The MagCave Resurgent

[Lord Magtok]

Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari

Magtok doesn't look especially rattled. I mean, not any more than he was when the candy zombies showed up. After your hundredth or so giant rampaging monster, you get a sort of feel for how they work, when they're going to lunge, and where to stand to avoid being the faceless expendable goon that gets gored on its tusks or scythed like wheat by its blades. The key things to remember are that it's always has at least one attack option you didn't account for, it's usually a lot faster than it looks, will prioritize whoever hurt it the most and is standing the closest, and unless sapient, will hardly ever pursue you outside of its territory, especially at the expense of its own safety and well-being. Oh, and always make sure there's someone expendable standing closer to the monster than you are. Someone with shorter legs and less stamina, like a-

"Olvisin, you need to pull your team back further," Magtok advises, as he carefully murders a stray gummy soldier or two to give them room to withdraw. He's assuming Olvisin to be the leader of the group on account of the prosthetic arms, because of course she's the leader. You wouldn't give the cool aesthetic to anyone but the boss gobbo, right? Can't be Alzup Razortooth, he's probably just here because of nepotism or something. Or maybe reverse-nepotism, maybe his family hates him so much that they sent him here to die.

[Aurora Alchemi]

Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari

The glistening gobstopper eye leers down at the goblins as they pelt it with fire, but there is a degree of calculating intelligence in the glare. In a few moments, the great beast shifts, flicking a row of razor sharp rock candy stalactites down at the security crew in the same manner one might kick dirt at an anthill. As the cloying fire wreathes one side of it's arm, the beast gives a quick slash in the air, a great gob of half brimstone marshmallow, half alchemical fire glorps off and coats several feet of the lab in a vicious firestorm that smells of burnt caramel. As it looses the tartrap into the intervening area, Eshaal carefully squeezes off another round, the white trail of plasma left in the wake of her rifle briefly cutting shafts of light through the mist and smoke of the ruined labs. It was another orb down, but the process was slow, and the group didn't really have time to dodge around the thing for Esha to pick each weakpoint off one by one. "Gimme' a minute, sprockethand babe! I gotta make some spac-" The creature gives an earsplitting roar, and there again is that keen sense of intelligence, as if the beast were intentionally preventing communication. Either way, it did at least seem to shift it's attention more fully to Eshaal.

Or at least, so it seemed. Just a moment later, the carnivalfex swings one of it's scythes at Esha as she takes a dodge backwards, though the swing seems weirdly off center compared to the beast's normal movements. About halfway through the swing, however, there are a series of small pops, like the sound corks being released from wine bottles, and several small jawbreakers fly off of the beast's scythe, peppering the area around Magtok and the goblins. None of them move fast enough to be much of a kinetic threat, but as they hit surfaces around the lab, they vaporize into fine glittering dust, the exact kind of thing that would fry circuitry, form sugar flour explosions, and coat things in a sticky, nasty, carbonizing crud. After the shrapnel jawbreakers have filled the air with disorienting glitter, the beast takes a breath in, chest noticeably swelling, before loosing a stream of black and flaming goo at Eshaal.

The candy gremlin child gives several rounds of swears as they dodge, the stream of fire and hate tracking like an automated turret. Esha manages to slide behind a lab counter, though the other side is thoroughly sugar glassed. With one hand, she reloads the railgun, while the other searches her rucksack, before sliding a set of what look to be cyberpunk revolvers over to Olvisin. Esha holds up 5 fingers, indicating each handgun has five shots, before whipping the railgun up onto the lab table and popping another shot into the candy terror. This one severs one of the scythes, however as Esha starts to withdraw toward the Magtok trap, her dodging is just not quite good enough. Almost as if predicting the punk, a single concentrated shot of goo takes Esha's arm off at the shoulder, prompting another round of swears as the goblin rolls over the next row of lab benches to safer cover. "Hey cromedome, you didn't happen to leave any learning AI down here for it to subsume, did you? This stupid thing is smarter than I remember these bein-" There is another loud roar, as the beast turns toward Magtok. Esha doesn't seem all that phased by the loss of her arm, and a careful look shows that there is already a new one starting to form in it's place, but it has slowed her slightly while she adjusts.

[Morty]

[Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari]

The trio of goblins scurry to avoid the candy stalactites, fire, ooze and dust. There's altogether too much of it to line up a shot for the moment.

"This is my team, not-"

"Save it for later, boss!"

A suggestion of pulling back is nonetheless easy to comply with right now. Olvisin accepts the handguns from Esha and opens up at the severed wound where a scythe was just severed, hoping it'll do more than her own shots had. And shooting at a weak spot is always a good course of action.

[Lord Magtok]

Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari

"Raptor Christ, I left intelligent machines everywhere in this place," Magtok answers, his tone implying it should've been obvious to her that a mad genius like himself would have sophisticated AI systems all across his lair. She's been here long enough; the Magbots may have all moved on, but she must've seen at least a couple of the mechanized panzerbots roaming the halls of B4, thirsting for human flesh. Or the MagComputer's rogue security drones. Or the south wing of the sixth basement floor, where mechanical sharks roam freely after the entire place got flooded with radioactive ooze and machine oil. Did she really stick to just the bio labs and nothing else in her safaris?

"I wish I'd known we were going to run into something like this in advance; I might've sent a remote-controlled drone instead of my actual human form," he grumbles, disconnecting his own glittering candy-crusted left arm from his shoulder. He presses a button that makes it start beeping and shaking erratically, sighs in disappointment, and chucks it at the monster's maw, before running in the opposite direction. That's right, you stupid animal, chew on that, and maybe chase after him while you're at it, right onto the big electrical trap in the middle of the arena.

[Aurora Alchemi]

Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari

Air fills with a sharp crackling retort as Olvisin pulls the trigger, and though nothing seems to leave the gun barrel, the spot on the beast bursts into a white-blue fire that seems to torch for a moment. Though it fizzles down to a simple blue flame quickly enough, the shot clearly seems to be eating through the armored candy, and the flame doesn't seem to go out as the fist sized vaporized zone burrows into the beast's hide. As the cylinder rotates away from the barrel, a little holographic charging meter pops up over the spent location. It looks like about ten seconds to charge a new shot. This last shot, thankfully, seems to actually cause the beast some pain. Not so nice, however, is the extra attention it warrants from the candyfex. In an instant, the stream of carbon-sugar lava blasts the trio's cover zone, splashes flicking over the edge of the lab desks and landing like devilish globs of hot glue on the other side. Luckily, the torrent doesn't last long, as the trio receives a hand from their boss. Or rather, the creature gets an arm.

It's reaction is swift, almost as if there is a radius around the beast where it has blindsight. It's tail whips up, opening into a second maw for a moment, then glorping around the arm, sealing solid in an apparent mitigation strategy by the beast. Of course, Magtok was making a... tactical extraction, and the beast locks on for a longer moment. It starts to surge into an attack, but then freezes. For a moment, the eyes look almost mechanical, scanning across the room in the manner a laser targeting system might. The beast growls, the gutteral sound half electronic. "Mag.... Tok...." The psuedomechanical growl is too close in phonetics to mistake for anything else. The pause was brief, however, and the beast spits a glob of... something multicolored directly onto the biofilm adjacent to Magtok's trap. Slowly at first, but then quicker and quicker, as if a virus had been planted, a ring of rock candy and gooey candy transforms and corrupts the biofilm. While it wasn't moving much yet, the way the film glorps up the electrical device leaves no question as to hostility.

Eshaal watches the scene unfold for a moment, then blinks. "Alright, time trial... this thing is reaching critical evolutionary programming pretty quickly." There is a flash of a devilish candy smile, and the punk goblin pulls an object about the size of a pen out of her pocket. "Look alive teams! I can get us thirty seconds, but we have to crunch all the cores fast. Anything goes, they'll be open to attack, but don't step in the goo, it's infectious." Esha flicks the the little pen in a circle, where a single light blinks into existence. "Cover your ears, open your mouth, you know the drill!" Esha flicks the object over her shoulder toward the cotton candy tyrant, giving a wink to the alchemist as if to say 'Here comes my pocket alchemical fire'.

[Morty]

[Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari]

The goblins flee again when the candy-lava sprays their general area. They seem to be good at it, too. Scurrying from cover to cover like rodents. Olvisin doesn't really have time to marvel at the gun she's temporarily using as she does her best to avoid being melted.

When Esha gives her command, the goblins crouch and cover her ears, but keep their weapons close to open fire when they can. Or... Olvisin and Alzup keep their weapons close. The alchemist has produced something that, on first glance, looks like a firework. But presumably it will do something.

[Lord Magtok]

Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari

The beeping arm finally explodes with roughly the same explosive force as a grenade of the same size, which probably won't do nearly as much damage as Magtok had hoped, thinking the beast would foolishly swallow it whole, but hell, at least it's still in the same general vicinity as the explosion. It's not like Mag was doing anything particularly useful in this fight with that arm anyway, right?

...Actually, maybe that wasn't such a good idea. See, now he has to hold his revolver under his chin if he wants to stoop down and take his pouch of weird sci-fi orange gunpowder out of his pocket, and then crouch next to the floor as he pours almost the entire bag into the gun's chambers, sprinkling a very questionable amount on each of the bullets. He hopes whatever Eshaa is doing now will work, because gods know none of his own schemes have borne fruit. Maybe if his trap wasn't so transparently obvious to anything with a brain larger than a grape...oh well. It's not like he could've known the monster would eat a computer and develop sentience.

[Aurora Alchemi]

Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari

The little chrome ellipse seems to slow down everything around it as it arches through the air. The vicious candy carnivalfex's eyes lock onto the object, even as the blast in it's tail reverberates. There is a moment of pregnant pause, a half beat that seems to be just enough time to realize that the object has started to materialize glowing, circuit board-esk lines over it's entire surface. The beast lunges, a new maw opening on an arm to repeat the swallow and mitigate strategy that had dealt with Magtok's disposable arm... But just as the maw is about to close, there is a puff of air outward. It's almost completely uniform around the little tube, the glittering candy dust rushing away from the group, small beakers and labwear starting to move away, almost as if the room has taken a breath outward. The pause is broken by the electronic voice of the creature starting to scream Magtok's name once more, but it is cut short.

There is a bright flash, and a great wind inwards toward Eshaal's little device that seems to pull not just around objects, but through them, knocking the air completely out of the party's lungs for a brief moment. But perhaps the strangest thing is the silence that follows the rush of wind. As if someone had left the very Foley soundtrack to the battle out, the situation evolves in a seeming slow motion pantomime. The little container begins to blossom rainbow colored flowering flames, each with a strange black-shadow hue or glow, while the beast begins to warp and change, long tendrils of rapidly adapting candy flesh attempting to cage and protect, while the jawbreaker cores visibly migrate toward 'safer' locations in the beast's body. Safer is a relative term, however, as a deep vupp sounds, and the popcorn of flames suddenly seem to coat and consume the whole creature's body, before ripping it to shreds. The finale of the implosion positively coats the room in blebs of virulent candy crud, as chunks of beast the size of a head hit ceiling and floors with the sound mashed potatoes might make if you mixed them with jello and tossed them at a wall. The jawbreaker cores lay scattered throughout the room, as if rolled there by children playing.

"NOW, GO." Eshaal herself has already started moving, preforming a one armed cartwheel to ascend over the cover of the desk, aiming the railgun for a clean shot through one of the farthest cores as they spin through the air. For almost the first time the fight, Eshaal seems to be taking the brief moment very seriously, the subtle smile usually present on her face gone as she rapid reloads while coming down on top of a nearer jawbreaker with a stomp that sounds of shattering glass. It doesn't take much time to see why the brilliant blue bandit is moving so quickly; already the large chunks of vicera are agglomerating toward the nearest core, not unlike a regenerating slime mold. Indeed, some of the smaller blobs also seem to crawl toward the non-candy combatants, seeking to infect them with the corruption of the beast and Esha.

[Morty]

[Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari]

Olvisin and Alzup don't need to be told twice; they open fire on the cores with their weapons. Alzup uses the same long rifle as before, Olvisin the gun she got from Esha. The alchemist doesn't. Instead, she levels the firework-like tool and... well, it does indeed look like fireworks of sorts. But instead of bright light and sulfurous smell, it explodes into a blast of electricity and extreme cold. She'll use it to keep the crawling pieces of the monster away from the other two goblins.

[Lord Magtok]

Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari

The spicy cheeto dust Magtok has been holding onto finally gets a chance to shine again, as the bullets rip out of his revolver, acting as normal bullets do midflight, before violently melting within any cores they successfully lodge themselves in. It's the same trick Magtok pulled earlier on a zombie, but dangerously overcharged because of the excess of orange powder used, meaning each and every core struck this way has a chance of starting a massive fire and make it that much harder for the creature to regenerate, as everything burns and burns and burns.

Magtok himself doesn't stand around to watch, though. Not while blobs are trying to blob their way over to him and assimilate his genius into its ugly blob hivemind. It's time to find a relatively safe patch of ceiling and float up to it, where he can just patiently fire upon the remaining cores without incident and wait for the scattered goop to die. It should die once all the cores are roasting, right?



When the Levee Breaks

Rainwater is supposed to run down from the peak of Mount Enn. It’s supposed to funnel down into an artificial underground reservoir, flow into carefully constructed aqueducts and filters, and eventually spout from every sink, bath, shower, and decorative fountain within the MagCave. That’s why Magtok is very perplexed when one day it just…doesn’t. No water anywhere. No shower, no kitchen sink, no bathtub or toilet water…heck, not even a faint mist for all the plants in the greenhouse. It's mildly irritating when Magtok presses a button on the refrigerator for ice cubes in his drink and nothing happens, but genuinely unsettling when this isolated incident becomes a recurring pattern across the MagCave, as tests of each bathroom and sink prove this is happening all over the lair. It’d be very inconvenient for him to live like this, running to the store to buy bottled water for everything, but even more troublesome is the long-term damage such a drought could cause. The ecosystem of the lower floors will go insane if a drought forces them all upstairs into his living space. It's best to nip a problem like this in the bud immediately, and that's exactly what he means to do, grabbing his gear and striding up the stairs towards the underground reservoir.

Roughly Fifteen Minutes Later

An intercom crackles to life across the MagCave's first floor. It has the rhythm of our cyborg's voice, but it's lacking the pitch and tone, giving it a distinctly robotic quality that usually isn't there. "Hey Caelynn? Uhh...weird question, but I need you to answer as honestly as possible. On a scale of one to ten, one being not at all, ten being one of those early Wonder Woman comics, how would you rate your attraction to women? Also, I need you to take the stairs up to the aquifer three floors above you. Bring a swimsuit and a weapon, please. If you've rated yourself higher than a 5 you should be wearing nose plugs too, I think."

[Aurora Alchemi]

[Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari]

Eshaal dances from core to core, about once in every three cores she smashes accompanied by a shot from the railgun. It's a startling level of accuracy, considering the candy goblin's one handing the large rifle, while the other hand smashes or conveys cores to the toothy maw in equal parts. There is a few glances here and there to the others, but fortunately each portion of the safari seems to be doing a good job at balancing offence and defense. With the others relatively ok, Eshaal is free to focus on her forte, going hard offense while crossing the room, neatly avoiding the bursts of flame that Magtok spreads around the misty labs.

For the goblin trio, the covering coldfire of the alchemist works extremely well, the advancing blobs either halted, shattered, or slowed greatly. Fortunately while separate from the cores, the beast's innards no longer appear to be learning or adaptive, and keeping them at bay is only slightly harder than the original zombie-esk groupings. With an effective 4 shooters between all of them, the cores crumble quickly enough in a rain of bullets, or at least what each individual gun might consider as a bullet. Occasionally Esha gives a quick call to the other goblins for a core that's out of view from her position, or warns the alchemist of a particularly sneaky ooze.

Magtok, of course, seems to have risen completely above the danger zone, and blasting down gives a good overlook position. This, of course, does put him in range of the biogrowth on the ceiling, which at this range appears to be made up of a blanket of mosslike flesh with the occasional embedded but mildly identifiable body part. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, there does appear to be a few demonic faces in the overgrowth, a symptom of the absolutely crossplanar mess going on in this shimmering hulk of what was a lab. The biologic growth appears to be mildly malevolent towards the approaching Magtok, but in the slow, cautious manner of an ambush predator, rather than the rapid threat of the ooze. Either way, a barnacle maw starts to slowly accumulate.

Down below, the last of the orbs shatters in a scintillating pile of crystalline gobstopper, and Esha stands up, giving a thumbs up. "All clear here, blobs are dispersing. How do things look over there, crack shots? You had some good hits in." Esha gives a kick to an ooze that is rapidly crumbling into a pile of what could most comfortingly be called jelly. "Not a bad hunt, neither, but we'll want to get a move on. That was my only trump card of that type, and the noise will have attracted some others. Now then the exit is... This way? No no..." The candykin squints, then points a completely different way. "This way. Maybe. Do you remember, chrome dome?"

[Morty]

[Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari]

"That was awesome," Olvisin says. "Terrifying, but awesome. Can I take a closer look at this gun later?"

"She's right, though. I don't like our odds of finding something even worse down here."

[Arkhosia]

When the Levee Breaks

Caelynn has always been fairly early to rise, much to Magtok's alternating joy and chagrin. Some days it means he gets to wake up to a nicely cooked breakfast and a fresh pot of coffee, other times its getting dragged out of bed because she wants to *gasp* go out and spend time and do things with him!

If he were a saltier and more miserable human being, our erstwhile lord of the mountain and seventy-five percent of all major business chains and monopolies across the Nexus would have a veritable plethora of Silver- to Bronze-era cracks about the suffering that is living with "the missus" or "the ol' ball and chain", despite the two not actually being married.

But Magtok doesn't, because he is a healthier person in a bolstering and affectionate relationship that generally thrives despite minor personal frictions and differences in habit and belief.

Anyways, the point of all this is that Caelynn has already been fairly up and about by this point, and is just settling into a rather interesting medical textbook on the treatment of Capering Imp Sickness in the early years of Riverside's founding when the intercom shudders itself awake and startles her into attention.

The catgirl blinks. She frowns up at the speaker a little, more out of puzzlement than anything else.

"Er, sure," she answers out of habit, getting up and starting to rummage through her drawers. There's always something new and interesting going on around here, and you learn pretty early that - ah, there it is- it's best to roll with the punches and figure out what's going on in the moment. Although it has been mercifully quiet as of late since - wow, was it always this tight? Caelynn frowns. "Huh, I guess I really have gotten a little... curvier since moving in."

- - -

There's not too much delay before Caelynn makes her way on up the stairs, barefoot and armed. She's wearing just a fairly simple white bikini that's perfectly serviceable if maybe a couple years or so out of fashion, straining a little more than manufacturally-intended around the chest and hips, and carrying a respectably utilitarian Flock 17 just like she's practiced in Firearm Safety Class (which may or may not have just been Magtok and an old lab repurposed into a shooting range). She does also have a pair of Magmart nose plugs in."Mags? Everything okay?"

[Lord Magtok]

Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari

Magtok uneasily sinks back to the ground, giving the ceiling's demonic faces as wide a berth as he can manage as the rest of the crew celebrates. He is absolutely sending some drones down here with flamethrowers later. Flamethrowers, plastic explosives, and maybe a few crucifixes for good measure. Crucifixes made out of plastic explosives and flamethrowers blessed by a priest, maybe.

"The way back? It should be-" our tin man squints, his left eye looking over a holographic map of the floor as it was ten years ago. The most convenient exits have been walled off by biomatter or deliberately collapsed to keep the stuff down here from spreading, a hallway that's supposed to be here was removed in a teleportation accident eight years ago, and the demon outbreak shifted everything sixty-six degrees so the compass in his head isn't very helpful, either. Hrm.

"The chute is that way, and there's a staircase over there if something happened to it while we were gone," he points. Personally, he'd much rather deal with the stairs. None of these goblins, not even the candy one, look like they can climb up as easily as they rode down, and he'd rather not have to use his hover implant and carry any of them back up, Eshaal especially.

When the Levee Breaks

Imagine a swimming pool for mechs. An absolutely massive stadium-sized swimming pool that dwarfs Olympic pools, with all sorts of massive filters, channels, stirring mechanisms, pipes, portals, and more. All of the equipment frozen in place, frozen solid, frozen over, plugged up with a massive lump of ice, but just the equipment, not the surface of the pool itself. A very deliberate and improbable act of sabotage, clogging every pipe and pathway that would otherwise guide water out of this room and to the rest of the lair.

The blame for this heinous crippling of MagCave infrastructure can be laid entirely upon the naked stranger standing at the pool's edge with her arms draped over Magtok's shoulders and across his chest. A naked stranger with a sharpened icicle pointed at Magtok's throat, a snarling, boiling water spirit who would be the most beautiful woman Caelynn had ever laid her eyes upon, if not for the noseplugs blocking most of the pheromone fog around her. Even with that defense, she's still undeniably gorgeous for a pointy-eared woman made entirely out of flowing water and ice. A pointy-eared water nymph that radiates beauty and grace and righteous fury for the mountain stream that was stolen from her.

"How cute, you've brought your girlfriend to watch you die. Cat lady, do you know which of his buttons makes the water go back up? I want the mountain spring I was promised, and he's not telling me how to put it back," the watery witch pouts, expecting Caelynn to jump at the opportunity to do anything she asks, as mortals are meant to (except for weirdos like this half-robot who can turn off their own noses, what the hell is wrong with him).

"Look, no one here gives a **** what some irrelevant nature god promised you. Mt. Enn is mine, and you can't just-" Magtok is cut off by the business end of the river spirit's icicle, which carves a thin red warning line under his chin. The naked lady doesn't seem too interested in arguing over whose claim over the water is more legitimate. She has the pointy stick, she has the ability to freeze water, that makes her claim the only one that matters.

[Arkhosia]

Took Cat Lady To The Levee But The Levee Was Dry

Huh. Caelynn hadn't realized the Magcave had a swimming pool, let alone something so unnecessarily massive. Although it isn't too much of a surprise - her boyfriend did have a tendency for extravagance back in the day when he first built this place, and there were certainly stranger places they had rediscovered last week. Like the lab devoted entirely to studying new innovations in Lasgeese technology, or the Dread Lego Room.

But whatever was going on here definitely looked like some sabotage. Some sabotage done by... squinting an insanely gorgeous ice woman, it seems. Admittedly, Caelynn wasn't sure that she was really that into women, but she was fairly thankful she still took precautions. This spirit was absolutely stunning, the slim curves of her enough to cause a bit of a blush as she takes in the scene.

Those thoughts take a bit of a background to the pressing issue, of course, which is her boyfriend being held at icepoint.

"Woah, woah, how 'bout we both take things back down a notch," the cat lady suggests, holstering her pistol and lifting her hands in that universal gesture of conflict de-escalation. "Now uh, I don't think we have a button that puts the water back up. But if you pull the icicle away, maybe we can work something out."

All things considered, Caelynn is doing her best to be fairly friendly for now. It wasn't too often that she had to defuse any conflicts at her clinic, but it was something she found important to learn in her line of work. There was always a chance of unreasonable patients or erratic conditions that she would have to manage in the workplace.

[Lord Magtok]

The Life Aquatic With Caelynn Turath

"If you can steal my water, you can pump it back up," the fae creature insists, as her watery frame begins making minute adjustments to mirror Caelynn's own curves, in what might be a conscious or unconscious attempt to influence her (or her hostage?) and make them more pliable to future persuasive efforts.

"I don't care if it takes pushing a button, pulling a lever, flicking a switch, or draining every fluid out of your boyfriend's body through his ear holes. One of you is going to make it happen, but until it does, the icicle isn't going anywhere," she insists, doing a dramatic flourish of her pointy icicle (which isn't as dexterous as it looks because I'm pretty sure she cheated and it passed right through her watery fingers at least once) as Magtok nervously tries to...is he mouthing some sort of secret instructions or something? Kill her, I think he's saying? Well that's not very helpful advice in this situation. How is she even supposed to kill someone made of water and ice? Trip her into a pile of rock salt? Turn up the thermostat until she gets soaked into a carpet? Pour alcohol on her until she's too drunk to fight?

[Arkhosia]

Semi Aquatic Bab-Making Mammal of Action?

"I mean, we could probably figure out a way to build something for you, but I don't think it's something we can just go flick a switch for right now," Caelynn concedes, trying her best not to react too much at how the naiad seem to be trying to subtly mimic her. She was pretty sure you're not supposed to react too strongly towards fey, but she might also be thinking of... I dunno, maybe vampires or something?

"Unless you'd mind letting my boyfriend actually speak to me? Because I've never been here before, and he would actually know what any of these buttons can do - oh! Or if we have some sort of... send-water-upstream-inator that will just put all this water back up there somehow?" The catgirl nods enthusiastically, suddenly very confident in this.

[Aurora Alchemi]

[Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari]

The blue demon of a candy tilts her head, watching Magtok with a degree of curiosity. The eyes seem to peel apart the robotic boss man for a moment, as if tunneling into his very being, cutting deep for secrets.... or possibly Eshaal is just lost in a reflection of herself off that chrome dome. Either way, the goblin seems to nod in agreement. "Stairs sound alright to me, major Magtom. Ground control will be easier to reach that way anyways. I dunno exactly what's going on in that chute, but last time I climbed up that way, I ended up going several floors down. Somehow. As a side note, something down there is collecting skeletons; I'm not sure if they are from your closet, or if those are just the kind of things that tend to accumulate in places like this. Or maybe they are my fault. Equal possibility really." The candykin gives a shrug, popping open the anti-material railgun and loading another round with an air of unconcerned calmness. It was almost as if battle Eshaal had evaporated, the punky thing now standing tall back to a zoomer and a half of meme material. There is a few brief scans of the area, then the goblin peaks around a few blind corners.

"At least this way looks relatively clear. What about you all, any fancy scanners or goblin tech that'll teach us some tunnels? The walls down here shift a bit weird like, and I don't care to watch one of ya's get swallowed by a mimic cabinet. 'Specially not the one with the mega mart dosh." Eshaal winks at the group, before looking over to pistol pete-ette, and laughing. "Oh, you like that little thing? I'll do you one better, my nickel plated, integrated bicep cyborg friend! I got a mobile hard-light and holotool extraction settup at my apartment, we can make you something' similar but wholly your own. Though you'll have to hit up the holochip market for me. They don't let me in after the incident." The bright blue being gives a laugh, cutting through a thick set of vines that seem to weep blood and then wilt, demonstrating once more the razor edge on the candy claws, before revealing a set of hallways that look.... relatively.... safe. "You said this way... right?"

Indeed, it seems like the hallways are nice and straight, and mostly empty. Even the biomat seems to fade away a few feet into the hallway. It just looks.... like a college lab hallway? Esha squints, eyes working over the hallway. Esha gives an incredulous squint. "Huh... does this feel too easy to anyone else?" The hallway is void of anything out of the ordinary, except maybe that both halves of the hallway look too symmetric, in a positively liminal way, and the area feels way too clean. Like, not even dust floating in the air clean. Oh, and the alarms and red rotating lights that are in other sections of the lab seem to be either absent or off. Actually, the more the group looks, the more out of place everything looks, just because it doesn't look down bad horrible.

[Morty]

[Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari]

"I don't think I've managed to get on their bad side yet, so sure. You've got a deal," Olvisin says.

"We'd need to do a proper resonance scan of the walls to see if there's any tunnels here..." the alchemist says before they enter the new corridor.

"Oh, yes. Way too easy. This is obviously some kind of trap."

[Lord Magtok]

Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari

Janitorial equipment, by Magtok's estimation. A haywire cleaning drone that does its job a little too well, and violently sanitized anything that dared enter its hallway. That, or maybe one of those hallways full of lasers he built to lure incredibly flexible gymnast heroines to do rolls and backflips and running on the walls to get through without dying. I don't know if we ever got to try out one of those hallways on anyone, but they always looked really cool in movies and videogames and stuff.

"Let's find out what we shouldn't be walking into, then," the one-armed cyborg answers, scooping up a soft clump of what he hopes is just dirt attached to some bright-red grass. He winds his arm back and lobs the dirt clump down the hall, where it should skip across the tiles like a smooth stone across water before rolling to a stop. It should do that, provided he's completely wrong about everything and it's just a completely harmless hallway the evil bio-monsters just didn't want to interact with. If he is right, this is probably when the lasers and/or murder-roombas show up to eliminate the filthy intrusion into their domain, as Mag and the goblin gang watch safely(?) from afar.

River Titty Ransom

"You mean the thing he's been telling me doesn't exist and is impossible to build this whole time?" the spirit of the mountain spring answers with a glare, before her scowl cracks, replaced with a triumphant grin on her eerily perfect face.

"Ha! You still feeling so clever after calling your girlfriend down here, robot boy? Less than two minutes and she's already on my side and calling you out as a liar. Must suck to suck that bad. Maybe I'll even keep her after I get my water back, as repayment for making me go through all this," she crows, before lowering her icicle. Magtok is understandably less enthusiastic about all of this. Not having that frozen knife at his throat is an improvement, and it's good that the stream spirit seems to believe Caelynn, but does she have to be so goddamn smug about it? Ugh, he almost wants to just tell her the truth, just to get her to stop acting so undeservedly proud over this hollow 'victory' over him.

"A floor down, there's a control console next to the salination vats," Mag lies, trying to sound reluctant to admit this. He doesn't dare wink at Caelynn or drop any sort of hint that he's up to anything, because he has no idea just how much the naiad creature understands about the way mortals think and act, and maybe she can see his face in the reflection of her icicle, who knows? It's not worth taking the chance.

[Aurora Alchemi]

[Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari]

Before Eshaal has time to protest to the length of waiting it would take to do a resonance scan, Magtok is already on the foot with a bit of that good old' stalker anomaly detection. "Good thinking, my red eye'd bossman!" As the clump of 'soil' is pulled up, it squeals momentarily, and several swelling pustule-like organs develop in moments on the grass blades. Fortunately, Magtok has lobbed the lump before it had the chance to do much else abomination worthy. As soon as it passes the barrier between dirty and clean, the whole hallway seems to warp and shimmer like an image projected onto the surface of a lake, and the lobbed object slows to a crawl and begins to scream. The screams are rapidly muffled, like an object being stuck into goop, as the clump begins to slowly disintegrate, pulled into many little pieces with soft streamers of flesh and blood connecting the separate pieces, which exist for a moment, before vanishing. It's very similar to the digestive processes one might be used to seeing in a microscope landscape.

Eshaal gives a few blinks. "Ahh, ooze. Looks similar to a gelatin mimic..." The candykin walks closer, then uses a root to draw down the surface of the entity, disturbing the image projected for a moment, revealing a number of inorganic objects and bones suspended in various states of decomposition and oxidation/ [COLOR="#40E0D0"]"Except this fly motherhubbard seems to have a better set of duds then the jelly cubes I'm used to. I wonder if it's nanites? Eshaal rubs her chin softly. "Alright, well from what I see it looks like about ten paces onto the other side is safe. I could try to use a breaching round to open a pathway temporarily for us to go through... But of course if someone trips up...." Esha makes a slurping sound followed by a pop. The punk gives a soft shrug. "Unless you all have some better ideas, in which case I'd love to hear them." There is a distant roar, and a few shakes of the lab complex. "Quickly, if at all possible."

[Arkhosia]

Frigid Gals and Robot Pals

"Er, wow, really?" Caelynn's eyebrows raise in surprise as the woman only slightly exaggerates how taken-aback she feels at all of this. Side with her? She'd barely done anything of the sort, even if her suggestions did somehow contradict or undermine things that Magtok had already told her before she got here. The catgirl does her best to maintain this expression and not scowl herself as the naiad goes about smugly gloating her self-declared victory. Being talked about like some trophy to have been won really does not sit right with her, and her tail flicks with subtle annoyance.

"Okay, well, I guess I'll go head down and find that then." The catgirl moves as if to leave, before a thought occurs. She pauses and looks back to the spirit and her captive. "Er, I don't really know that level very well though, nor the control console. Is... there some kind of way you'd let him help me find my way around it? Write down directions, get a pair of ear communicators, that kind of thing?"

[Morty]

[Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari]

"If it's an ooze, could acid work on it?" The alchemist suggests. "The rate of decomposition is remarkable... I'd like to save some samples if we can."

"I love how quickly we're moving on from the screaming grass thing."

"Focus, boss. We could also give it something that'll give it indigestion, but it might be able to eat just about anything."

[Lord Magtok]

Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari

"This one's all yours," Magtok concedes with a tired sigh. This is the encounter he should've blown up his arm for. Would've been super easy to just let the gelatin inhale it and then set off the explosives. Would've been more than sufficient, really. Also, while we're on the subject of troublesome inconveniences, Eshaal's nicknames are starting to grate on his nerves. Candykin is acting way too familiar for his liking, and if there wasn't money and his own survival on the line, he'd seriously consider lobbing her into the ooze next. Hrm...maybe if no one else's ideas work out. I mean, that much sugary sweetness couldn't possibly be healthy for the glop in front of them, right?

"I'll go last. If one of you is going to trip and fall, no one else is as capable of stooping down to pick you up off the ground and throwing you the rest of the way through without slowing down. It won't be very fun and you'll probably get a concussion when your head hits the floor, though, so don't trip," the one-armed cyborg advises, pulling his hood up over his head, as if that thin layer of cloth is going to be enough to stop the ooze if it starts dripping down and sticking to him before he's sprinted through to safety.


Can’t Take My Ice Off Of You

"You think I'm stupid?! You think I don't know 'salination' means salt? I know it means salt! I'm not going to let him tell you how to put salt in all of my water, three whole rooms away where I can't even do or say anything about it! We're both coming with you, so don't even think of trying it!" the water spirit, practically screeching. The frigid, transparent shell of ice around her body bristles with tiny pointed icicles for a moment, before she manages to calm herself back down from her agitated state. Magtok, as much as he tries to resist it, can't help but grin triumphantly. Oh man, this naiad is an idiot, this is only going to make it even easier to get rid of her. If he'd known it was this easy to talk her into walking into the most dangerous room in the lair for an ice spirit, he never would've involved Caelynn at all. Too much unnecessary risk to the wife.

Though...on second thought, I'm not so sure we would've come up with such a plot on our own, given the supernatural seductive aura clouding our head. I mean, so far our only real contributions thus far are getting her to show up in that cute swimsuit. It looks good on her, sure, but it's very much less than optimal attire for a hostage situation. Should've asked her to go to the costume store and order a sexy police outfit and megaphone if she's going to play negotiator. Maybe tight spandex and cape so she could be a superheroine. Or she could just wear nothing, since the water lady's wearing nothing, and then we could wear nothing, and then after we give her back the water we could all-

The cyborg blinks a few times, trying to push the invasive thoughts out. That was...that was a bit much. It felt like beer goggles, but for his brain. He's starting to think maybe he shouldn't be operating any heavy machinery or making any important decisions for the next few hours. I mean, aside from making Caelynn a mother again, that important decision is obviously our first priority as soon as this ice bitch is dead or gone or crowned the new queen of the MagCave. Honestly, can't think of a single reason why we would ever hesitate to bring another child into this chaotic, dangerous, unhinged kaleidoscope of a world, especially when they'll have the favor and protection of the world's greatest water nymph as their benevolent monarch.

"Yeah, she's right, we've both got to go with you. Down the stairs, through room...803? No, 804. 802? The one that smells like the ocean," the tin man answers, straining to remember directions that should be incredibly easy for him to recall. You know, the weather's starting to get warmer; going to the ocean doesn't sound like such a bad idea. Just the three of them, relaxing on the shore, splashing in the waves, Caelynn and the water lady burying him up to his head in the sand just before high tide comes Mag's left hand swings abruptly, slapping himself across the face.

"Sorry, lost focus. It's 806, the only one in the area with hazard warnings above the door. Lead the way," he answers again. Hopefully Caelynn doesn't need much more lucidity out of us than that, I don't know how much more Mag can still manage.

[Arkhosia]

The Trouble with Freeze

Caelynn startles as the naiad shrieks at her, the fur on her tail bristling on end. "Woah geez, okay - I hadn't thought of it at all," she assures, stepping back and raising her hands. Truth be told, she hadn't even been sure that leading the naiad anywhere was an option - I mean, the lady's all water, so it seemed reasonable to expect that she might not be able to move very far from the pool.

"Well! Right this way, Ms Water Lady!" The woman puts on a smile, raises a finger and pivots sideways towards the entryway with the "squeak" of a flipflop. She'll start to march off and lead captive and captor out through the lair, entirely unaware of the addled yet incredibly flattering thoughts going through her boyfriend's mind right now. Quite frankly, Caelynn's heart would probably flutter at being thought of as his wife, regardless of how much more apt it is at describing their relationship nowadays.

"I hope you won't mind the mess, we've gotten most of this area tidied up, but there really is so much space to take care of around here that it's fairly difficult to keep up on all of it nowadays." Like the acid stains in the rug from when the velvetlociraptor broke into the upper levels. "Now, if we just turn down here.... oh, watch your step! One of the boards has gotten a little loose." Caelynn's eyes briefly meet Magtok's own. He may get the sense that all of this friendly babble isn't just her being nervous - she's doing her best to try and distract the naiad, help keep her from noticing any warning signs of what he's convincing her to walk into or anything he tries to attempt.

[Aurora Alchemi]

[Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari]

Eshaal considers debating with the alchemist whether throwing acid at the cube that just dissolved something would work, but then Magtok gives the all clear, and that was enough for them. After all, boss said do it! Flicking open the railgun, the candy goober and noob tuber throws a brightly blue painted round into the weapon after dexterously butterflying it through her fingers, before putting an arm up to shield her face. Holding the rifle in one hand and turning edge on, the goblin gremlin pulls the trigger and pops a rail right down the middle. It becomes clear pretty quickly why they would stand edge on, as a thin blue line opens up in the center of the gelatin like someone has thrown a brilliant blue needle through it, then expands rapidly to about the size of a bank vault door. As the opening expands, there is a rush of air not unlike a gale wind, and a deep resounding Voom! "Alright ride's over, if that thing in the distance didn't know where we were before, it does now!"

The blue blur doesn't wait up on the others, instead vaulting through and skidding to a point behind a bit of furnishing that had overturned next to the stairs, throwing the Railgun into a supported position and aiming down the hall behind the group. Of course the vaulted gateway in the ooze isn't going to last forever, and as the goblin settles onto the other side, the top of the arch is already slowly collapsing like a poorly supported bridge... that wants to eat you. Even as the walls begin to close in, there is a distant sound of crashing, and another two of the carnifexes round the corner, giving roars and searching rooms as they prowl to find the location of the tasty sounding noise. Fortunately, if everyone makes it through there will be a nice barrier up between the things and them. In the meantime, however, Esha loads a round and waits for one of the beasts to notice the group, ready to run suppression. "Well I for one hope the bulkheads up above are intact! I'd hate to run from these and not have a door to shut behind me."

[Morty]

[Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari]

The three goblins waste little time before hurrying through the newly opened hole in the ooze. Why would there be more of those giant creatures down here? They clearly underestimated whatever Magtok had been doing here.

[Lord Magtok]

Mar Wars: Waterfront 2

The stairwell Caelynn heads down through is the same one she took to come up to the reservoir room in the first place. Just a whole bunch of stairs and landings arranged in a spiral, with open air in the middle for anyone who tires of walking and prefers to just float up or down to the floor they're looking for. If Caelynn were to look down (which I wouldn't recommend), she'd see that it goes down...wow, a really long way. Maybe four or five floors below ground level, with a massive concrete slab at the bottom, sealing off even further floors and stairs that were deemed too risky to leave open and exposed.

"I'm made of ice, I can just slide over whatever-" she's looking at the floor instead of breathing down Magtok's neck. She's focused on her footing as they enter the stairwell, rather than anything actually important. This is the moment. This is the opportunity to do something stupid, something reckless, something dangerous. Magtok exploits a brief moment of his own lucidity to grip the arm that's been holding a sharpened lump of ice to his neck, and takes it with him as he sprints to the edge of the stairwell's railing and jumps.

"WHAT?! NO, NO, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DO-NO NO NO, YOU LOVE ME! CATCH ME, YOU ****! CATCH MEEEEEEE!" she screams, regretting the last few split-seconds she spent stabbing Mag's arm for daring to brusquely seize her like some disgusting animal. If he still had the strength to hold onto her hand instead of letting go and careening into a wall in a bloody daze, she wouldn't be so alone right now. She wouldn't be so fragile, like glass, plummeting several stories with nothing to slow her fall, dropping, dropping, dropping...


Subterranean Sugarbeast Safari

"Well I for one hope the bulkheads up above are intact! I'd hate to run from these and not have a door to shut behind me."

"Our situation is dire enough without you tempting fate, Candy Crush Saga," Magtok scolds as he runs through the slime gauntlet, before internally wincing at his own choice to play the stupid nickname game like that licorice lunatic has been doing all day. Oh gods, it's starting to spread. Her awfulness is contagious; it might be best to just stay put and let the gelatin liquefy our bones rather than allow this disease to escape quarantine.

"Remind me, the next time I find myself thinking 'well what's the worst that could happen,' this is what I get. This is my own fault for trying to be a little more daring than usual," he grumbles, before diving through the collapsing arch and sliding to one side to give Eshaal a better view of the hallway she's aiming down. Also, it's not your fault for that, Magtok. It's your fault for not hiring a maid service to keep this place tidy while you were away on business. Don't even try to tell me you couldn't find anyone to hire, either. You knew a perfectly good catgirl maid nation, with reasonable rates and plenty of bodies to spare. I'm sure they could've kept this place in better condition if you weren't so stingy with your obscene wealth.

[Arkhosia]

Red Faction: Ar-Mag-eddon

"I mean I'd still - oh god!" Caelynn only whirls to catch the latter half of Magtok's sudden leap. Instinct kicks in and she rushes to look over the railing, scrambling to grab for her partner's arm and do her best to pull him up. What was he thinking? Was he thinking at all? She honestly couldn't even remember if Magtok still had any fancy gadgets like Ferrus Guy-style repulsors or some kind of wonky hover mode for this situation, and even if she did there's barely any time or space to think about it - much like how she consciously chooses not to think about the screaming all-too-human figure plummeting behind him, or the devastatingly solid slab at the end of a hard fall.

"Alright, alright, c'mon - I gotcha, just- need a little help." She's a far cry from her young and spry vigilante days with HALO, even if she still does hit the gym on occasion. Thankfully, she's much better nowadays at handling pressure. "Mags, are you there? Can you give me your other hand? I need a better grip to try hauling you up."

[Lord Magtok]

A Higher Caeling

"I'm here. I'm...well, I'm mostly here. My head is still somewhere else right now; my working theory is that enchantment is the body's chemical response to a magical cultivation of sex pheromones in the air. Oh, and she got me good a couple times; am I going to bleed to death?" Mag asks with an inappropriate level of calm, holding up a bloodsoaked arm for her to pull up the railing. Once that's done, when they're both out of breath and lying exhausted on the stairs, the doctor will have plenty of time to see her de facto spouse has a lot of cuts on that arm, but they're almost all shallow, surface level scrapes. It looks a lot worse than it really is because of all the blood, but he'll live. It's nothing that a medical professional and/or some sci-fi medical goo can't take care of, though I don't think he'll be writing anything down or doing any sort of heavy lifting for a few days. Elder Circlet and its poisonous swamps will have to wait, too.

"Oh, by the way, I was going to ask if you wanted to help me weed the third floor botanical garden before all this happened. Not because I needed the help, mind you, I just wanted to show off the moon lilies I stole from the moon. They match your eyes," the injured villain remarks, frowning at his stabbed arm in distaste, as if it summoned that naiad into existence just to ruin his day and spoil all of his plans. "They're very rare and expensive, and I picked them out for you even though I wasn't ever going to actually admit that, so I hope you'll take good care of them after I die in five minutes," he asks, still weirdly mellow and at ease despite his firm (and entirely fraudulent) belief in his own impending demise.