Lugubrious

World of Light

Underground Nexus

Sakura’s @Zoey Boey, Peach, Luka, Dexio, Sina, Raz

In a show of both inter-platoon cooperation and uncompromising strength, the ten Scarlet Guardians dispatched the Gunkin Fisher. It died with a final squeaky howl, its hoses flailing in every direction in a desperate bid to spread its all-important oil before its tank finally went dry and shattered to pieces as the rest of the Other turned to ash. Seto carefully collected the big monster’s spirit, then joined everyone else standing in a rough circle. “Good work, all of you,” he told them, the smile in his eyes making up for the battle mask that covered his mouth. “That was a Major Other, but you all handled in with finesse and, more importantly, teamwork.”

After sliding his batons into his belt, Shiden stood with his arms crossed. During the last part of the fight he’d found and broken a pipe in the area to flood part of it with water, then blasted the Gunkin Perry with a massive wave of amped-up chain-lightning. Striking the final blow seemed to have left him pretty chuffed. “You should expect nothing less.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Luka congratulated his own team. “We’re nearing the tail-end of the operation, I think. Let’s make sure to finish strong.”

Seto nodded. “We’ll head down the right-hand path then. Take care out there.”

“Knock ‘em dead!” Peach cheered the others on, waving to them as the teams parted ways.

Luka Platoon Encounter 2/3 Results

Party: Sakura
EXP: +5

The group proceeded down the left-hand path from the decrepit facility where they fought the Gunkin Perry. They encountered a handful of Pools and Pendus on their steady march through the underground, but nothing of particular note. Eventually, they entered a a mostly-empty tunnel that blazed with ethereal orange strings and floating fragments, slowly and even peacefully drifting through the open space. Though definitely psionic constructs, these couldn’t quite be called Visions without any sort of generator or source, other than maybe Psynet or perhaps even the collective consciousness itself. Disjointed snippets of information gathered here were the lingering traces hearts once collided, tantalizingly indistinct like half-forgotten memories. Hanging in the air were scattered thoughts, lost hopes, crushed dreams, hurt feelings, and so much more, all sanded down so fine that they might as well be dust. Were these, visualized by the ambient presence of Psynet, the treads that connected people? And were those shards then the tattered remnants of connections severed? Peach couldn’t stop herself looking closer as she passed them by, but it was difficult to get anything more than the vaguest idea of what sort of people left these traces here. Like footsteps in the sand nearly scrubbed clean by the relentless drudgery of the tide.

The princess wondered the people who left these psionic blips were even still alive. Would some piece of her remain here, adrift in this scarlet web, once she herself was gone? Just an echo, doomed to fade away? She took a deep breath and tried to clear her head. Thoughts like those weren’t going to get her anywhere. Surely, she reasoned, she’d leave a greater impact than this.

Luka Platoon emerged from the tunnel to find the train tracks stop suddenly at the edge of a large, open area. It appeared to be roughly square in shape, with a mostly flat floor and ceiling, both cracked and roughened up by dilapidation of the structure and shifts in the earth. “Some sort of underground parking garage, maybe,” Luka ventured. He noticed water leaking in through some of the larger fissures in the ceiling, and even felt a faint whiff of fresh air. He also noticed at least one other tunnel branching off from this area, lined with the distinctive gray of aged asphalt that indicated a former roadway. Fallen rubble seemed to be cleared off that path, however, and there were tire tracks in the disturbed dust. “Strange,” Luka murmured. “Have people been here recently? Why would anyone spend time in such an Other-infested area…?”

That aside, the mission of the Scarlet Guardians was to eradicate Others, and neither Peach nor Luka saw any Others here. By now Luk Platoon had spent quite a while underground, and given how long it had been since an encounter, the princess considered the possibility that the Psych-OSF had succeeded in making a clean sweep of the abandoned subway network. Unfortunately, that hypothesis turned out to be a little optimistic.

“Hold up, guys. I’m feeling something.” While the team lacked anyone with Clairvoyance or Precognition, Dexio’s Seismokinesis gave him a keener sense for any fluctuations in the earth’s surface, and after kneeling to put his palms on the ground he furrowed his brow in worry. “Something’s headed out way from one of the smaller tunnels. A lot of somethings, it feels like.”

Just a few moments later the others could hear the noise, a distant clamor of clacking and jingling that echoed through the tunnels. Luka gave the signal, and the team moved to surround the opening. Moments after that, the Others appeared. It turned out to be a massive pack of predatory Vase Paws, hungry and on the hunt for human brains. They swarmed out of the tunnel two or three at a time, forcing the Scarlet Guardians to back up or be overwhelmed. “Holy cow!” Dexio exclaimed, crouching down. “There’s no end to them! I’m gonna collapse the tunnel to keep ‘em from getting in!” He allowed his power to ripple through the earth, up the fractured walls and toward the fissured ceiling.

Luka’s eyes widened. “Dexio, wait…!”

With a calamitous shaking and a terrifying rumble ceiling began to come down. Though Dexio succeeded in his goal of blocking off the horde’s entryway, he also accidentally triggered a collapse. “You bonehead!” Sina yelled, running toward Dexio as a slab began to fall. Luka got there first, teleporting to grab the unlucky fellow and warp him back the way the team came in. As the roof caved in, massive chunks of rock and concrete piled up near the subway tunnel, trapping Luka, Raz, and Sina on one side, and Sakura, Sina, and Peach on the other.

Coughing, Peach fanned away the dust billowing in the air. Now a huge gap had opened in the ceiling to reveal the remains of a multi-level parking garage, mostly fallen to pieces, beneath a rainy sky. The muted daylight also revealed a massive rubble barricade blocking the subway tunnel, with no way through. “Raz! Luka! Are you okay?” There was no reply, but after a moment of critical thinking Peach switched to Brain Talk to repeat the question.

“We’re okay,” Luka’s voice replied in her mind. “But there’s no way through, and without a clear visual of the other side to see any obstruction, I can’t risk teleporting through. Can you see a way out on your end?”

Peach looked up, gauging the distance toward the new hole in the roof. ”Yeah.” While looking, however, she also noted the dozen-plus rising up from the dust nearby. ”I see a whole lot of those Others, too! We’re going to have to fight!”

”Hold on, we’ll try to find a way through to you!” Luca replied, his voice frantic. Peach took a deep breath and manifested her Scatterboom. This was going to be rough.

World of Light

Valley of Ruin

Level 11 Tora (150/110) Level 12 Poppi (50/120)
Giovanna, Roxas’ @Double, Pit’s @Yankee, Susie’s @Archmage MC, Zenkichi’s @Multi_Media_Man, Partitio’s @Dark Cloud
Word Count: 1751

With a strategy in mind, the Seekers began the battle with the Spider in earnest. The Nopon and maid-robot, standing together before the giant war machine, might have seemed feeble and insignificant in comparison, but as long as they had one another they were never alone. In very short order their eight-legged opponent set the pace for the fight: pinning Tora and Poppi down on defense. While they could either avoid or outright tank the robot’s gunfire and laser-guided missiles, that ended up being about all they could do. The Spider alternated between long-ranged barrages and attempts to smash Tora beneath one of its legs, but despite the engineer’s best attempts to take turns of his own, his enemy effectively prevented counterattacks through a combination of massive size and proactive withdrawal. Unable to build up ether to use his all-important arts without physically hitting the machine, the pair couldn’t even begin to build up any momentum. Even if Poppi could do some damage by flying off on her own, she knew if she stopped channeling ether into them her Masterpon’s weapons would depower and he’d be a sitting duck with no barriers to protect him.

That put all the offense against the Spider in the hands of the Rust Crew. Though the borrowed salvage truck offered only poor acceleration and handling, Cain deftly wove between and around both the scenery and the Spider’s legs, giving his teammates as much time as they could to pound their enemy’s joints and underbelly with bullets. “Wish Rachel was here right about now!” Big Bo griped as he replaced his empty magazine, noting as he did the dwindling stockpile of ammunition in his hardcase. “A couple rockets to the gut would fix this bad boy right up!”

“We need backup,” Marshall agreed. His well-aimed shots sent sparks flying from the drive system on the Spider’s underside, but it just wasn’t enough, and after a moment Cain’s swerve around the wrecked remains of a gas station broke Marshall’s line of sight. “Steer us toward those two!” Risking a strafing run into the Spider’s line of fire, the Rust Crew drew close enough to Tora and Poppi to call out to them. “Hey! We’ve gotta lure this thing south to alert the others!”

“Roger!” Poppi called back. She pulled Tora up onto her back, where by clinging to her shoulders with his nub-arms he could still use his wings -and the Mech Arms they wielded- to protect them. With this method the duo began to lead the Spider on a dangerous chase back the way their truck originally came. The Rust Crew followed alongside the machine or in pursuit, wearing it down as best they could. When Big Bo’s ammo ran out, he swapped with Cain in the driver’s seat. A couple minutes after passing back by the crashed plane, which the Spider put a foot through with a callous stomp, a sudden blip rang out from a device on Poppi’s person. She reached down and pulled out the walkie-talkie Sakura had given her the day before. Someone was trying to reach her.

---

Perhaps unsurprisingly, not all the Seekers chose to back Giovanna up on her side mission. The secret agent felt as if she understood Susie’s behavior, as brashness often came hand-in-hand with self-motivation, but she didn’t quite get the nature of Partitio’s grievance. Was the team’s goal not to help the poor people of Midgar’s undercities survive in the hopes of reaching a better tomorrow, by eliminating the foes that threatened their lives today? Well, neither case really mattered to Giovanna. She was neither the Seekers’ team leader nor their public relations rep–just someone who got things done. Big groups weren’t her style, anyway.

Still, with neither a hacker to access the Prospector’s data deposit nor the numbers to assault it directly, she needed to come up with a different approach. Zenkichi offered to bait as many machines as he could away, with special emphasis on the Simians using the crane as their personal jungle gym. “Refreshingly professional,” she told him, and the simple plan was afoot. As the rain continued to pound the dilapidated neighborhood, Giovanna made her way to the crane and waited until the gunslinger got the Machines’ attention to climb. It was a long and arduous ascent, made all the more treacherous by the rain-slick rungs on the ladder, but minute by minute she neared the top. Not far from the crane’s base she spied massive pipes of steel beams encased in concrete probably meant at one point to be buried in the ground as sewer pipes, but which now lay stacked like fireplace logs by a half-excavated pit. If she could drop one on the data deposit, she reasoned, it would deal some serious damage and hopefully bring whatever these bots were planning to a grinding halt.

On the way up, however, the distant, echoed sounds of warfare reached her ears. Giovanna turned and, hanging by one hand as she shielded her eyes from the rain, spied chaos toward the north. The muzzle flares and sounds of gunfire, punctuated by the percussion of missiles, drew her attention to a massive mechanical arachnid a ways to the north. While she couldn’t make out its targets, she could make a pretty good guess. “Oh, brother,” she groaned, turning back to the ladder to pick up the pace. Once she reached the top of the crane, she slipped her walkie-talkie from her belt and dialed it in. “Tora? Poppi? Come in, this is Giovanna. What’s going on, over?”

After a moment she heard a reply. “Oh! I forgot we had this. Well, this is perfect! We’re fighting a huge robot spider. Us and the three soldier guys. We’re trying to lead it toward the rest of you. Can you give us a hand? Uh, over.”

Giovanna sighed. “Yeah, uh, we’ll do our best. I found a-!” She jumped as a smattering of bullets whizzed by her, crouching down behind the crane’s operation cabin. Way down below, the glow of a dozen pairs of red eyes confirmed that the machines had somehow sussed her out. Did they intercept my signal? she wondered, gritting her teeth. More worryingly, she could see that the Prospector had returned. It floated in front of the data deposit trying to access it. Giovanna’s eyes widened. Trying to cut and run? Forced to ignore the bullets sent up by the gunners on the ground, she jumped in the cabin and began working the controls. It took some trial and error, but she managed to send the hooks down to seize one of the heavy pipes.

Once again, however, noise from the north grabbed her attention. Tora, Poppi, and the Spider were getting close; she could clearly see them even with the rain. “Needing help soon!” Poppi’s voice came over the radio. “The robot stepped on the guy’s truck and sent it flying way farther than it should have! Tora and I have taken…ugh! …A lot of damage…!”

Giovanna glanced down at the Spider, then back at the data deposit. “Man,” she groaned. “It’s always something.” Turning on the walkie talkie, she yelled, “Bring it to the crane!” She then slammed down on the controls and raced out of the cabin. As the crane’s arm began to move down its corrugated metal catwalk through the rain and bullets. She leaped from its end to grab the metal cable with both hands, sliding down it as the elephantine contraption picked up speed. “This has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” she told Rei, to which the wolf spirit nodded, until finally the revolution of the crane’s swinging payload rammed the sewer pipe directly into the Spider’s left side like a runaway freight train. Giovanna jumped at the last second, and as she sailed through the deluge she watched the robot topple over, two of its left-side legs and half its abdomen totaled by the terrific impact.

Time seemed to slow down as energy built inside her. Her skin glowed green, her hair orange, and her eyes pure white. “Fear on the wind…!” she murmured as air built around her. “Tempestade!” Like cannonball she fired downward at a diagonal angle, screaming through the air to plow into the Spider’s drive system with a majestic divekick. It left a big dent, surrounded in crackling arcs of electricity, but it wasn’t enough. Giovanna bounced off, unharmed by any fall damage, and slid through the grass a short way only to hear the honk of a horn. She turned to see the Rust Crew’s truck barreling toward the Spider’s belly, with Poppi amping up its only redeeming characteristic (max speed) even further by pushing from the back with her thrusters. As its horn blared Giovanna cleared the way, and once Bo threw himself from the driver’s cab a final rocket-powered punch slammed the truck head-first onto the giant robot’s weak spot. KABOOOOOOOM! The ensuing explosion sent everyone within a thousand feet flying away, stunned by the shockwave, and when they finally looked back the Spider was no more.

“Woohoooooo!” Tora yelled, bouncing up and down. His bullet wounds were quickly fading away thanks to his out-of-combat healing, but he threw himself into Poppi’s arms for a massive hug anyway. “That so incredibly amazing! Tora and friends can do anything!”

With a weary laugh Giovanna crossed her arms. “I didn’t think that would work, honestly,” she admitted. “We just got lucky.” She narrowed her eyes at what remained of the Spider. “Also, using the truck for that? Not the best move. Now there’s just one for all eleven of us.”

“Way to rain on our parade,” Marshall joked. “We can just say the Spider destroyed it, which is pretty much true when you think about it.” After a series of high-fives and fistbumps all around. “I hate to be the one to say it, but as crazy as that was, I don’t think we’re any closer to stopping the Machine invasion.”

Cain shrugged. “One less giant war machine sounds like a win to me, monsieur.”

“Meh-meh-meh!” Tora piped up. “While up on building, Tora see long-neck steelypon near flooded spot with head like big radar dish! It might be way to tap into Machine communications, meh?”

“Worth a shot,” Giovanna told him, remembering the Prospector that by now had surely gotten away with all the data. “I have a feeling we don’t have a lot of time.

---

When Susie descended on the partially-collapsed flooded district of the ruined cityscape in single-minded pursuit of the Shellwalkers that trundled along the water’s edge, her approach did not go unnoticed. A nearby troop of Clamberjaws spotted her and set up a racket of raucous hollering like the baboons their designs aped. The disturbance alerted the Shellwalkers, which turned to see Susie flying in for a melee attack. As she homed in on one, the only one of the three with antennae, the machine she targeted turned to face her with its bell-shaped left claw upheld, and with a surge of electricity a hardlight wall sprang to life. When the Business Suit slammed into the energy shield it held, at least for a moment, during which the claw-shaped Lighting Gun on the Shellwalker’s right clew blasted Susie again and again. After a few seconds though, the shield shattered, and as it bulled through the machine got bowled over. The clamps holding its crate on its back shattered, and it fell to the ground.

A moment later though, the Shellwalker rose up. First it reached out to pick up its crate with its Lightning Gun claw, which it placed and held on its back. Then, as Susie came back around for another charge, its antennae lit up and the Shellwalker emitted a loud, angry metallic warble. Every machine lifeform in the vicinity received the command, and the battle began. Susie’s return charge came to a sudden stop against the hardlight shields of both other Shellwalkers, which grouped together to defend the first, and this time she lost momentum before the shields lost power. The two fanned out, swinging both claws in massive electrified hooks, slams, and explosions.

With a fearsome roar a Snapmaw burst from the nearby water and lunged toward Susie, clamping its jaw down on the Business Suit’s left arm. Chillwater began to pour from the sac on its throat, freezing the metal and making it more brittle, increasing damage dealt by up to 300%, before the chainsaw teeth in its maw began to rip and tear. Susie’s rockets took to the sky and even felled a couple Clamberjaws, but the machines returned fire with a vengeance. Another Snapmaw hauled itself from the water behind Susie a ways off and began to rain down arced shots of Chillwater from afar, and if forced out of melee range the Shellwalkers would add to the mix with electric shots, potentially paralyzing if too many of them hit. Worse still, the bloat of Widemaws then joined the fray. One spewed out a barrage of sludge coated in Purgewater, capable of increasing susceptibility to elemental attacks while disabling the sufferer’s own. Another sucked up a bunch of rocks with its vacuum to hurl a much larger, more damaging sludge bomb that bounced, leaving Purgewater puddles, before exploding on contact with its target. The last charged into melee range, its quad-jaw unhinged to clamp down and drill into whatever it could. Badly underestimated and very angry, these deranged machines posed a real threat individually; together, their durability, damage, and elemental onslaught spelled disaster.

---

Tracking down the Tallneck Tora spotted took a bit of time, but those fresh out of the fight with the Spider were happy for the chance to take a breather. Once they reached the towering, giraffe-shaped machine in a tree-ringed clearing, Tora found that it ignored them, so Poppi flew him up to the top to plug into its neural network. The others waited nearby, but only for a couple minutes. Tora quickly returned to them in a state of panic. “We need go now!” he warned, flapping his wings in terror. “Now, now, now! Tora knows where they are, and all friends need go stop them, now!”

“We might have a problem,” Giovanna said, standing on the edge of a cliff. When Tora, Poppi, and the Rust Crew soldiers joined her, they peered down at the flooded district to see the entire local machine animal population united against Susie and Pit. It looked like chaos down there–a maelstrom of gnashing teeth, grinding gears, and elemental attacks. “I didn’t think she’d actually DO it.”

Poppi grimaced. “We don’t have time for this.” She spotted the other team’s transport on the other side of the collapsed valley. “We need to grab that truck, extract them, and intercept the Machine army before they reach Midgar!”

Abandoned Subway - Chinery Junction

Level 4 Goldlewis (31/40)
Karin’s @Zoey Boey, Midna’s @DracoLunaris, Blazermate’s @Archmage MC, Geralt @Multi_Media_Man, Benedict’s @Dark Cloud
Word Count: 1007

Dangerous as the Slippy Chinery was, engulfed in an inferno and wildly attacking anything it sensed with animalistic savagery, going berserk only prolonged the inevitable. Liking her odds more against fire than lightning, and more than able to stand the heat, Midna fought back against the Other’s wildfire with flame-quenching sand, thrown objects, and her Vibrava’s dragonfire. While the Slippy’s crazed rampage wasn’t exactly predictable, it was exploitable, and few were better at ruthlessly punishing a foe’s sloppiness than Karin. Ringlets streaming behind her, the street fighter sped around and behind the monstrous thing to land a critical hit on its unprotected hindquarters, leaving a big dent in its metal body and her hand sticky with sand-speckled oil.

Her poise-shattering crush counter did its job, though, and thanks to her efforts a patched-up Geralt could bury his blade into the Slippy Chinery’s tree-like head with a creaking groan. In a stroke of deadly pragmatic genius, the Witcher then blasted his sword with unrelenting force, and in a shower of sparks reduced the thing’s head to kindling. The rest of it quickly followed, burning away to cinders. Its body, only partially organic and bitten by the Suffering Shield in its metal back anyway, failed to resurrect as an undead. Geralt might still be hurting, but he and the others were victorious. One down, one to go.

When Blazermate left him to go pile onto the other Other for easy pickings, Goldlewis couldn’t help but click his tongue in disappointment. The Winery Chinery stood firm in its pool of electrified water, shamelessly staring the Secretary of Absolute Defense down as it hurled bolt after bolt of lightning. This was quite the conundrum he found himself in. While no shrinking violet, he didn’t fancy his odds if he took a dive in that water, not after feeling an Other-induced electrocution firsthand yesterday afternoon. But even if he could reach his foe with an airdash he couldn’t go anywhere from there, and that assumed the Other wouldn’t just backpedal if it saw him flying his way regardless. On the other hand, he couldn’t stand still long enough to bring his minigun or heligrenades to bear, either. So what was a man to do?

Goldlewis thought for a few seconds, then turned and ran away. He kept going, ambivalent toward the stray bolts that hit his back, until he disappeared inside the long-dormant subway train poking out of a dark tunnel.

The Winery Chinery stared for a moment. Then, forced to continue the fight until its enemy lay dead by Galeem’s despotic influence, it began to move. Walking carefully on its fingertips, it splashed right out of its sparking pool and climbed onto the tracks. Its prey could run, but it couldn’t hide, and it certainly wouldn’t find any safety inside this rusty metal husk. Before it could lay hands on the train to start tearing into it, however, it heard a deep, bassy uproar echoing from the tunnel behind the vehicle.

“Down the…system!”

With an ear-wrenching metal crash the entire train plowed forward, its wheels screeching along the tracks. The Winery Chinery, weakened from the beatdown it had already received, got splattered like a bug on a windshield. It got carried for a good hundred feet before the runaway train’s ride came to a sudden end against the caboose of a fellow train, reducing the Winery Chinery caught between them into red-black paste.

Two down, none to go. Goldlewis stepped from the darkness of the tunnel into the incandescent flicker of a fickle overhead light, dusting his hands. “Reckon that’s done with,” he announced matter-of-factly. Noticing that between them the other four managed to kill the Slippy Chinery as well, he smoothed his pompadour over coolly before jabbing a thumb backward down the tunnel. “Found a way forward while I was at it. Let’s roll.”

Team Goldlewis Encounter 2/3 Results

Party: Goldlewis, Blazermate, Geralt, Midna, Karin
Encounter Reward: +10 EXP

The tunnel was dark, illuminated only faintly by a dim bluish light. While the Seekers found no enemies, this place presented an issue by itself through its mazelike structure. Its tunnels branched again and again, curving upward and downward, leading to many dead ends. Other than trial and error, only distant noises and faint tremors served to point them on the right path.

At one point, the team became aware of a red glow emanating down one particularly wide branching tunnel. Investigating it turned up a lone lift on rails at least twice as wide as the usual subway. The glow came from on top. Once Goldlewis jumped up, he spotted the source: an old video camera mounted on a tripod. “Hmm,” he murmured, stroking his whiskers. “Hey, y’all. What d’you make o’ this? It ain’t attacked us, and it might be useful, but this whole red aura is mighty threatenin’.” On further inspection, the camera quickly proved anything but normal.

It suddenly lifted into the air, floating like a marionette. It hovered off towards the tunnel’s dead end, only for the dark wall to split in half and open up, revealing an unfathomably long -and perhaps infinite- tunnel aglow with moody blue light. Music filled the air, and without further ado the L.I.F.T. launched forward, carrying Goldlewis and everyone else with it as it zoomed off down the tunnel. Behind them, the tunnel they came from faded away into an ominous black void. “Gosh…darnit!” the veteran hollered above the rushing air and retrowave beats, his tie and coat flapping in the wind. “Some kinda magic!” He pointed his finger at the camera floating ahead, which the UMA mirrored with a spindly arm extended from the coffin. “We gotta shoot that thing down!”

Of course, the only one in the group with a gun was himself, and his Skyfish had a strict timetable thanks to Goldlewis’ Security Level. The others wouldn’t want for something to do, however, as the tunnel soon opened up to either side. Additional L.I.F.T.s appeared running parallel to the Seekers’, which was good because very sturdy hanging signs soon started showing up in all three sections of the tunnel. Some were at head height, some at knee height, and some were big enough to block almost the entire tunnel. More Session Pounds showed up as well, manifesting from nowhere as if simply written into being by this altered reality, their plan the same as ever: to chase the heroes down and explode. At times one or two of the L.I.F.T.s dropped back into the void, making agile jumps between the swift platforms not just advisable but mandatory. This dramatic episode would only end once the Actionmaxx Camera, flying out a couple hundred feet in front of the L.I.F.T.s but occasionally drifting backward, took enough damage.

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

Imogen Reed

The stranded teens’ terrifying brush with a gigantic mutant frog might be over, but despite the restoration of the deserted island’s natural ambiance in the wake of amphibian onslaught, roaring wind, and freezing cold, Imogen hardly felt at peace. She doubted she’d ever be fully at peace again, in fact. Where at first she’d kept herself more or less together with repeated self-assurances that all this could only be the product of a comatose fever-dream, that theory didn’t explain everything nearly as well as she would have liked. Still, she clung to that idea. It was all that separated her from disaster as the walls of her worldview, built brick by brick over the course of many years, came tumbling down by this deathblow to her definition of normalcy. The monster being done with wasn’t enough. Imogen needed all of this to be over, and as soon as possible.

Daniel’s question stirred her from her miserable reverie. She knew the answer, of course, but she hesitated to reply. If nothing was amiss with the ocean after all, then the girl plunged into its shallows would’ve already arisen from the surf, shell-shocked and soaked but otherwise alright. But she hadn’t. Sofia was gone. That realization weighed heavily enough on Imogen’s own mind, despite how little the girl meant to her personally. Who knew how it might affect the others here? That guy with dirty-blond hair looked like a week-old balloon, pitiful and deflated. The news that someone had disappeared might be all he needed to pop. “...I don’t know,” Imogen muttered. Wherever Sofia had fallen, she wasn’t here anymore.

Speaking of Franciszek, though, where was he going? The fallout from the froggy fiasco had leveled much of the island’s foliage, which made his delirious crawl toward what looked like a spring more public than he might have liked. Imogen watched in horror as he immersed himself in the freshwater pool, seemingly trying to drown himself. “H-hey! Stop!” She mustered just enough manic energy in her weary muscles to run over toward the spring in a futile attempt to drag him out of the water, but by the time Imogen arrived he hadn’t just submerged himself–he was gone. “...What!?”

Of course, Verity did the only sensible thing and followed suit, vanishing as suddenly as Sofia had. “Aaagh!” Imogen yelped. This spring clearly wasn’t natural, why were people so willing to hurl themselves into the unknown?

Then again…this purgatorial place had betrayed no signs of either entrance or exit until now. Imogen emphatically did not want to stay here. Any minute another malformed monstrosity might drag itself up from the depths. Verity probably took the plunge because the same thought occurred to her: no matter where this spring might take her, it had to be better than here. At worst, it might lead to a demise more merciful than slow, agonizing dehydration on a desert island, or digestion inside some primeval beast.

As if to lay her concerns to rest, Victor suddenly appeared. He informed them about the endpoint of the island’s spring-based transportation system, that being a random bathroom in the school the teens left behind. The news let the lingering fear that clouded her mind leave her in a rattled sigh of relief. He must’ve gotten dunked during all the chaos, then jumped into the ocean again to return here. “Weird,” Imogen almost laughed. “Really weird. But I’ll take it.”

Daniel couldn’t definitively answer Victor’s question, but Imogen backed up his hypothesis. “Yeah, in there, I think. Same as you,” she told him, letting the others assume that Sofia escaped through the spring as well. Still a little loopy from the series of incredible events, she almost burst out laughing when Daniel basically said I killed a frog…with my mind. I killed a freakin’ frog with my mind!. God bless quippy dialog and its diffusion into pop culture. “I guess we should all get goin’,” she added. “Before any more monsters show up.”

Imogen went over and prepared to make her own jump, but stopped at the edge of the spring. Something was nagging at her. She turned around to see Maive, still unconscious and draped over the sand where Verity let her fall. Imogen furrowed her brow, but didn’t ultimately need to think twice about what to do next. A moment later she stooped over Maive, then worked to pull her up and support her with her shoulder. Thank goodness the other girl was small. “I’m gonna pay ya back,” Imogen grunted as she started to move, half-carrying and half-dragging her new acquaintance. “For forgivin’ me.”

Decrying any attempt by the others to relieve her responsibility, Imogen approached the spring and carefully inserted Maive feet-first. Doing that took some serious effort, but at least Maive was on the smaller and lighter side. After catching her breath Imogen jumped in herself.

In a blink, her surroundings changed. There was no fanfare, no magical interdimensional interlude, just a flash and then she and Maive were sitting in a girls’ restroom. To her displeasure Imogen quickly realized that, unlike her first strange journey, she was soaking wet and shivering from the air-conditioned chill. But she was back in the ordinary world, and that was a trade-off she was more than happy to take. Imogen nudged the body of the girl she’d brought with her. “Oi, you okay? Experience existential dread if you can hear me.” Hopefully the cold water had jolted Maive into wakefulness as well.

As Imogen prepared to leave, though, she became aware of another problem. It was late, it was cold, and she’d forgotten something important. Her beloved dark green overcoat still hung from a spar of driftwood on that phantasmagorical island. Given a little time she might’ve been able to dismiss this whole ordeal as a bizarre hallucination induced by the cafeteria food, but the loss of her coat smothered that coping mechanism in the crib. Without a coat, it would be a very brisk run back to the dorm indeed. “Ugh…crap.”

World of Light

Abandoned Subway - Gunkin Junction

Raz’s @Truthhurts22, Sakura’s @Zoey Boey, Peach, Luka, Dexio, Sina

Together Luka Platoon charged forth to assist their fellow Scarlet Guardians in battle. As the team spread out on their way in, Sina helped pave the way with ice shots from her arm cannon, aiming not for the monstrous Gunkin Fisher’s shaggy fur or masked head but the red-tinted tank of simmering, sludgy oil on its back. Some of her shots went wide or hit one of its spines instead, but the sudden cold she introduced both siphoned off heat and weakened the glass as her shots piled up.

Peach slowed down once she reached a comfortable mid-range, far enough to react in time to the Other’s vicious strikes and dangerous oil sprays, but not so far that her Scatterboom lost its bite. Mr. Grimm’s revolver made an appearance as well, and the princess put it to use hammering the Gunkin Fisher’s hairy hide while her shotgun cooled down.

Naturally, Dexio rushed past both ladies to take the Other head-on. With an armored defender on hand to take the Fisher’s attention, Arashi could abandon the hit-and-run role of evasion tank and focus on the ‘hit’ part. While Dexio amped up his Seismokinesis to keep the ground constantly shifting beneath the Other’s feet, forcing it to fight to keep its footing almost as much as him, Arashi sped around as a glowing pink blur. Peach could barely even see her chainsaw as it cut streaks through the air; only by the gashes that ripped open in the monster’s torso could she be sure that Arashi passed by.

Arashi needed breaks, however, between usages of Hypervelocity, and that’s where Luka came in. He repositioned constantly with his Teleportation to avoid the Gunkin Fisher’s business end and escape its focus in order to bring his hammer down on its exposed flanks. With an enemy of this size, the savvy and mobile fighter enjoyed plenty of openings. More than anything else, Luka focused the raw power of his weighty weapon on the Other’s metal forelimbs. By denting the bars that constituted them again and again, he could gradually warp its arms to cripple both its offense and mobility.

Most of Luka Platoon naturally assumed that the wounded member of Seto Platoon would be fine under his role model’s protection, but like a true hero Sakura wasn’t going to take any chances. Her sudden appearance and the bespectacled boy’s side took him by surprise, though indignation came quickly and naturally to him, as if it were a default state. “The hell are you-!?” he griped as she took hold of him, pulling him away from the fight. “I can still-!” His protests came to a sudden halt as the sensation of restoration suffused him. Mistaking Sakura’s Tag Out for conventional healing, he seized his batons, ready for another round. “Don’t expect me to thank you.”

“Shiden, wait! Just listen to her, will you?” his commanding officer told him. Seto looked back over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed.

Shiden bristled. He couldn’t back down, not when he had something to prove. “Captain, this is nothing. I'm not just gonna watch from the sidelines!”

“I know.” Seto fixed his protégé with an intense look. “But I need you to work smarter, not harder. Take a few moments, reorient yourself, and come at the Other from a fresh perspective. That’ll impress me a lot more than blindly rushing forward.”

A comment like that from anyone else would’ve stoked Shiden’s fury, but he couldn’t bring himself to contradict the man he idolized. “...Right,” he finally agreed. “Don’t count me out, though. I’ll be back before you know it.” Without looking at Sakura, he backed off, maneuvering around the battle in a wide berth as he formulated a winning strategy. His next move would need to make up for this lost time, or he knew his battle rank would leave him bitterly unsatisfied.

Meanwhile, Sakura joined the fray with gusto, landing a strong kick before getting beneath the Gunkin Fisher to sear its belly with fireballs. The opening she made gave Sam a chance to send her spiders forth and jump in the Other to keep it occupied, while Akira laid into it with his mind-bending illusions to debilitate it with different status effects. Still, this monstrosity was nothing if not tenacious. It wasn’t going to just stand there with someone directly beneath it and take its lumps. The Gunkin Fisher jumped straight up and came down in a room-shaking body splash, then seized its head-hoses with its center hands and took aim at all the Scarlet Guardians in its proximity to bathe them -and the whole area- with steaming-hot oil. Dexio got coated, Akira took cover, Sam lost some spiders, and Arashi -moving too fast for her own good- slipped on the oil and went into a headlong tumble. She came to a stop in a pile of rubble, her expression more annoyed than hurt. “Ugh, this is too much work…”

At that point, however, both team leads stormed the scene. Seto, no longer burdened by Shiden, went on the offensive with Lucian’s Atmokinesis brewing up a storm around him. Lightning-quick, the Septentrion’s twin swords slashed, sliced, and stabbed in a deadly flurry, and Luka -borrowing Sina’s Cryokinesis- joined him in an all-out Teleportation flurry. Luka and Seto matched one another blow for blow in a spectacular thundersnowstorm. Their bombastic assault gave the other team members the time they needed to recover, and by the time the Gunking Fisher blew through the cloud cover to push the two back, all ten Scarlet Guardians stood ready to mete out some serious justice.

Seto clanged his blades together in a shower of sparks. “All troops…!”

“...Take it out!” Luka cried, hurling his hammer to begin the final act.

World of Light

Valley of Ruin

Level 11 Tora (157/110) Level 12 Poppi (47/120)
Giovanna, Roxas’ @Double, Pit’s @Yankee, Susie’s @Archmage MC, Zenkichi’s @Multi_Media_Man, Partitio’s @Dark Cloud
Word Count: 1557

About halfway between the salvage site and the factory smokestacks where the Rust Crew planned to get a lay of the land, their truck briefly pulled over to let Tora and Poppi disembark. This particular part of the ruined city looked especially old. Botany had never been an interest of Tora’s, let alone a strong suit, so he couldn’t tell exactly, but the giant concrete husks of buildings here sported massive trees growing in, out of, and around them, some with roots big enough for a Metro Cat’s subway train to ride on comfortably. In fact, green foliage blanketed the whole area, with only stretches of ancient, cracked roadways visible between the swathes of bracken and grass. That probably didn’t happen overnight.

Gazing around at the post-apocalyptic environment, Tora had to remind himself that all this -as well as the World of Light in general- was a mere fabrication. Those enormous wooden spires hadn’t grown here over the course of centuries; they’d been plonked down by Galeem. Still…this overgrown cityscape came from somewhere. Some distant world of melancholy, meaninglessness, and loss that Tora couldn’t even imagine. Standing here reminded him of the feeling he felt when he stood at the graves of Vandham and Rex’s parents, wondering about the lives lived and lost that led to this wistful moment. So Tora couldn’t harden his heart to this scenery. But the knowledge of this world’s falsehood, or perhaps more accurately its shameless appropriation, drove him onward. As well as the rain that stung his eyes whenever he tried to look upward.

Poppi took care of the area’s verticality for him. Once she had her Masterpon in her arms, she ascended the nearest skyscraper in a series of rocket-propelled high jumps, from window to window and branch to branch. It wasn’t long before they reached a high, flat roof among the treetops. Judging by the rain that poured down through the highrise directly next door, its roof had caved in some time ago, so this seemed like as good a spot as any. Despite the rain, it provided an incredible vista of the surrounding area, including the flooded, collapsed district to the south. While Tora shuffled over to sit underneath a giant leaf, Poppi tuned her long-range optics to better examine the mechanical lifeforms working there, puzzled by their behavior. Most of the Machines she’d spotted in the Valley of Ruin so far just ambled around aimlessly, but not these ones. They didn’t emulate the behavior of the animals they resembled, either. Instead they appeared to be working, each with some sort of goal in mind. The Clamberjaws roved the streets and foliage in aggressive gangs for wrecks to disassemble, not too unlike Midgar’s salvagers themselves. Widemaws collected and processed raw minerals from the landscape. Snapjaws imbibed and detoxified the bodies of water they basked in, launching pods full of the extracted chemicals onto the shore. Finally, the crablike Shellwalkers carefully collected the resources that the others gathered, sequestering them in the different compartments of the huge cargo containers on their backs. As Poppi watched, one of the Shellwalkers turned to leave the machines’ work zone, crawling down the river.

“Strange,” she said aloud. “It’s almost like they’re all working together to collect different resources. But why?”

Tora thought about her question for a moment. “Meh-meh-meh,” he murmured. “Well, it sound like Ever Crisis is big-big battle of attrition, going on for long time. In war that big, both sides need way to refill ranks. Tora not remember who, but someone say something about Machine factories. It not occur to Tora before now, but it make sense that there units designed to gather bot materials, meh.” Narrowing his eyes, the Nopon waddled over to join Poppi at the edge of the building. “Maybe…if friends follow crabbypons, they lead straight to factory?”

“That makes sense! Should we go back down and tell the others?” Poppi asked him, spooling up her thrusters for flight mode.

Tora shook his head. “Right now, factories not friends’ concern. If Machine invasion about to happen, we need worry less about units not built, and more about units already built.” He lifted one wing and pointed at a point a little farther to the west, toward a wetland responsible for the tributaries that created waterfalls into the flooded gorge. “Look there.”

A solitary larger machine lifeforms could be glimpsed there, slowly patrolling on a predefined loop. It reminded Poppi of Gormott’s native Garaffas, albeit with a very broad, disc-shaped head sporting multiple antennae. “Tora was just thinking,” her Masterpon continued. “There have to be way Machines communicate over very long distances. Was looking for relay station of some sort, but then Tora see tall-neckypon.” Scratching his chin, he looked up at Poppi. “It seem important. Tora want try access it like with truck. If nothing else, ride-around on mobile vantage point might be fun, meh!” Shaking water off his fur, he gave a cheerful smile.

The duo’s scheming came to an abrupt end when a terrific crashing sound resounded across the landscape from the north. After a brief shared glance Tora and Poppi raced across the rooftop to the opposite side, with the former sliding beneath the huge tree branch while Poppi jumped over. Immediately they saw that chaos had broken out at the defunct factory, evidently mere moments after the Rust Crew arrived. A colossal spider robot, with smooth plates of shiny white armor and an array of beady red eyes, had smashed its way out of one of the factory’s smokestacks in a terrifying show of destructive might. Naturally the Rust Crew opened fire the instant the mechanical monstrosity appeared, sending the sound of gunfire echoing through the rainy cityscape, but with their foe so needlessly large that even Big Bo only came up to its second ankle-plate, the trio were more focused on covering their retreat than actually fighting. Hounded by a hail of bullets from the Spider’s head-mounted underslung machine guns, the Rust Crew made a break for their parked truck.

“Oh, no!” Tora cried, jumping up and down. “Must get down there now, meh! Other friends too far away to help!” Poppi grabbed him, took off, and blazed through the deluge toward the unexpected boss fight. Squinting against the rain, Tora spotted red targeting lasers homing in on the truck, and he managed to trace their paths to a pair weapons systems that looked rather like supersized versions of the missile racks inside Poppi QT’s Mech Arms. If they managed to lock onto the truck, it would be a disaster for the team. “Poppi!” he called, having to yell to be heard over the rushing wind. “Need fight fire with fire! Swap to QT!”

His companion adjusted her flight path. “Understood.” Swinging Tora around to her back, she boosted into a shallow dive to swoop down over the Rust Crew’s truck, where she hastily dropped off her Masterpon before transforming in midair. A maelstrom of fiery sparks and red ribbons heralded her rapid reconfiguration into her more defensive form, the lethal adaptability of her Variable Saber replaced by mighty mechanical mights. The Spider locked on and unleashed a fusillade of missiles into the air, but Poppi held firm. She popped open her own miniature silos, locked on to the enemy’s projectiles in flight, and let loose her own salvo in response. For a moment the watery sky filled with fire, and the next second the chain-reaction of aerial explosions set off a spectacular fireworks display. “Fully intercepted!” Poppi reported as the smoke cleared.

After an awestruck moment, Tora and the Rust Crew rejoiced. “Hell yeah!” Bo cheered, pumping his fist. “You sure know how to pick ‘em, boss.”

“Simply breathtaking, mademoiselle!” Cain added.

After picking himself off the wet grass where he rolled to stop, Tora smugly put his nub-arms akimbo. “Poppi just that good!”

“Hold your applause, fellas. This is far from over.” Once he finished reloading, Marshall took aim at the Spider. The giant machine looked almost surprised to see that its targets survived the bombardment, but it was more than happy to finish the job. “Split up and keep moving! Don’t let it pin you down!”

Tora focused up, standing firm just long enough to get a bead on the Spider before its machine guns got blasting again. Poppi passed him the Mech Arms just in time for him to block a couple dozen rounds. “Tora see massive drive system on belly, meh!” he announced while hunkered down in defense mode, his guard enhanced by Poppi’s channeled ether barrier. “While Tora have it attention, hurry and give upset stomach!”

“The legs!” Marshall called out. “They’re only protected from the front! Shoot ‘em out to stop it moving!”

With the duo on foot to tank for them, the Rust Crew climbed aboard the truck, with Cain swinging into the driver’s seat to put the pedal to the metal. With a roar from its engine and a spray of mud from beneath its tires the vehicle took off, circling around the Spider to give the other two an angle on its joints.

---

The other half of the team’s truck stopped at a fork in the road. On one hand, the flooded ruin that Tora and Poppi surveyed from afar, with its crew of perplexingly animalistic machines laboring away at their harvest. Erosion there led to enough collapses to turn the highway there into a series of tiered cliffs leading down toward the water, meaning that if the truck went that way, there’d be no going back. Down the other road stood a much drier half-finished neighborhood with a much more militaristic -and coordinated- contingent of machines. Differing ideas on which route to take left the six at an impasse. Zenkichi suggested the left-hand path, and Susie the right. Pit didn’t mind the latter choice, apparently thinking that the team would make short work of all those machines. Roxas and Partitio didn’t take a stance either way.

That left it up to Giovanna to arbitrate. Sitting on top of the parked truck, she considered the others’ viewpoints in conjunction with her own, both literally and metaphorically. Zenkichi wasn’t kidding about hippos and crocodiles being dangerous, and the ones Giovanna knew weren’t augmented with heavy-duty plating and multiple onboard weapons systems. The mostly aquatic terrain looked almost as bad for business as the machines themselves. Watching a Widemaw vacuum up entire chunks of masonry and exposed sediment into a jaw like a hydraulic press, outfitted with multiple grinders and drills, did not make her eager to get in melee range. Luckily, they seemed about as disinterested in tangling with her, focused instead on their jobs. In contrast, the machines at the other outpost looked like weapons of war with their various firearms, spoiling for a fight. Their makeshift outpost smacked of reconnaissance. That seemed more relevant to the Seekers’ mission of stopping a machine invasion–a mission that it sounded like Susie needed a reminder of.

“We’re not actually here for scrap. That was just the cover story,” Giovanna said, her arms and legs crossed. Susie’s attempt to decide for the group, and to cement her chosen course of action by ringing up her business suit, sat about as well with Giovanna as her motivations for doing so. She doubted that Susie intended to give whatever she got to Midgar’s poor. “We’re here to find and deal with the Machines that are going to invade Midgar. Lining our pockets with ‘the good stuff’ should be our last priority.” Her tone of voice was blunt, and she pulled no punches. “I mean, hey, if loot’s more important to you than human life, whatever. A dozen giant robots is gotta be easier than one Loup-Garou, right?” Giovanna jumped down from the truck in the direction of the crane, glancing at the others. “I’m not your boss, so I’m not gonna tell you all to follow me, but I’m gonna see what’s going on over here.”

Opting for the stealthy approach to scope out the situation before taking action, Giovanna quietly entered the neighborhood on foot. Though originally drawn here by the crane that might serve as a vantage point, she now found herself more intrigued by the possibility of something else afoot in this location. She dashed between hiding spots at high speed, her eyes out for any Machine sentries. The weather lowered visibility in general, but not enough to disguise the bright, soulless red of the robots’ eyes, and the shine of their optics against the falling rain gave the perceptive a rough outline of their vision cones. She stayed outside to avoid any potential traps or security measures the Machines might have set up inside the buildings, but overall the place didn’t seem very fortified. Her suspicions of it being a temporary base seemed more on-point by the minute. With the cards stacked in her favor, she managed to follow a distinctive humming noise toward the center of the neighborhood. The guards were too plentiful for her to dare intrude much further without abandoning any pretenses of stealth, but she did find the source of the sound. A mechanical obelisk stood in the shell of an unfinished building, the panels on its sides sliding in and out.

As she watched, a strange drone the size of a car hovered up from an underground tunnel. It plugged one of its seven tentacle-like arms into the obelisk and transferred data over the course of about thirty seconds, then flew back down after the deposit to continue scouting. Giovanna began to regret telling Susie off; if this was some sort of data center, it might have information on the Machines or their targets, so hacking it would be worth the Seekers’ while. Without a tech expert on hand, Giovanna would need to destroy it, but that lay beyond her ability as a lone operator too. Maybe I can rope them into this, she thought as she glanced upward. She couldn’t help but picture something massive dropping from the crane’s outstretched arm and smashing the whole station flat. Or maybe…

Abandoned Subway - Chinery Junction

Level 4 Goldlewis (18/40)
Karin’s @Zoey Boey, Midna’s @DracoLunaris, Blazermate’s @Archmage MC, Geralt @Multi_Media_Man, Benedict’s @Dark Cloud
Word Count: 1007

Goldlewis’ face tightened as he put two and two together. Others ate human brains, and if he and his teammates stumbled upon these two at the tail end of a feast, it meant that the heroes had a couple fallen Scarlet Guardians to avenge. Once the Winery Chinery and Slippy Chinery detected their next meals, they wasted no time showing off their dangerous abilities. For the former, water and electricity made a deadly combination Goldlewis knew all too well, while oil and invisibility made the latter into a different but still dangerous problem. Of course, these powers came packaged with these monsters’ natural speed and strength, so it looked like the Seekers would have their hands full with their vengeance. “Work together, y’all!” he shouted as the team spread out from the entrance to avoid getting washed away by the Winery Chinery’s opening gambit. Another damn spitter. “Divide their attention, and don’t let ‘em corner ya!”

Midna worked fast to attend to the elephant in the room, that being the Slippy Chinery. While her sands hadn’t availed her against the extradimensional Chimeras, buffeting the surrounding area in a miniature sandstorm worked wonders against the invisible Other. The grains that stuck to its oily coating, rendered its trick of the light all but useless. Recognizing the danger, it went on the offensive before Midna could coat it more thoroughly. As she got smacked Geralt moved to support her. The Twilight Princess put a dampener on the vicious thing’s assault and struck back through clever use of her bottomless bag of tricks, and the Witcher tag-teamed the Other from the back, dealing appreciable damage. Things really heated up when the two lambasted the Slippy Chinery with flame. Its flammable coating caught fire instantly. As it burned its midsection -little more than a spine and ribcage full of fruit that connected the meshes of its front and rear thirds- became brittle and susceptible to attack. The strikes Karin pulled off as she joined the fray would deal serious damage to the midsection. At the same time, however, the revealed Slippy Chinery went berserk. Oil streamed from the holes in its limbs as it thrashed around, creating burning splashes with every blow, in a mad bid to pulverize its opponents before its damage accumulated past breaking point.

While his teammates tangled with the Slippy Chinery, Goldlewis moved to engage the other Other. “Over here!” he called, grabbing a Thunderbird drone from the UMA to hurl at the monster’s leafy head. The airborne explosive bounced off the Winery Chinery and blew up, putting its aggro squarely on Goldlewis. He barreled toward his target as fast as he could go, but while he cut an intimidating figure as he ran, his enemy had more than enough time to act. As it wrenched its facial value to unleash another spray Goldlewis risked jump and follow-up airdash to close the distance. Karin did her best to get the monster’s attention, but unfortunately the Thunderbird grenade meant that right now, the Winery Chinery only cared about Goldlewis. It adjusted its aim upward and rinsed him mid-airdash. “Aw, hell!” he groaned as he got blasted back into an overhead sign. He smacked into it hard enough to bring it down with him as he fell, and by the time the veteran regained his feet the Other was upon him.

Fortunately, Goldlewis found himself well-protected. Blazermate flew to his aid with her energy shield, and though it didn’t technically block the Chinery’s withering blows, it did punish the monster’s overeager attempt to capitalize severely. With a snarl the Other leaped away from the painful protection, crackled with electricity, and smashed its arms down to unleash a lighting wave. Even if the barrier didn’t soak up all the voltage, Goldlewis had recovered enough to block for himself by now. It gripped its valve again to let loose another torrent of water, but with Blazermate shielding him Goldlewis forged straight ahead, plowing through the flood to shoulder-bash the Chinery right in its stupid nozzle. It reeled back, taken by surprise, only to find the veteran’s coffin descending upon it like a blazing meteorite. “Try this on!” Goldlewis bellowed as he smashed the Winery Chinery against the floor, splaying its front legs out to either side. He dropped his coffin, the UMA thrust his minigun into his hands, and he unceremoniously pressed its barrel against the Other’s head to unleash a stream of bullets.

The point-blank barrage bowled the monster over, but it sprang to its feet to return with a vengeance. It brought its fists down on Goldlewis, right, left, then both, only to find that its attacks bounced off his impervious, ubercharged body. “Eeeeeeyaaaaaaagh!” He swung his massive coffin around like a lasso, pounding the Other again and again in a spectacular Behemoth Typhoon. While Blazermate couldn’t hold it still even with her shield thanks to the size and strength difference, she did act as a wall Goldlewis could bounce the Winery Chinery off of, allowing him to keep up his combo. Finally, a tremendous slam bounced it over Blazermate’s head with an OTG hit. “Crumble!”

After a moment the monster slid to a stop against some turnstyles. It staggered to its feet and grabbed its valve again, this time with both hands, and promptly wrenched the faucet right off. Water poured from its insides, quickly pooling around it. A moment later lightning danced across the Other’s body, electrifying the water around it. “This shit again!” With the ubercharge spent, Goldlewis backed up from the waters edge. Noticing the weakspot mark on his adversary’s hindquarters, he brought out Skyfish to try and finish the Other off from afar. It promptly hurled a bolt of lightning at him, which both counterhit him and wasted his Security Level. “Dadgummit!” he snapped, his lip curled in frustration. While the Winery Chinery was clearly hurting, he couldn’t finish it off without getting fried thanks to this water hazard. Not without doing something clever.

World of Light

Abandoned Subway - Infested Tunnel

Raz’s @Truthhurts22, Sakura’s @Zoey Boey, Peach, Luka, Dexio, Sina

With the whole platoon’s combined firepower, the Rainy Rummies didn’t stand a chance. Some of the Scarlet Guardians took hits from either the Others’ umbrella attacks or their lightning bolts, but as long as they didn’t get waterlogged first a few zaps didn’t pose too much of an issue, allowing everyone to outmaneuver their foes as they more than outmatched their firepower. Once the last Rummy fell, the team spent a brief moment collecting their spirits, as per standard protocol. Seven Rainy Rummies, three Rat Ruts, one Exonerator. As platoon leader, Luka carefully stored them all inside a specially made canister.

Luka Platoon Encounter 1/3 Results

Party: Sakura, Raz
Reward: +5 EXP

“You took out two Rat Ruts on your own!?” Despite lacking Raz’s iconic eyewear, Sina practically goggled at Sakura. “We had to dig deep just to deal with one! I’m so jealous!”

Dexio rubbed the back of his head, a little sheepish. “And here I thought I was the team’s physical powerhouse.”

“No need to make comparisons, you two,” Luka chided gently. Weight Hammer in hand, he moved to the front of the group, walking along the edge of the flooding. “With how competitive it can be in Psych-OSF sometimes, I can’t say this isn't a race. Nor can I say that it’s a race we start on equal footing. But the important thing is that we run it together. We’ll all grow stronger as a team.”

Peach gave an enthusiastic nod. Part of her wished that she, as a leader in her own right, had been the one to say something like that, but she was also grateful to have someone else filling the role for a time. “Absolutely! We’re not trying to show each other up. We’re trying to lift each other up!”

After everyone took a quick breather, the five got underway. This abandoned tunnel network was a vast labyrinth, and even with all the different squads deployed down here today, Luka Platoon had a lot of ground to cover. As they proceeded the floodwater in the subway tunnel soon receded and the earth dried out, but all things considered Peach liked this area a whole lot less. What began as stray stretches of cobweb quickly became gigantic tangles and tapestries of spider silk, big enough to entrap entire subway trains, complete with bulbous cocoons hanging from the ceiling. Peach thanked her lucky stars that a few of the overhead lights in this tunnel somehow seemed to be working, since without them to illuminate the way it would’ve been the easiest thing in the world to bumble into and become hopelessly ensnared in these sticky nets. Of course, that left just one big issue: whatever artisanal weavers were capable of spinning webs this big.

What the team found here weren’t spiders, however. In an open area amongst the webs were three Others that Peach recognized as members of the slime-like Pool family, although they differed visually from the Bile Pools and Scummy Pools she’d seen so far. These ones featured artificial aluminum plant fronds, and five pink bulbs branching off from the curled trees on their heads. While Pool-type Others had been pretty consistently weak in Peach’s experience so far, the sight of these particular specimens made Luka wince. “Doppel Pools!” he called out, teleporting forward. “We have to act fast, or-!”

As he appeared above one Pool and brought his hammer down, the Other split into three that quickly spread out in different directions. Sina took a few shots from afar with her Refrigerant Ring arm cannon, but missed due to the distance. The other Doppel Pools divided into three as well, and as soon as possible all present copies began to shoot blasts of impure water. “Only one of each trio is real!” Luka called out. “It’ll just keep replacing any fakes we destroy, too. If only Tsugumi was here to give us her Clairvoyance.” Without any way to tell the originals from the doppelgangers, he, Peach, Dexio, and Sina could only try to brute force the solution.

Ultimately, there were only three Others though, and once flushed out they weren’t too tough to dispatch. With the interim threat quelled, Luka Platoon got moving again. This time, as her squad swept through the tunnels, Peach gradually became aware of noise from up ahead. “I think I hear…people fighting?” Voices, explosions, the discharge of weapons–it sounded pretty definitive. Luka nodded, and the team picked up the pace until they came upon a larger underground chamber where a boss battle already seemed to be in progress.

The first thing Peach saw was the Other, and though all Others were both bizarre and intimidating to some extent, this one took the cake. It resembled a huge, shaggy-haired, six-legged beast, with cagelike forearms tipped with red rubber gloves and a strange masked head with keyhole-like sockets. Metal garden hoses sprouted from its body as both a mane and tails, and on its back -within a bed of long spines amidst green roses- lay a red tank full of viscous, boiling-hot oil. So tall that Peach’s head would only reach the very bottom of its mask, the Gunkin Fisher looked like a fearsome opponent, but she could see another squad fighting it with everything they had. Septentrion Sixth Class Seto Narukami used twinblades and his electrokinesis to fight with careful precision, safeguarding another electrokinetic, the baton-wielding Shiden Ritter, who looked like he’d taken a bad wound. Peach recognized the pink twintails of Arashi Spring as she blitzed around with Hypervelocity with her chainsaw, Innocent Rabbit Hug. She did not, however, recognize the green-skinned redhead who appeared to be commanding a small swarm of giant spiders to fight on her behalf. Oh, that’s where they are, Peach thought, creeped out as she was impressed. She also spotted a man in a stylish suit of OSF red and black augmented with gauntlets, boots, and a grimacing facemask of blue-green metal beneath his ruby-red glasses. With Atmokinesis he created localized weather phenomena, mostly rain, and as Peach watched he managed to wash off a quantity of movement-impeding oil that the Gunkin Fisher blasted Arashi with just before the Other tried to crush her beneath its massive weight. The last member of Seto Platoon looked to be a young man with a spiky plume of hair, long coat, and studded scarf. Akira Tadokoro worked to manipulate the monster’s mind with illusions created by his Hallucikinesis, but he succeeded in making the Gunkin Fisher a little too angry, and got whipped by its tail-hoses for his efforts. It looked like this team could use a hand.

“Luka Platoon, moving to assist!” the team leader announced, and Peach hopped to it.

Edinburgh MagicaPolis

Level 8 Big Band (71/80)
Ace Cadet’s @Yankee, Frisk’s @Majoras End, Red’s @TruthHurts22, Mewtwo’s @Double
Word Count: 2154

Regardless of whether or not Sierra might have any more slivers of useful information for the Seekers, Band backed off to let her rest after her initial explanation. She needed some time to decompress, and the detective needed time to think. That was just as well, since for now the small team had nothing but time. With the EMPD out in full force after the dramatic incident at the Noumenon, and no doubt whipped into a frenzy by the showdown with their top dogs, it’d be a good idea to lay low until the whole thing blew over. Or at least, until nightfall, when the dead would rise and give local law enforcement a far more widespread -and far less complicated- problem to worry about. It looked like the team might be at odds with the police from here on out, but that was nothing new to Band. It had been a long time since his early retirement from the force; since then, as an operative of the supposedly shuttered Anti-Skullgirl Lab 8, he’d gotten used to working in the shadows.

After getting his thoughts in order, Band began to play music to pass the time. He selected some chill, low-key blues just to set the mood, and though he only intended to practice, the rehearsal of a skilled player sounded nice enough. His slow, jazzy notes filled the restaurant’s upstairs habitation and drifted down to the diners below, where they complimented a cozy, altogether pleasant experience. Eventually, Ace returned from his chores and conversation downstairs with food for everyone, which Band gratefully accepted. He might not need nearly as much sustenance as his massive frame would suggest, but the flesh-and-bone part craved a good meal as much for the nutrition as a reminder that, underneath all the brass and bionics, he was still human. It helped that Grammeowster’s cooking was to die for, hearkening back to warm, homemade dinners on the cold winter nights of childhood. Just one mouthful of roast chicken and savory potatoes filled Band with warmth, and he relished it with his eyes closed. “Mm-mm,” he murmured, smacking his lips. “My compliments to the chef.”

When the sun went down, the Seekers went to work. They went their separate ways in search of any sign of the Skullgirl, or any leads on their new enemies the Consuls. Band moved through the streets of Edinburgh with an abundance of caution, careful to be as inconspicuous as a trench-coat-clad titan could as he swept each area, giving each and every pitch-black nook and cranny in his path at least one cursory glance. He looked over his shoulder almost as often, wary of any potential pursuer. The light of magical streetlamps provided ample light in certain areas, but elsewhere he relied on the dim, eerie glow of the scar-faced moon high above. Unlike New Meridian, this city seemed to be a remarkably clean and well-kept place, thanks perhaps to the abundance of magic that made everyday chores and appearances easy. Of course, that brought any abnormalities into sharp relief, and it wasn’t long at all before Band found his first gang of skeletons. There were three of them, clad in tattered clothes, and they meandered together in a small group along the sidewalk. Silent except for the rattling clank of their bones as they walked, they lurched along without paying Band any mind, and the detective didn’t bother them either. There seemed to be some semblance of purpose to their movement, although he wondered if those bones might be aping the motions their owners made in life. He tailed them for a few minutes until they reached some sort of office building. They rattled the knob, but after finding it locked, turned back the way they came.

At that point Band moved on–he did have somewhere to be, after all. He continued through the streets to his destination, spotting more skeletons as he did. Some wandered around, scratched at dumpsters or doorways, or ran down the roads as if they had somewhere to be. At one point Band spotted a group of five standing in a circle around a magic car, motionless. He couldn’t see anyone in the car, but the sight disquieted him nonetheless. Not all of the skeletons were permitted to go about their business unimpeded, however. Some of Edinburgh’s citizens closed their blinds and cowered in their beds, but others took to the streets themselves to challenge the undead with might and magic. Band skirted around two separate large-scale scuffles where local mages were mopping the floor with skeletons before he finally reached the spot. Crashed against a magic streetlamp was a familiar van, its engine dead and the driver long gone. The detective’s nose drew him to the driver-side door, where he discovered a lot of frozen light-blue goop on the sidewalk and the vehicle’s exterior. Despite the darkness, he also found a number of burn marks, several of which even now faintly smoldered with pink embers. No doubt about it, he thought.

Moving to the back of the van, he ripped open the doors. Inside he found four cages, just as he expected, and inside those cages were four rotund, terribly dispirited Spheals. At the sight of Band, however, their sad eyes light up with joy. “There y’all are,” Band crooned, using what he hoped was a soft, sing-song sort of voice to comfort the scared Pokemon. “Don’t fret now, I gotchyou. There’s someone I think ya oughta meet.”

---

The next morning, after a good night’s sleep, Band could be found in Grammeowster’s Kitchen, seated in a corner booth with the table removed to accommodate his size. He held a pot of coffee in one hand like a normal person might hold a mug, and with the other he paged through the morning newspaper across his lap. As happy as Sierra’s reunion with her Spheals had been last night, and as cute as the sight of her asleep with her four best friends all snuggled up with her had been, Band now wore a rather severe expression. None of the other early-morning customers dared come near him, but when his fellow Seekers approached, he quickly opened up about what he found.

“Although I wouldn’t call my time ‘wasted’, I didn’t turn up much in my investigation last night,” he began. The others’ efforts had been similarly fruitless, but that was understandable. Edinburgh was a huge and unfamiliar city, and the heroes couldn’t be expected to stumble upon the critical path every single time. That wasn’t to say, though, that they hadn’t missed anything. “Take a look at this though. Looks like somethin’ else went down at that big library after nightfall. Somethin’ serious. Accordin’ to eyewitnesses, a whole boatload of skeletons showed up. The police still there cleanin’ up ended up tanglin’ with ‘em, which went on until a strange girl showed up.” Band narrowed his eyes. “A pale girl in green, with hair and rabbit ears comin’ outta her hood like icy-blue fire. They say she wiped out the cops in an instant, includin’ that fool I laid out. ‘Kurtis Stryker’. But get this. Right afterward, a Consul showed up and fought her: Consul N. There ain’t much details after that, but it says that despite both fightin’ tooth and nail, neither won. The Skullgirl escaped into the night. Sure tries its damnedest to make N look like a hero though.”

Albedo furrowed his brow. “As expected of one of the World of Light’s rulers. Thankfully it sounds like he wasn’t able to defeat Linkle, but the fact that she’s using the Skull Heart’s power is cause enough for concern. We need to find her tonight, before the situation worsens.”

That wasn’t all, though. Flipping back to the front page, he brought the others’ attention to the main story. The headline read Edinburgh MagicaPolis declares war! “Check this out,” he read aloud. “Consul L announced a state of emergency yesterday after receivin’ word that the foreign city-state Alcamoth had begun a campaign to overthrow world leadership and destroy the world itself.” His tone sounded grave. Even though he’d never been to Alcamoth, the crumbs he heard about it from other Seekers made it sound important. “In response to this clear and present danger, L vowed swift and decisive action. While her plans must remain confidential, Edinburgh citizens can rest assured that her forces are more than sufficient to overcome this adversary. Provided all goes well, we can expect to hail her triumphant return to Aether Paradise at approximately one o’clock today.” He looked up at the others, raising his eyebrow with a frown.

Lucia’s eyes widened. “Wait just a second. Aethah Paradise as in Aethah Foundation? The hell’s L doin’ at a consahvation centah?” She gasped. “UNLESS…the Aethah Foundation’s just been a front this whole time!? All that cute and cuddly stuff with Pokemon ta boost theah public image, but L’s in chahge doin’ all kinds of screwed-up stuff?“ Scowling, she cracked her knuckles. “Maybe we oughta pay those dahtbags a visit.”

“This might be a trap,” Albedo cautioned immediately. “L might believe that Frisk and I are dead, but by now the Consuls must be aware that several of their enemies are somewhere in the city. If they do indeed control the presses here, this may be an attempt to draw us out.”

Big Band harrumphed. “Bastards must be pretty damn confident callin’ us out like that if so. Worst part is…well, they might have our number. If not for that flashbang from Ace, we mighta all kicked the bucket back in the Noumenon. If we nearly got outmatched by N’s pet project, chances are we ain’t strong enough to fight him straight-up. Still.” He folded up the newspaper and slapped it down. “We don’t gotta go loud the minute we get there. Long as we play it cool, we might learn a thing or two. If there’s gonna be a crowd, we can blend in. Sound like a plan?”

---

Contrary to the newspaper’s report, L didn’t return at one o’clock. Instead, it was almost three by the time the people in the crowd began to a spot a purple-and-cyan Galaxy dropship flying in over the snow-dusted buildings from the southeast. It made a low-altitude beeline straight for the artificial island known as Aether Paradise that floated due north of the city’s humongous central pumpkin, in a circular body of water within the city itself fed by countless canals. While this lake wasn’t much larger than the island itself, no bridges spanned it to create a walkable or drivable connection from Aether Paradise to the rest of Edinburgh, leaving it accessible only by water or air. Thus, the citizens that did turn out to witness L’s triumphant return clustered along the railings that surrounded the lake on the east side, hoping to catch a glimpse of Edinburgh’s most important woman.

Finally, the Galaxy set down on the structure’s eastern helipad, and when the rear doors lowered L herself walked down the ramp to a chorus of cheers. She waved like a celebrity on the runway, but even at this distance Band’s sharp eyes could tell that something was off. She moved stiffly, as if in pain, and despite her attempts to hide it she walked with a limp, favoring her right leg. That, plus the extra time it took her to get here, convinced Band of one thing: things hadn’t gone quite as well as she might have hoped. He also noticed some people who came out from inside Aether Paradise to receive the dropship on the landing pad, which included a scientist in white with big green goggles and -much to Band’s exasperation- Wicke.

“Good people of Edinburgh MagicaPolis,” L’s voice rang out, amplified via some magic. Practiced -or maybe forced- charisma oozed from every word. “Thank you all so much for your support, both here today and every day. It is your tireless effort that has made our fair city the shining diamond of the frozen north, and inspired me to do whatever it takes to see that it never loses its luster. Today, I am proud to tell you that your city, your loved ones, and your tomorrows are all safe and secure, for the looming threat of Alcamoth is no more!”

More cheers echoed across the water from the people, reaching a fever pitch. L bowed her head, full of gratitude. “Thank you, Thank you! And I assure you. Now that I’ve laid your fears abroad to rest, your fears here will soon follow!” With a final wave, L turned to strut across the helipad toward the central building of Aether Paradise, still noticeably limping.

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

Imogen Reed

A captive audience, Imogen watched from down the beach as Maive and her gale-force poltergeist stood against the monstrous frog. She trembled instead of cheering, and she dared not raise her voice even if it couldn’t be heard above the howling wind lest she attract even a modicum of the terror’s attention, but all the same she fervently wished the other girl the best, and hoped that she would succeed. Whether she knew or liked Maive made no difference; this nightmare was an enemy far greater than petty interpersonal quibbles, and against such a foe, human beings stood together. Well, at least in spirit, if not in the flesh. The knowledge of Imogen’s own powerlessness gnawed her with shame and despair, but those feelings hadn’t quite quenched something else that smoldered inside her. Deep within she still burned with anger, but that pilot light still sputtered in the dark, searching for more fuel. It wasn’t yet time to ignite.

Some of the others did what they could, however. Orlando hurled rocks to try and give Maive a chance to recovery, and Verity gave…’advice’. A Maive couldn’t live on words alone, though, and she needed more time than the Orlando’s courageous distraction could provide. But help did, coe, and came from an unexpected source: after a very long internal dialog, and no small amount of head-splitting agony, Daniel made his entrance. In the wake of the windstorm that rolled across the tropical island came a sudden, terrible chill. As its frigid fingers brushed across her skin Imogen tensed up with a gasp, hunkering down as she wrapped her arms around her shoulders in a protective self-embrace. Her gaze snapped to the figure that emerged from the foliage, wreathed in pearlescent fog. “H-huh!?” Behind him he cast a long shadow, deep and black as the bowels of the earth itself, and from the fated union of cold and dark rose a terrifying specter, hooded and shrouded in archetypal black robes. Imogen gawked, shivering in the sand. That tornado-mummy had been one thing, but this? It could only be Death.

"Kharon!" Danny shouted.

...Oh. Imogen blinked. The boatman from Greek myth, right? Not Death. Gotcha.

But like the apparition that preceded it, Kharon. seemed less interested in finishing the haggard students off, and more interested in the frog. In what seemed like a matter of seconds, the fearsome Persona smacked the frog in the face with his Boatman Blast, and things went poorly for it. The bug-eyed beast freaked out, its already-reprehensible face melting away as if doused in acid. In its death throes it hurled its captive (who Imogen could now identify as Sofia, restoring her belief in justice) into the air for a wild aerial rave. It reminded Imogen of old Sauce Engine physics. Unfortunately for Sofia, but fortunately for the world at large, her majestic flight soon turned into a headlong plummet into the eldritch ocean. Sploosh.

Diverting her attention from the toad’s gruesome demise, Imogen watched the spot where Sofia disappeared. No sign of her could be seen either attempting to breach or struggling beneath the surface. “That sucks,” Imogen muttered. Despite her righteous vitriol toward Sofia, she didn’t actually want the other girl to die. But Imogen wasn’t about to risk a dip in that weird water. She glanced back toward the action to find that everything seemed to be over. The frog was gone, the wind subsided, and the cold relented, so Imogen walked over. She could see no sign of either of the mysterious beings that appeared to help the students in their hour of need. Maive passed out, and Daniel looked like death, but even if they seemed fine Imogen felt no need to pester them with useless questions. In a make-believe world like this, things didn’t need to make sense.

That said, Imogen did have one question. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t care about their well-being. With Maive unresponsive, she furrowed her brows toward Daniel, a worried frown on her face. “Are you okay?” she asked. Their future might be uncertain, if any future awaited them beyond this purgatorial place, but at the very least she could focus on the present.

World of Light

Valley of Ruin

Level 11 Tora (154/110) Level 12 Poppi (44/120)
Giovanna, Roxas’ @Double, Pit’s @Yankee, Susie’s @Archmage MC, Zenkichi’s @Multi_Media_Man, Partitio’s @Dark Cloud
Word Count: 1577

Even if the vista of desolation laid out before Tora, filtered through the dreary haze of a raincloud-gray sky, filled him with a sense of melancholy, it couldn’t dampen his spirit for too long when he kept such good company. Naturally he could face just about anything with Poppi around, but the team’s newest recruit took an interest in the rotund engineer as well, and soon Tora found himself engaged in a lengthy conversation with Partitio to pass the time. Though different in disposition and speciality, they shared a sense of curiosity that made it easy to communicate, and of course Tora was only too happy to tell the merchant all about his pride and joy.

“This is Poppi!” he practically sang, gesturing toward Poppi with both wings open like a showman. If his companion had the room, she might have performed a curtsy or some similar elegant formality, but without the space to do so inside the tricks interior she struck a pose with her hands on her hips, her head turned sideways with an amused smile. “Poppi invention of Tora, meh. She Artificial Blade originally designed to replicate capabilities of blade one-to-one, but after many-much adventure and development Poppi come into her own as incredible fighter and true-blue companionpon! Crux of matter is indispensable Ether Furnace, originally designed by Grampypon Soosoo and iterated upon by daddypon Tatazo, which draw in naturally occurring ether from environment for use as fuel. Can also reconstruct both body and weapons using ether to suit any challenge, meh. As product of many many long days and sleepless nights shut up in house, Poppi truly bestest invention, and living proof that Tora bestest inventor!”

He squeezed his partner close in a big hug, although his eyes bugged out slightly when Poppi squeezed him back, squishing him like a giant stress ball. “Most modest inventor, too,” she joked.

Cain, who happened to be riding in the truck, rested his chin in his hand in a thoughtful expression. “Ah, a homemade masterpiece. Zat would explain why even in a city chock-full of machines, you truly seem to be one of a kind.” His bright blue optics roved between Tora and Poppi. “Alzough, I am curious about one thing, monsieur. How do you see her?”

“Meh-meh?” Tora blinked. “Not sure what friend mean.”

“Hmm…” Crossing his arms, Cain tried to think of how to phrase this. “What I mean is, what is ze nature of your relationship? Do you see her as, say, your daughter? Or perhaps something more…intimate?”

The question seemed to perplex the Nopon. “...Not sure actually, meh. Not really give it much thought. All Tora know for sure is that Tora like Poppi very much!”

Cain tried to read Poppi’s expression, but her mental state was inscrutable. “Fair enough, monsieur!” he replied, and the topic ended there.

Eventually, the trucks groaned to a halt at their pre-programmed destination. Eager to stretch their legs and stimulate their senses after the stiff, sore, and somewhat boring journey, everyone climbed out and set foot for the first time in the Valley of Ruin. It didn’t take a lot of perception to see why this spot had been chosen as a salvage point. Neither Tora or Poppi recognized the once-proud machine splayed out before them, but the sight of a crashed passenger plane made Giovanna take a sharp breath. It lay in huge, grisly pieces with its tail in the air, its right wing lodged in a nearby building like a broken axeblade left to rust in a tree. Its cabin, ripped clean off by the catastrophe that transpired here, had come to rest a couple dozen feet away, the broken glass of its windows listlessly reflecting the rainy day’s dim light, streaking down rivulets of rainwater like tears. At one point this section of destroyed city might have been a bustling, vividly-lit Chinatown, but all that remained now were the characters on decimated signs and red paper lanterns dangling from what few cable lines still clung to their crooked poles.

Especially with today’s weather, it was a terribly solemn place, but the sight of the airplane’s hull reminded Tora and Poppi why they were here. It had already been thoroughly picked over by previous salvage crews, who’d unscrewed or cut off panel after panel of usable metal to make good use of the precious steel, titanium, and aluminum. Most of the other loot around here had already been claimed as well, but a little delving could still uncover a variety of suitcases with small amounts of cloth, batteries, booze, snacks, hair and face products, pills, cash, and other such goods. The trucks themselves also made sure to remind the alleged salvagers to get to work before time ran out. Nineteen minutes, twelve seconds remaining, the displays on their dashboard consoles read, counting out the seconds before the trucks’ automated departure. Of course, the Seekers weren’t here to salvage, and they had no intention of letting their rides leave them behind. Giovanna approached Tora. “Ready to do your thing?” she asked.

“Born ready, meh.” Once helped into the driver’s seat by a boost from Poppi, the Nopon put down his toolbox, pulled out his microcontroller kit, and after a couple moments spent configuring the adapter, plugged right into the truck’s console port. He got tap-tap-tapping straightaway, a rather pleased look on his smug little face. “This too easy for top-of-class code monkeypon like Tora, meh,” he said, despite having not taken any classes. Quickly he accessed the vehicle’s internal self-driving system. “Only have, what, ten circuit boards?” It didn’t take long at all to disable the truck’s automatic route. “Looks like it only drive on pre-recorded route, so can’t turn autopilot back on to get back afterward,” he noted. “Hopefully someone pay more attention to route on way here than Tora.”

Poppi frowned, thinking. “I can surface those memories. We should be fine.”

She helped her Masterpon out of the first truck, then boosted him up to repeat the process for the second. At the same time, the Rust Crew finished casing the area and reconvened with Giovanna beneath a surviving overhang to get out of the rain. “So. Now that we’re in the woods, all that’s left is to go hunting, eh?” Marshall asked.

The secret agent nodded. So far, her team had spotted a handful of Machines scattered around the area. Whether bipedal or aerial, they just seemed to mill about, although Giovanna couldn’t discard the possibility that these units were scouts as well. “Uh huh. Recon ‘til we find anything that looks like an assault force. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so we should get moving. And destroy those Machines whenever possible. We don’t wanna let them pile up.” It looked like another long, footsore day. Even if the coat she’d borrowed from the Salvage Depot hampered her style, Giovanna was glad to have some protection against the rain.

“We oughta use the trucks to drive between vantage points,” Bo mentioned. “The higher the better.”

With that plan in mind, the teams got underway, identifying four high-altitude locations in different directions from the crash site that they could visit to survey the area. The Rust Crew took their truck northwest in the direction of an abandoned factory where a surviving smokestack offered a good spot to get a lay of the land. Tora and Poppi went with them, then broke off on the way to fly west toward a handful of overgrown highrises.

The other truck took Partitio, Susie, Giovanna, Pit, Roxas, and Zenkichi further south. There lay a district of flooded ruin in the shade of a great tree that grew from two skyscrapers that collapsed against one another. Strange Machines inhabited this zone, like the troops of baboon-like Clamberjaws that prowled the overgrown in search of fresh scrap, happy to use their tail dusters to spray noxious fumes or hurl hunks of metal ablaze with foul chemical fire. In and around the waterways lurked crocodilian Snapjaws able to slow down targets with sprays of freezing water to leave them vulnerable to a killer lunge. Worse still were the bulky resource collectors known as Widemaws, which used powerful vacuums to suck up minerals into their massive, drill-filled jaws for grinding. Further still stood a couple Shellwalkers stockpiling resources collected by other Machines into their containers. Not too far east stood an intact construction crane overlooking a neighborhood that never was. That crane crawled with Simians however, and the entire neighborhood featured a conspicuous patrol of Assault Shooters and Rapid Shooters. Wherever the Seekers went, excitement was sure to follow.

Abandoned Subway - Overgrown Transfer

Level 4 Goldlewis (21/40)
Karin’s @Zoey Boey, Midna’s @DracoLunaris, Blazermate’s @Archmage MC, Geralt @Multi_Media_Man, Benedict’s @Dark Cloud
Word Count: 1534

When the monsters appeared, Goldlewis was ready. From the moment he lost sight of the sky he’d been on high alert, cautiously moving step by step through the underground railway labyrinth as he waited for humanity’s enemies to appear, whether he found them or they found him. Now, the bright red flash of the Session Pounds and the bulbous, bloated silhouettes of Rotwarts through the smoke, bouncing along like over-inflated balloons just waiting to burst, kicked him into action. He’d seen enough of war to know that any enemies that single-mindedly charged like this with no visible weapons were detonators.

“Get behind me!” he called out gruffly, stepping backward to try and herd the others back the way they came, out of the open where an attack could come from any angle. Instead Midna disappeared, and the others might be similarly disinclined to be protected, but Goldlewis was undeterred. His coffin slammed to the ground with a thoom, and the lid slid open. From insight the UMA’s spindly arms lifted up the Skyfish minigun, which Goldlewis gladly took and hoisted in his massive arms. Bullets sprayed through the haze and punctured several Rotwarts, detonating them long before they could reach their targets, but even though he lit up a pair of Session Pounds they neither exploded nor were visibly wounded. The minigun clicked empty, and after a disappointed click of his tongue in reply Goldlewis stowed it away. “Darnit. The flyin’ ones are goin’ out on their terms!” he warned the others. As the Others closed in, he lifted his coffin up like a shield, a semblance of a plan in mind.

In the smoke, Midna descended on one of the Mission Pounds. It fought back to preserve its own life, whirling around in a circle like a pinwheel to try and strike its attacker with its metal body, but it couldn’t effectively counter the princess’s attack. Her angle and elemental attacks left it disoriented and tingling with electricity, leaving it open for continuous assault until she managed to finish it off. While the Missin Pound’s death didn’t make the smoke around it vanish, it would soon dissipate without the source to replenish it, and as the screen began to clear Midna tangled with a Session Pound of her own. It did not go down easily, and when she escaped between some pipes the explosive Other struggled for only a moment before circling around to find another route. These things were determined. Floating lazily over the battlefield made Blazermate a prime target for them; even if she could see them coming thanks to her scan, this area wasn’t enormous. Getting surrounded was both surprisingly easy and extremely punishing.

Karin found a way to use the Session Pounds’ relentless pursuit against them, however. Even if these enemies proved frustratingly unsuitable for melee combat, she could demonstrate clever use of the other tools at her disposal. With her grappling hook she bound two of them together, and almost instantly the Others got tangled around a pipe. Completely at odds in terms of directional movement, they tugged and tugged, hopelessly wrapping themselves around the pipe like a giant set of bolas. Shortly after binding themselves so tightly that they couldn’t move anymore, the Session Pounds wrenched the section of rusted pipe clean off, which sent them spiraling into a corner of the room. There, Karin’s cinderblock promptly smacked into one of them, making it think it had been struck by something in melee range. It blew up, and the one at the other end of the line quickly followed suit, shaking the underground chamber with the twin explosions but hurting nobody. At the same time, water began to pour from the broken pipe, quickly pooling and spreading across the floor of the room. The Rootwarts splashed through it heedlessly, unaware of the potential hazard sloshing at their gnarled feet.

A couple Session Pounds closed in on the spot where Goldlewis stood in front of Geralt and Benedict. The latter used his new striker to sling an ice spell at one of them, but the freeze did not proc. Goldlewis prepared to swing his coffin to try and squash the Others with a Behemoth Typhoon or two, but he changed his mind at the last moment. If these things were going to wait to explode until in the perfect range to do so, he might as well let them–as long as they couldn’t hurt him or his team. The veteran slammed his coffin foot-first onto the ground in front of him, and blue light flared out from within. A glowing hex shield appeared, covering almost the entire room to either side of Goldlewis from wall to wall, and when the Session Pounds blew up against it the barrier held firm. “Hmph!” he snorted, smoothing over his hair with his other hand.

Once Midna and Karin finished dispatching their own targets, and however many detonators crashed against the rocks of Goldlewis’ shore to be broken, the scary but brief encounter came to an end. “Nothin’ to it,” he said breezily, slinging his coffin back over his shoulder. He glanced down at he spirits left behind by the tam’s fallen foes, wondering if creatures like those could be made into Strikers that could explode like that whenever summoned. They might work even better than his Thunderbird drones. Then again, given how Strikers worked, that might blow him up. “Hmm.” Leaving Midna to round the spirits up, he continued on his way.

Team Goldlewis Encounter 1/3 Results

Party: Goldlewis, Midna, Balzermate, Benedict, Karin
Reward: +5 EXP

Continuing in the same direction brought the team to another abandoned train platform, separated by another platform to either side by train tracks that led into collapsed tunnels. The escalators that led upward also turned out to be dead ends, but the path continued straight ahead. Unfortunately, this liminal space wasn’t unoccupied. Three particularly bizarre Others called it home, two on the left side platform and one on the right. The Saliva Santas appeared to be male and female bodies conjoined at the midsection, where they sat upon a metal box, and covered in blue fish scales. The male halves would use their head-tentacles to spray beams of watery spit at the Seekers from a distance. Their long-range sniping, performed either as precision shots or big sweeps, would stop only if they ran dry, their targets got too close, or they completely lost sight of them. In the first case the Santas’ male halves would plunge their tentacles into the ports on the females’ heads to extract saliva for a refill, and in the second the Santas would retreat into their extremely durable boxes. Fighting them at melee range necessitated taking them completely by surprise.

These Others proved to be a huge pain for Goldlewis. He couldn’t outmatch them from long range, he couldn’t hide behind the pillars in the room to cover his approach, and even when he finally got to the one on the right he couldn’t crack its shell before it blasted him back with an explosive saliva reversal while still encased. “Consarn it all!” he spat, red with frustration and supplied with no shortage of spittle himself. Since the Santas seemed more keen on being massive annoyances than actually moving, he turned and left the room using his Wall of Light for protection. “Rat bastards,” he muttered as he proceeded to the next room. Once everyone got through the door, he slammed it closed and shoved a piece of rubble in front of it to keep it shut even if the Saliva Santas managed to drag themselves over, provided any survived the other Seekers. “The Scarlet Guardians can have ‘em.”

It was in the next, much larger room that the heroes found their next real challenge. Inside the reinforced cylindrical station, illuminated by the vivid red light of a high-power flare, were two large Others. Both sported equine hindquarters, long tails perfect for whipping, and treelike heads sprouting from metal valves. The one in full bloom with burgundy leaves, the Winery Chinery, lay on the ground like a tiger as it cleaned blood from its nails. Its counterpart with branches as bare of leaves as trees in midwinter, the Slippy Chinery, was on its feet and eating something. Fresh ashes lay piled around their feet. When they smelled the Seekers’ brains, they turned to look together, staring with the holes in their metal faces. Then they roared, the horrid noise reverberating through the room. The Winery Chinery crackled with electricity, and the Slipper Chinery lifted a hand to turn the valve on its head. Oil flowed from its pores to coat its metallic body, and after another moment the huge Other turned invisible. A torrent of water burst from the Winery Chinery’s face a moment later, forcing the Seekers to break formation as the battle began.

Home of Tears - Soul Sanctum

Level 10 Nadia (152/100)
The Koopa Troop’s @DracoLunaris, Primrose and Therion’s @Yankee, Sectonia’s @Archmage MC, Jesse’s @Zoey Boey, Ganondorf’s @Double, Rubick’s @Scarifar, Teemo’s @Bugman, Ichiban’s @Truthhurts22, the Knight
Word Count: 1411

For Sectonia

You have acquired:
Blood Vial
Special blood used in ministration. Restores HP. Once a patient has had their blood ministered, a unique but common treatment in certain rumor-shadowed places, only successive treatments can reproduce that same sublime feeling of invigoration
Odd Vial
An injector that contains a strange substance. It’s hard to tell if it’s solid or liquid, matter or energy. It simply glows yellow, and it feels significant. As if the will to keep on living, or the resolve to change fate, were somehow materialized and encapsulated in this little vial

For the remainder of Gallo’s exposé on the machinations of Consul P’s inner circle, Nadia kept quiet and listened. The rain drummed down on the windows and walls, steady as ever. Its rhythm and purity helped her both relax and focus as she considered the new road this stranger laid out before him. He made it sound as if P were little more than an upjumped brat, given enough undeserved power and authority to let his worst nature run rampant, and that once these Agarthans were out of the picture his downfall would be straightforward enough. Nadia liked having a plan to follow; nothing felt quite as satisfying as the moment when all the dominos fell just as planned and she pulled off the perfect crime.

Still, she couldn’t help but feel a little conflicted. On one hand, though an expert in subterfuge, Nadia Fortune was a thief, not an assassin. Once the Seekers disassembled Those Who Slither in the Dark, the last step of the mission would be squashing P himself, who -as Gallo rather callously mentioned- was a child. A loathsome, selfish, and abusive child, but still. On the other hand, this whole scheme felt just a little too good to be true. The Seekers would still need to put in some work, but Gallo’s plan made the elimination of a Consul sound simple, and could that really be the case for a member of such a powerful organization? Gallo himself gave off a rather villainous impression, with ‘mad scholar of magic’ written all over him. Then again, his ego was his whole reason for rebelling against P to begin with, and ratting out his master like this was a pretty big risk. He couldn’t stand up to P on his own, and if he thought the Seekers could, he couldn’t oppose them either if he went for some sort of double-cross. He wasn’t being all mysterious and secretive either, which was nice. Nadia decided that she felt optimistic about this.

Some of the others had questions. Sectonia immediately volunteered herself for the Agarthan stationed in the Royal Quarter; regardless of whether or not she possessed a discrete bone in her body, she heard the word ‘royal’ and went straight for it. Rather than try to figure out where to start on her own she asked Gallo, who gave a nonplussed shrug as he turned up his nose. “I’m not what you’d call a socialite,” he told her. “If you’re as well-versed in the games of nobles as you claim, I wouldn’t dare offer any puerile suggestions. Your own expertise would surely serve you better?” Primrose asked him about Shambhala, and Gallo shared what little he knew. “I would not be at all averse to joining any raid you may envision on Shambhala,” he added. “While I greatly prefer the study to the battlefield, I daresay my signature weapon would be an invaluable means of support. I do insist upon being there when P flees to his sanctum, however. I want to see his face when I spring the trap. I care not who does the honors after that.”

Kamek lavished Gallo with flattery, but he took it in stride. Evidently all the honeyed words in the world would do him less good than seeing P and his toadies dealt with once and for all. Kamek and Primrose’s other suggestions, however, he did agree with. “Indeed, I bid you make haste,” Gallo advised. “Not so much that you slip up and botch things, mind, but the sooner the better. Strike as the iron’s hot, as they say. I myself will return to Gallo Tower and keep watch from the Clock Run. When you’re ready, I will open the gates” Rising from his seat, Gallo prepared to leave. He sighed heavily at Kamek’s last question. “Truth be told, I wish there was an easy way through here. But I picked this place for secrecy, not ease of access. I will simply walk. If you choose to descend through the air, be aware that the pounding rain is strong enough to beat down most winged fliers. It would not do to see my new associates dashed upon the pavement due to impatience.”

He took one step, then paused. “Oh, one more thing. I believe that the last person to run afoul of the Agarthans without a plan is currently imprisoned somewhere in Shambhala. She may be of use if you free her.”

After that he began the descent, not waiting for the others. On the way through the hallway he almost ran into a yellow dinosaur on her way back from her kitchen to her room with a steaming cup of instant ramen. “Doctor,” Gallo greeted nonchalantly as he passed, glancing in the direction of her room’s open door.

Alphys looked confused at seeing someone else in the Soul Sanctum for a moment, but when Gallo’s eyes roved perilously near her computer screen she moved like lightning to block the door. “D-don’t look in there!” A second later the door slammed shut, punctuated by the sound of multiple locks closing in quick succession. Gallo was already on the move, however. Before making his way downstairs he activated some sort of magic which began sending out light-blue rays in a rotating ring around him. If anyone followed behind him, they’d see that when the rays came in contact with a monster, whether patient or Amalgamate, the aggressor would be frozen in time for a moment while Gallo coolly slunk by.

Nadia did not go back down through the Soul Sanctum. She planned to climb down the building’s exterior, confident that her claws’ grip would outmatch the heavy rainfall. Before going, however, she took a few moments to confer with everyone else. “Well, I don’t really have any objections,” she piped up. “Could be some kinda trap, but I’m not seein’ it. If he tried actin’ all nice he might be hidin’ somethin’, but you can always trust a jerk to act like a jerk. And if it’s jerk-on-jerk violence, no matter who loses, the good guys win!” The bigger issue at the moment seemed to be Consul P’s childlike appearance and demeanor. Something poignant occurred to Nadia as she mulled the matter over, though. “Well…we did kill that Orphan of Kos thing, and we literally watched it get born. And it caused a lot less sufferin’ than P, it sounds like. Plus, P’s the guy who tried to kill us already, right? So if you ask me, the kid gloves are off!”

At the very least, step one of the plan -get rid of the Agarthan kingpins- was agreed upon. “So what, one or two of us per target?” Nadia ventured. “Well, Gallo said the one at the circus is an assassin, yeah? Why noy send in someone who can’t be backstabbed?” Pulling out her box cutters, she neatly stored their blades in her case and slid the grips into her belt with a flourish. “I’m down to clown.” Once everyone decided between Kronya at the Amusement Park, Solon at the Downtown school, Cleobulus in the Royal Quarter, and Thales in Shambhala, everyone could split up and begin their separate missions.

---

Now that the Seekers knew the names to look for, the ones that went to the Royal Quarter didn’t need to spend that much time searching at all. The word ‘Cornelia’ was plastered on almost every sign, display screen, and bulletin board they found, and her face -a visage of uncommon beauty and smirking, unfettered pride- appeared an all kinds of advertisements from fashion brands to perfume, but nothing so much as what appeared to be her pride and joy: the Royal Canopy Club. All the ads for that particular club, evidently the pinnacle of the Royal Quarter’s high-society artistry and entertainment, mentioned breathtaking performances ‘all night long - for the sun never rises in the Home of Tears’. They also listed off a number of other star performers, so it wasn’t exactly clear if Cornelia would perform herself, or merely ran the show. At least the Seekers knew a likely spot to find her, but dealing with someone whose modus operandi seemed to be making sure as many people as possible were giving her attention at any given moment might be difficult.

Unless Cornelia could be beaten at her own game. The descriptions of the Royal Canopy painted one other picture about it: that it was where the best of the best singers, players, and dancers proved themselves, specifically over one another, all vying for the crown in a sort of musical battle royale. They fought for the favor of the esteemed patrons who attended their performances from their galleries on high, sipping fancy drinks and dabbing their lips with fancy napkins, and those who managed to win the audience’s adoration through skill and spectacle were promised fame and fortune. Looking at the Royal Canopy through that lens, it seemed almost like a dolled-up colosseum, and if someone possessed the right skills for the job -as well as an ‘in’- they might be able to upstage even the gala queen herself.

---

Nestled in the less-cluttered, less-claustrophobic part of the Downtime district, the Seekers could find the school they were looking for. Aptly titled ‘School’, it lay not far from the cavern wall, and it featured its own little fenced-off grounds where great pains were taken to preserve facsimiles of green grass, autumn trees, and white picket fences beneath a gigantic umbrella that shielded against the constant rain, beneath the apex of which warmly-colored spotlights served as an artificial sun. The result was a comfy, establishment of brown brick and white marble with a nostalgic small-town aesthetic, and though the recreated environment was ultimately a lie, the atmosphere it created probably did help keep the students’ depression at bay.

Somewhere inside that school, according to Gallo, was the Agarthan Dark Bishop Solon, disguised as the schoolteacher Tomas. Even if the Seekers ultimately decided to eliminate P, endangering the lives of normal children was probably out of the question, but that made things difficult. Their target was someone everyone in this establishment probably liked or at the very least knew. Chances were that he’d be surrounded by kids, and given his true identity as a villain, the worst case scenario could be very, very bad.

Luck might be on the Seekers’ side, however. Today was, after all, Sunday, and school was out for the weekend.

---

The Amusement Park was a curious place. Normally, any circus would have to be canceled if it rained, but given the circumstances this one had to adapt. As much, the entire fairgrounds essentially lay beneath a sea of red-and-white striped fabric awnings, some of them several stories high. All the water got channeled into the narrow canals that criss-crossed the district, small enough for even young monsters to hop over easily. Only the roller coasters and water rides were exposed to the elements. Everything else was dry, not to mention a bombastic bonanza of flashing lights, wild noises, and noisy attractions. Alongside the guests here, who themselves were monsters of all shapes and sizes, there were also tons of clowns. Some were silly, some were sweet, some were smug, and some were a little spooky, but all were generally trying to make sure the visitors had a good time.

“Wow…this place is in-tents!”

Of course, Nadia didn’t need a clown’s help to be all smiles. Already sunny by nature, she felt almost giddy just being around here. She hadn’t been somewhere this fun and jovial since Carnival Town after all, which felt like ages ago. Sadly, the feral knew she was here on business, not pleasure. Somewhere among all the fun and games was a killer in disguise. “Alright,” she muttered to herself, narrowing her eyes to get her bearings. “If I were a murder-lovin’ psycho lady, where would I hide…?”

World of Light

Abandoned Subway - Flooded Tunnel

Raz’s @Truthhurts22, Sakura’s @Zoey Boey, Pach, Luka, Dexio, Sina

When confronted by the Others, Luka had only a brief window in which he could size them up and take his pick. By now they could sense the psionics’ brains, after all, so time was of the essence. Luckily, it was an easy choice to make. “I’ll take care of the big one,” he notified his teammates as he set his sights on the Exonerator, wishing that he both sounded and felt a lot more confident. The pressure of setting the example for his brand-new team as its leader -which meant demonstrating both combat excellence and tactical awareness for his allies- was a big contributor, but not the only one. Part of the Scarlet Guardians’ effectiveness came from the organization’s shared pool of knowledge, freely accessible through SAS, which stemmed from the limited variety of Others in existence. However, Luka didn’t recognize this particular Other. Right now this didn’t concern him because of the admittedly low chance that his team discovered a new variant, but because it could possess any number of new and terrifying psychic abilities. That made the Exonerator his responsibility to handle.

Luka disappeared in a bluish burst, teleporting closer to the bizarre, baby-faced threat. He popped back into existence just above the water, sending it flying with the pressure of the air he displaced upon arrival, but before a single droplet spattered back down he blinked away again. By teleporting in quick succession, appearing for less than a second at a time, he quickly closed the distance. Before the Exonerator knew it, Luka warped above it, augmenting the strength of his hammerfall with the power of gravity. “Hah!” the grunted, smashing down on what should be the strange monster’s forehead. The material buckled under the hefty bash, and various pieces forcibly dislodged from its frame flew in every direction. With a weird squeal the Other furiously backpedaled, trying to align its lightbulb with Luka, but he wouldn’t allow it that chance. In a blink the pint-sized powerhouse teleported behind the Exonerator for another carapace-cracking wallop, yet again using outside force to amplify the power of his strike, in this case the opposing force of the Other’s backward roll. The result was a satisfyingly brutal bludgeon, and as the Exonerator reeled, trying to get away, Luka pressed his advantage.

He used the centripetal force of his weapon to whirl him around like an olympic hammer thrower, delivering blow after crushing blow, but after a moment he realized he’d gone out of control. Before he could take a potentially disastrous tumble he teleported a short distance away, resetting his momentum, but the Exonerator managed to face him in the open area and finally get off a flash of its bulb. Its vivid yellow flare slammed Luka’s senses like a flashbang, not just burning his eyes but momentarily frying his mind. “Agh!” he cried, unable to stop himself as he dropped his hammer and planted his palms on his eyes, limply falling to his knees in the water as he did. Completely paralyzed, he couldn’t do anything as the Exonerator promptly ran him over, crushing him against the subway tracks beneath the water’s surface.

However, Luka rose again after a brief moment, his eyes narrowed and his lips pressed thinly together. Though dripping wet, he’d suffered no broken bones, and he’d learned an important lesson. “So that’s your game,” he told the Exonerator as it turned around, lifting his hammer from the water. “I won’t make the same mistake again.” He teleported point-blank and struck the Other like a slap to the cheek, knocking it askew. The next second he was above it again, his hammer raised for an overhead smash on the lightbulb. A whirring wail sounded out as the Exonerator wheeled backward, turning sideways to fix its newly-recharged bulb on Luka. “Hmph.” Borrowing Peach’s power through SAS, he materialized a wall to block the light, then hurled his hammer straight through it toward the Other’s lightbulb, guided by Sakura’s telekinesis. The wonderful sound of broken glass rang out as the weak point shattered, its baleful glare extinguished, and as the Exonerator slumped over a different bulb plopped out of its open mouth–the one that meant Luka could finish this with a Brain Crush. He teleported into the air, caught his hammer, and brought it down on the second bulb to finish the Exonerator off for good. “One down,” he muttered, and he quickly bent to collect the spirit.

Meanwhile, his allies were working their way through the other Others. Raz split from the other three, zooming down the tunnel to bash into and then psi-blast an unlucky Rainy Rummy. When the junior psychonaut stopped to showboat, however, he quickly realized that the Other could, in fact, reach him. Sparking with yellow electricity, it aimed its umbrella frame at him, popped it open, and unleashed a lightning bolt his way. Its tottering compatriots followed suit, spreading out in the tunnel’s flooded center section to open fire on Raz in a seven-point thunderstorm assault. Their accuracy, though, was far from perfect, and they could only zap as fast as they could close their threadbare parasols again. Forced to stay on the move and out of the electrocution-prone water, Raz would be getting a lot of mileage out of his acrobatic expertise. He’d dealt a little over half that first Rainy Rummy’s health with his batter-and-barrage, so he could take these things down if given the chance to focus, but whether or not he’d be able to on his own might be another matter.

Fortunately, he wasn’t on his own. Peach joined him as fast as she could, and she heralded her arrival with a one-two punch of explosions from a grenaduck and her rocket launcher to ruin the Rummies’ formation. “Over here!” she yelled at them as she took to the air. A few of the Others took aim at her, but the princess kept herself on the move. Making herself essentially weightless through the power of Levitation, she kicked off the ground, the walls, the ceiling, the tunnel’s support pillars, and the Rummies themselves whenever she got close to launch herself around like an astronaut. Her Scatterboom’s tremendous blasts both dealt a lot of damage and sent her flying in the opposite direction at high speed like this, which Peach quickly learned to use to her advantage. As long as they stayed mobile, Peach with her area-of-effect and Raz with his sharpshooting, the two of them could take these Rummies apart.

At the moment though, Sakura, Dexio, and Sina were all occupied by the Rat Ruts. Sakura subjected the one she’d managed to get in close quarters to a blunt-force beatdown, making solid progress on its shell. This Other was far from helpless in melee range, however. It suddenly started doing donuts, whirling around in a violent circle to try and his Sakura with either its body or its six lateral prongs, and one of which could bash or gouge a weak point if she was unlucky. Another Rat Rut remained farther away and started shooting oil at her, putting Sakura in double the trouble.

The Rat Rut that nearly rolled over the Street Fighter, meanwhile, also tried to do the same for the other two, forcing them to jump to either side. “Cool it!” Sina chided, lifting up her right arm with her left hand clenched around her right bicep. Her Refrigerant Coil came to life, channeling her cryokinesis to unleash a volley of ice blasts from her palm. At the same time, Dexio pounded the Rat Rut’s metal shell from the other side with his cestus. That shell held firm, however, only lightly dented by Dexio’s punches and seemingly unaffected by the ice. Without warning the Other began doing donuts, its six lateral prongs outstretched, and both Scarlet Guardians took painful blows. Dexio staggered, but Sina got knocked clear off her feet, and when she landed beside the track at the water’s edge the impact drove the wind from her lungs. “Uuuugh…” she grunted, fighting for breath as Dexio kept trying to box the Rat Rut. She loosed a couple more ice blasts, but no amount of buildup on its shell seemed to slow the monster down. “This isn’t working,” she growled, dropping her hand. As she did, she felt the water begin to chill around her hand, and looked down to see the water freezing over around her. “Wait a second…”

As Dexio got knocked back again, Sina crouched at the edge of the flooded area and unleashed her Cryokinesis. A wave of ice spread across the calf-deep water, and when he spotted it Dexio caught on. With the plan communicated through Brain Talk, he took off running to bait the Rat Rut onto the ice, at which point its single narrow wheel promptly slipped and toppled its heavy body to the ground. At that point Dexio stopped, planting his hand on the ground. His Seismokinesis spread through the earth, causing it to shake. After only a moment the whole area was vibrating dangerously. “...Crumble!” he growled, and from the ceiling a massive chunk of rock shook loose to fall on and shatter the Rat Rut’s shell. With the Other’s papaya core exposed, Sina needed only to freeze it with an ice shot so her partner could shatter it with ease. “Score one for Dexio…” he crowed.

“And Sina!” his partner finished. With their allies still in danger though, they couldn’t goof around for long. They hurried down the tracks to help the others clean up.

World of Light

Sector 07 Slums

Level 11 Tora (151/110) Level 12 Poppi (41/120)
Giovanna, Roxas’ @Double, Pit’s @Yankee, Susie’s @Archmage MC, Zenkichi’s @Multi_Media_Man, Partitio’s @Dark Cloud
Word Count: 1496

No recognition glimmered in either Tifa or Cloud’s eyes when Roxas confronted them. If anything they seemed a bit put off by the stranger’s sudden introduction and forwardness, and though Tifa at least put on a friendly face, Cloud looked suspicious. Someone knowing the name of his new acquaintance he could understand since hers was a welcome and familiar face in town, but his? He’d just arrived. While Roxas admitted they wouldn’t know him, the extra information he offered sounded like nonsense, and it didn’t explain why this kid knew his name.

Sensing the mercenary’s guardedness, Tifa tried to smooth things out. “Well hi there, Roxas.” She gave Cloud a smile, part disarming and part reassuring. “Always a friendly face around here.” Then she turned back to Roxas. “We’re a little busy right now, but you can almost always find me behind the counter at Seventh Heaven when we’re open! See you later.” She waved, and without any further awkwardness or embarrassment, headed on her way. Cloud gave Roxas a last narrow look but turned and followed Tifa without a word, choosing to believe that this stranger simply happened to hear his name at some point since his arrival last night. At the very least, Roxas had time to think of a better opening before he got his next chance to see one or both of them at Seventh Heaven later that day.

Back with the rest of the group, Tora was happy to see that rather than try to continue with his rabble-rousing, Partitio joined the Seekers instead. Zenkichi spoke the truth when he said things would probably get rough out there today, but as long as the merchant pledged his strength, Tora was happy to accept him with open wings either way. “Good to hear, meh!” he told Partitio. “Many Nopon end up as merchants, so even though Tora inventor, am very well acquainted with businesspon.” He blinked, scratching his chin with one of his winfingers. “Would like know however, what can friend Partitio do in terms of combat? Plan today not involve much talking, meh.”

With the distraction offered by Partitio, Zenkichi and Poppi ended up paying a visit to the Rust Crew by themselves. The detective greeted them with a call and a wave, drawing their attention. Even if Poppi hadn’t been a particularly important part of their long and arduous day yesterday, they still recognized her when she waved today, especially the robot Cain, who left Zenkichi’s preamble to the others. “Ah, bonjour, mademoiselle,” he greeted her, reaching out his hand. Thinking he wanted to shake, Poppi extended her own, but to her surprise Cain gently took her hand and raised it to his faceplate as if to kiss it despite his lack of lips. Tink. “It does me good to see you in health.”

Poppi blinked, thrown for a complete loop. “O-oh, uh…uh, yes, thank you.”

She gingerly retracted her as she turned her attention to Zenkichi, and Cain evenly followed suit. The detective kept things short and to the point, but even what little he did let slip piqued the squad leader’s interest. “Oh yeah? We almost got her, but things ended up getting…complicated. Still.” He sized Zenkichi and Poppi up with a different frame of reference in mind, his arms crossed. Once he and Big Bo exchanged a glance, he cracked a wry smile. “Well, someone’s gotta get things done around here. Might as well be us. We were fearing the worst when we lost the Hollow Child, but now that we know for sure…”

“We can do somethin’ about it,” Bo finished, nodding as he turned toward the motel room. “I’ll get the goods.”

Cain went to help, and Marshall stepped away for a moment to make a radio call, briefly mentioning reinforcements. He returned at about the same time Tora waddled over, and seeing the Nopon made him grin. “You on mission with us too, little guy?”

“Tora ready to reclaim some scrap!” he proclaimed, using a wing to give the thumbs-up. “Any mechanical issues out there, Scruffypon just leave to Tora!”

“I’ll do that.” As Bo and Cain returned with their equipment in tow, Marshall looked between Zenkichi and Poppi for information. “So what’s your plan?”

“We’re hitching a ride with the salvagers, I think,” Poppi replied.

Marshall nodded. “Better than hijacking a DespoRHado transport, eh Cain?”

“I merely said it would be interesting, monsieur,” the robot off-handedly replied. He flicked his head toward the Salvage Depot as if to say shall we? and without further ado everyone got moving.

The location in question was a lively one, with a number of well-equipped people and formidable six-wheeled trucks rolling around, unloading cargo and loading fuel. Poppi spotted Giovanna in conversation with an ordinary-looking everyman in a futuristic suit with copper-colored armor, presumably the Isaac Clarke she heard about while asking around. When the secret agent saw her entourage headed over through the freight yard, with the Rust Crew trio in tow, she jogged over to meet them halfway. “Good news,” she told them. “Well, in a sense. On one hand, we caught them at a good time. It’s all hands on deck to clear out the current wrecks and caches. On the other hand, that’s because their long-range scanners are detecting movement from the Machines. Like the tide going out before a tsunami. They’ve gotta be quick to pick up the fish.” She put her hands on her hips. “So, we’re probably looking at an attack, just like we thought. Anywhere between three and eight hours from now, if so. They’re gonna raise the alarm once they know for sure, but ‘til then they’re gonna batten down the hatches and take everything not nailed down, which is where we come in.” She raised her eyebrows at the Rust Crew. “Along for the ride?”

“If it means trashing some machines, we’re all aboard,” Bo spoke for them.

“That’s enough for two trucks then. Of course, they don’t take chances with their hardware here. The trucks have their routes locked in for maximum safety, with scheduled pickup and dropoff times. They drive themselves out, wait for the salvagers to load ‘em up, and drive themselves back. No human error.” She winked at Tora. “And of course, I know ‘no human’ who’s good enough with machines to do something crazy like, I dunno, override the program and give us direct control.”

Tora -who’d been trying to find Rex amidst all the salvagers as the depot- gasped, his eyes wide. “That me!”

“Then what’re we waiting for?” Giovanna tossed him a hardhat, which Tora caught mostly with his belly. When he looked up, she was already wearing one. “We’ve got a quota to meet.”

---

Once ready to roll, the two trucks started on their own accord and began to maneuver through Scrap Boulevard, with the ten members of the team split between the first and second trucks. As much as Tora wanted to start meddling straight away, Poppi convinced him to hold off until the team reached the halfway point, that being the designated salvage point. On the far side of Scrap Boulevard, which itself harbored the scars of many a past battle, lay a massive perimeter wall with a massive hole in the center thanks to a dedicated Machine invasion at some point in the past. Some stopgap gates had been erected in the breach by the locals, and they swung open to allow the trucks through, but Poppi knew they wouldn’t hold for long should they come under attack again. Better to not let the Machines reach the undercities in the first place, although Poppi knew as well as anyone the Seekers by themselves couldn’t fight an entire mechanical army. They needed to find some other way to make a difference out there.

Once through the gates, and out under the rainy sky, the trucks rumbled due south. The farther south one went on the continent’s northeastern peninsula here, the lower in elevation it got, turning from temperate and autumnal at the educational northern shore to the river-carved badlands around Midgar itself to the Valley of Ruin to the south, where swampland and overgrowth choked the remains of sprawling cities. Formerly metropolises perhaps even comparable to Midgar in size, albeit far more conventional in appearance, these destroyed cities seemed to go as far as Poppi could see into the distance, nestled between the eastern and western ranges. Abandoned by humanity and reclaimed by nature, the buildings looked almost like mountains themselves, and the Seekers were already rolling into the foothills.

Tora wore a sad expression as he peered out into the distance through the rain. “So much devastation. So many people, long gone. Especially with rain, it…it make Tora feel sad.”

With a slight smile, Poppi patted his head. She couldn’t help but agree.

Sector 05 Seiran

Level 4 Goldlewis (13/40)
Karin’s @Zoey Boey, Midna’s @DracoLunaris, Blazermate’s @Archmage MC, Geralt @Multi_Media_Man, Benedict’s @Dark Cloud
Word Count: 1632

“You WHAT!?”

Goldlewis stared, mouth agape, at the contingent of Seekers newly returned from the reservoir with the stink and stains to prove it. None of them seemed to be wounded at all, but whether that came as a result of their own performance or of Blazermate’s healing, only they could say. Along with them they brought one hell of a story and a squat, scraggly-haired, part-alien bum wrapped and shivering in a raggedy blanket. Even putting aside the color and translucence of the skin across patches of his body, it didn’t take a genius to tell he wasn’t well. He clammed up the minute the away team brought him in, and just sat in a dark corner where he twitched as if addled by some sort of muscular disorder, muttering things about Suoh, Seiran, psychics, and psifish with varying levels of coherence and consistency. The last of the Bridges renovators spared him a worried look as they left the building, giving the reservoir visitors as wide a berth as they could.

“Lord have mercy, I’m too old for this crap.” Goldlewis gave a groaning sigh. Two men as old or older than himself should have known better than to dive headfirst into that dingy swamp. He removed his glasses and kneaded his wrinkled temples with his palms. “Look, y’all. I don’t mean to be rude or nothin’, but there’s an awful lot ridin’ on us. We can’t afford to run off half-cocked and pick a buncha fights when we don’t know what we’re gettin’ into. I mean, I know I’m new to the Seekers an’ all, but ain’t there gonna be a day y’all kick the wrong hornets’ nest? If those psifish you found were even a smidge more aggressive, they’d’ve popped your noggins like they popped them those doggone ghouls! How d’you know you ain’t got somethin’ in your heads right now? And even putin’ aside all that, we can’t have ya pickin’ up dysentery, parasites, or worse from that stinkin’ bog down there, either.”

He glanced over at the former soldier known as Taro Chalmers, who had yet to drink from the cup of water he’d been given. His face creased itself in pity. “I know y’all wanted to do the right thing, but we ain’t equipped to take care of this poor fella here. He’s hurtin’ somethin’ fierce, both body and mind. All that time spent around psifish musta done a number on him. This man needs a hospital and trained medical professionals. I don’t give a damn whether fusion’s legal or not; the consequences don’t matter if he ain’t alive.” He rubbed his whiskers for a moment, thinking, before he snapped his fingers. “We’ll send him through the portal. Chances are he’ll get better treatment in Sector 7 than here.”

Once that was taken care of, Goldlewis rounded up the whole group. “Alright, listen up now. While y’all were down there, I got some news from Raz. The Psych-OSF op’s moments away from startin’ and it’s happenin’ down in the subway tunnels next to sectors 5 and 6, not far outside the city. Did any o’ ya see any tunnels while pokin’ around down there?” They had not; scouting had been neither a reason for their descent nor a byproduct of the time spent at the reservoir. Goldlewis shrugged helplessly. “Well, I hope you guys ain’t outta steam from all that fightin’, cause we’ve got a doozy of a day ahead of us. The subway’s s’posed to be crawlin’ with Others. Our goal’s to get in and meet up with Peach, Sakura, and Raz. Clear out any monsters in the way, make sure our buds are fine, and figure out whatever we can about Psych-OSF and the Ever Crisis.” He raised a cautionary finger. “One thing. No matter who we run into, this is our story. We’re part of the Special Operations Unit, sent in by Konoe himself to make sure the operation’s runnin’ smoothly. My name oughta be enough to lend us all the credence we need.” He nodded at Benedict. “But havin’ a Turk along should help shore up any doubts.” He grabbed his coffin, flung the massive object over his shoulder like a fall cardigan, and headed for the door. “Now let’s get a move on. On the double!”

Reaching the city’s edge in Seiran proved to be a lot tougher than in the Sector 07 Slums. Rather than walk there, the Seekers needed to find a roundabout path through the skyscrapers via the network of bridges, rooftops, and cable cars. In the end, with what little time they were allotted, they found just one means by which they could descend to earth at the border between reservoir and the wilderness beyond Midgar: a defunct cable car system repurposed into a dangerous zipline. It meant a sizable detour, since the former fishing village at its base lay closer to the edge of Sector 04 than 06, but there were no better options. Unfortunately for Geralt and Benedict, it seemed like switching teams wouldn’t save them from flying along at lip-flapping speeds suspended beneath a length of metal. Luckily, the cables proved tough enough to hold even Goldlewis’ weight, although he requested that Blazermate help provide a little lift on the way down just in case, anyway. Using the zipline, the heroes made it to earth, far from the area of the reservoir that Midna’s crew disturbed earlier, but not quite free of the mire’s grasp.

Before the reservoir’s decline into hideous stagnation, the Stilt Village might’ve been the perfect old-fashioned callback to seafaring Seiran’s maritime roots, alive with hardy inhabitants and wistful vacationers casting baits and nets to dine of the salty lake in a bid to return to the simple, natural life. Now, though, there were no fish to be found, and the carcasses of abandoned fishing vessels festered in their watery graves. Only troglodytes and dying psifish chrysalises now dwelt in the half-collapsed hovels above the putrid red-tinted surf, their insane scratchings seldom audible over the miserable creak of loose, rickety boards.

Goldlewis watched his step carefully, not eager to put a foot through any of these rotten planks and plummet into the contaminated brine. With how long it’d take the team to even reach the subway, they could afford to get tangled up or bogged down anywhere on the way. The UMA in his coffin helped point the way as he guided the Seekers through the Stilt Village’s decrepit maze, heading southeast. His airdash came in handy during big jumps, but the others could find their own ways to get around. He expressly avoided the packs of roving trogs, ghostly chrysalis drifters, and anything that looked particularly loathsome while still making decent time, according to his well-used wristwatch. Even if there was loot to be had in these hovels, left behind as the previous inhabitants fled from the psifish scourge, he wanted no part of it. Nothing wholesome could come out of a place like this, not anymore.

Eventually he found it. Just outside of Stilt Village lay a wooden train station, and beneath it, a single underground platform. Naturally, this had to connect to the rest of the network Raz mentioned, and sure enough, when the team reached the station they found evidence of Psych-OSF presence. “Looks like some kind o’ rally point,” he told the others, taking note of the supplies and communication equipment left here. “Must be plannin’ to come back out this way once folks in the area get done cleanin’ up the tunnels.” He trooped down the stairs toward the platform, using a comm glyph to dial in his location as he went. “All we gotta do is follow in their footsteps.”

Pretty soon, Goldlewis followed them straight into the site of an Other encounter. The underground tunnel opened up into a small enclosed area, mostly ruined and pierced in a few places by large roots. Odd red plants flourished here, including a kind of red flower he hadn’t seen before. Another thing that caught his eye was the Missin Pound pinned to one of the roots, still weakly eking out smoke from the top of the sacklike organ within its cagelike body. A spar of rebar had been forcibly jammed through the rungs of the cage, the sack, and out the other side before the Other had been left to die. Upon noticing the Seekers, it began to exude more smoke, but without much left in the tank it failed to pose even the most tangential of threats. Still, worth noting in the veteran’s eyes. “We’ll be needin’ your scanner of more of these show up to lay down smokescreens,” he told Blazermate. It looked like the Psych-OSF squad went left from this junction, so Goldlewis turned right. After another minute or so that brought the team to a open room lined with old pipes, and barely did they arrive than a pair of Missin Pounds appeared to fill the room with smoke. “There we go,” Goldlewis grunted, although movement in the shadows told him there was more to this ambush. Through the haze came curtain-flapping, antler-bearing Session Pounds, flashing rapidly as they closed in on the newcomers to violently self-destruct. At the same time, some of the locals appeared with a similar strategy, though their charges ended with a violent explosion of corrosive Root Rot instead.

Home of Tears

Level 10 Nadia (149/100)
The Koopa Troop’s @DracoLunaris, Primrose and Therion’s @Yankee, Sectonia’s @Archmage MC, Jesse’s @Zoey Boey, Ganondorf’s @Double, Rubick’s @Scarifar, Teemo’s @Bugman, Ichiban’s @Truthhurts22, the Knight
Word Count: 2142

Just as Nadia pulled her arm back to hurl her box cutter away, Ichiban suddenly -and unexpectedly- interceded. Someone with a lick of sense in his head might have attempted to grab her throwing arm rather than jumping in the way of a very-soon-to-be flying weapon, but his chosen method of stopping her short was brave, foolhardy, and effective; though unable to completely stop herself in time, the moment the frizzy-haired man placed himself in her path, Nadia managed to instinctively detach her own forearm to stop herself going through with the throw. “Hey!?”

Her box cutter blade clattered to the floor along with her arm, and Endogeny went for it. Even if the fetch amounted to only a couple feet, the monster bounded toward Nadia, flecking a strange liquid from its orifice. Seemingly unaware of its massive weight and powerful gelatinous body, it accidentally knocked the feral off her feet as it went to retrieve her sword, although the sudden fall surprised Nadia a lot more than it hurt her. She scooped up and reattached her arm, then got up to see Endogeny offering her the weapon it retrieved, its tails undulating proudly. “Oh,” she muttered, gingerly retrieving her box cutter to make extra sure she didn’t hurt the critter. Despite everything, it still seemed to be a dog, and a good dog at that.

Jesse showed up, and she wasn’t too happy about the halt in forward progress. “No need to waise the woof,” Nadia hissed under her breath. “Just go another way. There was another staircase, right?

Ichiban then revealed his plan, which turned out to be a lot better than Nadia’s. In hindsight, sacrificing her brand-new (and expensive) weapon just to the amalgamate off her back wasn’t one of her brighter schemes. “Ohh, that’s a…a smart idea, yeah.” As Ichiban fed Endogeny delectable sausages from his pocket reserves, which the amalgamate accepted into its unfathomable gullets with gusto, the cat burglar marveled at the foresight it took to make such careful preparations. “Good thinkin’, Ichi. If I lost my sword dealin’ with this dog, it woulda been ‘ruff’.” Despite being in his forties and being kind of a doof, Ichiban had been doing well in the Soul Sanctum so far. He could hold his own against some of the foes the team ran up against, and he did not push his luck against the more powerful horrors that reared their ugly heads. The fact alone that he chose to accompany the crew to such a dangerous and ill-omened place when a handful of their own did not suggested that he might be hero material himself.

When all those shapeless wretches first started showing up, always appearing from odd angles and often attacking either silently or a few at a time, things had been something of a scramble for the Seekers. Of course, things could only be so creepy with Bowser and Sectonia around. The former promptly went on a rampage backed up by a posse of offense-oriented Kamek clones, nearly setting fire to the tower’s dry, dusty interior with their flame in their eagerness to mow down all the spooks. Sectonia, meanwhile, flooded the rooms and halls with her antlions, packing them like sardines to pound any haunts into submission the moment they appeared. Together the royals and their cohorts did a lot to diminish this place’s atmosphere. That said, the patients still posed a threat with their manic, flailing strength, and the farther the group went into the Soul Sanctum the more they got spread out, each forced to contend with their own handful of threats. Unless something ridiculous showed up, though, Nadia figured she’d see the others again at the top.

She turned her attention away from the staircase and the distant noises of combat and back to Endogeny. After happily glutting itself on Ichiban’s food, the amalgamate leaned its dripping, amorphous body on him, twitching affectionately. “Huh. Furrykey as it looks, it’s actually kinda cute.” Not having to kill everything in her path was honestly kind of nice. Though she didn’t want to put away her sword in case something else showed up, Nadia switched it to her off hand, then went over and stroked Endogeny just to try and make sure it was happy. The tarry substance around its gaping pit-face began bubbling up into a happiness froth, and its epidermis quivered with what might have been a contented sigh. Nadia considered giving the monster a tummy rub, but she couldn’t tell exactly where the tummy began or ended. Idly she wondered what could have happened to make this creature like this, or if it just started out this way. Either way, with Endogeny essentially pacified, Ichiban could slowly ease its bulk off his body and join Nadia on their continued ascent through the Soul Sanctum.

Nadia continued to climb with a spring in her step despite the eeriness ambiance and haunted atmosphere, her wellspring of energy topped up by her surprisingly heartwarming encounter with Endogeny. Few of the creatures she met on the way up, however, proved to be as pliable. Her keen senses and reflexes spared her a nasty contusion courtesy of a patient patiently waiting just through a doorway. When it swung its rusted IV pole at her she popped her head off as she went low. She planted one of her feet in the side of its knee, taking its spindly leg out at the load-bearing joint, then drove her box cutter upward straight through its bag-head. Her own slammed down on top of the sack with the help of a blood rocket from her neck, pushing it further onto the blade, and from there Nadia could run up the wall and flip over the patient to carve the bloated bag clean in half. What sludged out onto the floor didn’t bear looking at, and the smell nearly made Nadia convulse, so she popped her head back on and hurried on her way.

After a few more scraps, she reached a strange room near the top. At first she thought the room had been overgrown by a strange leafy plant, but as the fronds moved she realized that they must be hordes of butterflies, and the feral spotted a handful of strange creatures. Pallid, bulbous, and ill-defined, they stood around with empty eyes as if waiting for her to make a move. There were no Mistakes or Follies here, nor patients, just these bizarre humanoids. Nadia swallowed, unsheathed her other box cutter, then began to move forward, one step at a time. She tried to give the Everymen a wide berth, but when she got near any of them they turned their empty sockets on her, and before she made it through one quickly started to plod her way. The cat burglar’s nerves wouldn’t let her stand still. “Fuzz off!” She sliced through it with her blades, cutting through it like butter, but Everyman barely seemed to register her slices. It headbutted her right in the nose, and with a growl she pivoted on her heel and kicked its head clean off.

The monster stumbled back, then without ceremony, grew another head. A chill ran through Nadia’s body as the hair on the back of her neck stood up; around the room, the butterflies took wing. They clustered together on the heads of the Everymen, causing them to writhe and thrash, and make muted cries of pain. The one Nadia hit tottered toward her, butterflies swarming around it, its arms outstretched. “Screw this!” With a yowl the feral ducked under its arms, slammed a Purrge of Vengeance orb into its back to blow it apart in a watery explosion, then ran for the door.

A few moments and a couple staircases later, Nadia’s run finally slowed to a jog, and after another few seconds she came to a stop. The roar of drumming rain sounded a lot louder now, and a peek through a nearby window confirmed that she was pretty high up. This floor looked like a cross=shaped hallway that intersected four rooms, with three staircases leading down and just one leading up. There must be multiple routes through the Soul Sanctum to get here, Nadia realized, but only one way forward. That meant the others might have run into different frights and foes on their way up, and that things could be different for her going back down, too. Like hell I am, I’ll just claw my way down the outside, she resolved. One thing did perturb her: she could see colorful lights beneath one of the hallway doors, and hear various noises coming from within. Curious, she moved closer. It sounded like music, sound effects, and a variety of voices in a language that Nadia didn’t understand. Was someone watching something in there? Nadia didn’t know who would choose to live in a place like this, but IGV’s letter mentioned the top floor, so this couldn’t be him. She rubbed her nose and sat down to wait for the other Seekers.

Once everyone arrived, they proceeded to the top floor. Here, the rain pounded down on the glass windows in the dome ceiling, reinforced with veins of wrought iron like leaves. Except for discarded tablets and a single chair, this floor appeared to be a single wide-open room, with no spooks or surprises beyond the lone figure who stood opposite the stairs, a mage or perhaps a scholar, his back to the Seekers as they climbed up. At the noise he turned, sweeping his fine cloak aside, and regarded the newcomers with a politely interested expression, as if they’d just related an anecdote he was supposed to find amusing. He wore an exquisite blue robe, hemmed with gold, as well as a floppy brown hat atop well-kept shoulder-length black hair, and his sunken eyes were no less dark. In his hand he held a red tome, embossed with gold, and after his brief dramatic movement his cape settled neatly behind him. “Good morning,” he greeted the Seekers, his voice deep, silky, and as refined as his appearance. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. I am Iguana Gallo Valletto.

“IGV,” Nadia said aloud, her brain cells audibly rubbing together.

“How adroit,” Gallo purred, glancing coolly around the assembled heroes and villains. “You certainly came in force. I’m glad. I trust the poor creatures down below gave you no trouble?”

Chuckling through her nose, Nadia stabbed her box cutters into the carpet and crossed her arms, her tail flicking behind her. “Ghosts and such don’t spook us. We’re big game haunters by now. What up with those things, though?”

“The pitiful products of vast and varied attempts to harness the power of souls for their own ends,” Gallo explained with a shrug. “Some by their own mistaken hands. Others not so much. Such is the price for meddling in matters beyond one’s own comprehension.” He tilted his head, a thin smile spreading on his lips. “A price that I hope we can help one another exact upon one most deserving.”

Nadia leaned against the wall. “Well, we came to hear you out, so let’s hear it.”

“Very well.” Gallo crossed the room, seated himself in the chair, tented his fingers, and began to speak. “By now you’ve heard of Gallo Tower, I’m sure? It is named after its creator–me. Originally, my tower was a place of artifacts and experiments, an edifice of science and sorcery where my glorious research was once synonymous with the word ‘progress’. Perhaps you may have heard of my famous Relics? The Glass Vizard, the Magic Banger, the Ars Gouda, or the legendary Randomazzo?” Despite the flair with which he said it, Gallo received only blank stares. “...No? Not a one? Argh.” He cleared his throat. “Regardless, those days are long gone. Now, Gallo Tower is merely the sty of that little…pig. Consul P.”

The words dripped with such venom that Nadia couldn’t help but take notice. “Oof, yeah. So you got it out for P-brain, too?”

Her response seemed to please Gallo. “Indeed!” he smiled grimly. “He is cantankerous, capricious, selfish, spoiled rotten, immature, rude, and frankly, stupid. He treats me as no more than a mere manservant–me, Iguana Gallo Valetto!” The man pounded the cover of his tome in anger, accidentally releasing a few tiny Dust Elementals that he quickly brushed away. Clearing his throat again, he continued. “Regrettably, I haven’t the means to oppose him. P’s toadies know I am much aggrieved, and I could do little by myself. But if for whatever reason your organization seeks P’s downfall as well, I can provide all the information you need…to orchestrate his undoing.”

“Purr-etty temptin’...” While she didn’t want to speak for the others, Nadia thought that sounded pretty good. “Well, it couldn’t hurt to tell us at this point, right? We’re already kinda stuck together since either of us could rat the other out to P.”

Gallo nodded. “But of course. There are just three things you need to know. One is that, while powerful, P is a simpleton. He is a woefully unfit ruler, and in fact, does not practice any ‘rulership’ other than shamelessly lording about and doing whatever he pleases. He doesn’t monitor the city, set up patrols, or do anything. If a problem arises, he solves it through brute force alone. This means that he knows neither who or where his enemies are, and that you can confront him directly…once you know my other two details.”

Gallo carefully opened his tome to leaf through its contents. “Two is that he is not completely alone. He leaves all his duties to the cronies I mentioned before, the ‘Agarthans’, better known as ‘Those Who Slither in the Dark.’ They are a troublesome group, none especially remarkable alone, but if allowed to rally together in support of P by a brash attack on his person, their devious tricks might prove...rather difficult to overcome.” The scholar looked up at the Seekers. “That is why I recommend you hunt down and take out their elites before challenging P. Without their leaders, the roaches will soon scurry back into the dark. So listen well.” Person by person, he began to spill the beans. “Solon is their Dark Bishop. He disguises himself as a cleric named Tomas, and works as a teacher in the Home of Tears’ largest school in the western district. Kronya is their Head Assassin. She leads a double life as Monika, a red-haired mage found often in the Amusement Park. Cleobulus is their Grand Sorceress, and she moonlights as Cornelia, the glamorous gala queen of the Royal District’s high society, seldom far from its grandest club. In her case, I urge discretion. Finally, there is Thales.” Gallo pursed his lips. “He is their leader, and he almost never leaves Shambhala, his headquarters. It will be difficult to dispose of him beforehand, unless you infiltrate Shambhala itself. Still, something should be done.”

“The last thing you should understand is that P is, first and foremost, a child. He is woefully immature and prone to fits of emotion. When on the verge of defeat, he will likely flee to his sanctum to hide, which we ‘servants’ masterminded in case of emergency. It is heavily safeguarded and may in fact be impregnable, but if one or two of you go there while the others fight him, you will be able to finish him the moment he arrives. And this is where it is.” Gallo offered the Seekers a diagram, and with that, he was finished.