The moment that Hatty veered toward the Ark Mall’s central spiral staircase, Nadia began to get the impression that this trip would be a highly vertical one. Without breaking stride the kid zoomed up the stairs as fast as her stubby little legs would take her, so both Nadia and Omori followed suit. While she could go a lot faster in theory, the feral didn’t want to leave her new acquaintance in the dusk, so she made sure to glance over her shoulder every so often to make sure that Omori was keeping up. With Hatty in the lead, the trio breezed past the fourth, fifth, six, seventh, eighth, and finally ninth floor landings, at which point they really had no choice but to head across the bridge to the Mall’s topmost publicly accessible floor.
From up here, a peep over the railing offered a glimpse of a dizzying nine-story drop all the way down to the bottom floor, as well as an overhead view of Ark Mall itself, with its neatly tiered construction and futuristic finery. Furthermore, this lofty vantage point overlooked the dividing wall that ran across the grand atrium’s center, which allowed a keen-eyed observer to see the grass, sidewalks, and trees of the vast indoor park on the other side between its pillars. In short, this spot revealed the whole of Alcamoth’s biggest indoor space, in all its glory.
Nadia counted herself lucky that her tour of Limsa Lominscuttle Town’s highs and lows, both with and without Blazermate, had desensitized her somewhat to heights. Back in New Meridian she’d seen the glinting, glass-sided skyscrapers of the towering inner city each and every day, but only very seldomly did she ever get the chance to scale one, even for business. Still, it boggled her mind that all this wasn’t only contained inside a single, gargantuan superstructure, but also not even close to the highest point inside it. For the first time Nadia turned her gaze farther upward still, to where the domed ceiling converged in the center of the dividing wall, which separated the roof of glass from the roof of metal. There, a circle of beams extended downward to the parapet, connected by horizontal support rings. Although she couldn’t claim to have spent much time here, she’d certainly allowed her eyes to wander while enjoying breakfast earlier, and she’d never imagined that something might be up there.
Spellbound for a few moments by the incredible architecture of this mystical place, Nadia stirred from her reverie when a small hand tugged at her own. She glanced down to see Hatty, pointing down the curved walkway to the right. The feral followed her little friend’s gesture to see that this path actually wound around the entire perimeter of the Ark Mall’s ninth floor and connected to the dividing wall on both sides. “Oh, ya wanna go over there?” she realized. When Hatty nodded, Nadia broke into a smile. “Sweet! Race ya there?”
The suggestion seemed to take the young one by surprise. A smug grin spread across her face. “Hmph!” she snorted in derision, as if to say
the very idea! The treatment of the possibility of her winning a race as preposterous just made Nadia want to show the kid a thing or two all the more, however. That said, there was a certain someone she didn’t want to leave in her dust.
Nadia knelt down and extended a hand to Omori. “Here, hop on my back!” she told him, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder. “I’ll give ya a ride over! I’m purr-etty strong too, so don’t worry about fallin’ off or anythin’, as long as ya don’t pull my ears!”
Once everyone was ready, the cat burglar got into a track-starter stance, ready to rumble. After another nod from her opponent, she counted down. “Three. Two. One. Go!”
She launched forward, sprinting on all fours. It was a long way to go at full tilt, especially with a passenger, but with Nadia’s oodles of stamina she felt pretty confident about going all-out the whole time. Unfortunately for her, barely a second passed before Hatty zipped by her, riding a
banana-yellow scooter. “Aw, come on!” Nadia laughed. Hatty just looked over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out with a wink, then cruised on ahead. With her defeat a foregone conclusion, the feral decided to relax a little so she wouldn’t wear herself out, and stood back up to jog along the walkway with Omori still on her shoulders.
After a few minutes Nadia came to a stop at the center of the parapet, breathing heavily. There she discovered a outdoor cafe sort of thing, the sort one might expect to find in a museum, with tables and chairs amidst potted plants in a rough ring around the
central shaft. Having arrived well ahead of her supposed competition, Hatty had made herself comfortable at one of the tables, sipping on a juice box from one of the little stands scattered around. Nadia rolled her eyes and gave the kid a golf clap, after which she hopped down and scampered over to join the others. The cafe struck Nadia as a rather funny thing to have in such an extraordinary place. The parapet of the dividing wall measured about fifty feet across, although it bulged substantially in the middle here. On one side visitors could look down at both the
atrium’s sprawling park and the
promontory above it, about halfway up. On the other lay the totally artificial Ark Mall, although Nadia now viewed it at the complete opposite angle she did earlier. After Omori got off, she could crane her neck upward to look up the
central shaft, which went so ridiculously high that she couldn’t even see the top.
Nadia, Hatty, and Omori approached the shaft. At its bottom, a very interesting platform rested upon the parapet. It seemed to be mostly glass panes connected by a supported web of metal spokes and concentric circles, but at the end of those spokes were larger hubs, and from each hub extended a large, mechanical limb. Taken together, the whole thing looked like a weird, giant spider, and while that plus how incredibly alien it was to Nadia made her a little uneasy, she couldn’t help but be curious. Gingerly at first, she stepped onto the platform, the glass cool to the touch against her bare feet. Now more than ever, this Smash City felt like something beyond her comprehension, the hallowed halls of some ancient civilization
The sudden introduction of a nearby voice might have made her jump if not for her feline hearing–and for its telltale familiarity. “Heading to ze top?”
Nadia turned to see a welcome sight: the pale, pretty face of Bella, curtained by the ringlets she’d gained from her fusion with Chicago during their voyage through the Bottomless Sea, which now poked out beneath her cute, tooth-patterned beanie. “Bella!” she exclaimed. “I was wonderin’ where ya’d gone! I was fixin’ to worry a-boat ya!”
“Ohoho, I am sorry to ‘ave worried you, mon amie,” the Seaplane Tender giggled before sobering up. “Just needed some peace and quiet, is all.”
The feral offered a sympathetic nod, speakin as she watched Hatty jump up into Bella’s lap to give her a hug. “For sure, yeah, don’t blame ya one bit. We all went through hell back there, but you got a raw deal even compared to most, what with the whole Abyssal thing and all. So take as much time as ya need, Bell!”
Bella squeezed Hatty against her chest, and a gentle moment passed in silence. Then the kid sat down on her lap, and with a hand on Hatty’s shoulder Bella looked back at the others. “I am grateful for your well-wishes, Miss Fortune. In truth, I am getting along well enough.” She looked out over the parapet, taking in the sights. “I figured zat, even zough I do not wish to fight anymore, I could be of use as an explorer. You know, make ze unknowns, known? And maybe see all ze things I missed waging my life of war. So I decided to get a head start and explore zis city. Isn’t it incredible?”
“Oh yeah, it’s crazy,” Nadia agreed. “Speakin’ of, you asked if we were goin’ up a minute ago. Don’t suppose ya know how this weird thing works?”
“Mhm!” Bella nodded. “I made sure to ask when I came up here earlier! It is a lift that goes all the way to ze very top of ze structure. Just press ze up button on that console over zere, and ze arms on ze sides will go to work, carrying you up to ze very clouds!”
Nadia blinked. “...Wow. And they just let anyone use it?”
“I believe so. There’s nothing up there other than ze view, as far as I know, so nobody really uses it. Alzough, I hear zat sometimes it turns itself on, but when it comes back down zere’s nobody aboard.”
“That’s su-purr cool!” Nadia grinned. She turned to Omori and Hatty. “We’ve gotta try this thing, right?” Then back to Bella. “Ya wanna come?”
The invitation seemed to take the Abyssal by surprise. “Oh! If you don’t mind, zen…certainly, I would love to! Zat is, if you three are finished looking around ‘ere.” She also turned her gaze to the kids, to make sure it was okay.
Radlandia
Level 9 Tora (239/90) Level 9 Poppi (239/90)
Bede’s
@Crimson Flame, Tora, Poppi, Vandham
Word Count: 829
So far, Tora’s newest friend-to-be had maintained a taciturn silence, both during the trip over to Radlandia and during the team’s examination of the strange little town so far. While the Nopon wanted to get to know Bede better, especially if he planned to join the group for the foreseeable future, the boy’s somewhat chilly disposition made him hard to approach. He seemed like he wanted to be left alone more than anything, and since by now Tora knew that being overly outgoing would not win him points with everyone he ran across, he ended up focusing on Poppi, Vandham, and his new surroundings instead.
Still, Bede could only remain stoic up to a point, and after a few moments all the bizarre things he’d seen and heard pushed him over the edge. His sudden question took Tora by surprise and left him scrambling for an answer, especially since the rotund inventor didn’t really know what Moogles were himself. “Meeeh…” he muttered, trying to buy time. “They uh, well, small, and…they fly, and…”
“Think of them like fairies, the sort ya might hear about in myths an’ such,” Vandham supplied, having seated himself on a nearby bench. Having overseen the implementation of the Moogle-based communication system, he came much better-equipped to satisfy Bede’s curiosity than Tora. “They’re fuzzy li’l critters, with white fur and teeny bat wings, who live peacefully away from ‘umans in forests and the like. They’re also magic, and can poof around wherever they wanna go. Right now, for lack of anythin’ better, we use ‘em for communicatin’ across long distances. Back in their worlds, they ‘ad a sort o’ system called the Mognet they used for deliverin’ mail all over, which is what gave us the idea.” He smiled as he crossed his arms. “They're kindly folk, so if ya see any, make sure you’re nice to ‘em, mate. Soon as we come by a supply of Kupo Nuts, we can start to thank ‘em proper.”
At that point he looked up at the tallest building to check on Poppi. She’d flown up and landed without issue, her appearance apparently nothing out of the ordinary to the local kids, and proceeded to call in a Moogle as planned. The big guy pointed up at the two. “See, there’s one now. Cute li’l bugger, eh?”
As Vandham and Bede spoke together, Tora had gotten steadily more bored, and started to wander away from the train platform. No matter which way he turned, a little scrutiny turned up something weird to keep him engaged. For almost a full minute he entertained himself by dancing around in front of a sewer drain with eyeballs in it, watching them turn to follow his erratic movements. In a nearby public restroom he found a
hand protruding from a toilet, whose owner begged for paper, which Tora sadly lacked and could not offer. When the curious Nopon opened another stall he got screamed at by a
hidden ghoul crouching on the seat, prompting him to run screaming from the bathroom himself. He came to a stop in front of a small farmer’s market whose stalls also served as supports for the skate tracks that ran above it, where he quickly became enthralled by such unusual
fruits and
vegetables as cube-shaped strawberries and swirly tubers. The vendors, who appeared to be from the nearby countryside, almost all had fascinating
pet slimes with them too, which Tora couldn’t resist petting. Before the Nopon knew it, he’d wandered far from the train platform and gotten hopelessly lost in the quaint little town.
It wasn’t too long before Poppi returned to Vandham and Bede, her Moogle contact hovering right behind her. “Mission accomplished!” the artificial blade told them proudly. “Headquarters now know exactly where we are!”
“That’s right, kupo!” the Moogle told them. “This area is the Deep Blue Seaside, and it’s actually very close to Limsa Lominscuttle Town, out there!” She pointed her little arm toward the big city out on the water. “I hear that the other team had a lovely holiday over there yesterday, kupo!”
Poppi’s brow furrowed. “Unfortunately, we very far from Alcamoth. Opposite side of continent, in fact, so we need keep going.” She looked around the train platform, scanning for Tora, only to turn up nothing. “...Where Masterpon?”
“You mean Tora?” Vandham searched as well, and when he didn’t find Tora, stood up to his impressive full height for a better look, but still found no sign. “Huh, I swear ‘e was ‘ere a second ago…”
Poppi sighed, shaking her head. “Masterpon must have wandered off thanks to goldfish-size attention span. Poppi better go look.” She shot Bede an apologetic glance. “Poppi not suppose Bede help search for him?”
Upon his group’s arrival, it didn’t take Raz long to intuit one very important detail concerning his surroundings, derived from the walls and ceilings of stone beneath the beds of budding moss and vermillion clovers: that the subway he, Jesse, and Therion had taken left them somewhere underground. While the implications of that discovery might be lost on the thief as he summoned a Moogle, Jesse and Raz could probably guess at the results that the white-furred creature soon provided: when Mission Control sent out its signal to ping the little device that the Moogle carried, it never received anything in return. Evidently the team had no reception in the Queen’s Station, and probably wouldn’t as long as they remained underground.
With that in mind, the messenger’s recommendation sounded like a good plan, but one easier said than done. While no maps could be found on the premises of the Queen’s Station, a quick look around did turn up a crossroads sign, albeit one with only three pointers. It featured the same strange, white script that adorned the hanging plaques throughout the station, and though it seemed totally foreign at first glance, but with a little focus it seemed strangely legible, as if the readers were able to understand what it meant. One direction indicated the aptly-named Fog Canyon, which rolled onward and upward beyond the station’s balcony, another suggested a realm called the Fungal Wastes down a tunnel to the right of the balcony, and the last pointed toward the Salt Pits on the left.
Fog Canyon appeared to be a highly vertical cavern. While its bottom level resembled a rolling countryside of verdant hills and acid pools, great columns of overgrown rock rose from those mounds, and the higher up one went the more the open space closed in, quickly becoming
more narrow shafts that led upward in different directions. Stone bridges carpeted in greenery and curtained by loads of dangling vines underneath both branched between the pillars and criss-crossed the shafts, providing plenty of spots to jump and climb, but no actual paths could be seen. It was anyone’s guess which way might really lead to the surface, if any truly did. The carved totems and posts seemed to rise from the foliage around the canyon without rhyme or reason, and throughout the whole place the lazy jellyfish floated among the bubbles.
Conversely, the caverns that lay at the other end of the right-side tunnel were a completely different story. True to their name, the
Fungal Wastes were wide-open and rather barren caves, brownish-yellow in appearance, where almost every surface seemed to be covered in different kinds of mushrooms. Very few traces of the actual walls, floor, or even ceiling could be seen. Some sections seemed to be higher than others, giving rough routes up or down throughout the environment, which bouncy purple mushrooms might aid. The light given off by the multitudes of bright yellow spores floating in the air allowed any visitors to see quite a ways, which meant they could also make out the Wastes’ denizens.
Floating spore sacks and sentient shrooms could be found alongside
carnivorous toadstools, the occasional
bulky behemoth, and
plodding fungal powerhouses with their young. Unlike the crisp, cool Fog Canyon, which felt like a misty spring day, the air in here seemed to be warm, humid, and itchy.
Meanwhile, the left-side tunnel opened up to smaller, branching caves of angular red rock dusted in a coating of natural rock salt. The
Salt Pits lacked the biodiversity of the other two regions, but made up for it in interesting rock formations, like fields of tiny,
pointy crystals. Plentiful evidence of past mining ventures could be found here, where some
scaled workers and
single-minded bugs still labored to extract salts and other ores from the rock.
In short, a long journey awaited the trio no matter which way they decided to go, and none provided any indication where -or how far away- the surface might be.
As the train’s passengers dispersed throughout the
encampment that partially surrounded the derelict station, the Scout kept an eye out, his expression furtive and distrusting. It wasn’t just the capable sorts around him seemed to be on edge, their weapons and munitions close at hand despite the bravado with which some of them talked and joked, or that the medical tent seemed to be very busy, or that the
sniper standing guard atop that old water tower seemed to be very heavily armed. It was because this place had lots of big trees, and wherever you could find lots of big trees awash in the mystique of fantasy and nature, an unlucky dwarf could expect to find
them.
Elves.The trio’s resident superhero got up on a large root to scope out the surrounding area, taking note of its peril. Though the Spirit Tree loomed over all like a silent and watchful guardian, maintaining balance between the area’s elements, malfeasance persevered in its realm. Red asked the others thoughts, to which the Scout replied with a grumpy
harrumph. “Let’s get this over with,” he told the others. “This place’s liable to be crawlin’ with bloody leaf lovers, and if I never see another prissy long-ears again, it’ll be too soon!”
Sectonia apparently agreed, and her plan to personally fly up to a suitable height to call in the Moogle sounded fine. The Scout didn’t object to her leaving him and Red alone, either. There were some bugs around, including a goddamn glyphid or two, but above ground those bugs posed even less of a threat than usual. Other fighters around the encampment treated them with a similarly casual attitude, not evening bothering to waste any ammunition on the glyphids that wandered toward the staging ground for the most part. Still, Sectonia saw fit to leave her allies with some reinforcements, which naturally took the form…of more bugs. The Scout rolled his eyes. “Reckon we’ll be sittin’ pretty for a minute then,” he muttered, plopping down on an overturned bucket to wait.
Up above, the insect queen summoned her Moogle as planned. The little guy waited a few moments, then gave a nod. “Okay, that should be long enough! I’ll be back in just a moment to tell you where you are, kupo!” He then vanished in a poof of smoke.
True to his word, the Moogle appeared another thirty seconds or so later. “Hello again, kupo! It looks like we’re in luck! According to the map, this spot is along the southern edge of the Land of Adventure, which means it’s decently close to base! But the boss wants you to try the other spots on this train line just in case there’s one that’s even closer, kupo. Good luck!”
While this was happening, however, a stroke of profound bad luck struck the group. Red and the Scout were just waiting patiently down below, idly watching a squad of kitted-out fighters head out through the main gate, when suddenly a hideous screech arose from the overgrown street beyond. A
Howler popped up from behind cover, screaming with its gnarled maw, and at its signal a platoon of
Shrikes popped up from behind roots and long-dead cars. Braying like elk, the Root monsters unleashed a torrent of crimson bolts at the outgoing squad. Taken by surprise, they scrambled to find cover for their gunners to return fire and their warriors to close the distance, a couple of them falling in the process. The Howler’s head suddenly exploded courtesy of the sniper on the water tower, who yelled, “We’re under attack!”
A mage ran over to ring the alarm bell in the center of the camp while everyone else jumped into action. One
lady knight ran straight for the crossfire, putting up a shield for a straggler to hide behind. “Behind me! I’ll get you healed up!”
“No, behind me!” the group’s
main tank, a big man with an equally big shield, yelled as he ran in from the armory. “It’s up to me to keep everyone safe!”
“Form a defensive line!” a
suit-wearing jackal commanded. Sander then glared up at the sniper. “How did they surprise us!?”
The huntress threw her hands up. “They must’ve used the trenches–agh!”
A
Shaman triggered an explosion of root rot at her position, throwing the sniper from the water tower. At the same time, one of the encampment’s side walls burst apart, and a
Hulk pushed through, a hefty bruiser of knotted wood reinforced with bolted-on metal. A
Lawbringer knight, clad head to toe in steel armor and wielding a weighty halberd, charged the brute and landed a handful of hacks and stabs, only to mis-aim a block and get chopped almost to the spine by the Hulk’s fearsome cleaver. “Do not engage it in melee combat!” Sander ordered the militia. “And we need a medic over here!”
The Scout was already on his feet. “On your feet red, we’re in for it now!” He hurled an Inhibitor-Field Generator at the Hulk to bog it down, then opened fire with his assault rifle both at the behemoth and the handful of shotgun-wielding
Rippers that came in behind it. "Gotta hold out 'til that overgrown Mactera's back, then we can make a break for it!" Sectonia’s electric antlions joined in, and the fight was on.
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