Inside 72: Halfway to a Gross

[5a Violista]

Perfectly Normal Park

I don't think June would recognize zjune right now. Legs and arms are the obvious differences, but there's probably a lot more differences too.

Oh! There's Vix!

June's glad she got here fine.
He waves.
...
He stops waving.
He starts waving with one hand.
And he thinks he probably should have said what he looks like over the phone.

"Hey! It's me, June."
Well...the shirt looks the same? Except not in good shape at all. Hair's the same color, too.



Necropolis of Kysimax

Venus already came this far! Fought a skeleton, broke the seal on the scroll case, and opened up doors. She might as well go all the way.

She idly plays with the ring while trying to decide how to best break the scroll's seal. She obviously doesn't want to break the scroll or tear anything...

The redhead puts the ring on her pinkie finger and tries to crush the seal. Then, open the scroll.


Abandoned Hospital

Carmen looks over the signs, trying to decide which would be the most interesting to visit. Most haunted, most likely to have secret magic rituals, clear explanations about what happened, and so on.

Maternity Ward seems the most likely to qualify for 'most haunted', Offices would be the best for finding out what happened, but she's actually slightly more interested in secret magic rituals or whatever. It's interesting, after all. If there's any secret rituals or sacrifices or anything, it would happen in the Research Wing.

She starts to follow the signs towards the Research Wing, imagining all the cool stuff she might find there.

[bc56]

Necropolis of Kysimax

If you are reading this, I am dead, and you have passed the trials of my tomb to find this message. I bequeath to you, noble successor, the contents of my library. May they improve your mastery of the blade as they did mine. Farewell, and may your steel be strong and sharp.
Signed: Lord Master Kysimax, Sword Instructor to the High Kings, Blade of the Twin Churches, Champion of the Free World

Abandoned Hospital

The door to the experimental wing is different from the other doors in the building. It's far heavier and more durable. It's also locked, with a complex mechanism that requires two keys to work. Apparently, it needed to be more secure than the rest of the hospital. Maybe they were working on diseases in there.

[Reinholdt]

BDD Sans Thread

Venus shakes her head. "Um...anything that's artificial or...non...or..." She tries to come up with the right word that wouldn't be too broad but also not too narrow, "...manufactured? Depends on the amount of preparation, I guess. Well, those kinds of things make me feel sick. Comes with being a nature...whatever, I guess. Not really sure where, exactly, the line is, though. Probably don't want to have to carry a sick me around, so won't test the boundaries today." So she just orders water on the rocks. "Also not really a fan of alcohol."

So he can have all he wants! She won't try to take it from him.

"But the atmosphere is nice in here, this time of day."

[BDD Sans Thread]

"Huh?" Reinholdt has a little trouble parsing that after half a bottle of rum. But he eventually comes around to, "I thought alcohol was just... really old grapes or wheat. Is there anything more natural than aging?"

Reinholdt may not know all there is to know about alcohol. Including how poisonous it is.

"Well, no pressure. Yeah, I like this place. I used to come here a lot. Met some... interesting people. I was hit with a shotgun right over there. Or was it a grenade?" Reinholdt points near where Raril's office is. "That was an exciting day. Convinced a werewolf king to make amends with his brother. Though now they both have it in for their mother. Fun times."

He heads over to the front door and holds it open for Venus. "After you."

[5a Violista]

[Necropolis of Kysimax]

Venus reads the scroll.
Library?
She perks up a little, liking libraries. In fact, half of the trouble she encountered first in the Nexus was because of libraries.
She looks around, though. But where is this library? This place has liked unconventional keys, so far, so maybe...
She looks at her finger.

Maybe the ring is a key, now, too?
She rereads the scroll, trying to see if it said where the library was, and she just missed it.

. . .

Well, she stands up, puts the scroll back in the case, and finds a way to carry the glowing flower, the scroll case, and also the wood sword all at once. Time to go around, looking for a ring-shaped keyhole, or a library, or whatever. She starts with looking around the room she's in: the walls, the fountain again, the walls again...


[Abandoned Hospital]

"That confirms it!" Carmen says to herself. It's locked up. Secret ritual stuff, for sure.

She pulls on the locks, pushes on the door, taps on the wall next to the door to see if any of it deteriorated. How else could she try to open it, anyway? There's really only two things she's good at, memory magic and lust magic. Changing the door's memories won't work: it'd still be a door. Infusing doors with lust magic tends to not really do much, either. Guess she just has to find the keys!
Or maybe an alternate path in.
Finding the keys would be the best, she thinks.

"If I were to have keys to a secret sacrificial ritual chamber...where would I hide them...?"
Oh!
She snaps.
Of course.
"The office. They always keep spare keys there!"
She looks around for the signs that point towards the office area and follows them.


[BDD Sans Thread]

"Alcohol sometimes is that, but sometimes it isn't," Venus, who still doesn't want to drink it anyway, says. Water and juice are good enough. If there's ever a situation where they need to be drunk, she could always just act drunk and it'll be fine.

She looks over at everywhere he points. "Oh, wow, a werewolf king? Did he wear a little crown or something?" She wonders what a werewolf crown would look like.

Having drunk water, she gets up with him and goes out the door. "Thanks," she says, "You're such a gentleman." Once through, she waits for him. "So best way to get there would be...catching a boat?" Wait, is it a good idea to get on a boat with a steadily-becoming-more-drunk person? "Or do you have any other secret pathways that'll take us places?" Luckily, he only just recently started drinking so he won't be that bad.

[Recaiden]

[Heresy Fighters]

Gold laughs, but then feels a little bad about laughing; that probably seems very reasonable from Purple's perspective.
"Oh, that's easy. I'm not anyone. You see, I know everything. At least, everything that could go wrong. Everywhere. Forever."

[Perfectly Normal Park 3]

Vix waves with her one and only hand while shuffling closer.
"Hi."
With her side whip she gestures at his many arms.
"Diff-fer-rent. How?"

[Zefir]

BDD Sans Thread

Venus shakes her head. "Um...anything that's artificial or...non...or..." She tries to come up with the right word that wouldn't be too broad but also not too narrow, "...manufactured? Depends on the amount of preparation, I guess. Well, those kinds of things make me feel sick. Comes with being a nature...whatever, I guess. Not really sure where, exactly, the line is, though. Probably don't want to have to carry a sick me around, so won't test the boundaries today." So she just orders water on the rocks. "Also not really a fan of alcohol."

So he can have all he wants! She won't try to take it from him.

"But the atmosphere is nice in here, this time of day."


Searching for Jo

The jaguar can't read his emotionlessness, but it definitely knows that he's strong and dangerous.

It gets scared when it realizes that there's another one of him, suddenly behind it.

The psychic jaguar struggles to get away, but dies quickly and cleanly. For an injured and soon-to-die animal, a quick and clean kill is a kind of mercy.


Carmen looks back at Fade and the now-dead animal. "There's absolutely nobody manning the outpost," she says. "I would've expected somebody to notice us by now."

Since it seems there's no danger from the outpost, she goes over to Fade and the animal. "Um, there's a psychic crystal here in the back of its throat," she says. "If we take it and throw it, it makes a pretty good explosion. Um...psychic energy bomb, makes everybody around it confused and disoriented."
She points out the crystal in the jaguar's throat.
He can take it if he thinks it might be useful.

She looks back at the outpost.

"Um...there should be no traps. The crystals we need would be in the storage room, right in the middle of the outpost. Probably locked, too," she says. Carmen adds, after glancing at him, "There has to be a key around somewhere, but I get the feeling locked doors don't matter for you."

Searching for Jo

The shadow Fade disapears after the beast is dead. The blood that he had on his sword seems to just drop onto the ground.

The real one then gets after the gem at first he appeared to just pull it out but after her explanaition he acts more careful. He doesn t seem in any way disgusted while grabing into the beasts mouth while his other hand tries to keep it open. Can t see inside if it closes.

"You are right" Fade says. Noticing the changw in her speech(different colors on purpose?)
" But I rather check out the base. It still appears like a trap." With that he tries to reath the outer points of the Outpost like the walls and looks for clues.

[Chaotic Bob]

[A Street - Cat-hating Sewer Monster]

Red Velvet, for her part, doesn't employ some of her grosser magic here. No, she trots out a horn blast of rainbowy power shimmering with the colors of sunset. One of her bolts nails a shadow dead-center, causing the aurora of light to rapidly eat across it like embers devouring a sheet of tinder paper. Within a few scant moments the shadow is gone, leaving three shadows remaining. Oddly, Red's chest heaves with a spasm as she suppresses herself from throwing up on the spot. There's a pretty good reason for that. She wants to wait to make sure the nightshade isn't lurking around waiting to murder them. A battle is no place for several confused fillies.

The shadows aren't particularly inclined to try touching the star, so the passive defense is less of an issue. The sparks flying everywhere are definitely a problem, though. One of them gets zapped pretty badly, leaving it smouldering. Both the injured shadow and its fellows vanish back into the darkness again, apparently disinclined to attack well-defend targets when those targets are already aware of them.

Ears swiveling this way and that, Red waits for a good thirty seconds or so to make sure no more attacks are forthcoming.

Then?

"nnnnnuggghh..."

She barfs shadowy black ooze all over the ground.

Oh gods why is there so much of it?

"Ugh... so unlady-like," Red frets as she wipes her mouth with a fetlock.

The goopy black puddle then sort of... stands up? Color and texture rapidly resolve until there stands a little kirin filly, her coat sky blue and her mane sea green. She tries taking a few shaky steps only to fall on her butt.

"You saved me!" the filly announces. "It was so scary! I was talking to a kitty he said I could wish for anything and then-"

"Hush, little one," Red says, putting her on the head. "We'll get you and the rest of the girls to safety. Please, do stay quiet and close."

The filly's voice drops to a whisper as she manages to wobbly rise to her hooves. "What about my daddy, though? He's still sick I was going to use my wish to wish him better."

Yeah, no, that's super disgusting.
And the gnome-girl isn't even kind of hiding it.
"That was...really really gross. What is wrong with the cops in this place?"
Also now they're stuck with some random kid! Who definitely sounds like someone that she came here to protect, so that part is interesting, but still. Dead weight.

"Yeah just stick to the puke-horse. She'll keep you alive or something, I guess."

We're just going to keep flying the warpstar forward and not think too hard about this situation.
Keep an eye out for shadows, maybe zap any that seem frisky, hunt down cold-spawning darkness demons...

[Reinholdt]

[BDD Sans Thread]

"Alcohol sometimes is that, but sometimes it isn't," Venus, who still doesn't want to drink it anyway, says. Water and juice are good enough. If there's ever a situation where they need to be drunk, she could always just act drunk and it'll be fine.

She looks over at everywhere he points. "Oh, wow, a werewolf king? Did he wear a little crown or something?" She wonders what a werewolf crown would look like.

Having drunk water, she gets up with him and goes out the door. "Thanks," she says, "You're such a gentleman." Once through, she waits for him. "So best way to get there would be...catching a boat?" Wait, is it a good idea to get on a boat with a steadily-becoming-more-drunk person? "Or do you have any other secret pathways that'll take us places?" Luckily, he only just recently started drinking so he won't be that bad.

[BDD Sans Thread]

"Yeah?" When is alcohol not alcohol? Rein's not drunk enough to figure that out. Better take another sip.

"He has a castle and good fashion taste, but isn't one for a crown." Reinholdt shakes his head, sorry to disappoint Venus. Though, Rein knows what to get Sszy for Thanksmas now. Probably get his head chewed off if the cat gets too cheeky with a werewolf crown.

He tries to wave off the gentleman comment, but there is a small blush on his face. Fortunately, getting a boat with a steadily-becoming-more-drunk person is fine. So long as they aren't steering! "Nah, I still think there'll be panic at the docks. We're best going out the front. The fuzz secure entrances like that second, right after they take care of their political overlords. So despite people being there, it'll be safer. I think." Rein usually flies out of bad scrapes nowadays, so his estimates are based on old experiences.

[5a Violista]

[Perfectly Normal Park 3]

"Yes. There was a pool of water," June says, not approaching because he thinks he looks a little scary and intimidating. He looks down at his right hands. "They were throwing people in there, I think. Threw me in there, too, then everything blew up. I think the water changed me."

He laughs and awkwardly tries to run a hand on the back of his head. "Actually I'm not sure everything that changed. Haven't had a chance to look at myself yet."

And, ouch, he winces. Arms rubbed against each other.


[Searching for Jo]

The color change was unintentional. In fact, I accidentally used three different colors but only noticed one of them and fixed that one.

"Yeah, probably a good thing to check, just in case," Carmen says, agreeing. "Even if it isn't a trap, it's still really weird. At the very least, we probably should find out why it's empty."

She follows him, looking around too.
The outside of the outpost looks pretty...normal. Nothing unusual, mostly. Things are a little dusty, like they were doing great, mostly abandoned so dust and dirt here and there, but all the critical parts of it were maintained every so often.

Most unusually, though, is on one side of the outpost. There's a pretty decent-sized graveyard, with special care to make sure no animals or water would get into the graves.
Carmen looks closer at the writing on the graves (it's all pretty crudely written). "Weird," she says, "Look here. And here. And here. Everyone died on the same day."


[BDD Sans Thread => Street]

No Werecrown is incredibly disappointing.

"Oh. That makes a lot of sense, actually," Venus says. "Yeah, if I were a politician that's what I would do too, probably. Maybe."

The nearest main city exit is...that way? she thinks. Venus starts going off that way, but looks back at Rein to make sure she's going a good direction. "Do you think I'm going to need shoes or something? I can change my legs if I need to." Being barefoot is fine, most of the time, unless you need shoes. She has deer-legs. She raises one, a little, and asks, "Will these be fine when we get there? I can probably walk on tile or whatever as long as it's not too slippery, but I've seen way too many videos of dogs and baby deer and college students slipping on ice."

[Chaotic Bob]

Abandoned Newspaper

”Make a run for it. I’m going to shut the lights to draw them to me and cover your escape.” G’nichi whispers to the captives. He sneaks out to a secluded spot and points his staff at the sky! Specifically the lights. With a bolt of JUSTICE ENERGY he’ll use Bell’s power to overload the electricity and knock out the power to cut off the lights and the printing press torture machines. This should stop most of the cultist activity.
Naturally G’nichi starts moving immediately before the cultists can get to the spot he fired the beam from.

G'nichi is definitely getting in the spirit of things now!
The staff is very on board with this.

A great beam of shimmering rainbow light erupts from the staff's gem, straight for the sky, a blaze of radiant JUSTICE!
Nestled within it, entirely hidden from view, a thin spark of electricity arcs up to bury itself into whatever passes for a circuit in this place, to offset the local voltage a tad bit higher than what a good electrician would recommend. Just enough to fry some fuses, burn out a power supply or two.

A good magic trick obscures simple things under all the flashy aesthetic.

[Reinholdt]

[Street Sans Sign]

Perhaps Sszy doesn't have one because he's not king of all werewolves, but just a king who is a werewolf (and turned all his subjects into werewolves).

The King of all Weres is certainly a character concept to be reckoned with.

Reinholdt's already blindfolded again! That was fast. He sure takes this seriously for a half-drunk guy. Still, she's going in a good direction so he didn't see the need to comment. "Umm..." He's not sure what she's talking about until she elaborates! "Oh your hooves. Uhh... should be? Unless they were recently cleaned or waxed. Well, you can change legs in the shuttle down to the base and decide for yourself later. Which form are you more comfortable in anyways? Were you born that way?" Rein asks just as small talk.

[Recaiden]

[Perfectly Normal Park 3]

"Yes. There was a pool of water," June says, not approaching because he thinks he looks a little scary and intimidating. He looks down at his right hands. "They were throwing people in there, I think. Threw me in there, too, then everything blew up. I think the water changed me."

He laughs and awkwardly tries to run a hand on the back of his head. "Actually I'm not sure everything that changed. Haven't had a chance to look at myself yet."

And, ouch, he winces. Arms rubbed against each other.

Vix listens to that and doesn't really understand it. Throwing June into a pool? Why? Blowing up?
But the important thing is that they both got away.
She continues approaching, and will try to give June a sort of hug. The arms don't quite match up, but the gesture should still work.
"Where. Can. We. Go. Now?"
If she had to flee the apartment, then, surely they can't just walk back.

[Rebonack]

[Abandoned Newspaper]

ZOT!

With a pop the power to the building dies, causing the press to grind (literally) to a halt. Thankfully no one was part way through the machine at the time. Lots of shouting starts up almost immediately. Mostly yelling at George about whether or not he plugged that stupid space heater in again since it keeps blowing out the power every time the press is running. That seems to be keeping most of the cultists occupied.

However!

The scary looking cultist guarding one of the cages noticed the rainbow and now she's heading toward G'nichi's location to investigate!

But it's dark.

Really dark!

The only light source consists of a tiny bit of natural light filtering in through boarded up windows and whatever light individuals can supply.


[A Street - Cat-hating Sewer Monster]

"A marriage of convenience, dear. Intersection asked for our help to protect the City and the Princess was inclined to agree," Red replies matter-of-factly.

That's what's wrong with the cops! A bunch of them are weird and belong to a different organization.

And speaking off frisky shadows!

All three of them dogpile the magical girl at once, all reaching for her to steal her vitality. They're getting zapped a bit, but they don't seem to care this time. Red Velvet immediately lowers her head and lights up her horn. But this raises a question. Why are they being so persistent this time rather than sticking to hit and run attacks?

The answer?

Because this is a distraction.

An awful black thing rises out of ice, like some nightmarish cross between a beetle and a spider the size of a hippo. There comes a hollow, base THOOM! that reverberates through the cavern as vile entropic power seeks to unwind all active spellwork in the area. Red's hornlight immediately winks out along with her protective blood ward. That's probably an issue.

[Deathkeeper]

Pennilan's Tavern

"On occasion. It's not a skill I make a big deal out of though and it's not like people look at me and go, 'oh, that hooved lady can dreamwalk'. Most of them apparently associate satyrs to sex n' stuff." Jaahlyn shrugs, not even bothering using a more subtle term for it now. "Usually I'm just made to dreamwalk to leave messages though. But honestly, I vaguely recall using it in way worse ways so that's fine."

Pennilan's Tavern

Jim decides not to ask about what 'worse ways' means. Probably experimenting with weird bad things people can't normally do. Maybe hurting people. He just has to assume Jaahlyn could have been asked to do anything.
"Well, if you want to do it we can do that. Just give me a time. I have pretty predictable times for being asleep most of the time." He stays up late sometimes but not super often.

Abandoned Newspaper

G'nichi is a dragon and therefore has no problems seeing fine in the dark. That's how you know he's not a dragonborn like Nala: dragonborn don't have darkvision even though everybody in Faerun has darkvision.
G'nichi circles around the printing press and moves to deliver a mighty blow of strength and JUSTICE to the back of the cultist's head as he comes around!

[Chaotic Bob]

[Abandoned Newspaper]

The staff will be resuming a hammer form for these melee clobbering sessions.
And possibly making very misleading squeaky toy noises in the process, given how dangerous it s.

[A Street - Cat-hating Sewer Monster]

This is unfortunate.
A lot of things that the gnome-girl has skirmished with did some pretty weird things, but none of them just turn off magic.

Her warpstar immediately disappears, sending her into an uncomfortable free-fall straight into the ground. She tries to save herself from an awkward crash, but her big paintbrush as also disappeared.
The state of her magical girl transformation flickers like a magnet passing over a television screen, but seems to put itself back together. At around the same time, a bracelet on her wrist seems to slide from golden coloration to silvery.
"Ow, shoot, ow, crud, ow."
It's a painful looking tumble, particularly with those little shadows pulling at her life in the process. Though, whatever the pry out of her is going to be weirdly stale, as if she wasn't alive quite right. Strange.

She's not going to just take this though; death would have come for her a lot sooner than today if every bad hit completely stunned her out.
With only a little bit of wobble, the girl gets back up and starts quickly moving away from the real monster here, running her tiny hands through a myriad of hidden pockets in her outfit.

[5a Violista]

[Street Sans Sign]

Wow! That really is a fast blindfold. She imagines he has a lot of practice, to be that good at it.

'Deciding later' is a pretty good plan, Venus thinks. "Well, I am a human," Venus says, before clarifying because that's probably needlessly confusing and she's not sure if a possibly-already-drunk person can pick up on that sentence's nuance when she hasn't even thought through all the nuances herself. "Or, rather, I was born human and still usually consider myself one, in spite of the evidence to the contrary."

She looks down at her front legs. "Because of the fairy stuff, all my muscle memory and instincts matches up with deer legs, and this feels a lot more natural." She then turns at her waist and looks at her back legs, then says, "But also it feels really uncomfortable. Not, like, physically, but...well, you know. Like, it feels normal but it's weird that it feels normal and I don't like how I imagine everyone else looks at me. Been trying to get more used to it. In the end, they're both useful for different reasons, but one is more physically comfortable and the other is just less uncomfortable." Plus, the dress she wears is designed for someone with human legs so it doesn't fit the best without human legs. Most other centaur-like people she's met are just fine going without bottoms, but she can't do that either because magically making clothes appear isn't instantaneous and is not something she's practiced.

"So, um...in the end, it's just a really hard-to-answer question. I definitely do like the extra height I get from human legs, though, because otherwise I feel short."

[Perfectly Normal Park 3]

June has no idea how much Vix knows about the pools and everything, but assumes that she actually knows quite a bit more than he does, given that they were looking for her to save them. If she didn't know anything, she probably wouldn't be able to save them. (Unless they were planning to use her as some kind of...breeding queen or something, which he hopes is not at all the case because he actually considered it, a little.)

Hugs are hard when there's a huge disparity in the number of arms and one of the participants isn't really used to the arms. He hugs back, in an awkward hug.

"You grabbed the jacket, right?" he asks, instead of immediately answering Vix's question. The jacket he said over the phone to grab. "And by chance, did you bring the phone, too?" He didn't ask her to bring the phone.

Having both of those would greatly make everything easier, since there's an emergency-wallet and other things in the inside zipper-pocket.
"I have a friend...well, I guess she's more of an acquaintance, really, but if I asked her, she'd let us stay with her. She lives on the other side of town but that's probably for the best. That way, we'll have time to decide what to do and sort everything out. Really, I think just...if we wait, to see what happens, is probably the best thing to do right now."

It's not a phenomenally exciting plan or a solve-everything plan or even a plan that ties up all the loose ends, but it is boringly practical, in his opinion.

[Recaiden]

Vix knows some things about the pools, but she tries not to think about it too much right now. It was a terrible time, and she also had a nonstandard pool interaction - though not so bad that it killed her, so maybe June is the unlucky one here. Anyway, he didn't ask, so she's not going to struggle through an explanation.
She was not needed to repopulate the lair of monsters, no. But her role also wouldn't have anything to do with the pools of mutagen. That was a backup plan given their lack of her.

Vix reaches under the cloak and pulls out the jacket. They jacket he said to bring, that jacket.
June won't be able to wear it with all those arms, though!

"No. Phone." Wouldn't it run out of power if she took it away from where it belonged? So it was left behind.

She wraps the cloak the rest of the way around her again. Feels safer that way, even if doesn't make much real difference.
"Friend. Go. To. Now?"
The monsters might not know where to find them, but they're not as far away from them as 'the other side of town' would be. Better leave immediately.

[Rebonack]

[Abandoned Newspaper]

One of the upsides to dragon eyes is that you can see humans in situations where they really can't see you.

Case in point?

There's a silly squeaky noise as the cultist is clobbered!

He doesn't go down, though.

Instead, he staggers back a few steps swearing and then points his hands straight at the ground, hurling a gross smelling congealed orb of blood-

-which will explode violently in a blast of razor sharp shards upon striking the floor.

It's like fireball!

Except blood themed!


[A Street - Cat-hating Sewer Monster]

Raising a leg crackling with malevolent power, the nightcreeper takes aim at the magical girl and intones a death-curse.

"Die in da-"

Whoops!

Someone just hurled a stupidly powerful artifact axe into the outstretched limb, spoiling the spell. Red Velvet sprints toward the nightshade on her hind hooves no less, holding a deep crimson sabre in one of her front hooves. She leaps as the nightshade swings a leg at her, her horn briefly flaring and yanking the axe back into her grip. She sails clean over the creature, raking it with both weapons as she passes. The wound from the axe festers and rots while abhorrent blood pours from the sabre wound.

"Well hello there, darling. A pleasure to meet your acquaintance. Perhaps you might spare a moment to provide a lady with a dance?"

Red Velvet has the nightshade's full attention at this point.

The magic girl is still being dogged by the shadows.

At least until the 'dead weight' kirin filly comes charging over and plants a buck square in one of the shadow's faces, sending it tumbling comically through the air.

"Hey are you okay?" the filly inquires.

[bc56]

Necropolis of Kysimax

Maybe the library was the room full of scrolls and books upstairs, where the skeleton warrior's throne was?
It's a distinct possibility. Venus doesn't find any more secrets down here.

Abandoned Hospital

The door and surrounding walls seem pretty secure, reinforced with steel and probably more protected than they need to be.
To the offices!
Carmen will find a neat row of offices in the decaying corridor. The wooden doors are falling apart from rot and moisture. Only two seem particularly notable. From one, the foul stench of rotting flesh washes out in overpowering waves. From the other, there are flashes of light and the much weaker scent of ozone.

Heresy Fighters

"Now I know you've gone crazy." If Gold knew everything, and knew the paper things shouldn't be stopped, why would they have tried to stop them at first? Purple really needs a better weapon. A gun, maybe. Not so heroic, but easy to use.

[Recaiden]

If Gold knew everything, and knew the paper things shouldn't be stopped, then trying to stop the paper things must have made them harder to stop in the end.
Think about it, Purple.
"Difficult to believe, isn't it? But you asked for the plain truth."
They sound like they believe what they're saying, though that doesn't preclude them being crazy. But this doesn't sound like the whole truth in any case.

That said, Gold jumps away again.

[5a Violista]

[Perfectly Normal Park 3]

June takes the jacket, and puts it on the best he can, with two of the arms.
It feels weird, especially in the shoulders-area. Even feeling weird, it's easier than carrying the jacket the whole time. Unless they can eventually prove it's safe to go back to the apartment and grab things from there, the things in the jacket's pocket are going to be crucial.

"Okay, that's fine. We don't need the phone."
He considers which way to go to get to there. Obviously, can't go to the station back there because that's where Vix has already been and they might be checking there.
"This way," he says, crossing the park. "There's a bus stop over here." Take the right bus, and it'll lead away from everywhere they've been so far.
"From there, we'll transfer twice more, and then we'll be there."

He leads the way, since he's the one who knows the way. "Between bus two and three, we'll have to wait a while, so if you need anything we could take a pit-stop there and stop by a store."

Unless something remarkable happens, they should be able to get there quickly with little-to-no further incident.


[Necropolis of Kysimax]

Venus considered that possibility, too, but thinks it more likely that there's a hidden library down here than the 'library' is actually one that already found earlier.

On the way back, she checks the coffins and the pedestals to see if there's any secret hidden among them that'd require the ring or something.

Assuming there's none, she goes back upstars to the scrolls and books where the skeleton was, so she can look through them to see if these are the sword manuals the scroll was referring to.


[Abandoned Hospital]

One is full of dead bodies, and the other is...electricity? Maybe?
Carmen's not entirely sure, but that's her initial guess.
She's planning on visiting both eventually, so it's just a question of which to visit first. Well, the foul-smelling one, since it was the first one she spotted and might as well get it over with.
She considers using her lust magic somehow to...do something? with the smell?
But she quickly decides that anything that has a chance of lustzombies is a bad idea. So, instead, she decides to go the simple route: bring her shirt up and use it to block her mouth and nose, because it'll cover the smell a little, as she goes through it.

So, she enters the awful-smelling room, to look around. With dead bodies, there's got to be a clue about what happened here, right?

[Vahnavoi]

Arkham Street Mansion

"Lots of people find themselves in your position, slipping through the cracks in reality and discovering they've entered the Nexus. Most can't get back. Not everyone arrives with a business or a family, either. Fortunately, when Crab's Hermitage entered the Nexus, it did so with its whole premises and half its staff, and they were able to get a claw firmly on the grip of the housing market in this city. We work closely with the House Hunters that ensure the new homes are safe and were quickly able to house our workers." The hermit crab bobs in an approximation of a nod. "This is the city of Inside, within the realm known as the Nexus. Meeting the previous inhabitant is possible, but speaking with them likely expensive. They died, you see. The current owners are their great-grandchildren, nine of them, who have never lived here. They wish to sell so they can split the proceeds fairly and put it all behind them. It has been empty for three years, since their grandparent died. Or perhaps longer, there is some debate on exactly how long they were dead before the discovery of the body. If you have questions, I have read up on their history and that of the house, and may be able to help you."

The swordsman scratches his chin with his free hand, pondering. "Hmmm. All right. I do have a few questions. Answer at your leisure." He turns around to regard the house, putting the urn down. "Firstly, are any of these great-grandchildren magicians? Secondly, were any of their parents magicians? Thirdly, does history tell what kind of magical research was being done in this house? Fourthly, were there any servants who might still be alive? Fifthly, what was done with body of the owner who died?"

"Lastly, there might be some undead being in a closet in the attic. I may or may not have to put it out of its misery before I make a decision to buy. Could you, or do you know someone else who could, come watch my back for a few moments when I open it?"

[Recaiden]

I think this time, they should be able to use public transportation without any monsters, kidnappings, or other complications.

Vix follows. She shakes her head 'no' about the wait between bus two and three. Pit-stop? Store? Why would they need any of that?
No, better to get to June's friend-well-aquaintance as soon as possible.

"Thanks. June."

[Earl of Purple]

Arkham Street Mansion

"No, none of the great-grandchildren are magicians. That may change; they inherited the library, and the youngest is fourteen. I do not think their parents were, either. The research was primarily alchemical, but I believe there was some dabbling in necromancy as well. There are no surviving servants, I am afraid. The previous inhabitant dismissed them all sixty years ago. The previous inhabitant left no body. They disappeared forty years ago, and nobody has seen them since. The house was searched thoroughly several times, and no trace of them was ever found. I... do not know how such a creature got into the attic. I know someone who can go with you. I can't use ladders, you see. I will call someone, who... has been a pest before, by trespassing in the attics of our properties, and refusing to buy a permanent living place." The crab retreats into its shell, and the faint noises of a telephone being dialled can be heard.

[Deathkeeper]

Abandoned Newspaper

G'nichi jumps back, throwing his arms out for a nice protective bubble that Bell is so fond of putting him and other people in.
Unfortunately the cultist throwing the big area spell doesn't have a protective bubble. He might hurt himself like that.

[Chaotic Bob]

[A Street - Cat-hating Sewer Monster]

The shadows are one of those things that present an existential threat to normal people.
This little magical girl is anything but that.

The shadows are painfully (literally) annoying.

And she's in the process of pulling out some jars of what look like pigment when the filly decides to buck her way into the situation.
"Hey, this is a no-fly zone, you'll get hurt!"
Hypocrisy.
"Augh, get close!"

She gestures for the filly to get very close, before she starts doing something akin to an interpretive dance with the pigment jars outstretched in her hands. She moves too and fro, twirling and creating odd motions with her limbs.
In the wake of her hands, the pigments leave streaks of paint in the air in a multi-colored, web-like shell around her and hopefully the filly.
"Gallery Art: Heaven's Meadow!"
The pigment shell pulses with a riotous shifting of colored light, before flying outwards in a hectic splatter of paint across every solid surface of the room.

There, it shall in a rather curious display of magic, turn this dismal little sewer pit into a fairly passable, three-dimensional landscape portrait of a beautiful grassy meadow.
Complete with a cheerfully beaming, warm sun.

[5a Violista]

"Yeah, no problem," June says, not entirely sure what, exactly, he's being thanked for.

Well.
They get there safely. No weird things going on.

It's a pretty small house. There's bars and a locked gate that goes all the way to the ceiling leading to what's basically a room on the outside of the house, with the front door at the back of that room. The floor's all uneven and mismatched tile, and all the walls are brick and cement. There's a flowerpot and a hammock in the before-the-front-door room.

June knocks on the gate, claps a little, and calls out, "Heeey!"
After possibly-too-long, a woman with really messy black hair comes to the door, opens up the door, stares blankly at June and Vix, then says "No thanks, not interested," and closes the door.

"Wait! It's me, Anani! Long story! Can we stay here?"

After another too-long period of time, that lady returns to the door. She's wearing a really loose T-shirt and baggy sweats. She opens the door, and then comes to the gate and opens that too. "Come on in," the lady says. "I'm expecting a really good story."

June enters the...front-porch-room?thing? and holds open the gate for Vix to go through.

Actually inside the house, it's pretty dark. Sheets instead of curtains covering the windows. A big bedsheet over a couch, too, and in the first room there, the main source of light is a TV that's on the pause menu for a video game. The house goes back to some other rooms, and even has a very-much-walled-in back yard with dirt and a few small trees.

The lady goes inside, and starts saying, "Bring a chair from..." then turns to look at them both. She blinks several times, as she tries to decide if she has any chairs that would work for either of them. She keeps on staring and blinking.

That's when June intrudes to break the ice: "Vix, Chrystalla. Chrystalla, Vix."
He tells Vix, "We used to work together. She quit, though." He then heads into the back, looking for a chair to bring to the front room.

Chrystalla picks back up the controller and a blanket from off the floor, and then says to Vix, "Hi. You two are eloping?" Since there's not really any other reasonable guess why two people would show up together, probably.

[Rebonack]

[Abandoned Newspaper]

Bubble!

A bubble is a good way to deal with a stabberballer.

The cultist gets pretty lacerated by the blast, but they don't seem to mind a great deal.

Why you ask?

Because each one of those fountains of blood morphs into a dragon-like shape and begins spitting bolts of elemental energy at G'Nichi!

It looks like they're going to keep it up until they get through.

Which is kind of rude, really.


[A Street - Cat-hating Sewer Monster]

The filly dives in close as the wave of magical paint splats across every available surface of the otherwise gross, depressingly cold chamber.

Red Velvet (somehow) manages to avoid the paint completely, her coat left as pristine as ever.

As warm, cheerful sunlight beams down into the room the shadows seem to wilt at its caress, smoking and sizzling like bacon on a too-hot pan. Sadly, unlike bacon, they don't smell good at all.

With a fearsome (not really) cry, the filly whips around and clubs one of the approaching shadows with her dragony tail, knocking it prone. Then she begins stomping the heck out of it with her crystal hooves, little flashes of rainbow sparks flying with each kick. Within a few seconds it has been reduced to nothing.

"I got it!" the filly cries with triumph! Before gagging, black ooze spurting between her teeth as her eyes go wide.

Oh gross now she's throwing up, too. Too many barf horses.

The other two shadows, weakened by the light, assault the magical girl again. It's pretty clear they're not having a good time and their attacks are far slower than they were before. None the less, they're quite intent on ripping at the magical girl's life force until she's nothing by a shadowy husk. It's possible that they can't actually do that, but we'll see!

Meanwhile!

The nightskitterer is NOT HAPPY about the sunlight causing its flesh to boil and bubble. It tries sinking into the ice, but the ice isn't ice anymore! It's a pretty meadow! That ice sinking trick would have been a dodge, which means it just found itself on the business end of a rapid series of strokes as Red Velvet rains attacks upon it. It has to make do with shielding itself with two of its more heavily armored forelimbs, which are being hack to bits regardless. It doesn't help that a pool of its foul blood has spontaneously animated and begun attacking it as well. Nor does it help that a crippling curse is sapping the heartiness of its armor.

So with that in mind?

It decides to manifest a thin layer of black ice over Red Velvet.

Whoop!

She's frozen in place now.

Though judging from the rapidly spread cracks she won't be frozen for long.

[Chaotic Bob]

[A Street - Cat-hating Sewer Monster]

Excellent, this is precisely what the gnome was going for.
It wasn't a fight-ending maneuver she did, but it was intended to be a momentum-tipper.

Now with that, she can actually pay attention to these aggravating shadows picking and pulling at her energy.
Over the course of all this, her bracelet has been getting ever darker, but she herself seems to be relatively fine. Probably nothing to read into here.

A smaller, normal-sized paintbrush is withdrawn from another pocket and she makes a little flicking motion with it, some ethereal paint stretching off the end and sticking into a pearly, vaguely blade-like shape.
"Alright, you all need to bug off so I can deal with the important thing."
Then she's just going to make some general hacking motions at them with her new magical knife!

If it kills them, cool. If it drives them off, also cool.
She doesn't really care about them, just wants them to stop trying to eat her.

[Rebonack]

[A Street - Cat-hating Sewer Monster]

The magical girl manages to rip through the frail forms of the shadows, rending them like tissue paper and causing them to dissolve with a distressingly child-like shriek.

While this is happening, the puddle of black goop the little kirin filly just barfed up rapidly assembles itself, taking on texture and color until there stands a unicorn filly with a powder blue coat and sunny yellow mane. She looks a little shocked and confused, but otherwise fine.

She also just registered the shadows being destroyed.

"Oh no, the other girls!"

Arright!

The familiars are gone that's always step one, right? Now she just needs to deal with the 'witch'.

Though that thing is probably not a witch.

"The Collector's champions I expected, but not the defiled nightmare. Truly this is a cursed realm," the gross black bug monster says, its voice a deep baritone. It regards Red Velvet is a look of absolute disgust, the magical girl with contempt. "I will be more prepared upon our next encounter. Tend to your soul, little champion. I would be disappointed to lose the opportunity to slay you myself."

Then it explodes.

Chunks of razor-sharp darkness are flung away from the monster, blasting Red out of her icy prison and sending her skidding across the ground. She looks wounded.

The two fillies and the magical girl are far enough away to avoid the worst of the blast, but flying shadow shrapnel might still give them a bad time.