its momentum to send her flying, and while the Guest toppled to the ground she soared over an aisle to land with a roll between two more monsters. One reached for her, but she shoved a ham into its paw instead and squirmed away.

This was the last set of tables before the stairs. In front of her sat a row of hungry Guests shoulder to shoulder, and the eyes of the one dead ahead had already lit up with greed. With a moan he launched herself from his stool as best she could, clambering onto the table to pull himself toward Nadia. Taking initiative, the little thief grabbed hold of a wine bottle like a club and rushed forward to slam it right into the Guest’s face. Nadia jumped on as the diner blurted out an exclamation of pain and fell backward off the table, riding the Guest through his stool all the way down to the floor for a very cushioned landing. She bounced off and rolled to a stop at the head of the stairs, where she turned to look back for Ace.

After a moment, however, the fallen guest stirred. He flailed and kicked wildly, smacking the already bent stool out from beneath a neighbor, who then fell alongside him. With beady eyes on Nadia the two slugged across the wooden floor toward her, forcing her to run for the stairs. She sprinted down as the ravenous tide rolled after her, barely making it in time to avoid the Guests that then plowed into a waiter. Fresh sushi dishes littered the ground around them, seizing their attention, and Nadia moved on. She’s reached the first floor.

Though this area was a single large room compared to the many smaller rooms of the restaurant upstairs, its added vertical space would do little for Nadia, and plenty of Guests remained between her and the dumbwaiter on the far side. Her heart pounded in her chest from both the tension and the chase, but as long as she was with the Cadet, she could make it through. Probably.

---

After Nadia and Ace the dishwashers had assumed that whoever came in did not mean to bother them, and with a very important task at hand, they planned to return the favor. Bowser’s loud and unexpected announcement, however, startled them unexpectedly badly. All of them jumped, with one koopa so surprised that his plate flew from his hands. It shattered against the floor with a loud crash, sending him into a panic as his coworkers flinched. A storm of hissed, urgent warnings flew Bowser’s way.

“Quiet!”
“Shh!”
“Not so loud!”
“Shut up!”

Despite his proclamations the washers did not believe him to be their king, and right now they had other issues. Now that Bowser got a good look, he could see that many of these rather high-strung troopers bore scars across their faces and arms. In just a few moments he could get a sense that these koopas lived squarely under the thumb of the chefs, and for how long was anyone’s guess. Fidgety, furtive, and meek, they seemed to possess almost no will to fight, except maybe when it came to getting a potential troublemaker in line. The nearest one jumped down to menace Bowser with a half-scrubbed pan. “Are you trying to get us killed!? You know the chefs are looking for any excuse to make us into turtle soup! We’re already in hot water ‘cause of the plates!” He pushed the pan into Bowser’s arms along with a scrubber, then tossed a dishrag to Junior. “Here, hurry up and get to work before they come in here and see you kids goofing off!”

---

Seeing Sakura heartbroken brought Bella’s spirits almost as low. She felt like weeping herself, whether from empathy, the pain of hanging by a rope around her wrists, the smoke in her eyes, or all three. With plenty of distraction and difficulty seeing it was difficult to take stock of the situation and arrive at any conclusion other than ‘this is bad’. Being cut off from their friends and left dangling over a blazing cookfire, with a heaping portion of killer butchers on the loose, made for a pretty bleak situation. But was it really that much bleaker than the other ones? They’d already gotten past a headless shadow monster and a flooded factory full of aquatic abominations. Armed with this information, Bella staved off despair, reasoning that if she, Rika, and Sakura could just keep it together they could hold out until their rescue.

With that in mind she craned her head around to address Sakura. “Don’t blame yourself, mon cheri. It was just bad luck. Could have happened to any of us, oui?” Any more encouragement than that, however, would have to wait. Her young friend had noticed something else, a detail that slipped away from Bella in the relatively brief time since the cafeteria, but a big one nonetheless. “I am?” As best she could, the Water Princess looked herself over, then glanced at the other meals-to-be, trying to get a frame of reference. “Humm...I think you may be right. My limbs...un peu plus long.” Though she couldn’t see it, her leviathan tail had benefited the most from her growth, straining against the bonds that tied its throat against her wrists.

She spotted Mimi, but unless the pokemon could lift all three girls off their hooks and over the fire to safety without Larry noticing, the situation wasn’t much better. For the moment, all Bella could do was wait and think. Something Sakura said got her gears turning, and one detail in particular concerned her. “Actually, I ate quite a lot,” Bella corrected. “I wanted to..” she paused to cough, straining to get her head away from the smoke. “Agh...I wanted to see if zere were...any effects. For ze team, remember? My tail and I just dug right in.”

Sakura’s plan seemed solid initially, the team’s current inability to eat food notwithstanding, but for reasons Bella couldn’t quite articulate something bugged her about it. She spent a few moments in quiet but furious contemplation, trying to put it together, before she realized. “Hold on, it may not be zat simple. This curse...it turned back time, yes? Zat explains everyone’s clothes. But remember zose other kids? They did not want to eat, yes? Zey must have known it would make them big...big enough for ze Janitor zat chef mentioned to send zem to ze kitchen. Like agneaux to slaughter.” Another coughing fit wracked her less-little body. “Z-zey weren’t cursed like us. Maybe ze food does not turn forward time to undo curse, but instead stimulate ze body’s growth.”

Her brows furrowed as she tried to puzzle it out. After a moment her intense expression turned on Sakura. “Listen, you trained as a child, right?” She awaited confirmation. “Well...if I am not wrong, eating could ‘skip’ us through many years of our lives. It would be like you reached fourteen without having ever trained a day. Or...” Bella became more worried. “What if we missed ze mark? We might pass our ‘current’ ages. What would happen if ze curse is zen broken?” At this point, without a lot of concrete knowledge on how exactly the food worked, she was just spitballing, but even then she found no end to the alarming possibilities.

---

Though Mirage could not resist the cheesy temptation laid before him, the boys reached the main kitchen’s first floor unharmed. Once there, however, they discovered even more trouble than they bargained for. Even with the added firepower of a magic nail, a sharp kitchen knife, and a bottomless dart gun, this didn’t seem like a fight they could win. If this ‘King of Cuisine’ character held sway over not just the stretch-faced chef but Larry too, it was hard to imagine him as a weaker combatant. The sushi chef didn’t look too deadly -or even very imposing- but the tempura wizards’ use of actual magic tipped the scales. Stripped of all their equipment and powers and locked into weak, frail bodies by the pervasive curse of the Resentments, the Seekers already had little to work with. Being transmogrified into actual food was more than anyone could stomach.

Unable to vent their fury in a straight fight, the trio strategized beneath their cabinet, wary of attracting the ire of chefs, wizards, and coffee cups alike. In a succinct fashion they bandied around a couple ideas, including the use of a decoy, but they soon settled on the stealthy approach. With the numbers and the area knowledge that the kitchen staff possessed, there wasn’t much of a choice. Luckily for the marauding sneaks, this place featured an incredible amount of clutter. At any time a good half-dozen projects seemed to be in progress at once.

The sushi chef possessed an entire station in the southeast corner near the dumbwaiter, complete with hibachi grill, and he also seemed to be in charge of plating. With a fastidious eye for detail he arranged and deftly sliced each roll, adding a dash of actual artistry that it was hard to believe would be appreciated by either his coworkers or his clients. In the eyes of the intruders at least, he could be written off; his station stood in the opposite direction from the stairs, meaning a trip in that direction could be a sizable and risky detour

At the central chamber, the stretch-faced chef labored at the pot roast to which he’d been assigned. Sizzling over a fire pit in a massive, green-sided cauldron of a pot, the stew existed in a state of flux that demanded constant attention, both ladling out its contents into tureens for delivery and replenishing the ingredients. Moving as quickly as his ponderous, doughy physique would allow, the hideous butcher threw in chunks of tough meat to soften, peeled potatoes, chopped carrots, and scattered seasonings. The carrot heads and potato peels went to the Tempura Wizards along with anything else the chefs didn’t need, transformed into deep-fried food to be stacked in heaping bowls and served. All three remained more or less stationary, unlike Antoine. The gray-haired King of Cuisine scuttled around like a beetle, attending to various dishes. He moved unpredictably between the ovens, shelves, stovetops, and mixing bowls, always on the hunt for some ingredient or another, spending a few seconds at a time before hurrying on. He presented a wild card, but as long as the kids were observant, they could make do.

The counter they found themselves under in the kitchen’s northeast corner harbored a selection of spices, vegetables, and herbs, as best they could guess. It featured at least one chopping block, although the one on the upper middle cook station served Stretch-face well enough for his carrots and potatoes. It was there that the communal knife rack stood, as well. All that meant that the chefs didn’t come by the kids’ hidey hole that often. Going west would bring them to a set of dirty sinks, going under which meant navigating past the various pipes and drains only to arrive at the stovetops and prep space that Antoine most frequented. Four large ovens lay stacked facing east in the northwest corner, offering nothing but impediment. Next to them stood a trough full of various meats, heaped indiscriminately beneath a chute in the wall probably fed by the efforts of the butchers above. Then came a row of drawer counters with various well-used machines, including a sausage maker, a pressure cooker, a fryer, a blender, a toaster, and a couple mixers, all dingy metal and very much in the crude style of the Maw. The stairs began right below where the counter ended, while mostly cupboards existed beneath the staircase itself, going all the way to the southeast corner where Fujimoto bent to his painstaking task. The drawer knobs looked rather climbable.

The lower middle station, on the other side of the fire pit, was where the Tempura Wizards did most of their work. Using some sort of hexes, they kept a couple metal carts rolling in a counterclockwise circle around the kitchen, offering convenient transport of both ingredients and refuse, which they took for transformation when the carts rolled by. Overhead shelves and racks kept a smorgasbord of pots, pans, and tools all readily available above just about every counter and sink. Less than perfectly organized, the chefs appeared to have just left various things lying everywhere, too, used and reused. Hopefully the disarray was merely the byproduct of a dinnertime rush, but the kids could by no means be sure. Dangling chains and needlessly long sausage links, some seemingly hanging from the second floor railing, swung hypnotically in the Maw’s gentle heeling. It was a lot to take in, but it made for a lot of options.

Old Mill

Location: Frozen Highlands - Alpine Skyline / Wildwood Glades
Linkle’s @Gentlemanvaultboy

For a few moments Albedo’s eyes lingered on Linkle as she used it to take a flurry of pictures of their surroundings. Without a single dull angle available to either of them, she really could just hold down the button and let her new badge work its magic. In his own world of Teyvat plenty of people shared her enthusiasm when it came to the newfangled devices known as Kameras, delighting in their ability to capture a forever memory in but an instant. Albedo himself never partook, instead finding greater fulfillment in the painstaking act of artistry to immortalize the creatures and landscapes that captured his interest, but she did have a point. This composite world offered an unprecedented amount of variety, a canvas splashed with the colors of countless different places in remarkable density. Even if he managed to make a drawing a day of the fascinating things he encountered, it would easily take a lifetime to depict everything. He did not have that kind of time. So when it came to Linkle snapping pictures as she frolicked among the wildflowers, or even up in the Alpine Skyline, he did not mind one bit. However cruel the World of Light’s origins, it would be a shame to pass its wonders by.

Able to admire the scarlet forest later, the duo managed to reign in their enthusiasm and focus on the gardener. After Linkle gave her and Albedo’s names he introduced himself in turn. “They call me Tuley.” He bent down to pull out a scraggly weed from between a few fresh buds, which he flicked into a bucket of other unwanted flora he’d pruned from his own little slice of paradise. “Freya…” he repeated, stroking his whiskers. “Sorry miss, I dunno anyone by that name. If anyone does though, it'd be the Witch o’ the Woods.”

“A witch?” Albedo prompted him, hoping for more information.

“Mm-hm,” Tuley confirmed. “She watches over the valley. Most kind-hearted lady there ever was. Treats birds ‘n beasts like her own children. Even cares about the plants. Not many folks do.”

The alchemist was already writing in his notebook. “She sounds like just the person to ask. Do you know where she is?”

At that, Tuley shook his bearded head. “‘Fraid I don’t. I don’t get out much, but I heard her house’s tucked away somewhere secret. Can’t find it if ya go lookin’. Maybe you’ll run into ‘er, though.”

One benefit of showing little emotion was not looking discourteously disappointed. “I see, thank you,” Albedo told him. He gave a stiff wave goodbye, then rose to head over to the river of grass and flowers flowing between the trees. It looked like he was already leaving, but in truth he only went out of Tuley’s hearing range for a little privacy, where he waited for Linkle. Her arrival prompted the delivery of his plan. “This valley is quite large, especially for one who does not wish to be found. If this witch is secretive but loves animals, we may be able to draw her out with one. The cries of deer, boar, and elk can carry great distances when distressed. Perhaps we could hunt one.” He considered Linkle’s own kind nature. “Or pretend to do so. A nonlethal wound would achieve the desired effect. Either way, the plan is predicated on your crossbow.” He scrutinized her expression, wondering what Linkle thought.

Persona - Soldiers of Fortune

Barney Rynsburger, Caelum Harrington

Though fear and stress hounded Barney’s every step, almost as bad as the guards scuttling around this place like insects and threatening to expose him at every turn, the would-be engineer took things one step at a time. Since it worked for him before he hid himself among prison lines whenever he could, aided in his deception thanks to an empty, discarded iron mask he found in the central ditch of his path between pens. Once disguised with the same ghastly helmet as the inmates, he was elated to find that the guards barely seemed to register him, even as his prison line walked right past them. Those pit-like faces seemed to be so fixated on searching for the frantic movement of runaway fugitives that none stopped to pick out any finer details on the people right in front of them. Maybe cartoonishly incompetent security came along with the territory of a cartoonishly evil overlord? Feeling a little braver, Barney managed to make pretty good time through the Proving Grounds, even as the blood loss from the wound on his arm began to take its toll.

By the time he finally reached his destination he’d started to feel a little dizzy. A hand clapped over his injury did not a bandage make. Maybe, Barney realized, he should have ripped up his shirt or something to stem the flow early on, but the thought hadn’t crossed his mind. As he climbed the steps to the doors there came a blaring, almost bleating noise from the courthouse behind him, and a panicked look over his shoulder confirmed that the Pondwater’s ‘Vision’ was operational once more. The radiant yellow light swept across the judge’s domain with furious speed, hastening not just Barney but also the incoming Caelum and Mila on their way. Though it looked like the redhead had taken a baton swing to the forearm at some point, she and Caelum were still very much alive, and Barney was glad to see that they made it. Still, he couldn’t relax just yet, not while that awful searchlight could rove his way any moment. With the others behind him he hastened up the last few stairs and into the cathedral doors with a thud. It was too late to worry about the abnormality of such a place sticking straight out of a jailhouse, or it being a potential trap, or even the other escapees he’d now lost sight of. He, Caelum, and Mila needed somewhere to hide.

Unfortunately for them, the door wouldn’t budge. It only rattled as Barney pushed on it, kicking back before he gained so much as an inch of progress. “W-what the!?” For a panicked moment he thought he might have gotten too weak to repeat his feat of pushing open heavy doors, but just a second’s worth of critical thinking told him that the door must be barred from the inside. When he looked again, however, he spotted a recess in the door with a small panel on the other side, right at eye height. With the searchlight getting closer, Barney threw caution to the wind and pounded on the door repeatedly, calling, “Help, open up! We need refuge! Help, please, let us in!”

He didn’t expect it to work. Just a few moments into his ruckus he heard the sound of a latch, and a second later the panel slid open. Inside Barney saw a shadowed but undeniably human face, belonging to a man pretty much the same height as him. He wore what looked like a hood at first glance, but appeared to be more of a hat with a head covering that descended behind it, plus a gleaming silver crown. A pair of yellow eyes stared back at him. “I’m here, I’m here, not so loud!” came a deep, bassy voice, shrunken to an urgent whisper. “What do you require of me?”

Relieved to have found someone who wasn’t a monster, Barney just about pushed his face into the recess. “Just let us in, please! We need a safe place to hide!”

Furtive eyes darted across him, Caelum, and Mila, then on the courthouse beacon overseeing all, before a kindly, understanding sort of expression dawned on the priest. The panel slid closed, the noise of wood sliding across metal came from inside, and the door swung ajar. One after another the fugitives squeezed inside the grand, wax-white cathedral.

A moment later the door closed behind them, but even though it shut out the baleful glare of the judge’s Vision, Barney did not feel at ease. In fact, he felt like he’d just stepped into the courthouse again. Although this place had a very different style, it seemed every bit as ostentatious, making even a big guy feel small, dirty, and unwanted. When it came to aesthetics, at least, he could appreciate its ornate, intricate archways and patterns over the gaudy gold and velvet lavishness of the courthouse. Whereas that other place felt oppressive, meant perhaps to convey the strength and authority of the one in charge, this cathedral sought less mundane, less worldly glorification. An incredible array of statues, all of them stooped or kneeling in worship, stood over countless candles, braziers, and little shrines. A single towering statue of a bearded man with the world on his back stood before the stained glass window at the far wall. Piles and even a few wagons of offerings could be found here and there. Maybe the others wouldn’t see the distinction -he honestly didn’t know if he could describe the difference himself- but he didn’t feel too bad about it. Then again, maybe it was just the halo effect--elation that he’d found a safe place, away from the deadly searchlight.

Caught up in examining his surroundings, Barney almost forgot about his host until the priest approached the newcomers. “Welcome, my lost lambs, to the Church of the One Most Worthy.”

Barney’s attention returned to the man, using the candlelight to take in the man’s features. For a moment he could not respond, suppressed by an inexplicable confusion. Something about this guy, about the same height as Barney, this priest looked heavier, with a bigger and redder beard, was terribly familiar, giving off the impression that Barney saw him somewhere before. He didn’t recognize those weird yellow eyes though, rather like the judge’s, if not quite as intense. Or that strange resonance to his voice, making it sound a little off, and hard to identify. Now that Barney got a good look at him, however, he saw the myriad clasps and chains that bound him. “You’re a prisoner, too?” he asked, letting slip a spur-of-the-moment question.

Expression grave, the stranger bowed his head. “I am. In my infinite charity I have accepted all bondage so that others may be free.”

Not much less confused, Barney asked his real question. “Do I know you?”

The priest gave a curious nod. “Why yes, my child. Though you have often turned your eyes from me, I have always been by your side.”

Barney gulped. No way. It couldn’t be. “Wuh...what are you saying?”

“Hahaha!” the priest laughed. “That’s right. I am the worthy one. The holy one. The faultless one. He who shoulders the burdens of the helpless. He who suffers selflessly under their weight. The only one to whom the gratitude of the world itself is due...” Slowly, the priest extended his finger, pointing at Barney right in the heart. “...You.”

Barney blinked, taken utterly aback. “M-me?”

“Yes, you.” Spreading his arms wide, the stranger lifted up his arms, allowing his chains to glitter in the candlelight. “He whose very presence shines blessed light upon the woeful blight of the inferior. Saint Barney Rynsburger, at your service.” With a broad smile he clasped his hands, looking between the students. “You may now commence the thanks and praise.”

---

Dakota Rhett, Vincent Cawler, Nick Waller

After narrowly avoiding the guards, Dakota and Vincent kept moving. For all of the veteran criminal’s experience against law-enforcement personnel of various stripes, the monstrous sentries of the Prison of Indictment somehow seemed to operate on movie logic after all. Though tireless as they were vicious, the guards lacked perception or large-scale coordination. Anyone with a few moments to think about the situation whilst hiding might note the lack of a general alarm, despite the presence of fugitives surely being common knowledge at this point. As odd as everything was, it afforded the escapees a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and they needed to make the most of it before the searchlights flared up once more.

Dakota could feel as much as hear the slight, ephemeral beat on the wind. It reached him again and again, faint but steady as a metronome. With Vincent beside him, Nick a ways behind, and the need for refuge growing every moment, he allowed it to guide him closer and closer to the entertainment center. A wary and a stop-and-go strategy kept them out of the way of the roaming guards until they finally reached the unusual structure. Jammed right in between two jailhouses and very different from them in construction, it seemed even weirder up close, but there was no time for second thoughts. They needed to get in.

The sheltering darkness within was a major relief. It promised to hide the fugitives from both the guards and the searchlights outside, giving them a chance to sink down for some long-overdue rest. From inside the venue, however, everyone could hear the music much louder and clearer than before. Following it even farther would lead to the music hall itself, a live performance in the dark awash with colorful spotlights. Nebulous, shadowy formers bounced in the audience before a stage with but one rockstar performer, playing as if there was no tomorrow.

---

Jin Ifriti, Harriette Moore, Alina Sanford

Constantly harried and forced to scramble for any means of escape at every turn, Jin, Harriette, and Alina ended up ducking into one of the imposing jailhouses. After running past rows and rows of caged inmates, all either asleep in their beds or hard at work after their desks, they finally found a cranny to hide in. A single cell, larger than the rest and open, beckoned invitingly, like the mouth of a mysterious cave. One after another the three hurried inside. Pounding footsteps and angry shouts grew near, went by, and finally faded away. At long last, muscles burning from exertion and throats ragged from hyperventilation could rest, and all the pain accumulated since their arrival in this crazy, hellbent world could start to ease.

At least, that was the hope. The fugitives were not, sadly, that lucky. Once sure that their pursuers were long gone, they could turn on their phones’ flashlights to find that the cell was no longer open. Somehow, amidst all the commotion, metal bars had snaked across the door to form an impenetrable barrier. They were blocked in. Worse still, their lights told them they were not alone in here. Once directed downward their lights revealed human bodies scattered around the floor, contorted in horrific positions. Despite the initial shock, however, these ash-gray bodies featured no faces, and one touch was sufficient to reduce them to piles of dust. The real problem came after their lights flickered and died, in too quick a succession to possibly be coincidence. In the dark they could see two piercing red lights, side by side, casting them in a crimson glare--the eyes of some unknown horror.

World of Light

Let's give this another shot, eh?

I'm going with a sorta amalgam here, taking aspects of the character from both the first and second game, not a lot of changes - allowing powers from the first game that didn't come over the second, and keeping a plot point that had been resolved at the end of the second, but still changes nonetheless!

Raz

- Name: Razputin Aquato

- Game Origin: Psychonauts

- Appearance: "My name is Raz, and today is my first official day on the job." 4'4" tall.

- Personality: Raz is surprisingly mature for his age, full of compassion and care for those around him and observant enough to cut right to the heart of the matter. He never turns a blind eye to someone in need, people who can't help themselves, always willing to lend a hand wherever possible, even if sometimes it's for the thrill of doing something important. Raz always treats people with kindness, approaching even the most flawed with the idea that they can be better, get help. Of course, Raz is still a kid, no matter how mature he comes across. For one thing, he's a massive dork, unable to control himself around his heroes and always having a quote from his comics on the tip of his tongue. He has a desire to be cool, often mimicking or imitating people he sees as such, though his lack of experience causes him to fumble the execution. It also makes him a bit gullible, easy to be swept up in the dramatics and intrigue of "cool", causing him to make bad judgement calls. But Raz isn't one to ignore his mistakes or brush them under the carpet. If he's messed up, he'll own up to it and do what needs doing.

- Background: Raz grew up in the circus, his family's own circus, a psychic in a family cursed by psychics to die in water, meaning he had to hide his budding gift from the outside world and only able to read the exploits of the famous government entity known as the Psychonauts. Until one day he was given a pamphlet for 'Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp', a facility run by the Psychonauts to train young cadets in the ways of the mental realm. So, obviously, Raz ran away from the circus to join the military.

After not quite sticking the landing on his arrival to camp, and having to learn everything he needed to become a Psychonauts in just one day before his parents came to get him, Raz had his work cut out for him. Oh, and then it turned out that Coach Oleander, one of the camp's counselors and renowned Psychonaut agent, was hatching a plot to steal the campers' brains to fuel world-conquering psychic death tanks. It was... awesome! An actual psychic threat that only he could stop! Which he totally did, by the way. He even managed to help four mental patients along the way and deal with the personal issues of traumas of himself and Oleander, reforming the man in the process, just like a real Psychonaut! Being officially accepted into the agency, Raz left camp the next morning having fulfilled his personal dream in just twenty-four hours. And then it turned out the grand head of the Psychonauts had been kidnapped, and Raz was going on the mission to save him! Things were definitely looking up for Raz.

Until they weren't. After a successful rescue operation and their arrival at Psychonauts HQ, Raz was confronted with the fact that he had only been a big fish in a small pond, the coolest kid at camp, and now he was in a much, much bigger pond, and he can't swim. Shunted down from "certified agent" to "intern to the mailroom guy" since, well, the guy who accepted him in the first place didn't really have the rank to do so, Raz was back at the bottom rung. He just had to prove himself again, and with the looming threat of a powerful and homicidal psychic, Maligula, and the possibility of a mole within the Psychonauts, Raz would have his chance once more.

To keep a long story short (and spoilers for a new game out), Raz managed to find out the mole, foil his secret plan to bring back Maligula, and was finally award with the title of Junior Agent, officially this time. Now all that was left was to figure out this whole 'girlfriend' thing he has going on...

- Specialty: Psychic offensiveness, supernatural recon, and mental health specialist.

- Level: 1
- Experience: 0/10

- Powers:

• Psi-Blast - One of the first things Raz learned in his training, Psi-Blast allows him to fire off psychic bolts of concentrated aggression. While these shots are pretty powerful and fly fast, Raz can't rapid-fire them, only able to get off 3 shots in quick succession, as it uses up his natural aggression and requires him to aggress all over again. They also can't fly too far from him, making them most effective at a close range.

- Strengths: (Things your character's always good at, or always can do; essentially, passive abilities or bonuses. You start with three, but you can add more in place of powers when you level up)

• Basic Braining - Proof that Raz is equipped to handle traversal in the mental realm. Having grown up in the circus, Raz has incredible athleticism and acrobatic skills, capable of twisting, spinning, folding, swinging, and balancing his way across any number of dangerous locales. He's also able to augment his natural abilities with his psychic powers, granting him the ability to 'double jump' as well as project bigger psychic hands over his own for hand-to-hand combat.
• Hard Headed - No, not literally. Raz possesses an innate mental defense system that even the most seasoned Psychonauts can't hope to penetrate. This makes him impervious to any mind-targeting attacks or ailments, of course, as well as protecting him from having his mind read or entered.
• Psychic Stowaway - Pretty soon after he first arrived at Whispering Rock, Raz met an agent by the name of Ford Cruller, a very famous member of the Psychonauts - in fact, he started the whole thing! Nowadays his own psyche is worse for wear, fractured following a psychic duel and leaving him unable to be himself unless near a large deposit of Psitanium. To help Raz along his way, Ford planted a mental construct of himself in Raz's mind, able to summon Ford to his aid whenever he needs it, like so. Since Ford wouldn't be able to leave Raz's head in this state and remain useful, he's really only there for moral support and tactical advice.

- Weaknesses:

• The Hand of Galochio - Due to an (ironic) curse upon the Aquato family name, Raz is cursed to one day die in water. This has manifested in the Hand of Galochio, a menacing hand made of water that will literally pull Raz under should he get too close to a deep enough source - even water made of wooden stage props or quilted fabric in mental worlds. Rather than a byproduct of the curse, it's actually a subconscious use of power from Raz, whose fear of the curse makes him control the Hand of Galochio without realizing it.

- Spirits: (See Spirits section for details. Start with none)

- Kindred Spirits:

• Lili Zanotto, Raz's newly-realized girlfriend and daughter to Truman Zanotto, Grand Head of the Psychonauts. Often hot-headed and prone to violence and pyromania, Lili will make it clear that she's not someone to mess with, fiercely protective of the people close to her in spite of her chaotic, rebellious nature. A gifted Herbaphonist like the rest of the Zanotto family, Lili is sure to stick by Raz's side through thick and thin.
• Kaname Date, a special officer working for ABIS, the clandestine branch of the Tokyo police force. A fellow secret agent, Date similarly enters the minds of other people in order to gather information that they're hiding, consciously or otherwise, and also has a friend taking residence in his head to act as support for his activities.
• Ben Throttle, the hardened leader of his biker gang, The Polecats, traversing the harsh desert of a post-apocalyptic future. While Ben and Raz have next to nothing in common, you could very well say that Raz, his friends, family, and the Psychonauts himself wouldn't have existed if not for him...

- Inventory:

• Psycho-Portal - A palm-sized device shaped much like a door. The Psycho-Portal is the bread and butter of the Psychonauts, enabling them to astral project themselves into the mental worlds of others through it. Simply stick the Psycho-Portal onto a person's head and let your projection get sucked right in to whatever awaits inside. If the target's brain cannot be entered for any reason, such as being too young or still under Galeem's influence, the Psycho-Portal won't stick to their head. In the World of Light, the Psycho-Portal is not limited to psychics, allowing for any Spirit to take advantage of its use.
• Helmet, Goggles, and Messenger Bag - Very important accessories for Raz for a multitude of reasons. The helmet and goggles are protective wear, of course, helping to fend off concussions or the poking out of eyes by girl scout den mothers. They also look really cool. The messenger bag is, well, a bag, where Raz stores his things, such as his Psycho-Portal, and where his merit badges are pinned to. Right now the only merit badges he has are his Basic Braining and Psi-Blast ones (not to mention his Oarsman badge), but he's sure he'll come across them all again!
• Honey Pepper Boar Bacon - a thick cut of bacon, the kind unique to the Psychonauts HQ. Raz uses it to get Ford's attention, his love for bacon so intense that he can smell it even through the small psychic hook he planted in Raz's mind.
• PSI Pops - special made lollipops for use by Psychonauts. PSI Pops heal mental health, letting Raz traverse mindscapes for longer without getting his astral projection kicked out. They also taste really good! Raz is able to carry three at a time.

@TruthHurts22

Overall, a good sheet. Gives the impression of a solid all-arounder whose main focuses on adventuring and mental health will bring a fresh perspective to the team. Hopefully he's able to heal more trauma than he has to endure himself. We can go over an entry point later but at this point in the RP it would be less straightforward to stick him in Blue Team, what with the situation aboard the Maw. But if you wanted we could probably make it work. Accepted.

World of Light

Dead Zone Recon II

Starring Banjo & Kazooie’s @Dawnrider, Pit’s @Yankee, and Yuri’s @Gentlemanvaultboy
Word Count: 6142 (+7)

Only after the trip across the Land of Adventure was about twenty minutes underway did Nero really get a grasp of its scale--and realize he’d made the absolute correct choice gunning for a vehicle to cross it with. These rolling plains, verdant forests, and breezy hills went on forever. The Bowsermobile made steady progress through the picturesque scenery under Banjo’s direction, skirting around craggy rocks and fording sparkling streams when need be, but they had a long way to go, and offroading was never a comfortable prospect. Nero dreaded running of gas but said nothing, since he couldn’t see how it would help. Instead he kept his eyes on whatever creatures he spotted from his rear seat throughout the course of the journey. Occasionally he glimpsed a creature from his own world, like buffalo or prairie dogs, but more often his searching eyes found fauna on the fantastical side. He could see prehistoric monsters from the long-necked giants to the raptors to strange ones that daffled his powers of description before they disappeared from his view. Unfamiliar birds walked the land or soared through the sky alongside bizarre mantas whose rumbling noises could be heard even on the ground. Once, an aggressive troll-like brute charged at the Bowsermobile from behind, but a number of well-placed shots from Nero and Pit convinced it to stay away.

Other than that, the trip across the Land of Adventure remained mostly uneventful. The majority of creatures that the team encountered seemed determined to mind their own business so long as the intruders minded theirs, and when the four encountered a small team of Lumbridge adventurers out on some quest they either greeted each other without stopping or simply moved along. Since they didn’t need supplies or have anything to do there the mercenaries skipped a stop at Lumbridge altogether and carried on northwest, until the green greens of the Land of Adventure finally gave way to arid badlands. It was about noon when the Bowsermobile finally choked its last, totally out of juice, and slid to a stop. Nero sighed and hauled himself from the car to land on the dusty road and stretch the cramps from his muscles. “Well,” he said, looking a few miles ahead to where an edifice of white concrete and gleaming metal rose stood alone, “We almost made it.” He regarded the weighty vehicle with a dubious stare, wondering if the others would be much good if push came to shove.

After a few moments of contemplation the devil hunter raised a finger and tapped it in the air a couple times, as if drumming up buried memories. “You know what, we might not have to push the damn thing. I remember seeing a giant, bright yellow truck at the gas station. It had to have been a tow truck.” He glanced between Banjo and Pit and settled on the latter. “Hey, you’re a speedy kid, right? Care to use all that energy to run down and let ‘em know we’re stuck out here?”

"I'm not a kid," Pit huffed. Despite the whole 'Kid Icarus' thing! He crossed his arms and leaned towards Nero, eyeing the devil hunter up and down. "Your gray head doesn't fool me, you're like, what, twenty? I'm probably older than you."

Nero rubbed his hair, a little embarrassed. “Ah. Sorry.”

The angel waved dismissively, taking no real offense. It might have been telling that even while Pit was rebutting the "kid" comment, his feet still started moving. He was a servant of a goddess, emphasis on servant, apparently. He thought Kazooie might be faster since she was a... roadrunner? No, what was it. Bre... something? Oh well. Considering she and Banjo were a package deal though, lugging the bear along might be tiring. "I'll go let somebody know!"

A half hour later the four arrived at Hammerhead. They were hot, tired, and sweaty, but things could have been a lot worse, and they’d made it to the waypoint Nero spoke of at last. Here they could rest and refuel both their ride and themselves before heading for the Dead Zone. The tow truck brought the Bowsermobile to a stop by a fuel pump and hopped out onto the tarmac. The truck driver, which he knew to be the daughter of the owner, gave the mercenaries a cheerful wave. “Y’all have a good one, folks! Lemme know if ya need anythin’!”

Nero waved her off, then wiped his brow. “Whew. Could use some water after that one.”

At their stop, Banjo withdrew the Lance from the floorboard that he had been using to reach the pedals from the driver’s seat and disembarked the Bowsermobile. He didn’t get in any hurry to refuel it, however, not knowing what the machine was powered by, and having never (canonically) dealt with refueling any vehicle he had ever driven. Not exactly the most acceptable excuse to be lazy for the moment, but he took it anyway to follow Nero’s lead on the afforded moment of downtime.

“Is that a restaurant over there?” Yuri said in between breaths, extending her finger out toward the nearby Grillby’s. The prospect of shade and a nice, ice cold drink sounded wonderful.

“Uh huh,” Nero replied, but his eyes only touched on the diner for a moment. Instead his focus lay squarely on the all-too-familiar van parked in front of the gas station. Though dirtied by ash and mucilage, dented and dinged all over, and scratched by monstrous claws in the course of its perilous journey, there was no mistaking it. A certain someone’s prized, tough-as-nails Minotaurus, in the flesh so to speak. A heavy sigh of relief welled up deep within the devil hunter, releasing the knotted-up tension in his core. “Go ahead, I’ll join ya in a second. Gonna see about our ride.”

"Aw, no more convertible?" Pit lamented. It had been kind of fun cruising around in King Bowser's car.

He was fanning himself with his wings, but it did little to fight the heat. He had no qualms about leading the way toward the restaurant, where hopefully it was a little cooler inside.

Nero made for the vehicle at a brisk pace, seeing nobody in the driver’s or passenger’s seats as he approached. When he slowed down beside it he thumped the door with an open hand. “Hey! anyone home?”

From inside he heard assorted thumps and clatters as fallen objects hit the ground, followed by a rush of footsteps. A moment later the door burst open, only narrowly missing Nero’s unmoving nose, to reveal none other than the sassy gunsmith he was looking for. Nico crossed her arms and gave a toothy grin as she looked down at him. “Hey, honey. Miss me?”

“About as far as I could throw you,” Nero told her, idly scratching his head, but his friend had no trouble at all discerning his true feelings. As she smirked he ran a hand along the van’s doorframe. “Guess you and your junker made it out of there in one piece, huh?”

With a haunted look she scoffed. “Barely! I beat that damn blast by just about ten minutes, give or take, an’ it still keeled my van right over and knocked me on my ass. Just about blinded me, too! When my head finally quit achin’ I went ‘n looked, an’ the whole stinkin’ city was one big crater. But it was startin’ to storm, so I flipped the van an’ hightailed it back here.”

She leaned against the doorframe, running a hand through her hair. Nero guessed it left quite the impression, but his mission was to see that same sight for himself. “So it’s all gone? Everything erased by the explosion?”

“Not quite.” His friend narrowed her eyes. “It’s crazy, but somehow, the Qliphoth’s still there. Just pokin’ right up out of the middle and reachin’ right up to the sky, all alone. Thing’s tougher than a two-dollar steak, that’s for damn sure.”

Nero grimaced, shaking his head in disbelief. “Great. Well, guess we’re not done after all.”

Twice Nico blinked in surprise. “What, ya mean we’re goin’ back there? You go off your rocker or somethin’?”

Shrugging, the devil hunter told her, “The Seekers wanted to check to see if they still needed to take out the boss, and I volunteered. Was hoping to run into you on the way.”

“Aw, so ya did miss me! I ain’t huggin’ ya, though.”

Nero treated her to a derisive snort. “So can you give us a ride or not?”

“Hmm…” With a mischievous grin Nico stepped down from her van. “Maybe if ya buy me lunch.”

Though he rolled his eyes Nero turned in the direction of the diner, and Nico followed him after closing the side door. “Jeez, you’re gonna squeeze me dry. Well, come on. The rest of us went to get something anyway, so what’s one more addition to the party.” They crossed Hammerhead’s dusty lot and stepped inside.

It wasn't hard to find the rest of his crew. They were seated together at one end of the bar, where someone had taken the liberty of ordering a whole pizza for the group. The pie seemed to have just recently arrived, soft steam was wafting from it, and a squeak of "hot!" came from somewhere among the four.

Pit had a slice in front of him, as well as a milkshake and a plate of sweet cake, making for an unusual pairing. The angel was swiveling on his stool slightly, not even close to tall enough for his feet to brush the ground, and he looked over at the door when the bell chimed. He noticed their new addition and smiled brightly at her. "One down, one to go! Hi there!"

Though she didn’t recognize the angel Nico was quick to return the smile. “Heya! Looks like we’re already in business!” With Nero following behind, who was trying not to think about how Pit seemed to be enjoying his savories and sweets in the same mouthful, she headed over and planted herself on an unoccupied stool.

Once the devil hunter joined her she treated him to an expectant look until he flagged down the waiter. “‘Scuse me. A breaded cutlet, please. And...a Grease Monkey’s Schnitzel Sandwich for the, uh, lady.”

The fellow nodded and went off to tell the cook. Nico crossed her arms in mock reproach. “Har har. Just ‘cause I do work for truckers don’t mean I eat like one.” She didn’t seem too put off, however, and Nero said nothing further. Instead he took a look around, both to see if the bear, bird, and medium were getting on as well as Pit, and to check out Grillby’s other patrons. Given the remoteness of the place there wasn’t exactly a crowd, but he noticed a portly old biker, a blonde girl who reminded him of Cindy on her phone, and a group of three very lost vikings enjoying a midday feast.

Yuri, much like she had on the car ride over, sat with her arms and tucked in close to her body as she picked her way through an egg fried crustacean bowl. A cup of coffee, steaming hot as per Heat-Man prerogative, sat half empty beside a plastic bottle of water that was completely drained. Every time Pit swiveled in her direction she swiveled away just as slightly, turning the pair into an odd metronome. Still, she looked pleased as punch that she hadn’t been necessary to find Nero’s friend. “It’s a pleasure to see you okay, miss.” She said. “My name is Yuri.”

Cordial and cheerful as ever, Nico greeted Yuri with a warm grin. “Nice to meetcha too! Reckon grumpy here told y’all all about me, then? Gotta say I’m kinda surprised. Wouldn’t a-thought he’d go and make even more pals.”

“We’re just trying to do what’s best for everyone,” Nero gruffed.

“Uh huh, sure.” The machinist didn’t buy it for one second. She leaned over to make sure that Banjo and Kazooie were still in two pieces. “Hey again. You two remember me, right? I didn’t do any fightin’ out there, but if ya need somethin’ made or fixed up, y’all won’t be forgettin’ my artisanry.”

With a nod, Banjo assured her, “Yes, ma’am. We remember,” save for her name. “It’s good to see you made it out okay, Miss.”

Two more plates arrived at about that time, the breaded pork for Nero and the sandwich for Nico. Despite her earlier protests the machinist dug right in, and when her friend looked at her askance she shrugged in reply. “You’re just lucky I’m the kind of sophisticated lady what likes German food.”

Nero snorted. “That stuff’s about as German as you’re sophisticated.”

“Huhuh! Thanks!”

“Hmm… All this food looks kind of familiar,” Banjo casually remarked when a filling entree he could still eat with his oversized hands was set in front of him. Sparing the reference little thought, Kazooie began pecking away at the plate-load of a singular side dish that came with the order, while both wondered who would be picking up the tab and how.

“Anything useful you can tell us about where we’re heading?” she asked Nico between beakfuls, taking her on her offer to help in not the most gracious of manner (nor considering the specifics of the offer). “Like, do we actually need to go back still, or...” While the idea of a return trip to the freshly obliterated Dead Zone didn’t exactly scare her the way it probably should have, she would be less keen to find out upon arrival that they were backtracking for little to nothing. She awaited an answer, expecting disappointment…

With a mouthful of sandwich, all that Nico could say for the moment was mmph?

“There are still the people who are missing. Seven, now that we found Miss Nico.” Yuri said, thinking back to the list of names on the mission bored. She turned her attention back to Nico. “Did you see any evidence of them on your way here? Ratchet? Noctis? A Doom...Slayer?” She had precious little information about these people besides their names and the mental images that those names called to mind, which wasn’t a lot to go on. Beside her, Pit was doing a poor job of hiding his snicker at the last name she listed off.

After downing her food with the help of a drink of water. “Uh, Noctis, yeah. I was curious myself, so I done asked around a bit. Guess he an’ ‘is friends took our warnin’ to heart ‘n hightailed it outta the Dead Zone. Came by here while we were still muckin’ around in there, then went eastish. The others, I dunno.” She bit off another piece of her sandwich and set the rest down, chewing while she thought.

“Thank goddess.” Yuri said.

“As fer the Dead Zone, it’s basically a big honkin’ crater, but somehow the Qliphoth’s still standin’. Dunno how it survived the nuke, but there it is, right as rain.”

“Figures.” Kazooie responded flatly, Banjo nodding with a soft sigh. They both knew better than to think it would be that easy.

Nero bristled, his expression sour. “That means our target is too--the Dead Zone’s ‘boss.’” He shook his head ruefully. “Couldn’t just give us a break and go down with the city, I guess. Since we’re on scouting duty, we should drive there and see what we can. Clear the way for the takedown team.” Raising his glass he finished off his water in a few long gulps. Kazooie wasn’t the only one who wanted to avoid the place, they couldn’t push their duty aside. Not given the state of things.

"Wait, what's a kly-fodd?" Pit asked, looking between those that had seen it before. It didn't sound very fearsome, but if it could survive that huge explosion... and wasn't even the area's boss? "Are we gonna have to deal with it while we're on clean up duty? Is it a demon? Zombie? ...zombie-demon?"

“A demon tree, more or less,” Nero replied. “We’re just handling recon, so we’re not taking it down just yet. But we’ll probably still need to defend ourselves at some point, so don’t relax just yet.” The devil hunter took a moment to consider his current surroundings. “Or, get your relaxing done while we’re here, I guess.”

"Don't have to tell me twice," Pit laughed. He returned to his food, but thoughts about the "demon tree" were still spinning around in his head. He ended up looking back and forth between his plate and his companions, pausing in his eating whenever a question came to mind.

"D'you think it's weak to fire because it's a tree, or since it's kinda demon-y it's used to fire?" He turned to Nico, eyes bright. "Could you make a flamethrower? Oh, does Nero's hand already shoot fire?"

He stopped after the words tumbled out of his mouth, another thought suddenly popping into his head. "I guess thinking about it doesn't exactly count as relaxing. Hehe, sorry."

“Can it shoot fire though?” Yuri asked, genuinely curious now that Pit had asked. “Or rockets? Laser beams?” Apparently nothing was now outside the realm of possibility.

"That would be so cool!"

“Hold your horses, partner!” Nico laughed. “I don’t suspect the tree’s weak to nothin’ after takin’ that nuke, but if y’all need flamethrowers, ya got the right gal! I can fix up a simple doohickey like that in my sleep!”

At the risk of inviting a relevant practical issue back to the table when advised to relax, Banjo decided to get ahead of their travel arrangements. “So… do we still need both vehicles, or would we rather carpool there?” A prudent question to be sure, but it would be a lie to say he wasn’t looking to subtract further operation, care or maintenance of the Bowsermobile from his list of responsibilities. Better to leave it with more qualified people in a safer area, lest it turn out, in the worst case, that the wrathful king held it dear, but mostly Banjo just wanted to take the trip a little easier. With already another on the itinerary, he figured it would be difficult enough.

Nero thought about it. “I think we should all take the van. Plenty of room, more storage, more protection, more everything.” He noticed his friend wheeling her hand around expectantly, and with a quick sigh added, “And a better driver.”

“No argument there,” Banjo concurred amicably.

Yuri smiled at the decision. The Koopa car had been too cramped for her tastes. It was just a quick turn or a sudden bump away from her brushing shoulders with the person seated next to her, and there was an inherent risk every time that happened of her seeing something she wasn’t supposed to see. “None from me, as well. A friend of my mentor had a van he would loan to us occasionally when she had to travel for work. They’re very comfortable vehicles. It should make for a pleasant ride.” She had no idea what she was in for.

A few minutes more and the freshly refueled mercenaries made their way to the freshly refueled van. They piled into its shaded, temperature-regulated interior, and once all were aboard with Nero riding shotgun and Nico behind the wheel, their driver revved the engines. A moment later the weighty vehicle was rumbling down the open road, Hammerhead left in its dust.

---

The roads of the Paved Wilderness lead steadily northeast through arid, craggy badlands, past sandy riverbeds and giant caterpillars of hardy shrubs. Despite the blasted hellscape that awaited them at the end of their journey, Nico’s passengers couldn’t do much but pass the time until they arrived. The terrain outside, at least, offered some distraction. They passed anthills several times taller than the average man, complete with rather large ants. Much taller were the strange curled spires that rose above the scrubland, inviting much wonderment. Some time later the van rolled through a region that looked as though it was made of cheese, though how sanitary said cheese might be was up for debate. There certainly seemed to be a couple vehicles parked here and there, be they tourists’ camper vans or trucks for hauling off nature’s cheesy bounty once harvested.

Most eye-catching, however, were the manmade elements of the region. Racetracks littered the terrain, weaved over and around one another. At one point, Nico nearly had to swerve to avoid an odd-looking machine as it soared off a natural ramp nearby. As it flew through the air the group could see a vehicle styled after a grasshopper, which landed a moment later on the next part of its racetrack and sped off down the road. Those who took it on themselves to look backward would find a frog bot, a stag beetle, and a whole host of other animal-themed racers in hot pursuit. The frog pulled away from the others, a mechanical arm extending from its top to reach out and grab a pole that stood up from the ground. It span at high speed, rising higher and higher, and finally launched back in the direction of the track to overtake the grasshopper in an impressive display of both courage and skill. The centipede tried the maneuver too, but ended up missing its mark and wiping out against a wall of rock. As it exploded in a shower of twisted metal Nico glanced in the rear-view mirror, eyebrow raised. “Well ain’t that somethin’. Sure hope people weren’t actually drivin’ those, huh?”

“We can only pray.” Yuri stutterd out. She hadn’t seen the crash. She turned away and shut her eyes tight the moment she had realized what was about to happen but that hadn’t blocked out the terrible, familiar, sound of the impact. It made her feel queasy.

Eventually the wastes gave way to rocky hills, their coats of green grass suggesting that at last the mercenaries had left the Paved Wilderness behind. Along with it went the sunny blue skies, clear as crystal, in favor as gray cloud cover. The team drew closer to their goal in near-silence; both pleasant exchanges and idle distractions were behind them now that they could see their target. Nero, Nico, Banjo, and Kazooie remembered the Qliphoth from their time in the Dead Zone prior, the coiled demonic trunk that rose like a colossal pillar from the ruined city’s center, its highest reaches unwound to interlace with the lowest point of the blanket of darkness that hung over the Dead Zone in a mad spiral. Now, however, the Qliphoth defied comparison. It hung over the city like a colossal balloon, or another planet, moored to the ground by countless cords, its ‘surface’ the interlaced canopy threads of pale trees whose trunks came together to meet at a single core. Only its bottom reaches could be seen beneath the storm clouds, but it couldn’t be much less wide than the city itself. When the van reached a hilltop just beyond Redgraccoon’s outskirts, the team could step outside and see from that overlook what lay below the Qliphoth--or rather, what didn’t. Of the cursed city nothing remained. Just a crater. Ashen stone blotched by a vast tract of tar, the shape of which Nero thought rather resembled a gigantic handprint.

The devil hunter could hear the rumble of thunder. It looked like it was raining over the city, liable to sweep his group’s way any minute now. He sighed. “Well. At least there’s no more zombies.”

"Yeah but there's that! Jeez, you guys weren't kidding!" Pit had been openly staring at the Qliphoth since they'd parked. It was exactly as they'd described, a demonic tree, but was so much bigger than he'd expected. No wonder it had survived the explosion. He was surprised they hadn't seen it way earlier during the drive, but the storm clouds prevented that he guessed.

Eventually he tore his eyes away to look at the crater around it. "Looks like there's nothing else, at least from up here," the angel said, "we going to take a closer look anyway?"

As hard as it was to rip her attention away from the demon tree, once she did Yuri was far more disturbed in what lay below it. Barren and lifeless, nothing to draw the eye, except for the liquid and its disquiting shape. “Black?” she said to herself, transfixed on it. She raised the Camera Obscura to her eye and peered through it down into the crater, using the camera's meager zoom to get as close a look as possible at the tar. It couldn't be the same thing. The Shadow Spring was sealed, forever, but Yuri wasn’t willing to give that liquid the benefit of the doubt about being natural. Not with that shape, and not with the feeling she was getting. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as the chill coiled up around her spine like a serpent.

“No, there is something down there. I can feel it. That crater is not empty.” she said anxiously to Pit, lowering the camera so as not to provoke anything. It was as she had feared when she had learned the name of this place. After an explosion like that, the only thing left were the ghosts. “I can’t tell how many, or how strong, but if we get closer I might be able to lead us around them. If not…”

She looked back at Nico, an idea inspired by their earlier conversation in the diner. “I don’t suppose you have a ‘ghost-busters’ arm stashed away in your van?” She asked. That was a cinematic special effect she wouldn't mind at all seeing in real life. “My Camera Obscura can drive off spirits if they attack, but I don’t know if all of your weapons would work on them.”

The inventor was forced to shake her head. “Sorry, hun. Ain’t a lot of ghosts where we come from, an’ bullets work pretty much fine on those we do got.”

"Guess you'll be depending on me then!" Pit said, puffing his chest out proudly. "I've got plenty of experience with spirits, specters, and all kinds of Underworld baddies. Ghosts won't be a problem!"

Yuri’s warning, meanwhile, had prompted some extra caution from Nero. The devil hunter couldn’t see what she saw or feel what she felt, but it was hard to deny that an odd feeling hung over this place, more palpable than those rainclouds. Even if he couldn’t see any active threats across the miles of desolation, the atmosphere was heavy, even disquieting. Like the sensation that gnaws one when visiting a site of historical tragedy, a place where vast amounts of people died. Nero knew that feeling from his last stint in Redgrave City, seeing all those flaky, human-shaped masses of bloodless matter. It was a heavy feeling.

“It doesn’t look like there’s anything else,” he confirmed Pit’s assessment after a few more moments. “Don’t know if we can get away with not taking a closer look, though. There could be pits or trenches we’re not seeing, or unstable ground, or hidden dangers of some kind. If we go back without at least trying to get an idea of any hazards, anything that happens to the strike team’s gonna be on us.” He rolled his shoulders and tramped forward, headed down the slope toward the crater. “Up here with me, Yuri. If there’s ghosts we’ll need you handy.”

The team proceeded in the direction of the Qliphoth. Though the rough terrain proved to be annoying enough to demand a bare minimum of attention paid to one’s footwork, it was hardly hazardous, and with no enemies whatsoever to be found the trek quickly got boring. Whether through instinct or response to that earlier sinking feeling, however, Nero kept his guard up and his eyes open.

As his crew drew closer to the crater he noticed only one real oddity, which took the form of the area’s vegetation. The land for a good distance beyond the crater’s perimeter on any side but the west -which opened straight into Empty Space- was green with low-lying grass, but that band contained no trees or shrubs of any kind. Way to the east lay the forest at the foothills of the mountainous area that eventually swelled into a range of peaks that separated the Dead Zone’s region from the Sandswept Sky. Its trees cut off in a notable abrupt fashion, not at the edge of the crater, but at the band. Though no botanist Nero thought that the trees right at the forest’s outer reaches facing the crater looked unwell; their color and stature set them apart. Some kind of radiation, maybe? Not a pleasant thought.

A grumble of thunder turned his attention forward, to where he could see a curtain of rain advancing out from the devastation to greet him. He peered into the oncoming rain, too paranoid to be at peace, and soon enough noticed something else that struck him as odd. He could see distant birds taking off as the wall of precipitation drew near, and they flew away from the city center with what appeared to be haste. And he couldn’t be sure, but Nero thought he saw the couple of flapping black dots that got caught in the rain suddenly fall but to earth again.

A handful of the crows flew overhead, their raucous cawing breaking his focus. Nero slowed to a stop, his expression cloudier than the sky overhead. Raindrops were starting to fall here and there, splashing on the grass and exposed stone. Suddenly he became aware of something descending a few hundred feet away. One of the noisy birds that had fallen behind now dropped to the earth, its wings and legs in the grip of spasms. A chill ran down Nero’s back. Something wasn’t right.

"Erm… Kazooie?" Banjo started, upon observing the ailing avian stock dropping like rocks in the rain. "You wouldn't happen to be allergic to rain, would you?" he asked in a half-assed attempt to rationalize the approaching phenomena.

"Not that I know of..." she replied simply, somewhat nervously. The sensation that something was dreadfully wrong was shared between them…

Yuri felt it too, and it piled on to her mistrust of the water. As a drop landed near her she instinctively took a step away from where it had fallen. “We should go back to the van.” She said, a sense of urgency rising in her voice as she began backing up. “There’s something wrong with the water.”

“Yeah, let’s go, go, go! Now!” Nero’s voice became a commanding yell that, along with the general sense of tension and disquiet, shocked everyone into action. The small group took off as if they had springs in their heels, sprinting over the disheveled ground back the way they came. Seeing the team headed her way in a real hurry, Nico quit lounging around the hood of her van and made for the driver’s seat. A moment later the engine of the formidable Minotaurus roared to life, but as it reached the mercenaries the swelling sound of rainfall was coming up behind them.

Like hellhounds at their feet, grasses and flowers sprouted from the naked earth in mere moments, growing to full size and then wilting in an impossibly short span of time. Frontrunner drops spattered against them. Just a few turned cloth ragged, then threadbare. A droplet’s touch could turn hairs gray, fray feathers, or age a body’s epidermis, making one’s skin thinner, paler, drier, less elastic, and even wrinkled or spotty. Of course, it lay beyond any unfortunate soul’s power to realize just what was happening, and they only felt the sting of what might as well be acid rain as it came down.

As Nero approached he could see slight blotches of discoloration on the roof of the van, but he focused instead on the door. Nico had thrown it wide open in preparation for abrupt departure; everyone could jump inside. But would that be fast enough? Nero, Banjo, and Pit all moved with superhuman speed, but Yuri had no such luck. The devil hunter turned and readied his Bringer to Wire Snatch the girl to safety.

Kazooie carried Banjo on the fleetest of feet in the scouting party, but in so doing faced her partner to the sky from which oily black droplets of stinging entropy fell upon him in their efforts to effectively outpace the encroaching storm that brought it. Banjo shielded his face as best as he could as splotches of grey burned into his fur, wore frayed threads into his shorts and backpack straps, and lightly weathered and rusted his belt buckle. Kazooie bounded for the van’s open doors, turning over to avert Banjo from further rain blight while she receded into the relative safety of his backpack, and Banjo tucked into himself to shield his from the rain and impending impact as he unintentionally became a living cannonball, clumsily barrelling in dangerously past Nico hailing them in.

"Ow, ow!" Though skeptical at first (after all, how dangerous could rain really be?), once the first droplet of water touch him Pit pulled his wings in as tight to his body as possible and ran all the harder. He was thoroughly convinced after that moment. What is wrong with this rain?! he thought, swatting at the falling water for all the good it did. He bodily threw himself through the doors of the van, probably leaving a dent in the interior where he'd collided with the steel. Dazed but unfazed, Pit scrambled up and out of the way, peering out of the opening. "Come on come on, hurry!"

Yuri wrapped her arms close to her body and kept her head down as stinging raindrops caressed her head and shoulders. Even the rain on Mt. Hikami had never been so accursed as to hurt like this. Was it the demon tree? The explosion? Or was whatever entity had left that print responsible? Regardless, all she could do was grit her teeth and run while knowing she would catch the worst of it.

Before she could get soaked, though, she felt something wrap around her chest. She could only see it was a wire before she was suddenly yanked through the air by a force strong enough to throw around whole demons. Luckily she was already mostly tucked in, so Nero was able to catch her and deposit her onto the van floor like a football. She looked up at him, breathing heavy, streaks of grey standing stark against the raven black of her hair. “Thank you.” She said.

Niceties could come later. Rather than reply to Yuri Nero hauled himself up to the front of the van, shouting, “Gun it, Nico!” even though he barely needed to tell her. Like an prodded beast the engine of the Minotaurus roared to life, sending the wheels into a frenzied spin that tore through the moss and loam of the former Dead Zone’s peripheral plains to speed the van on its way. The rocky terrain jolted it occupants violently, demanding their full attention just to avoid ricocheting around like billiard balls, but no amount of bruises compared to the threat of accelerated aging. With Nico at the wheel and the pedal to the metal, the van rocked and rattled toward and past the stormfront. It wasn’t long before they reached the road and could really start to pick up speed. The timefall, meanwhile, slowed down behind them.

Once the brutal jostling gave way to a smooth if not leisurely ride, and the mercenaries had the inclement weather squarely in their rear view mirror, they could steady their breathing and calm their frenzied hearts. Nursing a bloody scrape on his forehead, Nero cast one last, long look back, into the misty haze of deadly rain and the sky-high Qliphoth that loomed within. “Scary,” he breathed.

With the ice broken, Nico did not hold back. “You gotta be shittin’ me with that rain!” she fumed. “That bullcrap turned a coupla my curls gray and gave me a big ol’ wrinkle smack dab on my forehead! Lookie here, see? Just like my grandma’s, bless ‘er heart!”

“Caught a couple drops myself,” the devil hunter said dryly. “We got out in time, though, and we’ve got a hell of a report to give.” With a sigh he turned his gaze on the dusty road ahead. “And a long way back.” After wiping a backhand’s worth of sweat and dirt from his brow he got up, removed his coat, and went to hit the onboard shower.