[center][h3]Paved Wilderness - Scorched Gorge[/h3]
Lvl 15 Ms Fortune (61/150) and Chucho the Polterpup
[b]Word Count:[/b] 1170[/center]

After climbing back down the rocky spire, Nadia left her prize where it fell and set off at a brisk jaunt through the branching canyons, her polterpup an ephemeral presence behind her. Scorched Gorge wasn’t that big an area, all told, so even while steering clear of the resident bugsnax, it didn’t take the feral that long to find what she was looking for. Most of these red stone ravines were bordered by cliff walls, either tiered or sheer from bottom to top, but at one end of the broadest valley the terrain sloped upward, becoming a gravelly hill where slow erosion had at some point caused a miniature landslide. Even now rivulets of water trickled down amidst the pebbles, their paths forked like lightning but reunited at the bottom of the gorge to feed a shallow creek that flowed back toward the pools near the central spire. If Nadia could roll her salvage out of this place anywhere, it would be there.

Of course, getting it there was no easy task. Though Nadia’s fusions had filled her out and softened her up somewhat, her physique still featured plenty of lean muscle, which unfortunately did not lend itself to feats of raw strength. Sure, the salvage clump might be spherical in shape, but being just shorter than her, it was unconscionably heavy. Worse still, the feral wasn’t at full strength after exhausting so much energy this morning. Only by pushing against the sphere with all her strength, and also expelling blood behind her for extra thrust, could she get it rolling. Even then, she was at the mercy of any little rock or groove that happened to be in her way, so the road to her destination was by no means straight. Shaking her head, Nadia took a deep breath. “There’s gotta be easier money out there than this.” With no alternatives in sight, though, she hung up her jacket on a nearby cactus and got to work.

Swaddled by the dusty air and midday heat, with not even an errant breeze to relieve her, Nadia toiled away. It was hot, stifling work, and naturally it left her sweating like a big. She decided right away to take breaks every few minutes, which involved her jumping in labyrinth’s central [url=https://i.imgur.com/NvW5cYT.png]pool[/url], sapphire blue and mercifully cool. Bit by bit, she made progress, and after twenty minutes or so she reached the gravel slope with her salvage. At that point, her philosophy to ‘cross that bridge when we come to it’ came back around to bite her, since it quickly became apparent that her meager strength would not be enough to get her sphere up that hill.

Nadia tried hitting the sphere with her strongest attacks, but even if she could send it flying, it would only bounce and roll back to the bottom. Standing on top to roll it like those thugs in Mafia town did with giant meats didn’t work either, so  pushing was her only option. “Hrrrrrrgh! Hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!” No dice. She even tried slashing her own shoulders to better use her blood jets like rear thrusters, but while that seemed promising for a second or two, the only thing it accomplished was making her dizzy. “Oogh…maybe…that wasn’t the brightest idea…” She staggered over to a patch of shade, sat down with Chucho beside her, and pulled the Ripened Heart from its pouch to boost her blood replenishment. As the artifact worked its magic, she stared at the hill, then let out a heavy sigh and stroked Chucho’s head. “The hell am I gonna do…?”

Her ear flicked at a familiar and unwelcome sound. “Bunger, bunger, bunger!” She glanced over to see one two of those grotesque burger-beetles tussling over territory. They charged, locked fry-horns in a bid to wrestle one another to the ground or toss them overhead, then did it again. Nadia’s skin crawled just looking at those freaks, now that she knew what consumption of their flesh could do. Her right arm was still disfigured, and every minute that passed by made her more and more worried that the affliction might be permanent. Better to ditch it and get a mechanical replacement than live with that indignity, she thought. As she continued to watch the BBQ Bungers clash, however, her thoughts turned back toward them, and the hotsauce plants nearby. After another moment, her eyebrows shot up, and she snapped her bacon-fingers. “I got it!”

An excited energy sped her on her way as Nadia moved to put her latest and greatest idea into action. First, she ransacked the nearby sauce-plants, using her jacket as a makeshift container to carry as many as possible. As long as the ‘bottles’ were still in one piece, the Bungers didn’t seem to care. Next, she climbed up to one of the rope suspension bridges spanning one of the Scorched Gorge’s many canyons and cut sections of rope with her claws. By knotting them together, she created two lasses connected to a loop that she tightened around the salvage sphere. Then, with everything ready, she baited the Bungers. One at a time she lobbed sauce bottles where she wanted them to go, leading the greedy bugsnax straight to her setup. Once both were lapping away at hotsauce she’d splattered at the base of the slope, the dextrous catgirl slipped the lassos around them, then positioned herself halfway up the hill, giggling gleefully.

She turned around, cleared her throat, and yelled down at the Bungers as loudly as she could. “Hey, frysores! Yeah, I’m talkin’ about you, grease flunkies! Your buns are soggy, your cheese is moldy, and your beef is ground ‘cause it tastes just like dirt! Bunger? Hah! More like…” She paused, drawing a blank. “...Dunger! Yeah! Screw you guys!”

The bugsnax reacted predictably, charging straight toward Nadia with everything they had. The ropes went taut, and the Bungers began to drag the salvage behind them. Nadia continued to taunt, berate, and generally agitate them until they’d pulled their load all the way to the top, at which point their speed really picked up. The feral was ready, though, and as the bugsnax barreled toward her with the sphere in tow, she called upon her newest striker. “Well? ‘Water’ you waiting for!?” The huge abyssal [url=https://i.imgur.com/zHqBmdZ.png]Harbor Water Demon[/url] manifested behind her, lifted her enormous clawed mitts into the air, and brought them down on the Bungers to reduce both to paste in one fatal instant.

“Hah! Now that’s what I call a smash burger! I’m a fur-reakin’ genius!” Panting, Nadia looked up at the Harbor Demon and saluted her with a smile as she disappeared. Then she froze, her face aghast, the sight of her striker’s huge hands and immense strength freshly imprinted on her mind. She stared back down at the gravelly slope and all the way she came, hauling that heavy load, then clapped both hands to her head in despair. “DAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!”

[center][h3]Paved Wilderness - Highertower[/h3]
Edward’s [@DracoLunaris] Blazermate and Sectonia’s [@Archmage MC] Zenkichi’s [@MULTI_MEDIA_MAN] Juri’s [@Zoey Boey]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/lVGjOle.png[/img][/center]

From their vantage points either in the sky itself or atop the Forerunner pylon that hovered weightlessly above the oasis, both Sectonia and Edward could get a much better lay of the land in order to properly direct the Seekers’ efforts, even if some of their allies were already in the action. Broadly speaking, it all lay atop a cliff overlooking Empty Space, a breathtakingly vast pit occupying the center of the continent. This void was so broad that nobody here could actually see the other side, just a distant horizon where a black-brown gradient gave way to blue. Neither could they see the pit’s depths if they peered over the edge, just a starry darkness like the night sky itself. As absurdly tall as Highertower was, it would certainly not reach the bottom if toppled into it. Huge structures and landforms, like asteroids and miniature planets, floated out in the distance both above and below the horizon, unburdened by gravity, but it still held sway for anything -or anyone- that tumbled over the precipice.

The primary point of interest was the Highertower [url=https://i.imgur.com/8sT3HSu.png]compound[/url], hemmed in on all sides by the slim, slipshod faded wood or rusted sheet metal buildings of Red Valley Mining and Blu Industries, to the point where no land vehicle could gain entry. On the opposite side of the central boulders from the tower, a [url=https://i.imgur.com/Z1J303P.png]multi-tiered shack[/url] hung precariously over the edge of Empty Space, ready to fall and take whoever happened to be taking cover inside with it at a moment’s notice. Pieces of the Ficsit freighter, some large enough to cave in the surrounding buildings, were scattered around, their contents looted and packed onto payloads. Hastily arranged tracks criss-crossed the area, meant to convey the carts to wherever the people currently in control of them wanted them, but with all of the possible exits uphill nobody was making much progress, though.

Of course, there was more to the battlefield than the compound. It formed only one extremity of a battlefield that could roughly be divided into thirds: an outdoor battlefield, an [url=https://i.imgur.com/SF0XWj7.png]underground battlefield[/url], and a central facility built into the mountain that divided them. Roughly rectangular, that facility offered both an indoor path between the Highertower compound and the [url=https://i.imgur.com/hMEHPhy.png]fuel depot[/url] opposite it, and a route between the open and enclosed sides of the battlefield, both converging at a central [url=https://i.imgur.com/VFeV9iN.jpeg]atrium[/url] where an an alien artifact regarded the surrounding bloodshed in stolid silence. Much wider and conducive to vehicular warfare than its underground counterpart, the outdoor battlefield sported not only a glittering oasis in the middle, but a handful of [url=https://i.imgur.com/CyTUlSb.png]sunken structures[/url] that served as bunkers for anyone skittering across through the war zone on foot.

It was the outdoor battlefield that Zenkichi and Blazermate had taken their Prowler on a joyride through so far, and while Antler reinforcements from Sectonia helped a little, their assistance wouldn’t go as far as the bug queen hoped. Lacking mobility, Antlers were easy targets, not just for vehicles but for any of the dozen-plus fighters ferreted away in a foxhole somewhere on the battlefield, where they laid low looking to pick off easy targets or make a break for the next bit of cover. One could never know if the rock formation or bunker one just drove past had a soldier with a rocket or grenade launcher hiding in it, after all. As a result, the whole area was one big mess, with blurred and constantly changing battle lines. The longer an observer like Edward looked, though, the better he could define the teams.

Naturally, the Psychos were the easiest to identify. ‘Ramshackle but dangerous’ described not just their weapons, but their vehicles like the [url=https://i.imgur.com/4YlfcFc.png]Rollerhog[/url] and [url=https://i.imgur.com/JipXvP6.png]Treadmaker[/url], reclaimed from the junkyard and weaponized by acts of unmedicated ingenuity. While many of the crazed raiders were little more than lackeys, a few were racking up impressive kill counts, like a [url=https://i.imgur.com/RFt2bIV.png]musclebound maniac[/url] with an explosive scrap saw, and a [url=https://i.imgur.com/oHabFN6.png]dynamic duo[/url] that hooked foes into deadly traps. The psychos had the strongest presence throughout the central complex, and their salvage extraction route seemed to be underground, with five payloads stalled in the underground battlefield.

The faction with the best hold of Highertower itself was the [url=https://i.imgur.com/vOaFhVE.png]Mercenaries[/url]. With a versatile arsenal, the well-armed mercs -each more numerous than it might appear- worked as a cohesive team when outsiders were involved, but could resort to color-coordinated infighting just as easily, making it difficult for either sub-faction to make off with any of the four payloads. Aside from highly-mobile scouts and soldiers, the mercs could seldom be found out in the open, since they had the least vehicular options. That said, they could still field a [url=https://i.imgur.com/wDAc5v6.png]surprise[/url] or two in a pinch. Moreover, they seemed to have the easiest access to plentiful explosives, which would be much more effective against Edward’s golems than bullets were.

Lastly, the fuel depot opposite Highertower seemed to be the stronghold for the third faction, a conglomerate of more futuristic [url=https://i.imgur.com/hB39HQt.png]Troopers[/url] in blue and yellow, which could field a handful of different vehicles like tanks and aircraft. With their exit so far away, though, only three payloads were in their possession, and any interference left them rolling back down the hill into the open. This came not just from the Psychos, but smaller bands of freelancers also trying to muscle their way into the mix, like militaristic [url=https://i.imgur.com/SMz5qz1.png]soldiers[/url] with various gadgets and [url=https://i.imgur.com/CPyLcbI.png]alien gunslingers[/url] with excessively customized firearms.

With all of these factors in play, disposable minions would get disposed of quickly, and Zenkichi and Blazermate would find themselves in hot water if they stayed out in the open for too long.

Edward’s drone saw all this, and a good deal more as it ascended alongside the tower. There were random people fighting on or just climbing it, though these grew more sparse past the nearby cliffs that fighters could jump to or from. Higher up, it spotted some people just sitting there taking a break, watching the chaos unfold from above, to the point where some nominal enemies had reached a temporary truce. At the very top of the tower, the drone found a [url=https://i.imgur.com/r4CEezS.png]giant archer[/url] clothes in chains, rags, and a metal helmet. He turned his head to peer at the drone, seemingly curious. “Friend?”