Lugubrious

Persona ~ Alone at Sea (PERSONA WITH A BOAT 𓊝)

Persona ~ Alone at Sea (PERSONA WITH A BOAT 𓊝)

Imogen Reed

9/15

Huh. For a semi-remote, almost forlorn dockhouse, there seemed to be a surprising amount of people here, all about her age too. This must be an official school event after all, to have somehow roused so many students from their warm dorms to brace themselves against the nippy coastal gusts at sundown. But as Imogen looked between their faces, a sensation of familiarity quickly built up within her. She might not know -or she might have just forgotten- their names, but something about this particular assembly of students convinced her that she’d seen them all before. Or was that just her own wishful thinking tricking her, out of a subtle urge to do right by others where she felt they did wrong by her, and conscientiously avoid letting others fade unceremoniously into the background?

Regardless, there really were a lot of people here. For a little while they made no attempt at conversation, instead listening to the gentle chorus of wind and sea under the implicit assumption that they were all here for the same reason, not just bystanders drawn into awkward proximity by the whims of fate. Imogen felt no need to disturb the peace and quiet, or to insist on meeting anyone else’s gaze, even if just for a rhetorical questioning glance. They probably didn’t know any better than her, after all, and she gauged that the air of resignation here, about an evening wasted on probably nonsense, outweighed the air of curiosity. There was even a girl up on the dockhouse roof, chowing down on a bag of snacks while she gazed imperiously down. Imogen admired what struck her as bravado, and wondered which of the frozen meals in her fridge she ought to thaw out when she got back. She’d been so busy with her homework that she forgot to eat before coming, and to her chagrin she felt a little weak from hunger.

A couple more people trickled in to join the small crowd in waiting for whoever orchestrated this event to reveal themselves. Some of those who arrived, however, couldn’t stand the silence, and felt the need to break it. A guy with brown hair greeted his forerunners halfheartedly, asking them what was going on. Not that anyone would know, but Imogen felt it would be rude to ignore him. “Wish I knew myself,” she replied, just loud enough to be heard over the breeze-licked surf if the others were listening, but quiet enough that her response could just as easily slip away if nobody cared to hear. After coming to a stop next to Danny the eighth and final arrival, a fidgety beanpole who seemed so slight and shy that one of the stiff winds around here might knock her into the water, dithered about the ambiguity and weirdness of the situation. The weirdest thing to Imogen, though, was how lightly dressed some of these people were. An English shore was no place for shorts!

Then the dockhouse door flew open with a crash, startling Imogen pretty badly. It took only a split second to realize that everything was fine, but the sight of Sofia -whose face and name she did acutely remember, for better or worse- threw all her expectations out the window. Some of her peers might have expected this, but it did come as a surprise to Imogen. After what happened at the Icebreaker, she figured that Sofia might as well vanish off the face of the earth; by her reckoning, there wasn’t a single soul on God’s gray earth with enough guts to try and follow up that act. But here she was, just as abashedly goofy as she’d been before. At least this time she spared her audience the dated pop culture references in favor of a simple ‘thanks for coming’.

Imogen’s face had morphed from one of mild shock to a wince, with eyebrows both furrowed and upturned accompanying a thin, uneasy smile. It was the sort of expression one might make at a kitten who’d just failed to clear the jump from coffee table to couch. “...Sure,” she replied tentatively. She didn’t want to spit in the face of Sofia’s clear -if woefully misguided- sincerity, but she realized that she could now leave at any time with zero academic consequences.

Then Sofia told the students what she wanted them to do. Imogen blinked. “Wh…what?” Her word wasn’t bashful or fearful. It was sharp and flat, like someone had said something so incredibly stupid that she was checking to make sure she heard them right. “Are you mad?”

Imogen suddenly realized she was breaking character, and cleared her throat with an apologetic glance at Sofia. “Ach, forgive me for sayin’, but surely you don’t really mean it, right? Tradition or not, it’s freezin’. We’d catch our deaths of cold.” She backed away from one of the ladders the girl pointed out as if it might reach out, grab, her and hurl her into the drink. “I’m not about to…”

A raucous laugh cut her off, and when Imogen glanced upward she came to the sudden realization that some people were about to. She watched in stunned silence as Verity began to disrobe, then turned her gaze on the others. Wait a minute. Those weren’t shorts on Frankie. They were swim trunks! And in Danny’s case, not some kind of vibrant exercise wear, but a competitive swimsuit! Her eyes continued to widen, her mouth ever-so-slightly ajar. Were they really planning to throw themselves into that frigid water? Did they expect her to?

“No. Way,” she blurted out, despite her usual calm and agreeable manner. Maybe she should have inferred it from the note’s mention of a towel, looking back, but the thought of a swim in the ocean didn’t occur to her even once. Now several people were readying themselves for a dip. Even the shy girl was pulling out her towel! “You all must be off your nutters!” Imogen stared at Sofia with a mildly pleading expression, and tried to compose herself. The organizer was watching the others like a hawk, waiting for them to take the plunge with a smile that to Imogen looked rather gleeful. “I didn’t bring a bathing suit,” she confessed, attempting to negotiate. “I don’t even own one. Besides.” In a pouting manner she crossed her arms, turning up her nose at the whole superstitious premise as she looked off into the cloudy sunset. “I got where I am today without any luck at all. Just blood, sweat, and tears. Sorry to disappoint you, really I am, but I’m not gonna risk my life for a wee bit of luck now.”

Despite what sounded like a firm refusal, however, things were a little more complicated on the inside. Accepting the mantle of ‘uninteresting, unlikable, and unmemorable person’ did not mean that she ever stopped struggling with that lot in life. Even as she vocalized what she knew must be a perfectly reasonable and understandable objection, Imogen couldn’t help but wonder…was this sort of thing why nobody ever cared about her? By now she knew that she couldn’t expect anyone to come to her, that was just asking too much after all. But it was true she’d given up on going to them, too, and being a stick in the mud on the rare occasion a chance came her way probably didn’t help. The intrusive thought crossed her mind: if she did do this, maybe it would score some points with these people. It might give them something to remember about her, and even help her fit in. Would it work? Did it matter in the first place? Hard to say. But even after her refusal, Imogen did not go away. To an onlooker, it might be obvious that she, being a little too close to the edge, lacked the strength to stand by her convictions. A little push could be all that was needed to send her over.

World of Light

Probably more like they just remained outside of the fight without partaking. They could still meet up with the others afterward.

World of Light

For tonight's Detroit update, I must confess that I ran out of time, both for posting this evening and for workshopping together the next section. So I apologize that it ends without a real prompt for next time, but I will add the next part along with the rest of the main update on Sunday evening, and if you get something up in the intervening time consider it a bonus. Rest, repair, deal with spirits, offer alternatives on what to do next, whatever suits you.

World of Light

Detroit

Sector 8 Lower
Level 11 Tora (129/110) Level 12 Poppi (19/120)
Susie and Blazermate’s @Archmage MC, Raiden’s @XoXKieroBombXoX, Geralt’s @Multi_Media_Man, Benedict’s @Dark Cloud
Word Count: 2215

The sudden -and not to mention dramatic appearance- of a giant, hulking monstrosity with an oversized weapon of barbarous aspect, all decked out in the classic bad-guy colors of black and red, just about sent Tora, Poppi, Giovanna, and just about everyone into panic mode. Before any of the Seekers could join the Misconducts in doing anything they might regret, however, Blazermate announced her intentions. That phrase ‘Winds of Destruction’ did ring a bell, after all; it got brought up during the introductory meeting a couple hours ago when they team discussed the machine-oriented branch of Midgar’s defense. This was not, Poppi quickly realized, someone she wanted to hastily draw her revolvers on. The Medabot would head over to court an alliance with Khamsin before all hell broke loose, while the others held down the fort.

“Roger and good luck,” Poppi called back, not taking her eyes of the massive figure of TNT Randy, so mad at this point that steam might as well be billowing from her ears. “We’ll take care of things here.”

As Blazermate zipped out to parley with Khamsin, Tora leveled the blazing purple tip of his gravity-infused Variable Saber at Randy. “Not worry though. Fight with big bullypon not take long!”

While the dynamic duo could not see the face behind the demolitionist’s mask, his almost bestial growl told them all they needed to know about his mental state. “...When I’m through with you two, they’ll have to bury what’s left of you in a matchbox!”

Randy began, predictably, with some TNT. Just as he did with Geralt and the sentry, he hurled a handful of loose sticks to cover a wide area. Even individually those things packed a punch, but after taking on the likes of the Ender Dragon and Red Eye, Tora wasn’t afraid of this big blowhard. “Meeeh!” he cried, charging straight through the deluge of bombs. Those bright, violently fizzing sparks weren’t just for show, he knew. As the Nopon, closed the distance, bounding along like a basketball down the court, the dynamite harmlessly pinged off him and fell to the ground only to blow up a mere moment later, leaving a trail of explosions in his wake. In no time at all Tora got into melee range, and he immediately went on the offensive.

Vwoosh! Vrash! His Saber’s laser blade cleft through the air to slam into Randy’s shield in a shower of violet sparks, first on one side and then the other, leaving a burnt-in groove. Like earlier Tora then went low, but this time he lashed out with Speedy Sword at his much taller foe’s ankles, faster than Randy gave him credit for. He whirled around four times in a pinwheel of pain; Randy took the first two hits, reflexively lifted his leg up and away from the third, and blocked low for the fourth. At that point, however, Tora canceled into Swooshing Slash, launching upward with an explosive backflip swing that left him upside-down in midair. In a flash the Nopon came around with a horizontal cross slash, and though he couldn’t combo Randy without a topple preceding this technique, Tora did land a headshot that seared into ear, hair, and mask strap alike.

“Aaaagh!” Randy stumbled backward, reaching up clutch his burning headwound. With his opponent wide open, Tora moved in for a thrust to the abdomen, but things didn’t quite go as planned. Randy reached past his ear to seize the giant hockey stick slung over his back, then used his greater range and strength to bring it down on Tora in a tremendous chop. He expected its axe-blade to cleave the poor Nopon in half, but it only managed to lodge in his head. As Tora yelled in pain, Randy knew his partner would be coming to save him, so he planted his foot on Tora’s head to tug the hockey stick free with a kick, then raised his shield.

Sure enough, Poppi appeared. The minute Tora rolled clear, she lit Randy up with a trio of furious revolver shots, their repulsive force aimed not at his shield, but at his legs. Their subsequent bursts were too much for him to stand, and when he fell to the ground with his shield beneath him for support, Poppi coolly buffeted his mask with a double headshot, leaving her with only two bullets left. The raw force shattered his mask into jagged shards as it bent him over. backward, slicing up the brute’s ugly face, but he didn’t stay down for long. Randy returned with a vengeance and a fistful of TNT. This time, Poppi took a page from her Masterpon’s book and stood her ground. Two shots is all I need. Even as the dynamite flew toward her she lined up her shot, activated High Noon, and let loose. When the bullet slammed into Randy and split into four, the gravitational collapse it created sucked in everything nearby, from construction debris to the ashes of fallen Misconducts to Randy’s own TNT.

It flew back toward him and exploded in a bone-rattling blast, but the villain’s inherent explosive resistance saw him through. He emerged, roaring in pain and anger, from the smoke to deck Poppi with a giant left hook from his shield, then kick her onto her back. His hockey stick descended like a guillotine, but she managed to roll out of the way and get up onto all fours. Tora springboarded off her back to slash Randy across the chest before he could attack again. He used a shield bash to fling Tora away, but that gave Poppi the chance she needed to aim and unleash her final shot. When it ruptured it pulled Tora right back toward Randy like a flying bowling ball, and the demolitionist reeled. “...Poppi!” her Masterpon moaned as he hit the ground, too dizzy to do anything but lob the Variable Saber at her.

She managed to catch it despite the terrible throw, and in a flurry of light and sparks she and Randy crossed swords again and again. Poppi gave a lot better than she got, and Randy put all his strength into one last-ditch attempt. He delivered a tremendous headbutt to stagger her just long enough to wind up a massive overhead, forcing her to block. The two locked blades, and Randy quickly began to overpower Poppi, thanks to her Superstrength being exclusive to her Alpha form. Gritting her teeth, the artificial blade held out for just a couple moments more, bent backward until her opponent was sure of victory. Then she shut off the Variable Saber’s laser blade, allowing Randy’s strength to carry him right past her and onto the ground. When he rose to his kneels and whirled around, he found the barrel of the Saber’s shotgun mode aimed at his head. Poppi couldn’t have missed even if she wanted to.

The noise of destruction nearby came right on the heels of Randy’s demise. Khamsin was tearing through the construction site, impervious to the gunfire of the Misconducts as he mowed them down with his fearsome axe, one or two at a time. At some point in the fight with the ringleader Poppi did remember hearing Blazermate say that this Wind of Destruction would help, but this monster seemed happy to do the rest of the Seekers’ work for them. Geralt had the right idea, so Tora and Poppi followed suit, hightailing it out of the soon-to-be-wrecked structure and to the fringes of the construction site. Giovanna arrived on their heels, a little more mussed and dusty than last the two saw her but not that much worse for wear.

“Lead a couple of ‘em on a merry little chase,” she told the others drily, dusting off her hands. “You’d figure that if someone decided to stand up to people with guns empty-handed, they’d probably have a good reason, but these guys seemed dead-set on underestimating me. Oh well.” Susie quickly joined them too, and together the team watched the brief but brutal show as Khamsin made mincemeat of the Misconducts. Giovanna nodded at Geralt. “...Yeah, no kidding.” After a few more moments the solider’s mech -or perhaps the soldier himself?- squashed the last worm wriggling around in the pile with a giant swing of his hammer. In so doing he also took out one of the last load-bearing supports that remained, sending an entire section of the building-in-progress tumbling down. Only a couple sorry souls spared by the death sentence of Galeem’s influence managed to escape, while a shallow and graceless tomb fell upon the ashes of their comrades. Giovanna sighed, both at the situation and having to pat her expensive clothes clean a second time. Those gangsters had come upon some really rotten luck.

Near the wreckage and rubble, Khamsin eased open his war machine’s cockpit. “Whoo-wie!” he hollered as the dust settled on his face, wearing an ugly, gleeful grin. “Another victory for DespoRHado! Freedom reigns!” He glanced up at Blazermate. “Not bad for a tin can, huh? They oughta make more like you. Those crits make one hell of a difference, haha!”

With the battle over, Manananggal and Loup-Garou approached. “Y’know buster, I’m glad you came to help us and all, but…” The female demon looked over the wanton destruction with undisguised disgust on her face and in her voice. “What are you, some kind of ape? You did their job for them!”

“Shut your trap!” Khamsin snarled, his mood turned instantly from elation to outrage. “They’re dead, aren’t they? And you oughta know, I didn’t come for you. I came for freedom! Freedom from the yoke of oppression!” He hefted his axe. “That’ something you Shinra dogs won’t ever UNDERSTAND!”

The colossal weapon smashed down on Manananggal. She tried to resist, but physical strength was not her forte, and after only a moment she was mulch. Loup-Garou backed away with his teeth bared, his hackles on end, but he did not attack. He fixed his cold gaze on Khamsin as the man brought his axe up onto his shoulder, chuckling to himself. “That’s not going to go well with Public Security,” he growled.

“Like I give a damn! What’re you gonna do, fire me?” Khamsin spat back. “They’ll just shit out more of you Shadows anyhow. The Administration’s days are numbered, just you wait. When Armstrong gets elected he’s gonna show you all what freedom really looks like!” His mechs hand gave a shooing gesture. “Now git, before I teach you to play dead!”

Loup-Garou left in a hurry, shifting back into Investigation mode as he did. Khamsin turned to leave, like a force of nature that had just indifferently blown through town.

Tora watched the exchange from afar, rubbing his head. While Blazermate’s healing fixed the divet in his dome, what he just witnessed opened up a whole new can of worms it hurt to consider. “Meh-meh? Tora thought different branches of Midgar defense supposed to be allies.”

“They are. Nominally.” Giovanna leaned against the railing of the construction yard, crossing her arms. “But even in the same organization, people don’t always see eye to eye. In Midgar, there’s about a billion different interests and agendas, with everyone looking out for their own. Politics are especially divisive, now more than ever with the election. I guess even the Ever Crisis isn’t a big enough threat to make everyone get along.” She shrugged.

The Nopon gave a noncommittal grunt as he looked over Poppi, taking stock of her damage. “Tora not know much about politics. Not care either. What we do now?”

Giovanna looked around. Everyone was at least a little banged up and tired from the afternoon’s vigorous activities so far. Benedict and Raiden had been, for lack of a better term, underperforming. An old fart staying away from the dangerous frontlines she could understand, but for that high-tech cyborg to gleefully slaughter small fry and then not even contribute to this battle rubbed her the wrong way. Although, considering how Raiden felt about DespoRHado, maybe that was a good thing.

She gazed off into the middle distance, her eyebrows knit together. “Uhh…not sure, really. I’ve kind of had enough fighting gangs for one day. Isn’t it…I don’t know, kind of depressing?” She ran a hand all the way through her hair, realized her braid had come undone during the fighting, and started fixing it with practices hands. “As for what to do next, I’m not sure. We could shop around for a red matter detector, but it seems like the tech down here is mostly robotics and augmentation.”

She looked at Poppi, who’d raised her hand. “This might sound like a strange idea, but why don’t we follow Khamsin? Assuming he responded to the distress beacon because he was out on patrol, and that his machine needs energy like any other, he’s probably heading back to base. We could at least get a look at DespORhado HQ before we go.”

Giovanna got off the fence. “Sure, might as well. Never seen it with my own eyes myself, and the Bunker’s supposed to be a pretty big deal. Everyone good to go?” The communal answer seemed to be ‘ready as I’ll ever be’. “Then let’s hurry before we lose him.”

Results

Party: Tora, Poppi, Blazermate, Geralt, Susie
Encounter Reward: 11 EXP

World of Light

Suoh

Sector 3 Upper
Level 2 Goldlewis (20/20)
Goldlewis, Peach, Raz’s @Truthhurts22, Roxas’ @Double, Sakura and Karin’s @Zoey Boey, Midna’s @DracoLunaris, Pit’s @Yankee
Word Count: 2591

Rather than walk all the way back through the city, Goldlewis returned to his nearby hummer and drove back to Anistar with Midna riding shotgun, arriving at the gym a tiny bit older and not a whole lot wiser than they were when they left. In their absence the others had been exploring and making use of the gym itself, either conventionally or as a source of information. Apparently Sakura got herself into a sparring match with a senior Psych-OSF member of the premises, and while it seemed to go well at first, it ended on a surprise sour note as the street fighter’s trauma from the depths of the nightmarish Maw returned to haunt her. At that point she went from ‘working out’ to ‘working out her mental issues’ with the help of Raz, who unveiled a special ability he’d been sitting on for a while now to literally dive into and get straight to the heart of the matter.

In the meantime, Peach and Pit had been exploring the lower levels of the gym. Down there they found nothing too unusual, just more civilians and off-duty Scarlet Guardians training themselves through a variety of means. One of the more interesting methods they spotted was one telekinesis-user doing his best to hold up a number of padded blocks in the air, while two sisters engaged in a psychic shootout on the suspended battlefield. There were more normal classes on offer as well, including a ‘Boxercise’ routine run by one Disco Kid. With the tagline ‘punch with the best of them!’ it offered a workout that required no psychic ability. In the spirit of fitting in Peach decided to give it a try, though her choice of office clothes rather than gym wear got her a couple funny looks. Disco Kid was all about it, though, and with his winning smile plus can-do attitude he got the whole class grooving in a high-energy dance of jabs, hooks, and uppercuts. Her love of sports still intact, Peach had a great time, and afterward she got in a quick word with Disco himself. Once she explained her goal of training in order to volunteer for Psych-OSF, Disco supplied her with the requirements for joining. It was less stringent than she thought; applicants didn’t even need to have a home. As long as any would-be cadets possessed sufficient medical, moral, and physical fitness, basic education, 10-30 years of age, and psychic sensitivity, it sounded like just about anyone could join up. The princess thanked her boxercise instructor and returned to the group.

After a brief meeting during which Goldlewis and Midna shared what little they’d learned about the politics and pest control of Suoh, everyone went their separate ways again, resolved to meet back at Musubi’s by no later than six forty-five in the evening. Midna went to find Bede to warn him about the eventual fate of any and all psychic Pokemon in Midgar, but with no sign of the young man her search quickly turned into a wild goose chase through the streets of Suoh. Goldlewis, meanwhile, uncovered a promising lead via the public Psynet terminal in Anistar Gym. As it turned out, a relatively easy and official way to descend beneath the Sector 5 Plate to Seiran did exist: a public freight elevator not too far from the center of the sparkling red metropolis. Planning to see it with his own eyes, and use it if possible, he extended an invitation to any of the Seekers who might want to join him. Then he and whoever accepted loaded back up into his hummer, the veteran’s giant coffin tucked securely into the trunk, and they took to the city streets once more.

Thanks to the miracle of motorized transport, the hummer came to rest in the public parking lot of a grand structure called the Praetorium. Practically a fortress in terms of appearance, this was the transport hub that housed the freight elevator Goldlewis sought, and it positively bustled with activity. Even finding a parking spot was pretty difficult, especially given his ride’s sheer, audacious size, and things only got livelier from there. Coffin slung over his shoulder, he joined the steady stream of people headed inside the building, careful to observe everything he could about the place. From what he could tell, this facility handled both human traffic and cargo shipments between Suoh and Seiran, sending goods between plate and undercity in massive quantities. He could not see the timetables projected as Visions around the building, but they revealed an ironclad schedule: ten minutes to load and unload at one terminus, then ten minutes of travel between them, rinse and repeat over and over again like clockwork. In other words, the second the elevator got sealed and began its trip, it would be thirty minutes on the dot before it returned. The lift happened to be gone when Goldlewis arrived, so he joined the line to wait for the next one, ignorant of how long it might be thanks to his inability to see the psychic displays. Just under ten minutes later though, the elevator arrived, and the great exchange began.

The platform itself was pretty huge at hundreds of feet in diameter. Once it came to a stop and the gates opened, passengers flooded off it, and large machines went to work unloading the freight from Seiran in order to stack high the containers from Suoh in their place. It reminded Goldlewis of a cargo ship bay and a subway blended into one. As he boarded, his eyes on the giant cranes, he briefly wondered why a psychic city would rely on technology instead of, say, telekinesis to move such loads around. Then again, using mechanical precision cut out the possibility of human error, and maybe they needed to conserve their psionics’ abilities for combat, anyway. Once the passengers loaded up, either standing, using benches that rose up from the elevator’s surface, or just sitting on the floor, the elevator began its diagonal trek through the plate itself via a huge inclined tunnel, rolling on immense metal wheels.

When he arrived in Seiran, Goldlewis quickly learned just how stark the differences between it and Suoh were. While the Plate resembled an ordinary metropolis, at least for the most part, the undercity featured a much more unusual layout. It was composed entirely of skyscrapers of various heights, rising hundreds of stories into the air like a primeval forest, interconnected by countless bridges, cables, and metal rails–a real concrete jungle. Many of the skyscrapers, but not all, extended all the way up to the plate. One such building housed the bottom end of the Praetorium elevator, and after disembarking Goldlewis made his way to the nearest edge. After looking down and managing to not lose his lunch, he could see that there was no ‘ground level’ to this city. Instead the skyscrapers rose straight from the reservoir itself. The water didn’t look inviting in the least, with vast, scummy algal blooms turning the water green and even red, as well as embankments of trash instead of sand around the bases of the buildings. Blue and pink bioluminescence could be glimpsed even from this height, calling to mind the Psifish that one member of Psych-OSF’s Containment Division mentioned, but those pulsing lights were weak and febrile. Goldlewis did not envy anything living in that water, if ‘living’ it could even be termed.

The veteran snooped around Seiran for a couple hours, on the hunt for anything that might be useful for the Seekers. Though the glittering lights and stainless steel of Suoh weren’t so far away considering the freight elevator, the property values plummeted here, dropping lower and lower the farther down one went on the skyscrapers. Even getting around was tricky, with a variety of ingenious (or slapdash) methods to navigate the towers in evidence. While the higher areas featured an almost maritime charm to them, the lower areas tended more toward degradation and squalor, undesirable even for the city’s poor. Nothing wholesome could be fished from those waters, after all. Only the most abject wretches, laid low by illness or other malady, dwelled in the shanties near the water. Goldlewis heard that the denizens down there weren’t even people, for the most part; rumors spoke instead of fishmen and other demihuman monstrosities. He stuck to the upper levels, with their seafood markets supplied by high-level indoor aquaculture, ignorant of the Visions of aquatic creatures that swam through the air in an almost pitiable attempt to preserve the original atmosphere of what had once been a genuine seaside city.

After some searching, Goldlewis finally found it: a former clinic not too far from the freight elevator, for sale at a pretty cheap price. At some point after its initial dereliction, it had been occupied by a detachment of shady individuals purported to be operatives of some tech gang or another, but recently it had been discovered that they abandoned the place once more, so it was back on the market. Lingering fear of the gang members returning drove away potential buyers, though, which explained the cheap price. When Goldlewis arrived the demihuman landlord gave him a tour in person. The clinic turned out to be a strange blend of futuristic and medieval, with one half tinted yellow by the light that streamed through its glass windows onto wooden furniture and metal cookware, while the other was a jumble of discarded tech awash in electric blue light.

“Well?” Moneybags asked, reaching out his paw. “Not my most splendid property, I’ll admit, but it’s functional, pest-free, conveniently located, off the grid, and yours for a very modest price. What do you say?”

---

Goldlewis put his hummer in park, removed the key, and rolled down his window. The Seekers gathered around his vehicle. Aside from Bede, who the veteran hoped Midna managed to find and warn, everyone seemed to be here, and right on time. After an afternoon spent galavanting around Suoh, and in some cases Seiran too, the Seekers had reunited right back where they started: in the parking lot of Musubi’s. The shadows had grown long, and the sky tinted orange as the sun was beginning to set over the Suoh skyline. Seven o’ clock was right around the corner, but before the team went to dinner, Goldlewis had something to say. “Pile in for a spell,” he told the group, reaching his arm out of the window to pat the exterior of his car door. “I want a quick word before we head in.”

Once everyone got in, he put his window up again, and turned in his seat to address the group. “Sorry it ain’t exactly comfortable in here, but I appreciate y’all for hearin’ me out,” he told them, though for anyone less than seven feet tall and five hundred sixty-six pounds his hulking hummer’s interior was actually pretty roomy. “In here’s the only place we’re really safe from them listenin’ cameras. Now, this won’t be a minute, but I figured I’d sum up real quick before we get started. The little fella we’re meetin’ is Luka Travers. Regardless of anyone’s misgivin’s, we don’t wanna antagonize him, so play. It. Cool. He also ain’t as young as he looks, so don’t treat him like a kid. He’s the little brother of Septentrion First Class Ka-ren Travers, who just might be the biggest fish in the whole doggone OSF. We’re tryin’ to do two things.” He held up one finger. “One. We wanna learn more about Psych-OSF. Relations between the big players, current events, anythin’ we can without pryin’ too hard. Don’t grill the li’l guy or nothin’, just bring it up in conversation, all casual-like.”

He held up a second finger. “Two. We wanna get a couple o’ ours into the OSF. We can lean on Raz and his connections, hopefully get y’all fast-tracked through basic and into the fold. Luka can teleport, so maybe we could convince him to take ya along with him back to base to get started. Havin’ him along to vouch for ya’s gotta be worth somethin’, too.” He furrowed his brow. “That means it’s time…”

“Time for us to fuse,” Peach finished, nodding. “Me and whoever else wanted to volunteer. Was it you who did, Sakura?” She glanced at the street fighter.

Goldlewis pursed his lips. “I know it might seem…odd, but doin’ it right here might be your best bet. I got tinted windows that’ll block out the light some, and y’all used a bathroom or something anywhere else, chances are there’d be a camera watchin’ ya go in and out.”

“Okay,” the princess replied, determination in her voice. “Let’s do it.” After rummaging around in her pockets, she produced the two OSF spirits. She passed the other one to the other volunteer, then held hers in front of her heart. Closing her eyes, she steeled herself with a deep breath, then shoved the spirit into her chest.

For Peach

Spirit absorbed:
Kaede Thompson
The host had gotten shorter and more slender. Her skin is slightly tanned due to the lingering effect of Mr. Grimm, but her ethnicity is now predominantly white/Asian. Her hair is still tricolor, but the red-blonde-white is now a more muted auburn-caramel-cream, as if filtered through light brown. She has two round buns and long sidelocks in front of her ears. Her eyes are an interesting gradient, blue in the right and red in the left but both turning to amber and then to dark brown going upward. Her outfit is a slightly more techy suit and tie, with a red instead of white shirt, light armor pads, and a few orange wires wound around. Her personality is a bit more cheerful and carefree, not too far from her original mindset. This spirit confers the Power Materialization, which allows the host to create objects by psychically condensing stray particles into crystalline matter, which can be perceived even by those without sensitivity. This also imparts psychic sensitivity. This spirit also confers the Weakness Harsh Reality. Others can now sense her presence from a distance and will hunt her down for her brain. She can now be Brain Crushed and is susceptible to PR.

When the light died down, Peach sat in her seat, a changed woman. Considering how she looked before as a result of her fusions with Mr. Grimm and Chao Ho, she looked rather more normal now, but only the faintest trace of the original princess remained in her features. She checked herself in the passenger-side mirror, running a hand along her cheek. While she couldn’t say she looked bad or anything, she didn’t even recognize herself. And yet the effect of fusion dampened any dysmorphia she might be experiencing, so she couldn’t even say this felt wrong. The person staring back at her from the mirror wasn’t Princess Peach. But it was her. She inhaled through her nose, breathed out her mouth, and smiled.

Goldlewis had been watching her intently, intrigued by the whole process. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Peach replied, a little surprised by the sound of her own voice. It was higher than before, almost cute. “I feel pretty good, in fact! It’s almost like…a weight was lifted off my shoulders.”

“Good, ‘cause I think Luka just appeared right in front of the restaurant,” Goldlewis said, pointing through the windshield. “Let’s get movin’.”

The Seekers piled out of the car and into Musubi’s. On the way Peach nearly stumbled and fell, overwhelmed by the change of scenery. All of a sudden, Suoh had come alive with the light and motion of a million Visions, aglow and alive with psychic energy. Goldlewis, who had gone ahead to hold the door open for everyone else, didn’t reach her in time, so one of her other allies helped her along instead. The team managed to make it in one piece to the table where Luka Travers had seated himself, just as the waitress finished setting it for nine.

“Good evening,” the boy said, smiling. “It’s good to see you again, and in better circumstances.” He shook the hands of Goldlewis and anyone else who wanted, pausing only a brief moment as he tilted his head at Peach. Then he unzipped his bag and pulled out a handful of eight papers sealed in plastic. “Here,” he said, passing them around. They were paper menus, with all sorts of rice, ramen, and sushi dishes listed out on them. “I only realized after we made plans that Musubi’s uses Vision menus, so on the off-chance that they might come in handy I procured these.” He smiled again and clasped his hands together. “This is the ‘Place Where People Meet’, after all. You can never be too sure who you’ll find.”

The Ruins - Dripstone Cave

Koopa Troop’s @DracoLunaris, Primrose’s @Yankee, Rubick’s @Scarifar, Teemo’s @Bugman

Some quick thinking and teamwork allowed the Koopa Troop to cash in on the opportunity presented by the fleeing Huuli Hoarder. Once sedated and retrieved, it could be finished off with ease to render up a whole bunch of minerals, including nuggets of deep green Jadiz, mustard-yellow Bismor, and best of all, gold.

Junior then opted to take the initiative with a small pack of Migospel lurking nearby. The garishly-patterned bugs took note when he yelled out, drawing their attention to the entrance of the cave where the young prince and his friends were still getting their bearings. Such a large group of newcomers gave them pause, but once they realized that Junior might be a kindred spirit in terms of clowning around, they tentatively drew nearer. All of them made sure to use their best silly walks, or at least most of them did. One of the bunch lagged behind a little, its manner languid and bleary as if dispirited, sick, or perhaps just very tired. Junior would need to meet the bunch halfway, but when he did so he found the overlarge insects decently amicable. However, their comprehension of his questions left a lot to be desired.

“Send in the clowns!” one squealed, beginning to mime.

Another one honked its nose insistently, adding some extra sound effects to the mix. “Honk! Hooonk!”

“I love to laugh!” Another declared, juggling balls of ants. “Ha ha hee hee ho ho huu huu!”

The only one who didn’t join in the tomfoolery was the laggard one Junior spotted before. Its giggles were tremulous, and its attempts to juggle fell flat. It was as if the poor Migospel was half asleep. If Junior looked more closely, however, he would see something odd. Its eyes weren’t white like the others, but seemingly hollow, and within them shone a faint but unmistakable orange glow that flickered like firelight.

Meanwhile, Primrose retraced her steps a short ways. Mindful of both getting lost and marking a path for any allies to follow should they happen to come this way, she set about using a weapon gleaned from the fracas back in the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage to create an inscription in the stone. Doing so brought her close to the spot where the tunnel branched between the Dripstone Cave and the alternative, more cluttered route. When she turned to rejoin her friends, she caught a glimpse of something in the corner of her eye, a shadowy figure moving through the soft purplish light down the other path. Mists far less ominous than those of the Webwood clung and curled gently around the outcroppings of stone and discarded masks in that direction, and through them the dancer could see a lone figure whose oil-black body seemed to be adorned with a necklace of skulls and a helmet curled like a snail's shell. For a moment the stranger just stared back at her, making no attempt to hide himself, his shining white eyes curious. Then he waved as if to say hello in a manner very suggestive of sentience, and turned to tread a little deeper into the Ancestral Mound.

Naturally, Bowser and Kamek took some time to look around themselves. While most of the area seemed nice enough, dripstone caves like this owed their unique formations to calcium salts deposited by dripping water, and all the water found in this place turned out to be abominably stagnant. About a fourth of the cavern was occupied by a pool of extremely green, viscous liquid, pungent and foul. No Goams could be found in their vicinity; for all their invincibility they avoided that execrable liquid like the plague. The lily pads and reeds that grew in and around it were tough and brown, and around the poisonous pools lurked giant mosquitoes, a lot less mobile but a lot more dangerous than their minuscule counterparts.

The Koopas might have been content to leave the enormous pests to their rot if not for a certain discovery they made not too far from the muck. From his vantage point in the air the wizard happened to spot a diminutive creature nestled in the brush. He was a fuzzy little guy, with cream-colored fur and a head as big or bigger than his body, decked out the green pith helmet, gloves, and boots that befitted an explorer. At the moment the Yordle seemed to be completely unconscious, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why. Next to him lay a piece of half-eaten shelf mushroom of the variety known as Naiti-Nait, overconsumption of which had knocked the unlucky lad right out. Anywhere else he might have been able to recover on his own given time, but In the vicinity of the squalid swamp, time was a luxury he didn’t have. The mosquitoes were already homing in on his position, all too eager to pierce the tiny, adorable explorer with their swordlike proboscises and drain him of his precious fluids.

The Under - Mom’s Chamber

Level 10 Nadia (95/100)
Therion’s @Yankee, Sectonia’s @Archmage MC, Jesse’s @Zoey Boey, Omori’s @Majoras End, Ganondorf’s @Double
Word Count: 2273

The arrival of the Templar Impaler presented a fresh and ferocious new threat for the Seekers to contend with as they vied to finish Mom off, but to say that Ganondorf rose to the occasion would be an understatement. Spurred on by his pride and anger, he called upon his dark sorcery to transfigure himself into a towering boarlike monster, less eldritch and yet more fearsome than the cultists arrayed before him. As Nadia looked on, suddenly in no hurry to get any closer to the fight than she absolutely needed to, the slavering beast let out a hideous bellow and charged into the fray.

With greatswords bigger than most men he went after the gouty pillar of flesh wherever it descended, hacking into it with reckless, hateful abandon. The cultists that remained following Therion’s deft execution of the priest took aim at the monstrous new threat, gouging his body and mind alike with deadly spurs of bone and madness, but Ganon’s rage would not be sated until the amorphous mass responsible for his injuries lay dead at his feet. Omori and the Knight had been going after Mom previously, but after the already-wounded boy mistimed a dodge and ate another stomp, the Knight was forced to carry him out of danger, which left the way wide open for Ganon. Everyone else could more or less sit back and watch as their terrifying ally sundered chunk after chunk from Mom’s leg, especially after a friendly fire incident involving Junicorn when Therion went to head off the Impaler, which naturally carried over to the thief himself. Soon, the butchery took its toll, and Mom was on her last legs.

That said, ignoring the cultists -or just blindly going to town on them, for that matter- wasn’t without its consequences. The Rapturous Cultists that spawned managed to heal Mom twice before Spacial Rend demolished it. Both Ganon and Sectonia suffered from heightened stress, and though the former managed to stave off further insanity through the landing of critical hits, the mind of the latter went past its boiling point. The madness within bubbled over, rendering Sectonia Abusive not long after she unleashed her withering rupture in space-time. That said, her first shout sounded more like encouragement to derision as far as Nadia was concerned–not that Ganon needed it. After blasting away the Impaler with his laser one final time, the beast took aim at the bone he’d exposed in the leg with his continuous slices, and with a tremendous final slash severed the leg.

”ISAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAC!” the horror wailed as the room began to crack around the Seekers, blood pouring from the walls and ceiling to pool on the floor. The last cultist standing, the horrific Templar Impaler, thrashed and died along with its creator, soon reduced to nothing more than a ashen smear and Notable Spirit on the floor. After another moment the rumbling came to a stop, and in the brief silence that followed three things happened at once. First, a reward appeared on a pedestal, taking the form of a bright red high-heeled shoe just like the one that had been smashing the Seekers moments ago, albeit of normal shoe size. Second, a hole opened up in the center of the floor, and unlike the trapdoors in previous boss rooms, this one was circular, shiny, and flesh-colored, which pleased Nadia very, very little. Third, two doors opened on the far wall at the exact same time, emerging from crumbling rubble: a black door adorned by a goat head, and a white door crowned by a radiant cross. Within the first was the unsettling pitch-black visage of a devil, and within the second stood the image of an eerie, faceless angel, but both offered the same reward: a strange trophy with a capsule of prismatic light obscuring a shadowy figure within.

As Ganondorf turned back to normal, Nadia let out her pent-up breath. “Whoa,” she breathed. “That…really sucked!” The feral switched off her Night Light, then crossed her arms, shaking her head. “I mean, that boss was really one-note! Her minions were way more dangerous, not to mention scary. What kind of big bad relies on goons to fight for ‘em, anyway? More like min-yawn, jeez.” She jogged over to where the Knight had laid Omori, skirting around the high-heeled shoe in case her tail accidentally brushed it as she passed by. “Man, you got it rough, kid,” she said, crouching over him. “You sure you’re up for this? Here, lemme help. Uh, freakshow, heal him!”

Her new striker appeared and used Flesh to Flesh, repairing Omori’s wounds through unholy rite. Nadia’s own scratches, bruises, and scrapes were buffing out as well thanks to her regeneration. As the striker disappeared she treated him to a cheery smile, patting him on the head. “There! Good as mew, right?”

Nadia’s gaze then landed on the Knight. “Thanks for looking out for him, little guy! You really know your stuff when it comes to fightin’!” She sent her two brain cells into overdrive trying to think of a suitably bug-related pun, but whether due to the lingering stress from the fight or the fatigue she’d built up from fighting so far, the poor feral couldn’t think of a darned thing. Rats. I’ll get ‘em to laugh next time. If anyone else needed healing it would be another minute or two before she could use the Cultist again, at least by her estimation, but Ganondorf probably didn’t need her help anyway.

The feral stood, stretching out her limbs, and went to regroup with the others. Naturally everyone noticed the appearance of both devil and angel rooms, as well as the fact that their offerings not only seemed to lack any sort of price, but also didn’t fit this place’s blood-and-guts aesthetic at all. “Probably something different,” Nadia mentioned, pulling out the Bait Launcher both to show it off and reload it. “Like this thing. Didn’t embed itself in my skin or anythin’, just a normal gun. Other than, y’know, the fact it summons tigers. I sure ain’t hidin’ my stripes anymore after seein’ that!”

While the others decided what to do with the assist trophies and boss reward, which Nadia dismissed outright based on the hypothesis that it would mutate her feet into living heels, the feral pulled out and consulted her map. Despite her own injuries and nearly getting torn in half twice over, her hoodie and its contents seemed to be in pretty good condition. Still, that jacket would need some serious laundering. After a quick look at the map, her perked-up ears fell flat again, and her doleful eyes fell on the oversized orifice in the floor.

With a sigh she rolled up and stuffed the sheet of parchment into her pocket. “Guys? Accordin’ to the map, there’s one more floor. Much as it pains me to say, we probably ain’t done just yet.”

As much as she would have liked to take it easy, it looked like Nadia needed to steel herself for one last run before the Seekers could escape this damnable place. She spotted her anchors and went to collect them. Even if their chains had been severed and she could no longer swing them from a distance, they could still be of use. In fact, it might be better like this. Up close and personal was just how Nadia fought; it just didn’t make sense to try and be something she wasn’t. Of course, the Bait Launcher was a different matter. It more or less amounted to calling an assist, and useful assists like that made her style of non-stop close-quarters pressure even more unstoppable.

In the end, there wasn’t a whole lot to do aside from heal up, loosen up, and tune up any faulty equipment. The Seekers then gathered in a ring around the hole in the ground, their misgivings written plain on their faces. With all eyes on her to take the plunge again, Nadia took a deep breath. “Alright. I’ll be countin’ on you guys to bail meowt, ya hear? And if this leads straight into a giant stomach or somethin’, well, I’ll at least die knowin’ I was the best cat food that ever lived.” She flipped her anchors into a reverse grip, saluted with two fingers, and jumped. “Cannonbaaaaall!”

On the way down, she drifted toward the chute’s wall and jammed both anchors into the slick pink flesh. They slid right in, catching enough to slow Nadia’s descent, just as she planned, although even with both embedded almost to the hilt her weight was enough to continue dragging her downward at a brisk pace. The pit seemed to grow wider the farther she went down, not to mention darker and more humid, but a glance down confirmed a source of light. After another few seconds she dug her toeclaws into the meaty surface to bring herself fully to a stop right at the bottom of the chute, where it seemingly opened up into a big, bright cavern, at least twice as large as the decrepit chamber where her crew slaughtered Mom. Beneath her was a solid purplish floor of appreciable size, and she could see a couple things that looked like items. “I’m okay! I think it’s safe!” Nadia shouted up the tube, her voice echoing up to the others. She swiveled her head back around to glance down at the chamber. “There’s a little fall, so be careful. And get ready for a fight!”

Nadia dropped down the rest of the way, slowing her descent with jets of blood just enough to land with her typical catlike agility. The chute lay a good hundred feet above her, but she figured if she could climb up if need be, although she didn’t relish the thought, or anything else in this place for that matter. This new room seemed to be rather hideously organic, with moist, spongy flesh the color of gums stretching like meaty tree trunks through the air and along the walls, everything irregular and glistening. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. “Ugh, its soft!” she whined, hopping from one bare foot to the other on the surface of the big, roughly diamond-shaped floor. “And WARM! Yuck!” Nadia was quickly beginning to regret her decision. Goosebumps formed all across for skin, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. All of a sudden, it felt kind of like she was in something’s stomach after all. Like she’d been eaten. In the distance she could hear the low, deep, repetitive sound of a gargantuan heartbeat. “Can we just murder the ever-lovin’ fuck outta some big monster already and get the hell outta here?”

On the four corners of the raised area were four more items, seemingly there for the taking. Free Lemonade, a pitcher of lemonade with no strings attached that could either be drunk or scattered around to damage enemies, which could be stashed when not in use and after four minutes would refill itself. Leo, which would increase the taker’s size by thirty percent and give them stomps strong enough to shatter stone, along with a luxurious mane of wild hair. Ghost Pepper, which after bringing the eater to tears from the spiciness would give the power of fire breath. Ceremonial Robes, which when worn would increase the wearer’s damage and confer instant retaliatory damage for the next three hits taken.

“Hey, is that lemonade?” Nadia jogged over, trying to forget about the squidgy floor. She stooped over the pitcher, sniffing it. “I’m pretty sure it is! Real question is, what horrible thing is it gonna do to me…” A brilliant idea struck her. She created a copycat which, not being a striker, wouldn’t transfer any damage or other effects to her, and bade her doppelganger take the lemonade in her place. The clone seized the pitcher by the handler. Nothing happened. She poured some out on her head, and still nothing happened. Tentatively, the copycat passed it to the original, and still nothing unusual transpired. After absorbing the copycat, Nadia drank some, and found it pleasantly sweet and tangy. “Huh. Purr-etty sure it’s literally just lemonade. Guess I was just bein’ a sourpuss, eh?”

Only once all four items were taken did the boss rush begin. Seven bosses emerged, one for each of the challengers: Blastocyst, Scolex, the Bloat, Mr. Fred, Triachnid, Lokii, and Teratoma. It was up to the Seekers to pick their targets and get to work.

“Holy shit!” Nadia practically screeched, her impulses getting the better of her again. As Scolex erupted from the flesh wall and leaped for her, Nadia barely dodged in time, then hurled the pitcher of lemonade at the monstrous worm. To her surprise the liquid seemed to burn it, eliciting a bloodcurdling squeal as it dug back into the meat. “...Okay, I see its game. I’ll handle the scare-asite!”

Edinburgh MagicaPolis - Noumenon

Level 8 Big Band (43/80)
Ace Cadet’s @Yankee, Frisk’s @Majoras End, Red’s @TruthHurts22
Word Count: 1077

On the way up the interminable stairs, crammed with the others inside a scarlet, hand-shaped construct and paraded by red through the Noumenon like a waiter with his silver serving tray, Big Band got a lot of time to think. At this point it went without saying, especially since his allies might not yet be on the same page with him about the best and only course of action here, that the situation with the Skullgirl was very, very bad.

According to Frisk’s account of when and how her trio arrived in Edinburgh, it had been days since the Skullgirl’s last sighting. The fact that skeletons roamed the streets of the winter city at night was a testimony to the new Skullgirl’s power, but their aimlessness suggested a lack of control. Maybe she had yet to come to grips with her new abilities, which meant that Band -and anyone he convinced- might have a chance of finding her and putting an end to this imminent disaster before she could become a real problem. Maybe a semblance of her original heroic self still remained, and she was trying to keep herself from going on a berserk rampage. He liked that second possibility even less, not just because the undead presence in Edinburgh suggested that she was failing, but also because it would be all the more tragic when the time came to put her down. For that eventuality there was no alternative. Becoming a Skullgirl was a degenerative disease, with no heart in the universe too pure to fall to its corruption, and destruction was the only cure. The only difference would be whether he could stop her before she began freeing the skeletons of the populace by the hundreds of thousands, or after.

Eventually, Red managed to reach the twenty-sixth floor, weary and winded by the arduous descent. He let the others down, giving Band, Lucia, Ace, and Frisk a chance to stretch their legs while he rested his own. “Thanks for the lift, Red,” Band told him. “Sit yourself down and have a breather. We’ll take it from here.”

He held up his bookmark and repeated the same name he fed it earlier. It lit up in search of Albedo, and after a moment churned out some less-than-ideal news. “Twenty-seven?” Lucia read, her brows raised. “Of frickin’ coahse. Looks like ouah guy went up anothah floah while we wah makin’ ouah way up.”

“Just one floor,” Band said evenly, shrugging. “Would be a shame if Red did all the work, after all.” He nodded in the superhero’s direction. “You take it easy, we’ll see ya in a minute. C’mon, y’all.”

The detective led the way across the Noumenon’s twenty-sixth floor. Looking over the railing turned out to be a mistake; even for someone not especially afraid of heights, Band couldn’t help but feel a little queasy when he glanced down the precipitous three-hundred-and-sixty-plus-foot drop. And yet, the distance his team had already climbed suddenly seemed like little more than a drop in the ocean when he looked upward, revealing dozens upon dozens of stories yet to go. “Must be a hundred damn floors, at least,” he murmured, amazed. Hopefully this friend of Frisk’s found what he’d been looking for on the twenty-seventh and felt no need to ascend further.

Band’s inner monologue came to an abrupt end as a shadow fell across the Noumenon’s interior, cast from the west-facing side. The next instant something big blitzed past the windows at such intense speeds that the entire row of windows shattered with explosive force, letting in the chilly high-altitude arctic air. In its wake came a sonic boom that just about knocked Lucia off her feet, although Band reached out in time with a mechanical arm to steady her. Mages, scholars, and other library visitors in the area let out a chorus of screams and yells, either readying themselves for combat or taking flight, in some cases literally. The detective groaned. “Ugh. If I had to guess, our nice little field trip just came to an end. Let’s hustle, folks!”

The team sprinted through the latter half of the grand library’s twenty-sixth floor and practically flew up the stairs to the next, harried by civilians fleeing the opposite way. Upon reaching the twenty-seventh floor landing, Band spotted someone who fit the description Frisk gave them: a young man probably in his early twenties, with fluffy blonde hair, in an elaborate and almost nonsensical outfit that included a short-sleeved hooded coat, thighboots, and shorts over leggings. With a fancy sword in hand he’d taken up a position in the very center of the the floor on top of a central table laden with books, beneath which a couple of scared children had taken cover. “Albedo!” Band called, sliding over. The alchemist glanced his way, noticing both Frisk and the lack of Galeem’s light in the detective’s eyes. “I don’t know what in the hell’s goin’ on, but it looks like we’ll be facin’ it together.”

“Understood,” Albedo replied. An explosion from up above got his attention, and as the group turned to face the disturbance, the perpetrator appeared.

The new monster floated in midair without flapping its six wings, descending as if a seraphim from heaven, though its visage was anything but holy. Whatever it was appeared to be a sleek, if freakish fusion of angel and demon, fish and bird, with wings lined by glowing eyes and a half-head crowned by clasped fingers, its upper half a vague mockery of the female form. With a high-pitched cry like a note from an angelic choir, it spread its wings and unleashed a flurry of pink projectiles.

“Hmph!” From beneath his coat Band deployed two massive mechanical arms, their brazen digits clasped into fists big enough to crush melons barehanded. He blocked the lasers that came his way and deployed his bagpipes as well, loading himself up with armor. “Got some pipes on ya, huh?” he grunted, slamming his fists together. “But that voice could use some work. Gimme two minutes and I’ll have ya singin’ a different tune!”

In a flash, Artemis zoomed from one side of the floor to another, sending books and inkwells flying from the pressure. It came to an instant stop, already turned around, and its luminescent rays blazed forth.

Pilgrim's Caravan: An Open-Ended Fantasy (with Worldbuilding!)

It's been over three weeks without a word from the GM, so I'm not too hopeful, but I'm sure all of us would be happy if it did manage to get started.

Persona ~ Alone at Sea (PERSONA WITH A BOAT 𓊝)

Imogen Reed

9/08

At last, today was the day.

Although, it didn’t exactly feel like a big day. In fact, it felt very much like boarding school. Imogen sat alone in her dorm room, munching away on her breakfast and doing her best to drown out any worries about her first day at Harbor Academy with a days-old VOD from one of her favorite streamers. Eating couldn’t occur without something to watch, after all, but she found herself glancing away from her laptop screen rather often anyway, even if just to rove around the familiar shapes that surrounded her. It was a different room, a different desk situated so close to a different bed that she could roll straight from her different sheets into her different computer chair if she so desired, but it all felt pretty much the same. In a way that was reassuring, but it did invite the gnawing, nagging feeling that Imogen wasn’t treating this new experience with the respect it deserved.

Oh, well. Soon enough her trepidations were beaten to a pulp by the firestorm of flashing lights and casino sounds from the game the streamer had been playing. Even if Imogen wasn’t playing herself, seeing the 2D avatar in the corner of the screen jump and bounce around in elation for a lucky drop was like a squeegee to the girl’s reward center. She quickly checked her laptop’s clock -thirty-five minutes until her first class- then got back to enjoying her breakfast. Courtesy of her expensive minifridge, laden snack drawer, and excellent coffee machine, she had everything a busy student could ask for. Little plastic packets of fruit snacks (Not a substitute for real fruit, my ass) provided all the vitamin C she needed, while salty cured meat sticks and jerky offered a convenient and non-perishable source of protein. It perfectly complemented the main course: a bag of powdered sugar mini-donuts. The coffee she was guzzling down didn’t exactly taste good, like at all, but that wasn’t coffee’s job, and copious amounts of sweet creamer made it a moot point, anyway. All coffee needed to do was tear her free from the warm, enveloping embrace of her bedsheets to face a new day. And what a day it was, her first at Harbor Academy!

Imogen pulled a tissue from the box beside her laptop and carefully wiped powdered sugar from her lips. As she threw it away the streamer popped off–a loot chest just so happened to deliver five whole level-ups at once, including two weapon evolutions! Forgetting that she was watching a VOD and not a livestream, she hurried to add her pogchamps in with the rest of the recorded viewers’. She watched her emotes scroll up and disappear, smiled, and reached for her coffee.

Twenty minutes later, Imogen entered the hallway bathroom. Her tank top and sweatpants had been replaced by her school uniform, and her favorite green coat was ready to confront the brisk air of the English fall, with her backpack slung on top. She took a moment to smile at her reflection, happy with how her beanie and scarf looked. Then she removed her glasses and bent down to wash her face. She felt a little discomfort somewhere behind her face, some pressure in her sinuses perhaps, sore eyes, maybe a slight headache or just fatigue. A splash of warm water rubbed around her cheeks and eyes always helped whenever this happened, to chase away the buzzing and set herself at ease. Imogen sighed in relief, dried off her hands, and went away.

It was several hours before Imogen encountered her first real disappointment. When she arrived at the Icebreaker meeting, as instructed, she quickly realized that not everyone had shown up. If I’d known I didn’t have to come, Imogen thought, a little ruefully. I wouldn’t have. The Icebreaker didn’t make her nervous or anything; she just didn’t see the point in it. How out of touch did these administrators have to be, to think friendship could be forced? Luckily, a dragged-out episode of forced socialization wasn’t in the cards. To her credit the group’s senior advisor made an effort, but it came across as…well, cringe. Everything went downhill fast, suffocated by the sheer apathy of those roped into coming here. Before she could slip away, though, another girl introduced herself. Imogen gave her a polite, thin smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “How d’ya do, miss Kalde,” she replied, rather formally using the girl’s last name. “Nice to meet ya.” A handsome guy introduced himself too, but Imogen didn’t want to just repeat herself and look foolish, so she said nothing. After neglecting to mention her own name at all, Imogen left.

9/10

“Hi there!”

Imogen looked up from her coursework, taken ever-so-slightly aback. Although her second psychology class had just let out, she’d remained in her chair for a couple minutes before hightailing it to her next one, just so that she could get some slight headway on the introductory assignment while the professor’s words were fresh in her mind. When she raised her head, she found another girl standing in front of her, a young lady with glasses like hers, but glossy black hair pulled into a side ponytail. Her voice carried a pronounced Indian accent, and her eyes shone with friendliness. “I’m Spoorthy,” she greeted Imogen. “I just so happened to see you the first day. It looked like you wanted to say something when Mr. Pierce asked if we had any questions, but it was dead silent!” She gave a sympathetic smile. “I’m the same way. I hate being the first one to speak up. It’s so awkward when the teacher calls out the class for not saying anything, too!”

Extending a tenuous smile in reply, Imogen closed her textbook and leaned back to make sure Spoorthy knew she had her full attention; anything less would be bad manners. “Oh, I just realized I could probably look it up myself, is all,” she said. Trying to think of a way to make relevant conversation, she reached back for an anecdote. “Usually I’ll ask when I need help. When people say oh, how d’ya get such good grades, I just tell ‘em it’s because I get help when I need it. That, and doin’ my homework on time. Turns out the big secret is not crammin’ everything into the last hour before it’s due, haha!”

“Haha,” Spoorthy offered a halfhearted giggle, feeling like she was supposed to. Her attempt to find common ground and maybe make a friend fell flat, and instead she got something that sounded more like condescension or bragging. “Sounds like you’re on top of things. Me, it always seems like I end up cramming…” She glanced at Imogen’s schoolwork, then up at the wall-mounted clock. “Well, I’ve got to get going, so I’ll get out of your hair. See you around?”

“Have a lovely day,” Imogen replied, giving a little wave. What a nice person. I managed to make her laugh, too! Maybe there’s hope for me yet. She started packing up her own things, ready to move on to the next class. On the way she stopped in the hallway bathroom to wash her face.

9/15

The week rolled by uneventfully. Any ceremony that accompanied the start of a new school year quickly gave way to routine, and Imogen settled in happily. She attended every class, did every assignment, and partook in lunches and dinners at the school cafeteria, all alone in the midst of a burgeoning throng of humanity. In psychology she kept an eye out for Spoorthy, waiting to see if she wanted to talk to her again, but any further polite exchanges of pleasantries lasted even less time than their first encounter. Imogen didn’t try to push it further; she could take a hint, after all. Things really weren’t all that different here compared to boarding school. The schoolwork was harder, but that just meant she needed to work harder herself. She was here to learn and improve herself, and after spending her school days doing just that, she could enjoy her evenings relaxing with games or videos. Her favorite content creators were always there for her, after all. How’d she ever managed to get so anxious in the first place? Everything was perfectly fine.

The night before, Imogen was up late thanks to a latte she’d gotten a little too late in the day, grinding out some levels in a sci-fi MMO with her ears full of frenetic breakcore. She hadn’t noticed anything slipped under her door until she stepped on it on her way out to use the bathroom before bed, squashing the origami flat with a crinkling sound. After unfolding it -and tearing it a little in the process- it took a couple tries for her bleary eyes and frazzled brain to fully comprehend the note’s contents. “Huh…” Was this another Icebreaker-type social event? Or just a prank? And why would anyone need a towel? Well, if it was the school’s doing, she couldn’t just ignore it. With a yawn Imogen tossed the note on her laptop’s keyboard so she’d remember it come morning.

Somehow, the next day’s classes seemed to go by quicker than usual. When it came to drudgery Imogen was a well-oiled machine, and with her strategy of spreading homework out evenly to not overload herself she predicted that it would be a while before the sleepless nights of pulling hair and gnashing teeth began once more. With her days all to herself, her focus was absolutely, and when it wasn’t either a quick break to wash her face -or a longer one for an extra shower- set her to rights. When seven o’ clock rolled around, Imogen headed to the dockhouse right on time, her backpack full of extra towels. If this was a school-mandated event, after all, she needed to excel. That said, she did enjoy the pleasantly cool walk on the way over, and the fresh air felt like it cleared her head. Maybe I should get out in the evenings more often, she said to herself, tucking away the map she’d been given into her coat pocket. Before her she could see the dockhouse, sitting glumly at the water’s edge, and after tucking away the hair pulled loose by the playful coastal wind she meandered on over.

World of Light

@Lugubrious here's my next character per your review boss.

Comic Sans

Game Origin: Undertale

---

"it's a beautiful day outside..."

- Sans

---

Personality: Sans is lazy, prone to sleeping on the job and taking frequent breaks. This laziness is a combination of fatalism and apathy, due to the knowledge that the world could simply reset. Conversely, he often suggested that the knowledge could be "a poor excuse for being lazy." Although Sans couldn't be motivated to get a single thing done, he finds ways to get the work done by someone else like the fallen child.

He enjoys being mischievous, primarily towards those he's on good terms with like his brother Papyrus. San's antics range from an assortment of illogical, juvenile and slightly inconvenient pranks. His list of tomfoolery vary from using whoopee cushions to eye paint on telescopes, but Sans isn't above utilizing his magic for practical jokes either. But the self-proclaimed 'comic' is quite fond of making the occasional low-brow pun, but he seems to enjoy making others laugh.

Sans is almost apathetic about his own life at times, however he has shown to be considerate to those he cares for like his brother and the other monsters who frequented Grilby's all of which seem to admire the skeleton in a way or at least regard him in a positive light. Despite being friendly with the other monsters of the underground Sans hates making promises, due to the fact that even if he kept a promise it wouldn't matter at the end of the day.

Although the skeleton will play the part of an easygoing slacker, Sans is fairly observant and can easily read a persons expression. Most times he is an agreeable fellow, yet he can become eerily serious to emphasise a subject when least expected.

Background: Nobody in Snowdin can really recall when exactly the two skeletons took up residence in their cozy little town, some say they simply showed up one day and asserted themselves in the area but the story goes the skeletal siblings made themselves quite a kerfuffle at least the taller of the pair did.

Meanwhile his brother tried his best to make friends with the people of Snowdin, Sans simply spent most his days frequenting Grilby's much to his eccentric brothers chagrin. As far as he was concerned, Sans didn't take his sentry duties seriously though Papyrus was unaware that his brother had begrudgingly made a promise to someone.

Despite wanting the best for his brother he had no interest in capturing any human, were it up to him he'd have simply killed any unlucky enough to pass by but he made a promise not to. So he watched and judged the fallen child, passively of course.

Specialty: Glass Cannon
Level: 1
Experience: 0/10 EXP

Powers:

• Teleportation Magic: Due to the somewhat spacial or gravitational nature of Sans' magic, he is able to use teleportation magic on himself, his opponents and his attacks to a certain degree. He normally uses this as a "shortcut" to certain locations he visits but in battle he uses this power to dodge enemy attacks, making him incredibly hard to hit as well as making it difficult for an enemy to avoid his attacks. He can't teleport anywhere unless he is familiar with the destination or has a line of sight with wherever he plans to teleport to.
  ^{(Starting Power) Power Level: 1}

Strengths:

• Karmic Retribution [KR]: Sans' attacks have an affect on enemies who have done things that are considered evil, such as mercilessly killing innocent people or causing malicious harm to others, etc. When damaged an enemy will be affected by [KR] like they would if they were being effected by poisoning, each time their hit it accumulates if not healed right away.
• Enhanced Speed: When bothered to, Sans is capable of moving at speeds fast enough to outpace the fastest vehicles. Moving at such speeds isn't as harmful to him as it would a regular person, although he doesn't use his enhanced speed to run instead to dodge incoming attacks along with his teleportation magic. Because of this at times his movements are almost impercieveable, making it hard to anticipate his actions.
• Awareness: While seemingly ignorant, Sans is in fact incredibly aware of his surroundings and can usually anticipate the actions of those around him. He can usually interpret and predict an enemies attack and react to it, and avoid the attack if there is room to dodge or teleport out of the way even at a dead angle. Sans also can read a persons expressions pretty well too.

Weaknesses:

[+]

• Lazybones: Despite his extraordinary capabilities, Sans can't be bothered to use them in most situations unless absolutely necessary. He doesn't like putting in the effort and has even fallen asleep during battle. Although he does use his abilities to do less extraordinary things like travel without needing to move his legs or commit his usual childish pranks. In a fight if Sans uses his abilities repeatedly he will grow tired and may even fall asleep, though he has been known to dodge attacks in his slumber.
• Weak Stats: While incredibly difficult to beat due to his enhanced speed, difficult to anticipate attacks and skill with teleportation magic, Sans has the lowest strength and defense of any monster in the Underground. Each of his attacks do the least amount of damage, though [KR] and the speed of his attacks remedy this. And one good hit can put him in relative danger, as he isn't as robust as others which is why he uses his abilities to avoid being hit.

Spirits:

• N/A

Inventory: A blue parka, white shirt, black gym shorts, and a pair of slippers.

@Dark Cloud

I have a couple notes on this. The first is that you need to have your first character at level three before you bring in a second. The second is that I'd like you to demonstrate posting consistently and accurately for a while with one character before taking on two. The third, ignoring the first two, is that Sans is a difficult character to play in this manner. Between teleportation and superspeed it's almost impossible to actually fight him, all but negating his 'low stats' through absurd evasion and insane DPS. He even got strengths included in his weaknesses, like being able to dodge while asleep. The only limiting factor to this is him being lazy, but this is a voluntary act on the part of you the player, so your character is very overpowered unless you decide for him not to be. And if he doesn't do any particular thing, it isn't because he couldn't, but because he chose not to. Would you really just let him let his allies get hurt, or an enemy accomplish an important objective? That's be negligence, callousness, or worse. Would he, a notorious layabout, really depart on a cross-continental journey in the first place? He's a character of extremes dictated by whim and not, in my eyes, suitable as a PC.

Hello! I'm back! Is my character still in the rp?

@Isaac

No. You ghosted us without warning or anything, so I wrote him off. If you want to rejoin, you'll need to start fresh.

World of Light

Detroit

Sector 8 Lower
Level 11 Tora (115/110) Level 12 Poppi (5/120)
Susie and Blazermate’s @Archmage MC, Raiden’s @XoXKieroBombXoX, Geralt’s @Multi_Media_Man, Benedict’s @Dark Cloud
Word Count: 1240

With the all-clear given, all hell quickly broke loose. After concluding her gravity-empowered fusillade from on high, Poppi momentarily retreated from the Misconducts’ return fire with her masterpon. The two cycled clockwise around the partially-constructed structure away from where they’d last been seen, looking for another angle, and as they repositioned both driver and blade snuck a shot at the action down below.

Rather than face the firing squad that would be the Misconducts’ reply after her attempt to take down their boss, Giovanna hightailed it while her foes dealt with the concussive force of Poppi’s dark garage, forcing a handful of the goons to give chase around the side of the building. At the same time, Geralt made his entrance on the opposite side, laying waste to three crooks who happened to be on that side. Though literally outgunned, the Witcher fought with brutally pragmatic use of his strength and magic. In just a few moments he’d downed all three, leaving them writhing on the ground to nurse their bruises and fractions as he joined in the projectile mayhem with his crossbow. A couple seconds later, however, the furious report of Blazermate’s sentry from behind him completely outclassed his output, plugging any Misconducts unfortunate enough to be in cover facing the opposite way with lead, starting with the hockey player Geralt tossed over his shoulder. Neither Tora nor Poppi could hear the man’s shouts over the turret’s gunfire.

Susie joined the fight in a rather bloodthirsty manner, landing on and grinding one of the hapless hoodlums to pulpy powder with that giant war machine. Doing so got the attention of almost every Misconduct scattered around the bottom level at once, and bullets riddled her Business Suit from all directions, but her infused missiles wreaked even further havoc on their foxholes by yanking them and their equipment around. The distraction offered by that mechanized menace proved to be the undoing of those closest to the G-men, since the minute they looked away, Loup-garou was among them like a wolf among sheep. As one man aimed a shotgun at the back of Susie’s head, seeking to cut the head off the snake while he still could, Loup-garou struck him from behind with Souffle D’eclair, frying him in a brilliant blue surge of severe electric breath. Nearby Misconducts turned on the wolfman, but he swept through the area with Axel Claw, striking random foes. Unfortunately for Susie, his cohort had already assumed everyone in the area who wasn’t a G-man to be an enemy, so her Business Suit took three medium-damage slashes as well. Further off, Manananggal finished draining a female gangster of blood with her proboscis-like tongue, healing some of the gunshots she’d already taken.

Those two, Poppi realized, were going to be a problem. While the rank-and-file Misconducts could kill someone in mere moments with their firearms, they weren’t particularly strong in and of themselves. They’d bitten off more than they could chew, and the Seekers would be paying the price. If only Raiden and Benedict had come along to help. With a full strike team, they might have been able to end this before the G-men got involved.

As Tora and Poppi neared the edge of the upper bend of the C-shaped structure’s second floor, ready to help pick off their foes, they spotted TNT Randy on the offensive. He hurled a handful of lit TNT sticks toward the area occupied by Geralt and Blazermate’s turret. The ensuing chain-explosion destroyed the sentry, and with a roar Randy wrenched his axelike hockey stick free from the cleft skull of Blazermate’s last zombie. “You’ve all made a BIG mistake coming here!” he bellowed, taking aim with his rocket launcher. “You’re history!”

Tora pointed down at what was about to be a big problem with his wing. “Poppi!”

“Roger!” Poppi scooped up and kicked her Masterpon like a soccer ball, probably not what he meant but effective nonetheless. He hurtled down and bodily smacked Randy right in his mask, staggering him enough that his first RPG went wide and exploded against one of the third-floor supports on the right.

“Argh!” Randy growled as Tora landed. When the Nopon started swinging his Variable Saber the huge man brought up his shield, blocking strike after strike. Tora quickly realized his blade wasn’t getting through, but thanks to his low profile spotted an alternative. He reversed his weapon’s grip and stabbed its laser blade right into Randy’s foot.

The Misconduct miniboss howled. He slammed into Tora with his shield, bowling him away, only for Poppi to strike the next instant. She swooped in like a peregrine falcon and struck with her full weight and thrust behind a dive kick straight to the hockey mask. The rocket launcher clattered down beside its owner as Randy slammed head-first into the ground. Poppi’s momentum carried them both a few more meters, and when they slid to a stop she leveled her revolvers at the big man’s face. “Hey, hey. Roughhousing with Masterpon is Poppi’s job.” A hissing noise beside her got her attention, however, and she turned to see another bundle of TNT tossed up into the air. She jetted sideways before it could explode, releasing Randy but making sure he took a bit of self-damage in the process.

At about that time, the ground began to rumble slightly. Something was coming, and as a grinding noise grew louder, those not immersed in the action got the urge to look toward the street. After another moment, a giant bipedal machine rumbled down the road, tearing across the asphalt like a hockey player sliding on ice. It stopped, turned to face the construction site, and began to walk, carelessly tossing aside or crushing any cars or other obstacles in its way. Predominantly sleek black but with nodes of heavy, bulbous green plate reinforcing several areas, it resembled a walking tank. Pile drivers like talons on its feet pierced the ground with every step for added stability, while its long, double-jointed arms featured pronounced claws, blood-red like the mech’s other highlights. In those claws the machine held a weapon even taller than itself, a giant pickaxe-like implement with a chainsaw axe on one side, a pointed hammer on the other, and rocket boosters in both directions. At the very center of the machine rested its cockpit, enclosed in armor and adorned with both glowing red eyes and enormous horns, like a steer’s. The end result was an engine of destruction blended with a bovine titan, every bit as imposing as it was enormous.

“Attention, all you maggots crawlin’ around down there!” a boisterous, soldierly voice broadcasted from the machine’s speakers, loud enough to make its slight unhinged bent noticeable. The cockpit opened just enough to let the cyborg pilot see the scene with his own eyes. “This is Khamsin, of the Winds of Destruction! You know what that name means? Freedom! Today, I’m freein’ this place from scum of the earth like you!” The chainsaw blade of his colossal weapon spooled up, roaring like an industrial wood chipper. “So buckle the FUCK up, ‘cause here. I. COOOME!” With Manananggal pointing him in the right direction, the fearsome newcomer charged straight for the construction site, eager to tear asunder anything that stood in the way of freedom.