Member
Lunamaria Hawke
Snowdrops
Saa
Kuro
rabidbacon
Tlaloc
Crimson Flame
Sky Blue
GubGar
Hollow Bough - Stranga
Level 12 Nadia (89/120)
Primrose and Therion’s @Yankee, Artorias’ @Dark Cloud, Nadia's @Lugubrious,
Stetson the Scout, Paintbrush the Gunner
Word Count: 13,116 (+14 exp)
The Hollow Bough. So far, it had been an unpleasant trip, the present company excluded. Between the uneven paths lined by treacherous plants and grass and the armored bugs that scuttled throughout the area, the going had been rough. Not to mention, none of the Seekers really knew what they should be looking for destination wise, only the item they'd been tasked with retrieving. So it was that when arriving at a larger hollowed out area occupied by some dwarves, Primrose and Therion were grateful to their guide Tingyun for arranging better passage through the area.
Then a swarm came through, something expected from the way the dwarves reacted. A flurry of action began not long after, along with shots fired, spells slung, and insect chunks flying. For the Travelers, whatever chitin their weapons couldn't break through their fire spells made up for. Therion ended up taking an approach aiming for the bugs' weak spots with little trouble reaching them between his good accuracy and his feline form. Primrose continued to test out her new lance, and though she delighted at the freezing flames that flared from each impact point she ended up relying more on her magic in the end. She was still a novice with this type of weapon.
And finally when things died down, it was time to help fulfill the condition for their passage up. For that everyone split into two groups, each towards a separate "generator" they'd be looking to handle. With the Koopa family all sticking together in one direction, the majority of the remaining Seekers took the other - which meant that Primrose, Therion, and Artorias all tagged along with Nadia, Tingyun, Paintbrush, and Stetson.
Though Therion wondered how much the stuff the dwarves were mining might be worth, he kept his hands to himself unless it was to deal with roaming glyphids. He waited with Tingyun and Paintbrush for the lift while Primrose floated up to follow Nadia and Stetson, among the first to get a peek at what was to come.
A mostly mute Artorias huffed and puffed following the subsequent scuffle as he walked apace behind the others, though this seemed naught but a mundane trek through the caves he kept himself satisfied with the challenge the strange insect creatures called 'glyphids' seemed to present. They weren't exactly much but they came in numbers. A wonder it was they seemed the only other threat within the Hollow Bough.
Though the previous area was much more fitting to what they expected when venturing subterranean (cramped tunnels, cragged rock, perilous pathways, dangerous bugs, and darkness especially), the new one was more like what they'd actually been finding in the Under. Bright, sometimes beautiful areas ensconced in the earth like their own separate little bubbles.
Primrose gingerly touched the suspended water art. It stayed put while she waved her hand up and down inside, feeling the water resistance.
"I wouldn't be surprised if this could support a person. You could swim in the air," she said, and then thought privately to herself, though sights like these hardly come as a surprise to me anymore in the first place. Though not surprising per se, the phenomena was no less amazing, as Ms. Fortune had exclaimed.
The look on Therion's face clearly said he wasn't going to test out swimming. He tread a little farther into the cavern, eyeing the pitch dark faces of the sunflowers. Then he glanced at the cable they'd been following. Though they'd already come this far he found himself asking, "if this thing is feeding energy to that 'Caretaker,' wouldn't it be easier to cut off the flow than whatever it is we're going to do...?"
Stetson gave the thief a dubious look. “We got one dwarf who tried to be clever like that a while back. Spent all his ammo tryin’ to shoot it to bits, didn’t even get ‘alfway through. Figured ‘e’d use ‘is pickaxe to finish the job. Turns out the power that flows through these cables flows through dwarves just fine, too.” Leaving what became of the enterprising dwarf to Therion’s imagination, he crossed his arms and resumed his scan of the room while the thief grimaced. This especially alien ecology was hard to make heads or tails of. “Since we can’t bust in through the outside, we usually call down a hackin’ drone to mess it up from the inside. Won’t take long if we keep it safe.”
"Hmph, thou make it sound as if dwarves aren't the smartest bunch." Artorias said with an amused snort as he imagined what played out with the dwarf Stetson spoke of "How is it that these strange cables you speak of give magic to such strange contraptions?" asked the knight whom was unfamiliar with most machinery.
His remark made both Paintbrush and Stetson angry at him. “Figure it out for yourself if you’re so damn smart,” the latter grumbled.
Artorias tilted his head "Hm, my apologies it twas not my intention to offend thee. Thou are strange people and things to my eyes, for I come from a land where naught exist." the knight gave the cable a cautious nudge before retreating after either being electrocuted or not.
At the moment, Nadia was more interested in testing out Primrose’s hypothesis. She scrambled up one of the nearby pillars, her claws sinking into the vines with refreshing ease. With the nasty Bough Wasps and their horrible nests left far behind, she felt confident enough to unzip her jacket all the way once she’d climbed to the top. Then she crouched down, pressurized her blood, wiggled her tails, and pounced upward into the pool a dozen feet above with a splash. Going against gravity, she only got about halfway in before she started to sink back out fast, but with some furious paddling the feral managed to immerse herself completely. It was cold, cold enough to give her goosebumps, but the water was surprisingly clear and overall, rather nice. Delighted, she kicked her legs and swam through the pool, her ponytail streaming behind her. When she reached the top, Massachusetts’ power engaged to bring her onto the surface.
For a moment Nadia struggled, since this new manifestation of the shipgirl’s rigging was a lot bigger than the old one, but to her surprise the arms deployed on their own and extended to act as weaponized stabilizers. “...Oh!” In addition to not knowing that her new rigging could do this until just this moment, she hadn’t featured functional cannons since her fusion with Northampton at Blackwater Bay. When she took aim at a floating brain monster and willed the guns to fire, a double-shot of Hydro missiles burst forth to track down the creature and detonate against its vermillion lobes. After a couple more experimental volleys, the mutant popped, the flower on its head preventing it from ever fighting back. “Hah! Well, how about that!” Grinning, Nadia skated over to the edge of the floating pool and waved down at the others. “Well? Water you waitin’ for?”
His feelings on swimming clear, Therion began moving on little by little while Primrose only looked up at the feral and shook her head. Tingyun waved back, but also did not seem eager to soak her fine outfit or well-groomed tail. “I’ll leave the cave diving to you if you don’t mind, Ms. Fortune!” meanwhile knight Artorias simply shrugged, at this point he knew words alone were less likely to sway Ms. Fortune so he let her do as she must while he stayed behind with the others as he wasn't much for swimming.
From high up, Nadia could get a better view of this cavern’s layout. In addition to the large pink tube flowers that took in and then shot out water from the blue bulbs, there appeared to be green metal pipes that also ran in and out of the terrain, which she hadn’t noticed before among the green vines. Primrose recognized it, since the one she, Rubick, and the Troop took between Ash Lake and the Home of Tears was similar. She could also see more weird critters than before. In addition to the giant caterpillars and glyphids with flowers in their heads, there were a couple very round purple hippos, piranha plants with legs, and two small families of elephant slugs that floated and played in the air. Those are weirdly cute, the feral thought, though since she already had a new pet she made sure to give Chucho an affectionate scratch when he nuzzled her. Sometimes the critters went in and out of the green pipes the same way the blue bulbs’ water blasts navigated the flower tubes. Nadia also saw one problem, though. The cable leading to the Power Station disappeared into one of the walls, and she couldn’t see any way in.
Well…that wasn’t strictly true. Seeing one of the pink flowers sticking out of the wall nearby, Nadia got an idea. She skated a ways across the pool, then jumped off the side. After falling for a moment, she spent a little blood to airdash back into the pool from the side, then swam down to and dropped out the bottom. She landed on a yellow pole flower that swayed beneath her, then leaped to another. One last big flower on the ground looked like the perfect landing spot to get her close to her destination. When she landed on it, though, the flower promptly stood up with her on top of it, standing over twelve feet tall on giant, very human-looking green legs. It started to move, not walking but sliding with gyrations of its feet, and Nadia quickly jumped off. She somersaulted a couple times and landed on her feet, then turned to watch the flower slide off onto a pond of poisonous purple slime, her expression one of subtly horrified confusion. When she recovered a moment later, she approached the pink funnel flower, only to find its innards sealed tight.
“Ah, man,” Nadia grumbled. “I thought I could climb in ‘cause the water shoots straight through these things, but I guess this one’s closed.” Clawing at it, or the vine-covered wall for that matter, didn’t seem to work. As the feral found out, the plant matter regenerated with alarming speed. She turned to face the others with a shrug. “Guess I’ll ‘petal’ my bright ideas elsewhere.”
Primrose floated over to where Nadia was, pressing a hand to the dirt packed wall once she touched down.
"I suppose digging through isn't an option," she said, mostly to herself. If it was possible it would risk damaging the cable, and as Stetson had warned that didn't seem like a good idea. She took a few steps away from the wall and pointed out the closest piping.
"We can probably use those to get around this area. There was one connecting the lake and the city together, that's how we got in. Of course, there's no telling where they lead without going through them..." The pipes were interwoven through plant life and the walls and ceilings of the cavern, making tracing their routes impossible from there.
To demonstrate, Primrose floated up to one of the pipe openings. If she recalled correctly, getting transported through was almost automatic. She looked back to smile at the others before she went zip into it to see where it led.
As she did that, Therion glanced at Ms. Fortune. "Maybe your water copies could get through those flowers," he suggested. Just to see what was on the other side of the wall at least, considering the rest of them couldn't use the same route. As for himself, Therion had been testing a few things already. They already knew anything with those pink flowers growing out of them didn't fight back and hardly moved at all, and wondering if that was true for the rest of the flowers blooming in here he'd pitched a few knives at them. Silly maybe, as most reacted in the usual way a plant would (as in not at all), but the knife he'd thrown into the center of the sunflowers had gone through and disappeared, making them either yet another way to get around or a creepy trap into a dark void. Unbeknownst to him, it emerged from another random void sunflower elsewhere in the room and stuck into a vine beneath it.
While Nadia didn’t particularly want to find out where her fellow thief’s knife went, his other suggestion made her snap her fingers, an elated smile on her face. “Oh, yeah! Great idea!” Taking hold of her right wrist with her left hand, she pulled it off and then channeled blood from the stump to create a new copycat. Compelled by her wishes, her clone jogged back a short way, then took a running jump at the flower it promptly opened up, swallowed the copycat whole, and then spat it out on the other side. After a couple seconds of waiting, Nadia blinked a couple times, then straightened up and gave a shrug “Well, uh, I guess it worked, heheh. For all the good it does us. Guess my copycat’s all aclone over there ‘til we find a way through.” Scratching her head, she turned and looked around the cavern. Thanks to those big blue bulbs, there were water spouts and large water bubbles flying around all over the place. If only any happened to be heading in this direction.
At that time Primrose emerged from the other end of the pipe she’d climbed into. Shooting headfirst at high speed through the chute’s pitch-black interior probably hadn’t been pleasant, but when Nadia spotted her across the cavern the dancer looked none the worse for wear. The feral waved at her friend when she saw her. Unfortunately, Primrose looked no closer to her objective. Further experimentation with those strange tunnels would confirm that most of the pipes led circuitous paths around this biome. “Guess it was a pipe dream, eh?”
Not one to just offer criticism, Nadia then tried some experimentation of her own. While the dwarves tried different weapons to see if any worked on the plants, and Tingun boosted their attack before joining in alongside them, an idea drove her to approach one of the bubble-spitting bulbs. She positioned herself in the path of its next water blast, and when it fired, the bubble promptly knocked her flat. Left drenched (again) and sputtering on the ground, she couldn’t help but laugh at herself when the others glanced over. “Pff,” she giggled, knowing she probably looked like an idiot. “Don’t worry, I got this. Check it out.”
She picked herself up and went for the bulb itself. Much to her displeasure, her phagophobia filled her with panic at the prospect of clinging past the bulb’s green lips and into what looked like a mouth, but Nadia squeezed her eyes shut and steeled herself. When she finally took the plunge, the bulb promptly spat her back out, immersed in a bubble of water that flew through the air. It soared right into a curved pink tube flower, took a hard right, and shot out again in a new direction. The next second the bubble burst against the fulcrum of another tube flower, right in the middle of its meaty green stem, and after smacking against it Nadia fell once more. “Aww, c’mon!” she groaned, dizzy from the flight and dazed by the impact. She didn’t notice that her impact against the straight tube flower caused the whole plant to swivel ninety degrees so that one flower was pointed toward the exit of the previous tube. When the next water bubble sailed overhead, it went right in and carried on, flying until it encountered another tube flower or a hard surface.
Though Nadia hadn't noticed it, her companions certainly had. Disappointed by the piping and creeped out by the flowers, Primrose and Therion respectively had turned their attention to Ms. Fortune's new attempt when the dwarves' own didn't yield any success just yet. As the Dancer picked her way back closer to the others (hopping from plant to plant instead of taking the unpleasant pipe back), Therion got the feral's attention and indicated the flower-vine-tube amalgamation that she'd crashed into.
"You might have actually figured it out," he said. "Look, it turned."
His eyes traced some invisible path over the nearest flower tubes towards farther ones, trying to see how they might fit together. Once he had some idea in mind he ran towards one of them, jumping and pushing off the sturdy green stalk to strike its center mass and see it move. When subjected to a hard enough blow, the tube flower rotated dutifully. The same held true for all other pink flowers, able to shift between one of four cardinal positions, although for the straight tubes it was functionally two. However, yellow tube flowers couldn’t be rotated, requiring Therion to work around them. Bit by bit the path of the water bubble got longer and more convoluted.
When Nadia saw the vision, she joined in to help, although after messing with one that her fellow thief already had what she wanted she opted to follow his lead instead. Not that she couldn’t figure it out, of course; it’d just be faster to let Therion do it at this point.
While they went at it, Miss Tingyun came over to join Primrose. As it turned out, Stetson and Paintbrush had found a few cubes of Bismor, so they promptly left their fruitless endeavor for the thieves to solve and went to mine up the glossy yellow, orange-spiked mineral whilst the Seeker's resident knight went about to deal with any threat that appeared with swift brutality.
That left the Foxian to seek company from the next most elegant lady around. It seemed she was the chatty type. “Quite the cast of characters you’ve assembled,” she began. “What could possibly bring you all together, let alone to the depths of the earth?”
"You haven't even seen the half of it," Primrose replied, tone pleasant and words bordering on playful. She thought of shadow princesses, robot girls and nopons; the types that also made up their eclectic group in other parts of the world. Letting the thieves work on their flower path, with Nadia taking the plunge to see if each new orientation worked, the dancer gave Tingyun her attention.
"It's a complex and, frankly, unbelievable tale," she said. And one you won't be able to truly grasp, not yet anyway. "But I can give you the abridged version, if you like."
Her cordial manner and connotative words stoked the flames of the Foxian’s curiosity further. “Please.”
The sigh Primrose let out was almost wistful. Oh, where to start...? She took a moment to craft her tale, make it palatable for someone still glowing with sunset light to understand. She would like to free Tingyun, in the long run, but for now she only spoke.
"Most of us were displaced from our homes. Suddenly, violently. And after being dumped in a totally new, wrong place we were fooled into believing everything was normal... for a time. When our eyes were opened, we naturally came together to find a way to return home. Come to find out that everything was done by one... person, thing. An entity like a force of nature, or so it seems. I'm not sure what kind of place you're from, Tingyun, so it may come as a surprise to you to know this villain is of the cosmic variety." She paused there for a moment to let the words, however vague, sink in. "So we are allies of circumstance, trying to destroy this villain and set things right. Saving the world, you could say. As for how we ended up here, underground, well..."
Primrose continued by regaling Tingyun with a condensed version of their trek, starting from Gerudo Town and through the mess at the train station, ending with the fact that something they needed to complete their goal was down here, and they needed a relic from the Hollow Bough to get there. Tingyun listened, as politely interested as one could possibly be in the face of so many unfamiliar names and places.
As the dancer’s story-in-brief came to a close, the burglars struck gold. The latest flower layout that Therion set up turned out to be just the ticket as Nadia, who by now was soaked through and shivering thanks to the cool cavern air, climbed in the water bulb one final time. Once spat out in another water bubble, she flew through the carefully-laid sequence of pink and yellow tubes, going through turn after turn until she was so dizzy that Nadia didn’t even realize when her bubble shot into the final flower. She disappeared from the others’ view, successfully delivered to parts unknown. That meant that all the others needed to do was follow in her footsteps.
Naturally, this prospect didn’t please everyone. “Well, looks like it’s time to get our feet wet,” Stetson grumbled, tugging at his whiskers. “Damn water’s gonna mess up my beard.”
Having been distracted by Primrose, Tingyun went wide-eyed as she realized what she needed to do. “Wait. Can’t we talk about this?” She hugged her tail defensively.
"Nope. I did all the work, so everyone else gets to take a swim," Therion called from where he stood beneath the complex path. Though he'd gotten splashed plenty whenever tube-tester Nadia had splattered against a dead end, his tone implied he wasn't planning to go through himself. For all the uncertainty surrounding getting spat through an intricate connection of living hoses, mostly he just didn't want to get any wetter than he already was. His cat ears were low against his head, flicking some droplets off.
Tingyun huffed. “Well, if you’re not going through, it’s clearly not that important. I should stay behind with you–what if another one of those grabbers shows up?”
“Much I’d like to say to quit whinin’, she’s got a point,” Stetson mentioned. “Damn cave leeches’ll rip your ‘ead off if you ain’t got someone to get you free.” He didn’t plan to back down, though. After Paintbrush held on to his turban and jumped into the bulb, Stetson grabbed hold of his cowboy hat and did the same. In quick succession both dwarves got flushed through the system and into the cave on the other side of the vine wall.
Therion ran a hand down his face. He didn't want to deal with leeches or water but realistically, sticking together would be the safest option. After the dwarves disappeared through, he gestured for Tingyn and Primrose to take their turns.
"Fine. We'll all go. Ladies first."
"How very thoughtful," Primrose said, light and sarcastic, but she approached the water bulb all the same. She expertly kept the grimace from her face as she prepared to lower herself into it.
"Unfortunately, that whole ‘saving the world’ thing often brings us to the most unpleasant places and situations, compared to that a little water is nothing," she told Tingyun just before she jumped in and was spat out through the flowers.
Tingyun shot a look at Therion. “Such a gentleman.” With a defeated sigh she climbed into the bulb, then shot through the chain of organic pipes to emerge one very sodden and disgruntled Foxian. Very reluctantly, the final member of their group went after her.
After reaching the other side of the final flower, Nadia burst into a new grotto dimly lit by various glowing mushrooms and bulbs. As the water around her soaked into the plant-blanketed soil, the feral got to her feet gingerly, holding Chucho to her chest. If only the ghostly pup actually gave off any warmth. She didn’t mind getting wet anymore, and this was hardly new to her at this point, but a dip in warm waters beneath a tropical sun felt a lot better than getting drenched in a chilly cave. This was almost as bad as the caves beneath Carcass Isle…almost. At least it felt lively in here, however strange these plants and animals might be. All around her she could see more weird flowers, whether they gave off light, span like pinwheels, or danced to this biome’s natural rhythm. There was also one of those void sunflowers; hopefully it led back to the previous room. She didn’t spot any enemies, but she did see her copycat, standing in the middle of the grotto with her arms crossed and her feet tapping impatiently.
“Oh, there ya are,” the feral said breathily, putting on a smile. “For a minute there I thought ya’d go off and left me a lass half empty. Guess my blood runs deep, though. I should learn to b-positive.” She gave her copycat a high-five, and when the clone burst on impact Nadia soaked her blood back up.
“Haha, good one!” a cheerful voice said.
Pivoting her head around with her eyebrows raised, Nadia spotted a yellow flower with eyes. “Oh cool, a talkin’ flower,” she remarked, not even surprised at this point. “Thanks, little guy! I purr-ide myself on my sense of humor, ‘specially seein’ as I’m pun-derground and all.” Hoping to air dry at least a little while she waited for the others, she took off her jacket and tried flapping it, albeit with limited success thanks to the added weight of the rigging on the back.
One by one the rest of the party came through the same way Nadia did. As soon as Primrose was back on her feet she conjured a flame in both hands, shedding some warmth.
Her spell elicited a gasp of wonderment from the talking flower. “Whoa, that’s so bright!” She looked down at the unfamiliar voice, though any greeting she might have offered the flower was interrupted.
“Ohh, you’re a lifesaver,” Nadia sang, drawn to Primrose’s warmth like a moth to flame. Although a little less shamelessly, the others joined in, with Tingyun in particular wringing out and then wagging her tail to try and dry it out as fast as possible. “Ya know, I’ll admit,” the feral began. “We do a lot of fightin’, and I feel purr-etty well ‘kitted out for that, but this kinda goes to show that we could really be prepared in other ways. In fact, we’ve been crazy lucky. I mean, we barely scrounged up enough light to get this far. One wrong step in the dark, and we woulda been worm chow back there. What if we ran into boilin’ lava or freezin’ cold down here? If we didn’t fight our way through a place literally called ‘Pizza Tower’ we might not even have food.”
Primrose didn't reply, but she thought that Nadia was right. Something to think about for the future, though it was hard to prepare when you have no idea what to expect. Case in point this entirely strange area of the Under they found themselves in now, not to mention even stranger ones like the bloody river some had found at the bottom of The Basement. There was also the fact that some of the basic gear they'd brought hadn't seen any use... and, one contingent of Seekers had very nearly succumbed to freezing cold on the peak of Split Mountain. "Lucky" was an understatement... In fact, when she thought more about it, maybe luck was only a part of it. They were being guided by a heavy hand towards the Dreamcatcher, so it was more than possible they were being helped in little ways too.
All this worried Tingyun quite a lot actually, but she put on a brave face and gave a tittering laugh that she tried her best to keep her nervousness out of. “Well, they do say that the fate of a journey is often decided before taking the first step.”
Stetson was a little less charitable. “Sounds like a bloody miracle you all ain’t died ‘orrible deaths yet,” he told her as Paintbrush ruefully shook his head. Unable to argue with him, Nadia just shrugged.
"Basically, yeah," Therion agreed.
Artorias’s little experience with the Seekers thus far dictated it was less fate than getting by with the skin of their necks that kept them alive more importantly alive as a group.
The knight nodded "We survive because we work together, it would be suicide to go alone especially in dangerous places such as this."
Once sufficiently warm and dry, Nadia bid farewell to the talking flower and the team got moving. Their resident Scout led the way, following the cable whenever the tunnel forked or expanded into another grotto. His blue flares kept the way brightly lit, even if the shadows they cast seemed even more unnervingly dark than normal. Around the explorers, the flora and fauna continued to bemuse and unnerve them. There were strange fruits that Nadia had never seen before, at least for the most part; when she discovered a bush laden with cube-shaped strawberries, she tried one, which she found pleasantly sweet and tart. Less pleasant were the eye plants, which came in different varieties but all swiveled to watch the heroes go by. At one point the team ran into a small flock of Dorky Faces, strange creatures that seemed to be a mix of jellyfish and withered onion. As funny as they looked, their Funny Breath was paradoxically much less amusing, inflicting confusion on anyone who got too close. After getting thrown for a loop himself, Stetson drunkenly sicced Paintbrush on them, who minced the Dorky Faces with his rocket launcher.
Not long after that, the tunnel culminated in a wall of dirt, which the dwarves took as a sign of progress and immediately started dismantling with their customized pickaxes. On the other side lay what the team was looking for, situated in what might be this extraordinary cave system’s most fantastical cavern yet. It was huge, shaped roughly like an immense egg laying on its side, with the floor sloping down as it stretched out before the explorers. Aside from green vines that formed tall pillars or hung between them, every inch of the floor, walls, and top-heavy rock formations lay beneath a blanket of velvety pink or purple moss, some of which bloomed with small white flowers. Nadia could see two main points of interest: the Power Station they’d come to find, which the cable naturally led straight to, and the oversized flower pot standing (literally, given its little green legs) in the center of the room. It had (proportionally) little arms to go along with its legs, one akimbo and the other flexing to hold up a swing, a pink-and-white hula hoop, and a spiral ramp that led up to what looked like a domed house at the top, perched above the rim of leaves. Daisies sprouted from its sides, and at the very top sat a huge pink flower, its center large enough for Bowser to fit through. Warm light blazed through the windows, some of which took the form of a face on the flower pot’s front.
Nadia crossed her arms and shook her head, as bemused as she was amazed. “And here I thought it couldn’t get any weirder.”
“Wonder if anyone lives there,” Stetson mentioned, tugging his whiskers. “Someone better check it out while we call down the hackin’ pod. Don’t you lot all run over though, we need more hands to set up the data nodes good an’ proper.” Once again since nobody would explain to him what exactly this machinery did, Artorias was left a bit clueless as to what or how data nodes worked.
Paintbrush was already on his way over, and once he used his radio to confirm the Power Station’s position, a dwarven machine drilled down through the ceiling a few moments later. It landed a few hundred feet away from the Power Station, so the dwarves got busy linking them together. If the house had looked unoccupied, Therion would have gone to take a peek at what might be inside - but since a lodger was possible (even probable) he stayed behind to help the dwarves. The faster it was done, the faster they could leave. After taking a node out of the hacking pod, a stake protruded from the bottom they could use to plant it in the moss, and by tossing the nodes down the chain they quickly set up a stream of bright green digits flowing all the way from pod to station. Meanwhile, Nadia, Primrose, and Tingyun paid the strange house a visit. That meant jogging up a ramp wide enough to admit a car, and once they reached the top, Nadia went ahead and knocked on the door.
“Like, just a minuuuuuute~”
Nadia’s brows shot up, extremely surprised by the extreme valley girl accent that just accosted her ears. “Oh, I’m lookin’ forward to this.”
After some rummaging, a couple crashes, and noises that sounded suspiciously like cartoon sound effects, the door popped open. Out sauntered what the feral could only begin to describe as an alien plant woman, since while she looked like nothing Nadia could have conjured in her wildest dreams, she was definitely plant and she was also definitely woman. For all intents and purposes she appeared to have a potted plant for a head, with a drawn-on face (not to mention blush marks), goggles, and a mop of green fronds growing from the top in the rough shape of a spiky ponytail. She wore a black-and-tan leather suit with a tail like a root protruding from the back. It wasn’t zipped all the way, and quite possibly never could be. This alien raised one finger by her cheek, her drawn-on face somehow shifting in order to give her visitors a cheeky smile and a wink. “Like, wow! You guys tooootally took me by surprise! Nobody's paid me a visit in, like, yee-urs. How’s it hangin’?”
“Holy- uhhhuhuh," It took a lot of effort for Nadia to not go slack-jawed, or burst into laughter for that matter. “Well, whatever I was gonna say, it’s gone now.” She turned to the others, clicking her tongue. “What were we doin’ here again?”
Initially drawing his weapon the knight lowered the tip of his blade once Artorias was certain the strange plant creature was a non-threat, but to Nadia’s question the knight shook his head and shrugged.
"Dealing with the power station," Primrose supplied. She did not hide her amusement at Nadia's reaction to the stranger. Primrose herself looked more curious than anything. It had only been a couple of seconds, but this woman proved quite the character already. Certainly there were parts of her that drew in wandering eyes, but her leafy hair, petal bow and sprouting flowers were all rather cute, especially when combined with the drawings on the pot she wore... or that Primrose assumed she wore. That couldn't be her actual head. The dancer tilted her own head slightly toward the plant woman.
"We saw the house nearby and were curious if anyone was actually home. You won't mind, right...?"
Kanna put her hands on her hips. “Uuugh, that noisy thingamajig? Yeah, totally, go for it! It gives me hella bad vibes anyway. Like, I’ll even help!” With a snap of her fingers, she equipped two sets of floating leaf-shields, three on each side. Then she turned around, peering throughout her home’s pastel pink interior. “C’mon, Yacopu!” A squeaking noise issued from within in reply, and after a brief moment a small white rabbit(?) scurried out to jump into Kanna’s arms, at which point she lifted him up. “Alright, let’s do this! Floweeeeeeeer!”
She then looked at Nadia expectantly. Though taken by surprise, Nadia raised and shook her fist above her head. “Floweeeeer…?”
“Flooooooweeeeeeer!” With a cheer, Kanna started bouncing down the ramp, leaving her visitors to follow in the footsteps of Stranga’s most unusual plant.
Nadia watched her go, her expression still one of major disbelief. “Well, uh, I’ll refrain from the obvious pun and just say it’s nice meetin’ someone helpful for a change. Even if she’s a real pothead.” With a grin she headed over to the edge and jumped off, taking the short way down.
They reached the waiting dwarves and broke the news to them about Kanna, who jumped up to sit on top of the Power Station the moment she arrived. Stetson looked dubious at the prospect of her helping the team, but he proceeded with the explanation of everyone’s mission. “Okay then, listen up. We got Hack-C all set up an’ ready to go. All we gotta do is keep the bugs off it ‘til it’s finished, and bish bash bosh, we’re done ‘ere.”
Nadia slid her boxcutter hilts out of her belt and attached two fresh blades. “So wait, this thing’s gonna attract bugs? Why?”
Stetson shrugged. “Eh, some technical mumbo-jumbo, I dunno. You want the details, ask Overhard. Me, I just think they hate us.” At that, Paintbrush gave a weary nod.
Good enough of an answer as any, I guess. Nadia shrugged back. “Feline’s mutual.”
Once everyone was ready, Stetson pressed the start button, and the hack began. “Okay, look lively lads an’ lasses. It’s go time.” Sure enough, the walls and ceiling started to rumble, and glyphids began to extract themselves from the mossy earth en masse.
“Like, looks like we’re up then, Yacopu!” Smiling, Kanna squeezed her eyes shut and began to concentrate. “Flow…..errrrrrrrrrrrrr…!” After a brief moment, a strange flower popped out of her head, which glittered and shone with a strong white and blue aura. With a relieved sigh she plucked it, then promptly fed it to her rabbit, who devoured it in seconds. Then, as the bugs closed in, he began to concentrate. He turned around, then fired out a pellet that exploded in the air like fireworks. Immediately a psychedelic Wonder Effect pulsed through the cavern, changing everything it touched. Everything turned a random color, including Nadia herself from purple hair and blue skin to green clothes. Birthday hats appeared on all the glyphids. And finally, the cavern itself shifted forty-five degrees, turning the floor into a steep slope Nadia had to dig her blades into to not start falling down.
“What the hell!?” she yelled, her voice a ridiculous high-pitched squeak that surprised even her. She glared at Kanna with heterochromatic orange and yellow eyes. “How’s this supposed to help us fight?”
Kanna looked completely unbothered. “Fight?” she squeaked back. “Like, I’m here to help you guys have fun!” At that, Nadia just shook her head despairingly. Tilted floor or not, the glyphids were coming, and even in these ridiculous conditions Hack-C wasn’t going to defend itself.
Initially bemused at what was happening, it was the room turning that actually spurred the Travelers into action. Primrose, her red, black, white, and gold color scheme now turned a garish yellow, brown, and pink, relied on her scarf once more, taking to the air to avoid a fall. With no such equipment her friend's eyes darted around the room, and he hastily threw himself in such a way that when gravity changed, his fall was cut short by Kanna's home. Therion landed on the side of the ceramic house, a mostly green colored silhouette, and couldn't help turning a brief glare Kanna's way.
"This is fun to you?" he asked. His natural baritone had gone up an octave or two. He couldn't afford to feel any embarrassment from it, especially when the same thing was happening to everyone else. It was hard to find the humor in silly hats and clashing colors, especially since the ground had shifted under his feet while big armored bugs were swarming in. He wasn't the type to find battle fun in most circumstances either, and this wasn't one of those times.
Before all of the changes, Primrose hadn't been either. Personally she'd still say that she wasn't. But she sort of understood where Kanna was coming from; if not fun, the fight was sure to prove interesting at least. So Primrose didn't question it.
While airborne she held one hand high above her head, conjuring flames that gradually compressed themselves together and darkened into the Black Fire Orb. She hurled it into the tight pack of glyphids. She watched it explode on impact and ignite the insects as she landed on a piece of land that had once been a vertical plant-like pillar. Even the fire burned a random color, flickering a haunting mauve tone. Some glyphids that survived the blast fell from the wall (once ground) they clung to and landed on the new ground (once wall) farther below. Once he'd gotten his bearings it was these glyphids that Therion focused on first, lest they crawled up the opposite side and caught the group unaware. He made use of the magic knives from his own glyph, sending the weapons to knock the bugs off the walls again or catch them in their softer, unarmored spots. He hadn't been aiming for their heads, but with the horned headband duplicating his knives a quarter of the time it was inevitable that a stray throw would catch one of the glyphids in the face. It popped, the noise (and the accompanying disembodied childlike cheer) loud enough to be heard over the shouting and skittering, and showered a small area with paper the colors of the hat it'd wore while its body collapsed and faded.
Clearly Kanna's idea of 'Fun' was not exactly the helpful kind, at least to the knight whom found his vestments became a ridiculous shade of pink to the now blinding white shine of his armor, Artorias’s voice while still a bit of a rumble rose a few octaves "This is not fun it is rid-" the knight cut himself off with an annoyed sigh, swinging his blade to find the glyphids he felled exploded in a burst of garish multicolored confetti.
Artorias’s swings and movement seemed to pick up, moving at a pace he didn't quite think was possible but at this point whatever the effects of Kanna's meddling had done was further from his concern at the moment.
The gravity shift definitely threw Nadia off at first. Once rotated forty-five degrees, the cavern’s bowl-shaped floor turned out to be a steep slope, but not an unworkable one. After stowing one of her blades to leave one hand for climbing when needed, the feral adopted a low stance and began to move. When the first gang of bugs reached her, her blade flashed in the light of Stetson’s flare, and rainbow-colored viscera flowed in its wake. She chopped through the glyphid’s limbs and sliced apart their tender heads, which promptly burst like party poppers when struck. That took Nadia by surprise at first, but she quickly learned to interpret the cheerfully macabre noise as a confirmed kill. Fighting like this might be a little tougher, but party hats or no party hats, these were still just glyphids.
Her brain cells got put to the test, however, when a couple new variants showed up. Glyphid Stingtails featured a head of nasty-looking tusks and a curled tail with a grabber on the end, while Septic Spreaders faced her with smooth armor plates shielding swollen bile sacs that they used like living ballistae. Nadia didn’t know what color they were supposed to be, but the vivid pink globules of corrosive sepsis looked (and smelled) scary enough as they were. She picked up the pace, moving on three legs, to chase down a Spreader before it could inundate her with sludge, only for the Stingtail to make a wheezing noise. It shot out its grabber on a bright green tendril to snatch her by the head. “Hey! No touchie!” she yelped, flying through the air straight toward the glyphid’s horns.
Thinking quickly, she detached her head and allowed it to be reeled in, while her body lost momentum and sunk its claws into the mossy slope. “Hey, no touchie!” Her body wall-ran the rest of the way while the Stingtail charged to gore it, only for her body to turn to lightning and blitz straight through with Charge. It whirled around to use Battery in the form of a double spinning slash, severing the tail on the second stroke. As the bug turned to face her, she leaped up to catch her head, then spiked it down with her hair hardened. It carved across the Stingtail’s head like a buzz saw, weakening the armor. As she landed it struck her with its horns, eliciting a “Yee-ouch!” but when it went to knock her down the slope her head started biting. “Omnomnomnomnomnom!” Gross as it was, the taste of imminent victory was mighty sweet. Her body leaped up and dropped on the Stingtail from above, plunging her boxcutter into the broken armor with both hands. She left the blade there, snatched up her head, and jumped off just before the Spreader’s next volley could finish the job.
After that, it was just a matter of closing in on the Spreader. Nadia zig-zagged back and forth as she wound around its caustic blasts. Their splashes burned, making her wince, but she made her way to the high ground on the slope above the monster. As she ran she took out her bait launcher, and once she was in position she fired. “Eat this!” The Spreader opened wide, snapping up the steak in its jaws. “Oh. That works, I guess.” Its sac started swelling for another barrage, and Nadia threw herself down the slope with Cat Slide. Once she got close enough, she released her pent-up energy in a hyperextended Fiber Upper to launch the Spread off the slope and into the air. “Enjoy your in-flight meal!” As the Spreader flew, the buff tiger appeared next to it on a poof of smoke to tear the hapless bug apart. Nadia shaded her eyes as she watched it burst into goo, a grin on her face. “Now that’s just ‘plane’ wrong!”
There was no warning before the world titled again, throwing the inhabitants back into normal gravity. Primrose had been in the middle of casting, so the turn threw her off balance from her perch onto the ground. As she began to push herself up, she felt her body become heavy - or was it her arms becoming weaker? She struggled until she got her legs under her and stood. Lately Primrose had been unflappable, but once her colors began to change back to normal something else happened that froze the woman in place, her eyes wide and disturbed.
"What...?!"
Both of her arms were missing. Everything from fingertips to just before the shoulder was completely gone - she couldn't even feel a phantom limb there. There was no strain of muscle or flow of magic, just stumps where her biceps would start. It was completely unnerving. Any mild enjoyment she got from watching the glyphid heads pop with confetti was dried up now, especially by the time bats swarmed into the cavern and joined the remaining insects.
The Devout Beads appeared at her back to serve as her firepower in lieu of her spells while she adjusted, telling herself the missing limbs must only be temporary.
Initially the knight was horrified that he found his arms gone, his weapon clattering uselessly to the ground but that horror changed as he had to duck an oncoming bat from a clothesline to his face and all that initial panic became rage, launching himself into the air like a torpedo at the bats bellowing as he floated kicking and unceremoniously headbutting the air or any unlucky bat that flew near him in a futile effort that put him in a bit of a pickle as he slowly floated downwards.
At the very least, those bats didn’t seem quite right. They floated at a constant height above the ground, their wings flapping only about once per second. If anything, they looked -and moved- more like cardboard cutouts than living creatures. They were also surprisingly slow; an average person could easily walk faster than these bats ‘flew’. They did possess one advantage: shocking numbers, which combined with their ambling pace, created a sea of ink-black wings, fur, and glowing red eyes, slowly but steadily closing in on Hack-C and its defenders from all sides.
Despite the impending doom implied by the swarm’s advance, those bats looked like easy pickings to Nadia. When the previous Wonder Effect finally ended and gravity in the cavern returned to normal, she jumped back down to the ground ready to rumble. Only then did she realize that she was missing a couple critical components. “...Huh!?” She looked down at the empty sleeves of her jacket in utter bafflement. Having her arms off wasn’t exactly groundbreaking for her, but not even being able to feel them? That was new. She could even see her boxcutters laying on the ground where they, but her arms were nowhere to be seen. “Where the hell did I…oh, whatever.” With bats on the way, she couldn’t afford to root around for her missing limbs. Using the Oceanid’s power, Nadia expelled enough blood to turn into copycat replacements. “No matter what I lose,” she grinned, grabbing her weapons. “I’m always armed and dangerous!”
With an electric Charge she took the fight to the bats, hoping to thin their numbers before the wall of vermin could close in. “Mind if I cut in?” Her first boxcutter swipe sheared through one in a single stroke, and from its bifurcated body popped a gold coin that glittered once, then warped into her wallet. Not realizing at first, she carved through a handful of the critters before she noticed the slowly increasing number of coins. “Wait…” she whispered, her eyes getting wide. “They’re full…of MONEEEEEEY!” Laughing like a madwoman, she went to work. Nadia became a whirlwind of blades, kicks, and tail lashes, reducing bats to shreds (and coins) as fast as she could get her claws on them. Not even needing to jump, she barely even noticed the reduced gravity.
Watching her go to town, Therion clicked his tongue. Lucky cat. Like anyone who didn't have the option to reattach their limbs or grow new ones, he'd been freaked out by his own missing arms and it'd taken him a bit to adjust. He didn't attempt to shift into his beast form, not wanting to fall flat onto his face if it didn't bring his arms back in the form of front legs. Because of that he was left with very, very little options with which to fight: his divine skill, though he didn't have enough BP to use it at the moment, and his striker, whose melee attacks and horn ballista weren't great match ups. Unabashedly, he and most of the others left this round to those that had the means to deal with it, that being Ms. Fortune and Primrose.
"Makami!" The latter said, summoning the striker to her side, "Mafrei!" The skill fell upon the mob of bats while Primrose hopped up and away not even needing her scarf to float this time. Mafrei evaporated a large chunk all at once while Nadia carved a path through the rest.
All too soon, the coin fever came to an end, the pockets of the Seekers lined with extra gold. On the other hand, their arms also suddenly reappeared. While she’d managed to make do with her blood mimicry, Nadia had missed the certainty of her real flesh; copycat parts really were no substitute. Of course, those who hadn’t been able to hack together a cheaty solution had missed their missing limbs much more.
In this game of give and take, unfortunately, the moment one abnormality ended, another began. All around the cavern, everything with a middle suddenly shot upward, including the stalks of various plants, the Power Station, the Hacking Drone, and Kanna’s house, all increasing in height by several times as their middles inexplicably stretched. Of course, the same went for all the defenders. “Nyaaaaaaaaaaagh!” Nadia yowled as she flew upward, coming to a stop a moment later only to realize that her feet were still touching the ground–and that her midriff now seemed to be several dozen feet in length. “The hell is this shit!?” Her upper body wobbled precariously as her middle flexed back and forth, her elongated spine and stomach muscles working to keep her upright. As utterly bizarre as this felt, though, Nadia realized that this was only the beginning. She could no longer reach her earthbound foes with her claws or weapons, and her sense of balance was completely shot, so kicking would be very tricky. For the moment she could only retreat toward the dwarves, who could still shoot downward at the enemies from their new heights, while trying to think of a way to spin this.
Before she reached safety, the three-clawed grabber of a Cave Leech snatched her by the head and began to pull the struggling feral up into the air. “AGH! Somethin’s got me!” she yelled, swinging her boxcutters above her head in a panicked attempt to cut herself free.
“Leech!” Stetson called out. “We’ve got leeches!” When he turned his rifle upward, its flashlight illuminated a cluster of at least half a dozen, one of which promptly snatched him too. “Gaaaaah! There’s tons of the damn things!” And more were reaching down. With everyone stretched out, grabbing them was easier for the leeches than ever, and they promptly took Tingyun too. Thanks to his Heightened Senses perk, Paintbrush would have escapes if not for the sheer amount of leeches, but at the very least it meant he could instantly break himself free the moment he got snatched. Then he turned his rocket launcher upward, trying to kill the leeches’ bodies in order to stop the harvest before everyone got snatched up.
"Turn this stuff off already!" Therion hollered at Kanna, but she either didn't hear him or chose not to respond, if she even had the ability to stop the crazy effects in the first place. With his body wobbling like crazy he tried his best to avoid being grabbed. Obviously while stretched out so much he was a lot less dexterous, so it wasn't long until he was caught. A three pronged mouth closed around his upper arm and shoulder, eliciting a pained hiss from him. With his other arm, now blessedly back and with sword in hand, he stabbed the pink protrusion. It didn't let go, so he started trying to roughly saw the thing's head (or hand, or whatever it was that had a hold on him) off.
Her limbs and magic restored, Primrose itched to use them. Even as ridiculous as she looked now, she dodged the leeches with some modicum of grace. She began to glow, an aura covering her elongated body that flickered yellow, then green, then white-blue as she prepared her battle boost. She made an x shape in front of her chest with her arms and then pulled them apart, spreading them wide with a flourish as a great burst of fire spread to the ceiling. Following Paintbrush's lead she targeted the leech bodies, her pyromancy empowered well beyond normal with three boosts. While the flames ascended, Primrose began conjuring new ones. There's more where that came from!
The leech holding Therion writhed in pain, its grabber loosened enough for him to free himself. He glared at the burning leech cluster. "Fuck this." He chose now to turn into his beast form, long body much more manageable on all fours and far from the ceiling. Looking more like a noodle with paws than anything else, he weaved around the ground to tear apart the glyphids still swarming below.
Together, Paintbrush and Primrose wrecked havoc among the surprise colony of much-reviled cave leeches. Their grip might be hard to escape, but they could not withstand much punishment once discovered. After taking enough damage, their main grabbers went limp, stretching out to deposit their captives before the main bodies perished. Nadia’s own ‘plan’, which involved detaching her head to free her body just like with the Stingtail earlier, would’ve ended disastrously if not for her allies’ help. Instead, her head got feed just before the leech that caught her began to chew, and with a heavy sigh of relief Nadia’s head dropped from the ceiling. “Least some of you got a good head on your shoulders,” she remarked, a sheepish smile on her face.
That smile vanished when her body failed to catch her head, her arms grabbing just too late. Instead her head bounced among the moss. “Oof! Ow! Meowch!” It rolled to a stop in a clump of moss, and as the glyphids approached, her body stooped to grab it. While she managed to pick it up it, her body overbalanced and fell forward the next second. “Oh no.” In a panic she grabbed her own ankles, and straight away she began to roll across the ground in a giant loop; against all odds, Therion had some serious competition for ‘most stupid looking solution’ for the rest of the wave. Luckily, this wave wouldn’t last much longer.
The fighters could tell the situation was starting to change again when their elongated bodies began snapping back to their original proportions like rubber bands. There was a slight sting, likely a bit of whiplash, but otherwise they were no worse for wear. More concerning was their equipment and even magic disappearing. It wasn't a slow fade out, more like a switch being flipped. One moment there was a sword or spell in hand, and the next there was nothing. They were robbed of their means to fight, at least of those of them that didn't have natural weaponry, but at least they still had their arms this time.
The latest crop of monsters that surged in, including glyphids, bats, and other bugs, featured some specimens that looked bigger and badder than the previous. Already returned to human form, Therion cursed under his breath. It would be hard to just leave it to everyone else this time, but how in the hell were they supposed to- Poof!
A weapon appeared in his hands. It was heavier than his short sword - one of those "guns", with two long metal barrels side by side. Medieval as his home world was, he'd been in this new one long enough to understand vaguely what it was and how it worked: point and pull the trigger mechanism.
Never having actually used a gun, the recoil of this particularly powerful one came as a surprise to Therion. He just managed to stay upright while his arms and the weapon itself jumped upward after the shot. It ripped through the glyphid in front of him and damaged the one behind it. "Damn," he said, in regards to both the effect and the recoil. He backed up to ready another shot, shoving some balloons away as he did.
Artorias kind of looked confusedly at the new weapon in his hands, sword just gone in the blink of an eye replaced with an odd contraption with a trigger. It was a bit small for him to even press, thus the next best thing he figured was to use it as a bludgeon.
Though elated to be back to her normal height after that harrowing run-in with the leeches, Nadia couldn’t be happy just yet. Even with just a glance, she could tell that the standouts among the latest horde were not to be trifled with. It wasn’t just their greater size or menacing aura, but the magical empowerments that made them stand out from the rest. These Eximus enemies came in many varieties, from Arctic Eximus with bubble shields of freezing ice, to Venomous Eximus that exuded highly toxic clouds, to explosive Blitz, electric Shock, and fiery Arson Eximus. And just when Nadia needed them most, her entire suite of weapons vanished into thin air. “Oh, c’mon!” she snarled, thoroughly annoyed with all these random modifiers at this point. When she tried to cheat like she did earlier with her arms, however, she found that her nails wouldn’t sharpen into claws. At that, Nadia’s spirit sank, her ears flattening against her head. “Wait, what!?”
As the feral held her palms up in helpless bewilderment, something long and shiny dropped right into her grasp. It was long, heavy, and weirdly shaped, with two long metal halves joined in a stock, a grip, and a firing mechanism, all plated over by slate blue casing with orange stripes. Catching the Exergis nearly knocked Nadia off her feet, and it took a surprising amount of strength for her to lift up, but when she recognized the trigger she knew it must be a gun. Straining, she pointed it in the direction of a Venomous Slicer and squeezed the trigger. The coil-shaped pile bunker of the Exergis immediately punched into the crystal clutched in its end, shattering it into three radioactive shards that slashed through the Eximus like butter. One multishot wasn’t enough to kill it, but it did proc Confusion, and the grunts around the Eximus immediately started suffering form its toxic aura while the Slicer itself turned on its allies.
“Hah!” Nadia grinned, as excited as she was relieved to see the incoming mob tear itself to shreds. That was just one Eximus though, and her new weapon quickly clicked empty. “Uh…” As luck would have it, her new gun came with ammunition in the form of a bandolier of scarlet crystals. “Oh!” After planting the butt of the Exergis in the ground she plucked one humming gem and stuffed it in different parts of the gun until the mechanism finally clamped down. Once she heaved it back into firing position, she fired again, ripping apart a handful of glyphids but missing the Shock Bat behind it. When it started shooting electric orbs at her she knew she had to move. For a few moments, Nadia ran a cat-and-mouse game of run-and-gun, fleeing far enough to reload so that she could gun down some foes, then do it again.
Meanwhile, Tingyun was grappling with a new weapon of her own, her fans replaced by a blue Virtual Shotgun. While normally happily to play support and let everyone else do all the heavy lifting, she couldn’t help but be tempted by this armament. Guns might not be in style in the Xianzhou Luofu, but everyone knew what they were, as well as their basic principles. She decided to try her luck, and as it turned out, the Foxian was the luckiest of all. Her Virtual Shotgun wielded infinite ammunition, allowing her to blast as fast as she could pump the weapon. While she sacrificed some damage by staying out of the range of the Eximus auras, she managed to keep up with Stetson and Paintbrush, to whom shotguns were no strangers. And of course, the sight of the elegant businesswoman vaporizing bugs with a shotgun made Nadia grin like an idiot.
In the midst of mercilessly pummeling an Eximus in the midst of its noxious gas with nothing but the shotgun in his hands, Artorias seemed unfazed by the effects of the poisonous vapors but still damaged by it as he switched to beating the Venomous Eximus with his bare hands after the shotgun became too damaged by his onslaught. Pulling back to rush at the enemy with his fists he was stopped in his tracks as power-ups started falling from the sky.
Super Mushrooms. Mini Mushrooms. Fire Flowers. Elephant Fruits. Weird Mushrooms. Penguin Suits. Super Crowns. Double cherries. Metal Caps. Power-ups rained down, and whatever living thing they touched, they transformed. Enemies started changing sizes at random, some getting smaller, some getting bigger, and some getting much bigger. Some turned to gold, or metal, or balloons. Others gained royal dresses, goomba masks, rabbit ears, or propeller hats that sent them spiraling up into the air. “What now!?” Confused and overwhelmed, Nadia got hit by a Drill Mushroom before she knew what was happening. Her clothes instantly turned coal gray and red, and a drill-shaped hat appeared on her head. “...Huh?” A Bulb Berry rolled into her from behind, turning her body brilliantly incandescent. “Huh!?” Finally, a Super Acorn bounced off the Power Station and landed on her, and she found herself wearing a fluffy flying squirrel onesie. “HUH!?”
“Heeeeeeeeelp!” Stetson yelled, drawing her gaze. The team’s scout appeared to be trapped inside a big gray boulder, courtesy of a Rock Mushroom, and only his hat-wearing head was visible from inside. He rolled around inside it willy-nilly, crushing everything in his path while fighting not to lose his lunch. “Someone get me outta heeeeeere!”
Unfortunately, Paintbrush couldn’t help. Just as he went to use the Ice Flower he picked up, a Dash Pepper landed on him. The Ice Flower melted away as he turned a vivid red, then charged off uncontrollably, surrounded by spicy flames that left a fiery trail in his wake. He hit a Super Mushroom, doubling in size, and then a Double Cherry, doubling in number. The cavern filled with chaos as two fire-spitting giant gunners charged around like mad, burning everything in their path, and not even the knockdowns of Arson Eximus or blasts of Blitz Eximus could stop them for long.
Neither could Therion help, as he was busy extracting himself from a giant green shoe. It was inevitable that Stetson would just roll himself into another change anyway, so the thief focused on himself. He shimmed out of the shoe just before a big, cold bug snapped him up in its spiked legs. It started to radiate an arctic frost, but Therion started his retreat off by blasting one of its legs off. Just as he was really starting to get the hang of the shotgun, it was replaced by a white and blue boomerang when he ran into another power-up.
Tinyun was also somewhat preoccupied at the moment. While she’d been on a tear with her Virtual Shotgun, her killstreak came to an end when she touched a Spring Mushroom. Immediately a metal coil ensnared her whole body, pinning her arms -and her weapon- against her torso. “Ugh! Not my lucky day.” She could do little more than awkwardly hop around in order to try and avoid the bugs until she trod on a Vanish Cap. It instantly turned her transparent and intangible, effectively taking her out of the fight. With a rattled sigh, she sank to the ground to take a well-earned break, ignoring the enemies and power-ups that now just passed right through her.
Forced to fight on her own, Nadia fled from incoming enemies. As she jumped away, the wings of her onesie unfurled, and she found herself gliding through the air. Not world-shattering considering that she’d just experienced low gravity, but it was something, she guessed. Flying like this meant she could reload her shotgun in the air, and she also quickly discovered that 2700 Pounds of Justice meant that when she dropped, she could fall hard enough to crush weaker enemies in one fell swoop. Of course, her strategy didn’t survive long in a deluge of power-ups. In less than ten seconds she hit a Boo Mushroom, becoming a spherical ghost that couldn’t do much (her new form essentially frying her brain) until a Hammer Suit restored her to normal, albeit clad in a metal helmet. Hammers appeared in her hands, and when Nadia hurled one into a fire-spitting, rabbit-eared glyphid’s ugly mug, a new one manifested in its place. “Guess I hit it right on the head!” From then on she avoided power-ups like the plague, with the exception of a Super Mushroom, skirting around the rest as she bombarded her enemies with an endless barrage of hammers.
Amid the complete chaos, Primrose had abandoned the shotgun that had fallen into her hands as soon as she'd expended the ammo it had come loaded with. She had no idea how to reload the weapon, so once it was out she tossed it. She focused instead on the items and power ups spilling over the entire area. There were balloons floating throughout the cavern that she'd noticed popped easily when a stray attack touched them, and inside were items that might prove more useful to her. She kept out of reach of the monstrous bug nearest her as she looked through the balloons' offerings. Food here, a capsule-like thing there... The insect chased her down as she did, and being a Blitz Eximus let it strike the ground with its leg, sending shockwaves rippling across the ground towards her. She was easily able to avoid that, but not the Goomba mask that came falling from the sky directly on top of her. Suddenly she was a tiny little mushroom creature, staring down a chitinous predator.
At least until one of the two giant Paintbrushes stepped on top of it and smashed it into a paste which then proceeded to turn to ash as he rushed off.
Goomba-Primrose waddled off as quickly as she could. With danger all around she didn't want to wait to turn back to normal, instead she jumped head first towards any of the multitude of power-ups that were collecting on the ground. A bell with cat ears didn't revert her to human as she'd hoped, instead changing her current body. She hurried on, forcing her way through a small purple zone that one of the empowered bats overhead set down on top of her, leeching her energy and stamina. She made it out just before the zone collapsed in on itself, snagging a white, pink, and purple flower on the way to shelter beneath the pot Kanna's home was on.
“Wooooo, yeah! Isn’t this so great? You can do it!” Kanna cheered them on from nearby. At some point she’d turned into an elephant, then shrunk to half her size, and still the alien hadn’t lifted a finger to help. She just sat there on the Power Station as it chugged away, swinging her trunk and kicking her legs without a care in the world.
Primrose ignored her. "Nearly back to normal," she said to herself once the Bubble Flower took effect. The crimson of her clothes remained, while the rest of her ensemble turned a warm pink. She still didn't have her own magic back, which meant no flames, darkness, or dances from her, but she had something else she could work with now.
She left her hiding place and brought a hand up close to her face, splaying her fingers out as she let out a breath of bubbles. The bubbles were expelled quickly and grew in size, trapping any enemy they came into contact with and rendering them into a coin. The initial bubble volley she'd sent toward a cluster of bats, which had turned into coins before, but it also seemed to have the same effect on the glyphids and everything else as well.
The Seekers worrying about not changing again from some other random item falling on them was mitigated slightly as the battle went on by groups of clouds forming overhead, someone evidently having encountered a Cloud Flower. Items fell upon the top of them, piling up there until the spilled down off of the sides as the clouds acted as umbrellas, making pockets of space in the cavern a little less chaotic and letting the combatants focus more on clearing out the swarm however they could.
Still, it was a real blessing that the pandemonium didn’t last that much longer. After another minute passed, the hacking pod made a loud chirp to signify that its task was finally complete. At the sound, Nadia looked up glyphid she’d been beating with the butt of her Exergis, having taken a page from Artorias’ book when a Frog Suit swapped her Hammer Suit out a green frog onesie that deleted the rest of her shotgun ammo. Ice-Primrose turned to look, Vanish-Tingyun perked up her ears, Bee-Therion flipped himself rightside up in the air, Penguin-Stetson slid to a stop, and Metal-Wario-Paintbrush gave the bug that’d been fruitlessly gnawing on his metal boot an extra bop with his pickaxe for good measure.
A moment later Power Station went offline, its internal systems compromised and overheated to the point that a thermal cascade took it down from within. The few remaining bugs who hadn’t been killed by now began to flee, burrowing back into the mossy floor and walls of the cavern. As the station blew up beneath her, Elephant-Kanna overbalanced and fell from the top. “Wheeeeee…oof!” When she hit the ground, the impact smacked the elephant effect out of her, leaving the alien about as normal as she could get. As she picked herself up Yacopu bounced off her head and landed beside her. Rubbing her head with one eye closed, Kanna produced a Wonder Seed that she passed to Yacopu. When it processed the seed and fired off another pellet, the resulting explosion sent out a normalizing effect that returned the area -and everyone in it- to their original states.
“Woohoo, you guys totally did it!” Kanna beamed, rising to stand proudly with her hands on her hips. “Like, that was a blast!”
“That was awful!” Nadia hissed back at her. Finding that all her weapons had reappeared, Nadia closed her hand around the grip of her Bait Launcher. “Gimme one good reason I shouldn’t prune you right now, you overgrown shrub!”
Tingyun tapped her finger to her cheek in a thoughtful manner. “I’m having trouble coming up with any, I’m afraid…”
The Travelers were similarly upset. They caught their breath and calmed down, one more easily than the other. Therion's tail swished back and forth, some of his fur still puffed up.
"So you could have put everything back to normal this whole time?" he questioned, aggravated, his eyes flicking from Kanna to her rabbit.
She blinked at him, her eyebrows raised. “Uh….like, I guess? That woulda been hella boring, though…”
And though at first Primrose thought she could have understood the plant woman's motives, actually experiencing - and trying to fight through - the myriad of changes had been horrible, to say the least. Plus there was the fact that Kanna had sat on the sidelines, treating the battle as pure entertainment for herself. She hadn't wanted the thrill of battle, just to watch. Maybe the dancer’s feelings would be different if she had joined in. No matter Kanna's original intentions, it was this that irked Primrose the most. There was a dark, unpleasant feeling curling in her stomach, a lingering resentment from her life in Orsterra. Her struggles, her life, was not a show for someone else's enjoyment.
She said not a word in the alien's defense, instead turning to the dwarves. "Are we finished here?"
“Uh, yeah.” Right now, both Stetson and Paintbrush were watching to see if Nadia would actually go through with her threat.
The feral definitely had half a mind to, and she felt one hundred percent sure that she could get away with it scot-free. Ultimately, she let go of her Bait Launcher with a frustrated sigh, then stuffed her hands in her pockets. “Ugh.” Even if she really did feel that angry, she couldn’t bring herself to take it out on Kanna. It was wrong, and it probably wouldn’t make her feel any better, either. If only that ditzy pothead actually tried to fight them, instead of just being a bother. “You’ve gotta work on your definition of ‘fun’, lady. Just ‘cause it’s fun to watch doesn’t mean we were havin’ a good time. We coulda died thanks to you.” As the dwarves packed up, ready to move out, Nadia turned to go with them. “No wonder you’re all alone out here. Bet nobody can stand you.”
As she spoke, her words slowly seemed to sink in. “...Oh.” Kanna’s leaves drooped. Despite her drawn-on face, she managed to look pretty upset. “That’s, like, a total bummer.” She reached up and tugged at her fronds, uncomfortably swaying from side to side. “Well…if you want, you can take the stuff I’m growing around here. The moss is, like, super duper good for curing poison. ‘Specially the blooming stuff. And the herbs can heal you up. Like, a lot, if you mix ‘em juuust right.” Running around, Kanna quickly gathered a handful of unassuming, colorful herbs. Plucking a leaf from her head, she knelt down ground the herbs up into powder that she carefully mixed together, then wrapped the mixture up in the leaf and offered it to Nadia.
Nadia narrowed her eyes. Maybe this bumbling disaster really did mean well? Now she felt a little bad about what she said. Gingerly she took the package, which she slipped into a pocket. “Thanks for somethin’, I guess.”
Kanna seemed to take that as full and immediate acceptance of her ‘apology’. “Yay!” she sang, bouncing around with glee. “If you guys, like, ever need medicine or something cured, you can totally come back anytime! Can I get a ‘flower’? On three! Three, two…!”
By that time, though, Nadia had already spun on her heels and started to walk away. Everyone else followed her in short order.
Primrose sighed. Though she spared Kanna one last look over her shoulder, she probably wouldn't be getting over her new disdain for the strange woman any time soon. At least they'd completed their objective and had a little something to show for it too, if Kanna's claims about the herbs were true. Since they'd solved the area's puzzle it cleared out any threats along the way, it wouldn't take long to come back here if they needed to - as long as they didn't have to suffer mind bending, reality altering changes while fighting off a swarm of insects again. All things considered though, she would prefer not to come back.
"Is it too late to back track, meet up with Jesse and them above ground?" Therion wondered aloud to himself, frowning at the collection of flowers ahead of them as the group went back the way they came. He’d love to swap places - the director might have actually enjoyed that experience.
Once at the wall separating the two halves of the cavern, the Seekers figured out their transport back and continued to make their way toward the Caretaker, less enthusiastic than they’d been when they left it.
