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[img]https://i.imgur.com/BHScL9w.png[/img]
[b][color=Aquamarine]Wordcount:[/color][/b] 1,891 (+3/+3/+3/+4/+5)
[b][color=Aquamarine]Midna: level 10[/color][/b] EXP: [color=Aquamarine]//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color] (115/110)
[b][color=Aquamarine]Location:[/color][/b] The Dead Zone
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While watching Miss Fortune try and clean herself ineffectually was quite funny, Midna decided it would be best to remove herself before her uncontrollable urge to tease/taunt/joke about wet cats got inappropriate/grating. In place of that she headed out to go for a little relaxing ride around the lake. 

Not that it was the most scenic of views between meat moss, mushrooms and an overlook of the horror infested city below mind, but at least her mask filtered out the smells of blood and rot. For those with an eye for such things, there were valuable resources to be scavenged, but Midna had little interest or appreciation for the possible uses of the scarlet rot corrupted resin or neurode biosensors.

Neither did she for the strange [url=https://i.imgur.com/Q1nETYu.jpeg]fish[/url] paddling around in the pools, but as it turned out there was someone who was in the area who did. Or someone who had access to the area anyway.

Having allowed her wolfos to wonder where it pleased as she rested on its saddle, arms crossed over atop the bar, chin resting atop it, the beast followed its nose, having picked up the scent of something familiar in the corrupted landscape. This led it, and by extension her, to a mound of dirt marked by a sign saying ‘bait + sell’ that also sported a little bell on top.

Bemused by this, the princess guided her wolfos away from where it was sniffing and scratching at the mound, and then reached her shadow hand over and flicked the bell to see what would happen.

At first, nothing, and then after the sound of digging a [url=https://i.imgur.com/A9Ls5zL.png]fox[/url] cautiously poked his head out of the mound of soil, looking a fair bit nervous and not entirely enthused by the presence large predator that Midna was riding atop of.

[color=Aquamarine]”Uh, hello? Don’t worry it won’t attack without my say so”[/color] Midna told the fox, feeling a little silly about doing so, but having met enough animal people to know she shouldn’t just assume this wasn’t a person, before asking [color=Aquamarine]”What are you doing here? It’s dangerous”[/color]

In response the fox leaned to the side and tapped the sign, telling her that it was here to “Sell bait, buy fish” in a soft and impossible to gender voice.

[color=Aquamarine]”Those weird ones? They look infested, that can’t be good for anything”[/color] Midna replied, understandably leery about the health and safety of such things. They certainly wouldn't be good for eating, of that she was sure.

In response the fox just patted the bucket and told her to put the fish “in here” before explaining simply that it had “crafter clients” who wanted the fish, and then looking at her with a tilted head, which was all it needed to communicate the question of if she was going to help him out with supplying them or not.

Well with that vaguely clarified Midna only really had one more question, which was [color=Aquamarine]”Uh huh, and why do you think I’d spend my time doing that kind of busy work?”[/color] to which the fox’s onbrandedly short answer was that it would be “Relaxing”

Hence why, if someone was to come looking for Midna, they would need only needed to follow the sound of Lyre music (or at least attempts at it, the princess hadn’t exactly had much time for practice of conventional music since she’d picked up the habit) and find her sitting by the shoreline, back to her dozing wolfos. There she lazed with her helmet in her lap, chewing on cereal bar held in one hand, strumming at her musical instrument with two more, while the final hand, to which her astral chain was attached, lazily drifted too and fro.

There would then come a tug at her wrist, prompting her to yank it back and, from the perspective of the observer, cause a fish-adjacent creature to leap out of the water and then end up hovering in front of her. Of course, the fish was actually being carried in the jaws of her Beast Legion, which could casually phase through the bloody water, making not a single disturbance, as it hunted down prey for its mistress with supernatural ease. 

It would then pad over to the fox who’d stopped needing to be called back after the third fish catch she’d made in short succession and deposit it, still wiggling, into the rapidly filling bucket.

Of course, things could only go swimmingly for so long, and so, right after she’d caught and was busy admiring a ‘fish’ that was far more [url=https://i.imgur.com/WYatAZa.png]machine than meat[/url] she was rudely interrupted when a [url=https://i.imgur.com/33XN5Ol.jpeg]Deimos Carnis[/url] came bursting out of the lake, clearly displeased at this intrusion into its hunting ground.

Alongside it burst several floodfested [url=https://i.imgur.com/ALVtgWD.png]baslaisks[/url] in its thrall, the freaky beasts crawling and hopping up the beach towards her

[color=Aquamarine]”Goddesses, it's always something”[/color] Minda complained as she rose, but not having enough time to redon her helmet before she had to toss herself out of the way of incoming acid spit.

With her hands full of helm, lyre, and her beast legion’s maw full of the very shiny and valuable looking fish, things weren't exactly in a great state fighting wise. The first basilisk to approche breathing some horrible black mist caused the cold of death to start gripping her bones wasn’t exactly wonderful either, but a flowmotion leap back out of the fog saw to that.

[color=Aquamarine]”Want to dance? Alright let’s dance!”[/color] she declared, strumming the lyre up to a combat tempo before launching a blast of electrified sand forwards into the oversized eyes of the closest basilisk. It screeched and started rapidly blinking, giving her space to leap full over said eyeballs and to slam both dragon clawed feet into its back, an extra gust of wind joining the double stomp and fully slamming it into the dirt.

As she struck once with sand and once with feet, her new boon activated, surrounding her with two layers of shimmering rainbow barriers that would soften the next blow she took. Given the swarm of basilisks crawling towards her that looked like it might be coming soon, but not if she could help it. With another leap she repeated her gambit against the next basilisk, and then the next, sanding and stomping them with a rhythmic flow that she even managed to put a tune to using her Lyre.

She got so into the tempo that, in-fact, that she entirely lost track of the Carnis, right up until it lunged in and with a slashing claw knocked her entirely off her rhythm. Rainbow barriers burst as they absorbed about a quarter of the damage, and her armor did much of the rest, but it still stung.

[color=Aquamarine]”Ach, thank you whatever your name is”[/color] she said to the nameless god who’d granted her that boon, and then immediately cursed as the basilisks sought to take their revenge, black mist sweeping towards her.

She, fortunately, was not alone, as her little performance had been quite the distraction that let her beasts harry the foes rear, which they did so more aggressively now. Claws slashed as the wolfos howled, drawing attention, before they retreated back to draw some of the foes away, the beast legion still carrying the fish in its mouth, which amusingly to Midna meant that said fish must seem like the source of the invisible clawstrikes to the infested foes

[color=Aquamarine]”Careful with that thing, thing!”[/color] Midna called out, before coughing from having inhaled lingering basilisk mist. That was the last straw, the princess declaring [color=Aquamarine]”Alright, enough messing around”[/color] as she yanked herself to her beast legion’s back, and then, while riding it away, finally got her helmet on. 

Hand free of holding it, she drew a blade and began charging it with lighting as they wheeled back around towards the horde of hopping horrors and their centipede overlord. Not wanting to put her fresh catch in danger of being death misted however, she leapt off her beast legion as she entered the fray, blade flashing as she sliced it down into one of the eyes of a basilisk. Wind howled and thunder roared, as a wind aftershock sliced into the existing wound, and a lighting blast struck the creature’s back, knocking the wind from its lungs and preventing it from using its death breath on her long enough for her to claw its other eye out.

Neither blow actually killed however, rather intentionally, but it took it out the fight more or less. Naturally there were others, but a circular sand blast gave them just enough pause for her to focus on her primary target: the Carnis.

Her shadow hand punched up, smashing the centipede in the face as it came in to try and slash her again, the strike and follow up wind blast stunning it enough that she had time to summon her darknut. It arrived sized up, sword raised high, and then brought it down in a mighty decapitation strike that was meant to sunder the foe in half, but instead only got some of the rear as it recovered more quickly than she’d liked skittered to the side.

A Basilisk lunged blindly at a frustrated Midna, clipping her and expanding her starward barriers, and causing it to receive a trio of musical bolts to the face from the princess’ lyre for its efforts.

[color=Aquamarine]”Not interested in you, you wastes of space!”[/color] she yelled at the chaff, before shouting [color=Aquamarine]”I want to try my new thing out, so die already you bug!”[/color] at the Canis as she went after it with her sword, hacking at its lower limbs, crippling them enough that, in conjunction with the damage to its rear, the monster went crashing to the ground.

It tried to drag itself away with its remaining claws, but the princess leapt onto its back, running along it, sandblasting basilisks as she went, before leaping head over heels over its horns, and slamming her shadow hand down straight down in a punch right onto its head, crushing its already fractured skull. 

This strike launched her up, but she yanked herself to her beast again to get controle of her tumbling flight, and as she did so, behind her, the ashifiying remains of the Carnis suddenly bloomed with lunar flowers and the beast rose again, now, briefly, in her thrall. Towering over its former minions, the reanimated Carnis immediately began to lay into them, claws slicing, acid spitting, as it cut a bloody path through them without Midna having to lift even a finger or put any of her more important monsters in danger.

Instead, content to let it finish the job, she rode up to the dirt mound and sign, and rang the bell to sell the fish they’d so rudely interrupted her selling of.

Unfortunately, that would turn out to be her last sale, as the little battle had unfortunately scared off all the fish. Sure, she could have found another spot, but with the one so conveniently near to the fox merchant ruined, she decided to call it a day. 

Thus, with a pocket (or rather portal) full of a few thousand extra zenny, and a few extra spirits to boot, she headed back to the rest stop to see if anyone else had shown up since then.