Nyakuza Metro
Level 11 Tora (75/110) Level 11 Poppi (75/110)
Koopa Troop and Midna’s
@DracoLunaris, Geralt’s
@Multi_Media_Man, Ace Cadet, Octopath Travelers, and Pit’s
@Yankee, Blazermate, Sectonia, and Susie’s
@Archmage MC, Sakura, Jesse, and Karin’s
@Zoey Boey, Raz and Red’s
@TruthHurts22, Omori’s
@Majoras End, Rubick’s
@Scarifar, Bede’s
@Crimson Flame, Roxas’
@DoubleWord Count: 2097
Though Poppi and especially Tora feared for their newfound friend Band as he seemed to take a stand alone against the mangy masses, his seismic Giant Step quickly proved that the pair had nothing to worry about, and with a nod of respect the nopon turned to race after Raz, Roxas, Geralt, Sakura, and Karin on their way to the Black Line station. He bounded along with surprising speed, his feet given wings by instinctive fear, and Poppi thundered alongside him in her well-armored Alpha form. Normally Tora would opt to take point, his indomitable Drill Shield or stalwart Mech Arms ready to defend his softer, squishier allies against whatever might lie ahead, but this time he brought up the rear; the enemy was behind them, and in Tora’s case, right behind. As he ran for his life he soon realized that his pursuers were literally on his heels, spilling over themselves, crashing against surfaces, and flowing around obstacles like a landslide of black fur and white masks. For all his tankiness, Tora could no more turn and face them than he could a natural disaster, and whenever he lagged behind even a little a sharp blow to the shield on his back reminded him that the cat’s claws and fangs were just one step away.
For a while he and Poppi managed to keep up a good pace, hurtling up and down stairs and escalators, through tunnels and over bridges, but the farther they went the more the other Seekers left them behind. With Levitation, flow motion, and good old-fashioned long strides, they managed to steadily put distance between themselves and the duo at the back of the pack. Either that, or they took a side path after being cut off by another wave of felines. After a couple minutes Poppi suddenly realized that she must have missed a turn. In the Metro, glowing arrows and lines on the ground and the walls lit the way to the stations, but black wasn’t exactly the most eye-catching of colors. Worse still, she noticed her Masterpon breathing heavily. Without the speed or stamina for long-distance running, it couldn’t be long before Tora gave up the ghost. “Poppi!” he gasped. “Tora legs not hold out much longer!” His face turned from discomfort to dismay as more cats rounded the bend ahead of them, putting the pair on course to be caught in a disastrous pincer maneuver. “Oh no! What now, meh!?”
Poppi’s brow furrowed, and she scanned her surroundings. “Seeking alternative route.” The two of them seemed to be in some sort of indoor shopping avenue, with a hedge row interspersed with streetlights running down the middle, and only two stories beneath the low ceiling. Going up wasn’t an option, and smashing through any of these classy glass-and-curtain storefronts would be a huge gamble; if it didn’t have a back door, they’d be trapped. Her frantic search turned up no vents, nor grates among the shiny stone tiles that might provide access to an underground passage. Could they make it by flying over the crowd, with so little clearance…?
“Poppi!?” Tora quavered, unmasked fear in his voice. Only seconds remained before impact.
The artificial blade veered his way as she ran and grabbed him by one wing to pull him into her grasp. Constructing her claymore, she slid to a stop and plunged the huge wave into the ground, sending out a wave of elemental ether that matched her current Core: ice. As it coated the tiles, rendering them slick and slippery, Poppi boosted into the air. Unable to control their momentum, the two opposing mobs of yowling metro cats slid into one another at full force and went flying like bowling pins. As they groaned below him, unable to rise thanks to the ice and squabbling with one another, Tora found a look of uncertainty on his companion’s face. “Poppi not sure,” she told him, peering from one end of the cat-carpeted street to the other. “No routes available!”
For a split second Tora wavered, but as in all times of need he asked himself one important question: what would Rex-Rex do? Then he smiled, and took the Drill Shield in hand. “Then we make one!” he declared as he extended the drill bit and revved it up. Down below, the cats had started to pile up, forming a living tower to reach the two. Tora pointed his drill at the brick wall. “Now, Poppi!”
Poppi obliged, boosting forward to drive her Masterpon’s drill into the wall. The ether-infused weapon tore through the masonry and into the second floor of a cat-themed apparel shop. Yelling his most ferocious battle cry, Tora charged past a couple terrified kitties and into the far wall, which Poppi helped push him through from behind. Together they carved a path of destruction through a couple buildings, until finally they burst into a big, dimly-lit space. They fell onto a wooden platform hanging from the ceiling, and as her Masterpon sprawled Poppi grabbed the Drill Shield. She turned to face the hole they made and poured ether through the weapon to spray it with a freezing flurry. “Noponic Storm!” she called, and in just a couple seconds the way was blocked with an impervious mass of ice. With the flow of light, air, and cats thoroughly cut off, the tension began to fade, and Poppi heaved a simulated sigh. “Kitties not get through that.”
As she passed the shield back to Tora, the artificial blade realized just where the two had ended up. They stood in a big
subway tunnel with a few sets of tracks, one of many that ran through all parts of the Metro as they made their confusing and circuitous connections. Her Masterpon watched the trains rattle by while catching his breath, the puller cats that ran along the track nearest to him so close he could reach a wing out and stroke its orange fur. Unfortunately for him and Poppi, it looked like these trains belonged to the Blue Line. In one direction the tunnel seemed to open up into a part of the
Blue Station. Then something occurred to him, and he got to his feet. “This ticket out of here!” he told Poppi, pointing down at the train running away from the station. “Tora remember blue tracks up high. We surely see Black Station from there!”
“Just watch for signs,” Poppi warned, her eyes on the big neon adverts of various shapes that hung over the tracks with barely an inch of clearance. She and Tora waited for the next train, then jumped on top of it and were whisked away. A frantic few moments of dodging ensued, with both getting clipped and, in Tora’s case, flat-on walloped by one particularly big sign for some kind of milk bar. Soon enough, the signs came to a stop, the two not that much worse for wear, but the moment Tora went to breathe a sigh of relief he noticed something disconcerting. “Meh-meh! Look out!”
Up ahead, the tunnel came to an end, with just a cat flap to admit the train. As Tora panicked, Poppi’s eyes went to a double green track that ran above them, and she had an idea. She grabbed Tora like a beach ball and threw him, then followed with a rocket-powered superjump. They landed on the green line trains and were swiftly borne into
canyon between two buildings, where even the golden light that spilled from the pawprint windows did not reveal any bottom to the pit below. Thoroughly done with dodging signs, Poppi stepped forward to carve through with her claymore, and Tora sat to let out his heavy breath. “Meeeeh. This too much excitement right after lunch.”
“Mind if I drop in?”
Both trains shook, and a tremendous noise rang out, as a
furry dragon slammed down behind him. The impact bounced Tora into the air, his face one of comical shock, but the nopon landed on his feet. He raised his Drill Shield. “What now!?”
The huge creature sat with a mischievous glint in her eyes, her massive scorpion tail curled around her forelegs. “Paw-don me, where are my manners? Allow me to introduce myself. I am Cait Sith, and on behalf of my dear fur-iend the Empress, I am here to collect you.” She narrowed her reptilian eyes. “Won’t you come quietly?”
Poppi, looking back over her shoulder with a face of anger, chose to answer. She hot-swapped to her QT Pi form in a whirlwind of sparks and ribbons, then unleashed a wave of energy from her Variable Saber. It flew down the canyon, annihilating every sign in its path in one fell swoop. She turned and tossed the weapon to Tora, who caught the hilt and extended the blade. “Not going anywhere Tora not want,” her Masterpon added, scowling. “Please to jog on.”
“Aw, how very rude.” Cait Sith tilted her head, smiling. She lifted up a massive paw to pluck at her whiskers, and shadow magic welled around her. “In that case…”
She unleashed a whirling twister of dark power. Tora and Poppi split up to run around it on either side, with the nopon running forward to swipe at Cait Sith. She deftly dodged his slashes, then brought her paw down on him. Tora jumped back, landed in Poppi’s arms, and got promptly thrown at their foe. He planned to swing at the dragon’s face, but her tail whipped around, forcing him to change the Variable Saber to shotgun mode and change his directory with a blast. He landed on the train and went for Cait Sith’s legs with Swooshing Slash, but the dragon elegantly flipped backward to avoid the spin attack and brought her tail down in an overhead stab that roiled with shadow. Tora went to block it, but on impulse Poppi snatched him out of harm’s way, and a second later he found out why. The sting infused the train roof with dark energy, causing it to explode. Poppi leaped backward, and through the nebulous maelstrom Cait Sith sauntered, undeterred. “What’s the matter?” she purred. “You haven’t even hit me yet. Can’t bring yourself to mar my beauty, purr-haps?”
Just then, the trains shot out into open space, high up up in the Metro. They also split, with one train going up toward the cat apartments higher still, while the other wound down through the air toward the Green Station. The split forced Cait Sith to rebalance on one train as the wind whipped at her fur, and in that moment Poppi spotted it: the Black Line station, a few stories up, but currently below them. Thinking quickly, she leaped from the train with Tora in her arms, plummeting down to land in a garbage-filled alley. Cait Sith watched them go, a playful smile on her snout. “How a-mew-sing…”
On the ground, though far above ground level, Tora winced at the smell of the dumpsters. He and Poppi hurried out of the alley, covering their noses. “Good thinking, Poppi!” he told her. When they hit the street, they found the Black Station just down the road. “But won’t fuzzypon come after us?”
“We not hit her, so she not compelled to,” his companion reasoned. “Plus, did Masterpon catch whiff of perfume? She put on serious airs. High-society cat probably not so eager to jump in trash.”
“Ooh, doubly good thinking! Whoever invent Poppi must be genius” Tora sang, pleased as punch with himself as much as his partner. She nodded wearily and took off running toward the station, and as he made to follow, something caught his eye. Sitting only a few feet away, at the Latte Box cafe responsible for all the trash in that alley, was a
weird-looking cat. Tora froze for a moment, expecting an attack, but the cat only stared. The nopon stared back, trying to overwhelm the stranger with his trademark unflinching eye contact, but something about the cat unnerved him. In fact, she chilled him to his core. He wilted under her gaze, looked away, and ran, not daring to look back.
A few moments and another hot-swap later, the two drilled through the side of the Black Line station, and made a beeline for the final train, loaded with teammates and just about to leave.
The Black Line train soon pulled in at a rather ordinary
Yasoinaba Station, a rather small and well-lit terminus compared to the Seekers’ departure point. Thanks to the billboards in the station that mentioned a railway shutdown, it didn’t look as though anyone would be following them here, and aside from some discontent from the would-be passengers who’d been waiting around, no trace of the chaos that overtook the Metro seemed to have made it here. Everyone could breathe a well-earned sigh of relief and disembark at their leisure, for this train wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. After a station worker unhitched the big puller cat from the front and it went over to a giant cat bed to curl up, Tora made sure to waddle over and give it a good scratch. “Much nicer than last big kitty we see,” he told it, his praise barely audible over its purring.
Once both were satisfied, he rejoined the others commiserating at the entrance as they made their way out of the station. At the bottom of the stone steps they found a modern-day college town, full of coffee shops, bicycles, book stores, and students of all ages. Directly ahead lay
Gutsford University itself, the trees all over its spacious campus decked out in fall colors. To the left stood the prestigious
Blackwell Academy, a high school and academic oasis of art and science for over a hundred years and counting, adorned by pines and flapping flags in the cool temperate breeze. To the right stood the infamous
Bullworth Academy for grades one to eight, striking in its bleak neo-gothic style, with a rugged football field situated nearby. Beyond the breezy autumnal town, alive with a restless unease and fear for the future, lay a small part of the continent’s northeastern shore. No land could be seen across the chilly, dark blue water, just a forbidding white horizon.
Once far enough from the station to turn south, however, the Seekers could see something far more impressive than this nervous, insulated educational district. In the distance, far beyond where the autumn trees gave way to scraggly yellow grass atop croppy, rocky wastes, past miles upon miles of harsh terrain where the roads
snaked weirdly across and over the earth, lay a city–an immense, towering metropolis of steel that pierced the clouds, like nothing the heroes had ever seen.
As the previous riders of the Purple Line might expect, the Seekers’ train deposited them underground, but despite what they might think at first glance it wasn’t exactly the same dimly-lit, metallic blue-black station as before. This
stately but neglected terminus lacked any suggestions of mossy overgrowth, and no pinkish bubbles or cool, wet mists wafted through it. Only a few ghostly sprigs, curled and dry, sprouted between the cracked tiles of the floor to swish gently as the newcomers walked by. The ceiling, with its little domes and arches supported by various columns, wasn’t as high as that of Queen’s Station. In the pale light of lumaflies in one of the few lamps the visitors could see one other train platform, though it had no tracks and the tunnel seemed to be blocked off by an intricate but heavy metal gate. That same light shone softly on the bronze of the bell beside it, and on the curled shells mixed into the masonry. Other than the two platforms, the place offered only one other feature: a chain-operated lift, too small to carry everyone at once, that would raise them a few at a time to the entrance. After all, there was no going back, even for the allies who didn't catch the train.
Outside lay a pitiable town. In a misty night, illuminated sparsely by curled lamplights so as to leave much to the imagination in the shadows, its alien shapes and silhouettes might have possessed some manner of lost grace and quiet dignity. In the light of midday, however, its rounded hovels, clustered together and sagging like long-discarded shells, seemed woefully dilapidated. It gave the impression of something abandoned, unwanted, with its glory days so long behind it that only the ancient Elderbug who sat alone on a wrought-iron bench might faintly recall a time in which the place hustled and bustled, packed with eager adventurers and full of life.
Yet even in its current state, Dirtmouth wasn’t quite lifeless. A handful of men and women well-equipped with sturdy tools and practical clothes seemed to call this place home, or at least a base of operation. They went about their business, mending their gear and making preparations, offering neither friendly greetings nor words of welcome. Everyone seemed to be hard at work, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what they might be up to, for Dirtmouth stood at the edge of what could only be described as a staggeringly vast hole in the ground. The Seekers found themselves on the precipice of an awe-inspiring spiral canyon of pale red foliage and exposed bluish gray stone, full of wooden scaffolds, platforms, ramps, stairs, mine carts, rails, and other constructs, and littered with various tools of the trade, all to facilitate a single purpose: the systematic extraction of the wealth of the earth.
That said, not all of the hardy folk ferreted away around Dirtmouth or in camps around the Chasm could be said to be miners. Many seemed to be of a rougher aspect, perhaps looters, or even bandits. Countless mineshafts existed throughout the canyon, their entrances tucked away beneath the crags that spiraled down in an unerringly clockwise manner, and though clearly picked over for many years the area might very well still hold untold treasures. Most important of all, though, it featured at its very center a yawning black pit in the ground, an opening into the bowels of the earth. Given that this region seemed to exist mostly underground, it stood to reason that the Chasm was where Purple Team’s adventure would truly begin.
The escapees’ mad dash from the hordes of would-be bounty hunters brought them through a winding exterior passageway as they hunted down the source of the fresh air and chill breeze. Past the layers of insulation that separated the haven for heat-loving felines from the cold outside, past various mechanical and janitorial offices, and past a dozen or so surprised commuters the three charged, until finally they sprinted across an atrium lobby with the black cat horde on their heels and burst through one of the sets of double doors into a world of stasis. Big Band, Ace Cadet, and Wonder Red found themselves on a snowy street in an ancient, storied city, staring up at a colossal pumpkin big enough to house the Nyakuza Metro in its entirety. That same monolithic Halloween edifice, bearing the Eiffel Tower itself atop the hat whose gear-shaped brim the Seekers could not see past, looked out over a waterbound city of powdered rooftops and icy canals better suited for the wintry season of Christmas.
Behind them, the cats slowed to a stop well shy of the double doors and frosty windows, shivering as their teeth shattered. They shied away from the cold, their numbers already thinned by the journey here and their greed tempered by fatigue and discomfort at the extreme cold. Once a few of them broke ranks and ran back for the warmth of the Metro, the rest quickly followed suit. Only Lin Xiao remained, her face irate. “C-cowards!” she howled after the others, unable to avoid shivering herself. No matter how tough she might be, a sports bra and arctic temperatures clearly didn’t mix. And yet, thanks to Galeem’s influence, she could not back down. Gritting her teeth, the woman stepped out into the cold, her fists clenched. Edinburgh citizens gave her looks and kept their distance as she built up speed into a charge, headed straight for Band. “Raaaaaagh!”
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