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Nova Terra     Exploration eventually leads everyone to the so-called grand gallery. Nova shields her nose and mouth with her arm as she moves up to the edge of the balcony they're on. She leans over and looks down into the haze of poison that seems to get worse the further it goes down. Her visor zooms in on the details at the bottom of the the gallery. As she's taking in the sight of the gate, her system detects the underwater movement and nighlights the object. At the same time, readings come in from her suit on the toxicity of the air. Nova frowns.

    Stepping away from the balcony to breathe some not-quite-lethal air instead of the probably-most-definitely=lethal air, Nova glances at the others, "Yeah, there's definitely a gate down there. Likely the one mentioned by the message. Along with some kind of creature."

    Nova glances at the doors that line the walls of this balcony, "I wouldn't suggest trying to jump. That air's particularly bad. I'm guessing those doors are our way down... But which ones?" Nova is not thrilled at the idea of just walking through one to find out... For all they know the wrong one could drop them into a pit of poison.

    Or worse.
Yuuki Kuran When her familiars finish mapping out the area, Yuuki climbs up the ladder to join the rest of the party with a contemplative look on her face. "Well, this place is the worst, I think Seifer's right. But more than that... there's definitely more plinths than there are purification stones, and I don't think they're re-usable. Maybe they'd reset their positions over time, or regenerate somehow, but I don't think that's reasonable. Arthur, are you as good about things moving through space as you are with other space and spacey things? There has to be a way to arrange the purification thingies to clear out the lower area. Maybe..."

She taps her cheek with a cant of her head, eyes half-lidding. "The red text is the clue, again. That the zone with the thickest poison is the area we need to clear a path to, because it's the "purification" center."
Seifer Almasy      This place is hell.

     Seifer scratches the back of his neck, staring at the bruise-colored water, the roiling shadow beneath the surface. "If that thing's a blood monster I swear to Hyne," he mutters, then straightens. "Caster, you should do that...ghost-ing thing you do. This place is cramped enough already, I don't want you getting hurt, and on the off chance this shit turns flammable I really don't wanna risk us blowing the place sky high."

     Once Caster's gone, Seifer slings his gunblade over his shoulder. "OK. I'm gonna piss that thing off down there. While I do that, you guys look for a way to figure out which exit's which and get it open. I'll keep it focused on me as long as I can - should give you plenty of time. I've got enough potions on hand that I should be able to hold off that poison goop, too."

     Seifer swings his gunblade once, a wide grin on his lips. He gives a thumbs-up to Arthur and Nova, a wild grin that he most definitely doesn't feel as he slings off his coat and wraps it around his face, and goes over the side.

     He's falling.

     He's falling and he's blind.

     Except he's not really blind. Gunblade in hand, Seifer doesn't have to see to feel things out. He doesn't have to see to feel the way the wind, or the poison, or the world touches the weapon. Sight is...secondary. Unnecessary. Seifer's in control when he's got his gunblade. Seifer's /invincible/ with his gunblade.

     He doesn't quite hit the water. Just before it, he springboards off the wall. His blade flashes outwards into the bruise-colored lake, setting of a violent explosion as he triggers the gunblade's blast. That, plus a blast of fire from his hand downwards, sends him up and away from the ground; he's got some air time as the poison burns his skin, but not much.

     He'll have to make do.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur has mostly figured a path out, albeit one that took a hell of a geometric run. He's going to be hopeful that nobody will question exactly /how/ he did what he did geometry-wise, and just accept that the Weird Shouty Guy has Weird Shouty Insight. Now he's out on the balcony, peering over. His look is critical, like he's examining a piece of art that he doesn't like very much. "POISON LEVELS fucking SUCK." He declares, definitively, as if it's a scathing critique. Mostly because part of his skin on his face is sizzling from looking over. "DON'T LOOK DOWN."

    He claps his hands together and rubs them in response to Yuuki. "Alright homie. I'mma SLOT what I CAN, and then bring the BIG NOISE to clear what I GOT." The pipes converging makes him think that, in order to clear out the grand gallary a little, he'll need to focus on fountains near them! And theeeeen... "Alright, anyone bad at CLIMBING or no good at FALLING, get near a RAILING and get the HOLD ON, I'mma try some GOOD STUFF and you guys better get your DODGE GOING if it goes bad." He pulls out his broom, "plants" it on the edge of the balcony, and jumps over it, "pulling" the broom as if it were a large lever embedded in the ground.

    The HUD pops up, indicating to him -- and to anyone else who has their eyes on it -- the direction of local gravity. With intense force, he's trying to fully /invert/ gravity in the grand chamber! After all, the gate is lodged firmly in the ground -- but the water and gas isn't! If he can move it, and "drop" it towards the ceiling, it should take the people attacking the monster away from the gate (giving a clearer shot to those who can jump or fly or otherwise get conveyed up there by one of Arthur's Gates) while clearing out the gate itself from the flesh-searing muck!

    He's gonna try to fire a Gate at the, uh, other Gate, leaving one at the balcony -- where hopefully people aren't tossed into the ceiling, after his warning. Ideally, they can clamber along right into his gate and into the Gate below while the horrific beast is distracted! /Ideally/. The solution, as always, is likely to get more /complicated/.
Zero Kiryu "More than likely the passage you left behind in the Purification center leads to a plinth that can be used to clear that area and spread the purification process into the surroundings, eliminating the need to use a significant quantity of the purification devices inefficiently. That is just speculation, though." Zero chimes in, raising Bloody Rose as Arthur offers his warnings. His eyes drift to the HUD on the boy, and vines slither their way about him to create a makeshift platform that anchors along the walls. Anybody willing to brave the thorns of the vines can also grab on, although any beings of a life-drinking nature would find it beginning to hurt them on contact.

It's a clever gambit that Arthur has going. Presuming that it doesn't go sideways immediately -- literally or figuratively -- he moves himself through the offered gate and re-anchors himself on the off chance that it's necessary on the other side. Better safe than sorry. There's just one thing bothering him...

"How long can you keep a bunch of tricks like this up?" He asks Arthur, out of equal parts curiosity and concern.
Touta Konoe     Upon arrival onto the balcony Touta gets a good view of all those that had followed Arthur downwards into the well previously. Though the moment he looks down from above the terrible fumes that he had been able to avoid by going up return in full force and he reels back covering his nose and face. Okay, it's a good thing this guy's immortal cause clearly he should be dead at this point. Or at the very least in much worse condition than he already is.

     Though just as the bloodied writing had detailed, there was definitely a gate that could be seen through the smog. He honestly has no clue what to expect but Yuuki's suggestion seemed like a good start. But then all of a sudden Seifer jumps in without warning to try and deal with whatever is in this poisoned lake.

     And like that, Touta jumps in after Seifer not sure what to expect. He does have to say that this guy acts like he's the one whose immortal. Like Seifer he falls in blind and the fumes are definitely not treating him any better than they were Seifer. He imagines he's only gonna have a moment to try and grab him and get them out before the fumes become too much even for Touta.

    "Seife-"

     Before he can even finish calling out to the guy there's sounds of gun fire and explosions of flames...Was that his idea of not falling to his doom? Well, whether it works or not will have to be seen another time as Arthur gives out his warnings and all of a sudden...Touta begins falling up? Yeah, that's something new... Well his priorities are still the same as before make sure that Seifer's bold moves don't end up being the death of him. Unfortunately, inversing the gravity probably won't be helping the visibility of the situation that much. All he has to go by is the sound of the gunfire from before and the blast of fire he heard prior.

     "Seifer hold on! 1000 FOLD!"

     With the blasts likely sending Seifer above Touta, he figures that since gravity is inversed, if he increases his weight he'll be able to 'fall' upwards towards the direction he thinks Seifer's in if he increases his blade's weight.
Rurufon     Arthur switches the gravity in the chamber. This is theoretically a good idea for a really silly sequence break, since the final door will stay lodged in the wall (albeit someone will have to fly or superjump up to it) while the horrific quagmire of hellish poison picks a different floor to be on. It is not as good of an idea as it first seemed like when the revolting deluge that starts rising/falling from the floor/ceiling makes its actual depth apparent. That is to say, the sickening purple waterfall that turns the room into a toxic lava lamp is so distressingly voluminous that the new orientation of the room will in fact engulf the top two balcony levels, which is where pretty much everyone currently is, and thus will end up underwater.

    This has mixed, but not immediately disastrous results for those already taking dramatic action. Anchoring himself to the walls, Zero isn't at serious risk, save that with the fumes now rising/falling in the opposite direction, the 'upside-down' balconies do an even shittier job of preventing them from getting to one's face and eyes. The floor which is now a ceiling has also been host to that unholy sludge for so long that the stone itself is mottled with deep purple and black stains as if it were bruised and frostbitten flesh. Being near it at all is /still/ dangerous, as the thin layer of moisture that hadn't come off, and the fumes and acidity which have long soaked into the pitted and porous stone, present a severe area hazard of their own, like the poison equivalent of the 'convection' part of lava traps everyone forgets about.

    Seifer is effectively left to dodge the waterfall in mid-fall that then becomes mid-jump. He gets a strange period of weightless hang time, and then his gunblade acrobatics take him just out of the way by going to spring off the wall; however, that much liquid weight hitting the side of the balcony not meant to deal with it above him means a considerable amount crashes onto his new footing and catches him in the Sea World splash zone anyways. At least he won't fall right back down, standing on the underside of the lowest/highest balcony.

    Touta increasing his mass, and thus his terminal velocity, in the cheaty way as he falls, just before it becomes a rise, means he has just enough inertia to . . . slam into the 'roof', where he will bounce off like a pinball and back into the drink if he's not careful. This entails eating a big fat wad of ultra-concentrated poison damage all at once, though at least not sinking to the bottom of the pond with a 2 ton weight on him.

    One thing /doesn't/ fall upwards however. With the giant, horrible shadow it had cast through the already dense and oily cast of the water, it'd be easy to believe the creature no doubt beneath the surface would have been some kind of horrible fish creature or serpent, but what they come face to face with is instead a gigantic, 'evolved' form of horrific maggot-beast. The size of a semi truck at minimum, its creepy human arms are now four in number, which it reaches out to snatch hold of multiple balconies and arrest its fall with a rumbling crash, suspending it in the center of the room. Its lower body is long and hardened enough to resemble an ultra thick scorpion's tail, with a massive pair of spined pincers at the end, and what look to be /eyes/ studding its length. Smaller monsters cling to the underside of its torso in long strands like the eggs of a crab or octopus, soaking in the bright purple drool that oozes from its segmented, triple-parted mouth. Removed from its toxin bath, the thing outright /screams/, taking a huge swipe at Zero on his platform with one of its long-nailed hands, and vomiting a blast of ingested hellwater at Touta that partially occludes Arthur's gate, and thus spills through on him on the other side.
Arthur Lowell     An idea that's even /hypothetically/ good is still better than what Arthur usually manages. He cranks the gravity a little lower to give people the chance to leap around, as they may need it to navigate the hellish lava lamp of death. Sadly, his fine control of his magic doesn't grant him the ability to prevent damage to it. The Gate suffering a rush of sludge it's not meant to deal with actually disrupts and poofs it away, since it's not a pure paired Gate that can easily deposit the damaging deluge onto the other side. Not that it doesn't do it anyway, sludging him with the concentrated toxin and provoking a DANGEROUS spike of that poison meter, getting his hitpoints in a concerning steady downward trend that's visible. Better solve this within a few minutes or Arthur's toast.

    "FUCK!" He calls out, as his magic fizzles. He hardens it into personal flight, his body suddenly shimmering. "Alright, TOP GRUB, you wanna take a BIG SWING like that? You ready to get your SQUISH on? Motherfucker I'mma make you wish you had an EXOSKELETON and them I'mma make you know I'da CRUNCHED IT anyway, you DIPTERIC MOTHERFUCKER! LET'S GO!!"

    A tinny, highly compressed announcer's voice calls out, "READY? STRIFE!" He mounts his broom, leaning down and unloading a volley of heavy magic bolts. It looks like the chosen tactic and paradigm of combat for today is Practical SHMUPing, and Arthur begins darting around the chamber, rotating around the heavy, unnerving thing, as he blasts his steady stream of starfire bolts, and shouts a steady stream of increasingly rude and offensive Xbox Live lingo.
Nova Terra     There wasn't much warning. Nova is barely able to dive and grab hold of a railing as gravity suddenly inverts itself. Nova dangles for a moment, thankfully having avoided a fall to the ceiling. However, the next problem comes in the torrent of acidic water rushing down through the room. Nova pulls herself up the railings of her current balcony, before jumping towards the next.

    Unfortunately it's at this point that the water hits and Nova is drenched, pulling herself the rest of the way onto the bottom of the balcony and rolling away from the the center. Clearing the torrent, Nova rises once more, trying to shake off the majority of the acid as her suit smokes and sizzles from it. She swears to Arthur, "Thanks a fucking lot!"

    And after all that it didn't do a whole lot of good, the creature they had seen, now revealed and proved as ugly as suspected, still hindering their progress. Taking her rifle in both hands one more, Nova raises it to begin firing full auto towards the monster in frustration.
Zero Kiryu One of the problems with being hungry is that it puts you off your game, and one of the problems with /regenerating/ is that it makes you hungry. Zero Kiryu is currently trapped in a feedback loop of escalating misery, and it's only really getting worse the more happens. The sudden rise of toxins in the air begins eating at his eyes once again-- which begin regenerating once again at the same time. He blinks rapidly, his vision blurred, darkening, and inconsistent.

Claws rake the front of him and send him momentarily tumbling in a flash of red and silver as Bloody Rose re-orients itself to mitigate the damage, reducing the number of anchors it has along the walls and balconies. The hunter hangs there uncertainly, momentarily threatening to lose his position and fall. But he manages to re-assert some control over the vines and their reflexive action, shoring up his position.

The great gash opened along Zero's chest is already beginning to close. The bleeding has stopped, the initial volume of which drips through Bloody Rose's vines where it hasn't simply soaked into the frayed edges of his shirt.

The barrel of the gun rises and flashes, but-- his aim isn't anywhere /close/. Even for hipfire, that shot goes bizarrely wide.
Seifer Almasy      Touta gets in the way.

     If it wasn't for the hilariously awful poison stench Seifer might even say something. He really considers it. He's about to, but even through the wrap-around cloak he regrets opening his mouth. As the waterfall comes up and splashes against his footing, spraying him, he's doubly thankful he didn't say anything - he'd've been cut off /and/ he'd've gotten that hideous stuff in his mouth. He might be able to mitigate the effects with his wrap, but that stuff going inside him seems like a recipe for a very, very bad time.

     The horrific maggot beast was Seifer's goal all along. He's the distraction. When it emerges, he's off his perch. The poison's chewing on his coat, but there's no time for that now; he's got a job to do. He falls, gunblade swinging down right for the eyes. He intends to stab in, hook on, and get on its back in one fell swoop, and keep it as busy as possible while everybody else does their thing and solves the puzzle.

     Hopefully quickly.
Yuuki Kuran Being on one of the balconiesas things go tits up (quite literally!), Yuuki shields her eyes and mouth with both palms out, shying away from the toxic spray. The scent continues doing agg damage to her sense of smell every combat tick, and the crazy flips and running leaps into lethally toxic megadanger sludge (or, well, proximal to it) aren't something she's keen in joining in on.

But, once the immediate wash danger passes, she climbs up on the balcony, looking up and around. She wants to help in the fight - but the puzzle, the path, the places where purification needed to happen were more important.

Her eyes squinted and glowing red as blood flashes into the air, Yuuki surveys for the plinths in this central area, or the feeder locations to correspond with her mapped out areas of the maze, aiming to reverse-engineer the problem.

The battle gains a smidge of her attention as she flicks her finger at Seifer as he begins his combat fall, giving him a momentum boost to start his carving out with a real bang.
Touta Konoe     Sadly, Touta's quite use to crash landings. So the moment he's about to make impact with the ceiling he lodges his sword as an anchor to attempt securing himself where he lands. If there wasn't already a limitation to the actions he can do with a waterfall of this poisonous bile about to crash down upon him, he's also got to worry about whatever it is that's screaming out... At this point he can't really try to help Seifer, especially since he has no clue the guy's ended up on the underside of one of the balconies.

     With the 'sky' literally about to fall on him Touta has to act quickly. He reverts the blade's gravity to normal and dislodges it from the ground and without a second thought immediately starts running. But where to? It's not the perfect answer but Touta's gonna try using those wall running skills again to go from the ceiling back to the walls and run his way all the way back down to the floor. It's not a perfect answer but staying to the sides and dealing with the splashing was probably much safer than waiting for the water to fill up the entirety of the ceiling.

     Unfortunately it's definitely no cakewalk doing a wall run when there are so many obstructions is a pain. It gets even worse when getting to the side allows him to see first hand what that screaming came from, and it looks like it notices Touta as well and attempts to thoroughly greet him. Taking a hit from that water would be bad when trying to perform inversed-gravity defying stunts. He'd really not like to fall up into the waterfall so he attempts to dodge the incoming blast of water to propel himself to where the beast is and join Seifer in his attack bring his sword to try and slice at one of the maggot's arms.
Rurufon     As a gigantic target, with limited mobility in this situation, and only partial protection over an otherwise soft and grossly elastic body, whatever the hell this creature is supposed to be called is in no position to avoid the full on barrages of fire Arthur and Nova loose in its direction. Firing that many starblasts and 20mm slugs, it'd be impossible to miss with their eyes closed, and so the both of them have scored thirty odd hits in seconds, hammering long lines of bloody craters up and down the monster's body, eliciting another revoltingly high-pitched squeal.

    It is pounded so badly and so quickly that the monstrosity loses its grip and slips, dropping an entire Z level when its involuntary spasms cause its giant fingers to slide from the poison-slicked rings of balconies around it. It's the absolute worst timing, since it drops itjust out of Seifer's sword reach by complete accident, resulting in a clean miss while he's in the air and can't do anything to change direction. It's Yuuki's aid that pushes him back in the right direction, letting him get a reverse slash on the way back. Zero's gunshot going as wide as possible would still have a hard time missing completely, though his distraction leads only to it slashing a narrow furrow out of the creature's gelatinous midsection. Touta leaping from the balcony to cleave into an arm finds that those human-looking parts have human-like bones in them, making the question of what the /fuck/ it is and where it came from even more pressingly disturbing.

    Despite being upended out of its natural bossfight environment, though, the horrid thing still fights back. Using two of its arms to support itself, it uses the other two to swipe and swat at Arthur and Touta in the style of King Kong dangling from the peak of the Empire State Building, trying to slap them down and crush them. Some of its grotesque, pulsating brood slither and drop from its belly, landing on the balcony all around Nova and swarming her position with wetly snapping mandibles. Its segmented tail flexes up and around and attempts to snap and cut Zero's platform right off the wall and send him for a long, painful drop. It hasn't noticed Yuuki, but also can't seem to get to Seifer either, though the latter is in more serious danger of 'falling down the huge column of horrific toxic smog' and towards the drink.

    Using the info she's gathered from her familiars and close surveillance, Yuuki can already tell that they've skipped a couple of viable routes to get here, that might have brought them to this room poison-free, with minimal combat encounters, and some extra loot. There was even a red beacon a little ways back. Stuck with what she has to work with now though, she can locate a series of four fountain plinths that can fit purity stones in rooms around the bottom (top) layer, which roughly correspond to corners of the chamber, hopefully providing overlapping coverage. There are others on the layers above (below) that'd provide safe passage to it, but they don't have the time and didn't pick up the stones for them. Someone will have to brave the boss monster to get down (up) there.
Zero Kiryu Zero didn't expect it to be smart enough to target his anchor points instead of him. Bloody Rose rapidly disentangles itself from its falling anchor points, but not rapidly enough to find new ones and halt descent entirely. It pushes out against the walls, metal screeching violently as it grows upwards and downwards in an attempt to halt the fall. The thorny vines dug into Zero's body rip into him as he comes to his all-too-abrupt halt, not quite hitting the ground but still falling far enough that the de-celeration caused his own weapon's thorns to draw blood. These injuries /don't/ seal immediately.

Blood begins to trickle out in earnest.

He doesn't make an attempt to bear himself up higher. Drawing the vines in so that he drops the rest of the way to the floor, Zero loosens the vines wrapped around his body to them from working against him so sharply again and draws a clearer bead on the creature.

His vision is still swimming and blurry, and his body hurts all over-- and that's before the injuries he just sustained. But this is what he trained for.

Outwardly it still looks half-assed. Zero raises the gun portion of Bloody Rose in a grip that's too loose and fires several times towards the bulk of the creature, pink bolts of energy emanating from the barrel in place of ordinary projectiles. The shots are also strangely paced and drawn out-- too much so to be a regular attack pattern.

Either he's just struggling, or there's some other purpose to the irregularities. If it's a tactical decision, there's no immediately evident benefit.
Nova Terra     Nova winces behind her visor a little at the disgusting sight of numerous large maggots beginning to crawl their way towards her. She levels her rifle down at the first, but then doesn't fire. Her rifle is actually probably overkill in this situation and she has to consider her ammo.

    Nova starts backpeddling away from the maggots as she focuses her power, psionic energy forming around her hand. The maggots begin boxing Nova in, their mandibles trying to bite through the protection of her suit. But soon enough Nova has the power she needs, slamming her hand into the balcony at her feet and unleashing a blast of telekinetic energy all around her. It sends the creatures flying, opening up some room for her while also possibly sending them smashing into walls, railings, their boss, and even Nova's teammates!

    Taking the opportunity of freedom provided by her attack, Nova makes a dash and jump to reach the railing of the balcony above, pulling herself up into it in an effort to find a better position.
Seifer Almasy      Yuuki Kuran saves Seifer's life.

     If she hadn't grabbed him, if she hadn't flung him with telekinetic force, he'd be dead. He'd've fallen in the muck and he'd be soaking in poison and he'd probably be toast. Instead, he's flung upwards, away from the poison, which gives him a chance to re-adjust. He gives a thumbs-up to where he /thinks/ she is as he starts falling again.

     Sure, he still can't /see/ anything, but hey, that's never stopped him before.

     Seifer swings the gunblade around and fires. It's pure force of momentum he's counting on here, guiding himself towards the monster's back. He's perfectly fine braving the boss monster to get it up there. As Bloody Rose fires, he even does some crazy dodges, swinging his gunblade left and right to adjust and avoid being shot. Sure, he could get out of the way - but it's way smarter to just hit the monster in the same place. That'll add to the damage.

     So he falls, and he brings the blade down, and he hopes that this time he can latch on and really dig in.
Yuuki Kuran While a fight is afoot, Yuuki is burdened with terrible purpose. Truly, this atlas must shoulder all the burdens of the world, because while a sweet fight with shoujo laserguns are firing murderbeams and a dude with a dumb sword and a trenchcoat is being very pretty at it and ugh augh the smell, just, the cruelest task of 'doing the entire puzzle but really fast'.

Thankfully, fate also is cruel with the allotment of superpowers, and the Kuran clan almost seems to be getting nepotism from a higher spiritual power most among her world.

Standing on her balcony, her shadow lengthens and she pales noticeably as a half dozen red-eyed wolf familiars are loosed from her shadow, perching high before acrobatically leaping down the balconies and launching themselves at the maggot-king, digging exaggerated claws or shadowy teeth into the putrid flesh.

Yuuki can't taste it, so it's fine, right? She can't taste it, for sure. For. Sure.

With those dispatched, Yuuki uses her own absurd superhuman agility and parkour skills to go for the plinths.
Touta Konoe     The squeal of the monster is horrendous. If it wasn't bad enough their sense of smell and touch was being burned away by the toxic fumes and water, now their sense of sound had to be hammered at as well? That's apparently not the worst of it sadly. While Touta gets a clean hit on one of its arms, it doesn't cut through with enough force as he gets to the bone...Bone...In a maggot? Yeah this thing is bizarre, but that probably should have been expected from a creature that lives in poison waters to not be bizarre.

     Probably the most surprising thing of this all was how damn hard the damn thing hit. Touta attempts to avoid the one of the arms aimed at him, but as he moved to dislodge his he finds it much more difficult than anticipated to remove it. Maybe it's body was stickier than anticipated, or perhaps the blade got stuck in the bone? Whatever the reason is...

     Touta is splattered like a bug underneath the giant palm. And for a few moments there's no response from where Touta is. Upon moving the hand away from anyone who might see, there was probably the flattened body of a young man laying splattered on one of the creature's arms. A bloody mess, as if someone had taken a step on a pumpkin. The inner structure of the boy was on full display. How vile... But probably not as Vile as the boy's body beginning to reconfigure those squashed pieces, watching blood slowly return to it's vessel, and slowly but surely restoring the boy.

     Frankly this wouldn't be the first time that immortality has literally saved this boy from dying. While he was able to recover to an extent where he could move somewhat, the strike from that attack still was going to take some time to completely recover from.

     So before this thing would try to squash him once more he intended to dish out some serious damage to the thing this time. Finally dislodging the blade he attempts to reach the softer side of the maggot's body.

     "100,000 FOLD!"

    With a single declaration Touta positioned his blade to take full advantage of the inverse gravity to try slice all the way through this time. He wants to make sure that this thing feels this next attack.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur pursues as the thing falls, screaming and firing. He's heading straight for the terrible maggot-beast, when it brings that arm whirling around to slam into him! He catches it just out of the corner of one eye, and manages to reorient himself to summon up a space magic barrier! Screaming out in pain, Arthur's whole body is shocked by the blunted force of the impact! The crushing impact that would otherwise pulp his body is held back by a crackling, shimmering spirographic spellcircle for seconds, buying him just enough time to get almost out of the way when it slams through, catching him with a hefty bruise on his way past, and knocking him away into a nearby wall.

    He unleashes a tremendous shockwave of gravity to clear the air. "Ghhhh... Rrrrrh... COME ON, JACKASS! Take a BIGGER SWING! I wanna feel that WEIGHT in my BONES even if YOU DON'T HAVE THEM! LET'S GO, fucking BRING IIIIIT!!" He shouts, and then leaps hard and fast forwad on a rocket-ride from his broom held just behind him, sweeping up. Then he fires down, going for a high "rise" that will no doubt turn into a long "fall". At the top, he forms what seems sort of like a whirling tornado of gravity, one which he does his best to aim directly onto the beast's body. Where? Hmmm. Zero's got a good spot, he'll aim there.

    Seifer slams hard into the main body with his blade, and Arthur's lock-on has finished. Layers of concentric spellcircles form around and behind him like a halo, spinning up and "locking", before his visible ASPECT bar drains HARD low. When Seifer plants his blade in, Arthur intends to follow up! He dives with a distinct kick that a more self-indulgently referential artist might render as like an inazuma kick, but which Arthur himself would only scream less coherently about, in a rising, eager shout!

    His plan is to fall at massively gravity-accelerated speeds and enhance both Zero's shots and Seifer's planted blade with a massive, heavy heel kick to the hilt of the blade so it plunges in /extra deep/ and gives him a chance to discharge some serious waves of starfire into the interior of the monster. "YyyyyyyYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!" He screams on his way down for the big strike!
Rurufon     Regardless of whether Zero is struggling or not, the foe isn't in an ideal situation itself. No doubt this would normally involve running around linear platforms left and right to dodge acid attacks and fight off mooks to either side, transitioning from level to level as fist slams broke parts of the walkway and caused the fight to move, but everything about this situation is ridiculous and impromptu as all hell. Even blasting irregularly and wildly, he can score easy hits all over the bloated creature's bult, resulting in it swapping out arms to snatch the balcony level above him and bring the one previously there smashing down on him, apparently willing to slap the thorns in order to crush him against them.

    The maggots aren't any stronger than they were before simply for being in a boss room though. Nova's telekinetic blast is enough to send them flying from her relatively small perch. It doesn't kill many of them, given they are soft-bodied and relatively amorphous critters, but they won't be getting back to her, effectively neutralizing the threat. As she climbs upwards, the gross orange eyes studded along the monster's flesh visibly follow her movements, and with a mighty, swinging flex, it manages to hurl a small tide of purple acid up onto her targeted perch, leading her movements somewhat instead of just aiming where she is at the moment.

    This gives Seifer ample opportunity to buzzsaw straight down its back. Though it lacks anything line a spine to instantly cripple it for the effort, the amount of damage he can do just hacking and slashing away at it without impediment is staggering. He'll have to cling on tight if only for the sheer amount of blood that gushes down its length, leaving its body slick and smelling even worse than before. The blood itself is poisonous (because of course it is), but the howling maggot-behemoth seems to be unable to reach him, given its thrashing.

    Yuuki's familiars aren't so fortunate, but their function is to be a distraction anyways. The ghost wolves can rake and bike and claw as they want, but they'd have an easier time if they were ghost cats, seeing as more of the clinging maggots immediately drop from their (host? caretaker? queen?) and onto the summoned canines, sufficient to knock them loose or drag them down into the drink even if they can't even get a hit in. Still, by functioning in proxy, Yuuki isn't exposed to direct danger where she makes a break for the top. Her worst threat comes from the collateral toxic hell splattering around at random.

    Touta, as it turns out, might have to find a middleground here. His blade this time is so massive and heavy that it thwacks right through his target /too/ well, passing a sword-deep cut cleanly through its bloated, oozing mass without conveying as much trauma as it probably should have, like shooting an arrow through a blob of jello. Possibly confused as to how he'd gotten back up from being a smear on the floor, this time the monster reaches out to grab him out of the air, attempting to snatch him in its skeletal fist and crush the life out of him where it can make sure of it.

    Dubiously teen boys are a lot less efficiently weapon shaped than swords, which means the opposite holds true when Arthur supergravity dive kicks the damn thing, slamming into the thoroughly chopped and minced 'spine' of the beast. If he's prepared for possibly the most revolting experience of his life, he will in fact kick right through the horrible thing's skin, punch like a bullet through its insides, and burst right back out through the cut Touta had made, playing the part of the most poorly shaped cannonball ever conceived. The shock is so horrific that the monster falls two layers from its hanging perch ending up crashing back into the toxic pool at the top (bottom) of the chamber again, struggling to drag itself back out and crawl back up. Its injured arm is completely broken now.
Rurufon     That's as good an opening as any. Yuuki has the really fun and not at all stomach-upsetting experience of immediately falling from the ceiling and flopping back onto the floor the second she enters through any of those doors, then having the SAME experience when she exits, meaning a gravity reversal puke-coaster ride happening eight consecutive times. The rooms beyond aren't incredibly remarkable given she'd skipped the normal way to get to them and there's a nasty kaiju fight happening outside, but slamming the purity crystals into their slots gradually begins to suffuse the chamber outside with that gentle, warm white light. Were the water still on the bottom of the main chamber, it'd probably be clearing up now, and probably weakening the boss in the process going by dungeon logic, but right now it serves the purpose of making the bottom (top) quarter of the area poison-free, purging the horrifically stained floor of the toxic miasma it /exudes/ from its stone pores with a visible release of livid purple vapour, and thus making what appears to be the last room technically accessible.
Nova Terra     Nova manages to rise further 'up' the chamber, although she finds an unfortunate blast of acid waiting for her. Nova manages to shield her face with her arm, but the rest of her is a little more exposed. The acid coats her suit in several places, beginning to eat through the already damaged material. In some places it already reaches skin, Nova wincing at the pain. But it's something she can endure, for the moment.

    On the bright side, Nova is now higher up while the creature has been forced further down. That's useful for her as she reaches with a free hand to the compartment on her other wrist. Pulling out three spherical objects.

    Calling out to the others, she warns them, "You might want to take cover!" Nova primes the high-tech grenades, before lobbing them over the edge of the balcony. She then moves back up against the wall, following her own advice to avoid any result splashback.

    Lights on the three grenades flash as they fall 'down' towards the monstrous creature, likely bouncing against it and splashing against the surface of the acid water... Before finally unleashing a trio of explosions to rock the chamber.
Zero Kiryu This time, Zero is prepared for cleverness. Vines surge upwards to meet the falling balcony, colliding with it so that the force of the impact is -- mostly -- absorbed by the higher tendrils. Debris tumbles down through the gaps in the tendrils and across the surroundings, hammering the hunter and his vines alike-- but it's not the solid /crushing/ blow that the creature intended. His eyes gleam in the dark as his vines dig into him and draw further blood, dripping down into the poison below. The vines alter their course, fresh metal sprouting from the mass of the gun portion and darting out in what can only be described as waves.

They pour out towards the Mother Maggot several angles, creeping around its surface and attempting to dig its thorns into its surface. His coverage area isn't as large or as thorough as Zero prefers-- he's not the only one in this battle, and so he's taking care both not to become a hazard to his fellows, and to leave openings so that Bloody Rose does not become ablative armor /for/ the creature by getting in the way.

As all of this is happening...

He glances off to the side, following a blip on his mental radar. It moved away from them just a little while ago, but the bizarre movements brought about by the altered physics of the environment make it an especially animated blip.

As Yuuki's actions clear the poison that mires the air, Zero inhales deeply. Nuance returns to his sense of smell-- but he regrets it almost immediately.
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki had a wonderful time doing the plinth-hop with gravity inverting itself every time she approached and enter a door, the awful smell of the areas, combined with her immense disgust at the local creatures and need for her senses to be engaged and 'minded', all contributing to her moving through the level like a progressively more wobbly, uncertain, sickened pace.

By the time she places the fourth purity stone, the incidental poisonous acid had done a Pollock on her outfit and burning her skin, eating up more of her energy. As she gasped and dry-heaved on the plinth with a vicegrip on the stonework, feeling fucking miserable, she talks to herself. "I hate this. This is awful. Why am I here? That top area may be clean now, but maybe I'll just sit here and--

--WHILE YUUKI FEELS SORRY FOR HERSELF--

Her wolf familiars' red eyes cyborg ninja through the air as they engage the lesser maggots, one of the wolves crushed underneath before dogshimmying out like a flattened shadow from under the maggot and silently barkbarkbarking back, before leaping into fray against the serrated-mouthed 'adds' and incidental monsters that fall off the Queen.

Their smoky viscera is spilled quickly, though, as the sheer quantity and fleshy, gummy quantity of the Maggots overtake the hollow ferocity of the wolves.

--BACK WITH WORST GIRL--

Sliding off the plinth shakily to her feet, Yuuki trudges back to the door, putting a hand over her mouth and closing her eyes before stepping back into the reversed gravity and ONLY RETCHING A LITTLE. "Oh g-urp... Okay! I got them!" She calls down.
Seifer Almasy      Seifer Almasy has no right to pull off that stunt.

     It's like watching a professional acrobat, or a male ballerina, or a high-tier dancer. As he hits the bottom of the thing he spins up, releasing Hyperion. The spray of blood splatters around him in reverse. He twitches at the last second, and only some of it splatters on his coat, harmlessly burning away. When he falls, he snags onto Hyperion again, swings up the opposite direction, rips the gunblade out, and lands on the thing's back. It can't reach him, and he's got a big-ass opening, so the next thing to do is...

     "GILGAMESH!"

     A huge, translucent grey giant appears behind Seifer. It's clad in a red, tattered cloak. It has three meaty grey arms on one side, and three...are those cardboard hands stuck to the other side of its cape? A pair of horns and a tuft of white hair finish the bizarre show.

     The giant immediately covers its hidden mouth with two hands. Eyes go wide. Its third hand waves in front of its face, like it's trying to dismiss a smell.

     "HURRY UP!" Seifer shouts, and regrets it, and gags.

     The giant shakes its head, removes one of its hands from its face, and holds up a dazzling blue ball. Seifer snatches it and rams it into the gunblade.

     Ambient metal starts to gather. Chunks of terrain, scrapings from other peoples' weapons, bullet casings from the various guns, whatever. They build and gather around the gunblade as if it was magnetic. Then, around the Hyperion's long, thin blade, the gathered metal transforms. Blue light holds the metal together like chains as the metal bends into teeth. A bullet attaches itself to light like a string, and more bullets assemble into a pipe.

     Seifer, behind the mask, has a wild grin as he pulls the cord.

     RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

                                LIMIT BREAK                                
                           INTEGRATED ENGINEERING                          

Seifer drives the chainsaw gunblade into the thing's body. He drives it as deep as it'll go, driving it into the open wound, hard, fast, and without concern for his own safety. He pulls the trigger furiously; each shot puts out an explosion inside Hyperion that shakes the already-grinding chainsaw even more, adding vibration to its damage. He digs, and he digs, and he digs, and when he thinks he can't do any more damage in one spot, he slides to the next, digging and digging and digging with furious, wild abandon. When finally he runs out of bullets to fire inside the blade, when finally he runs out of power, the spare metal falls away.

     Seifer ejects the magazine as he swings the gunblade up and slams a new one in place. Ready for another round.
Touta Konoe     First it wasn't enough force, now there was too much? Touta can't catch a break with trying to get a solid attack on this thing. While he can't seem to find the proper way to deal with this thing. Maybe he should take a page from Arthur's book. He'll need to read from it later though cause the thing ends up trying to snag Touta from out of the air. Just as he attempts to perform a double jump, the hand snags one of his arms and does just as it intended to do and starts crushing his bones like they were twigs.

     Touta lets out a shout as his arm is literally being crushed under the weight of this attack. What's even worse is that with all the damage it's accumulating its beginning to fall! If Touta didn't release himself from this thing, he was gonna go into the toxic pools along with it. So with that in mind, he takes his blade reducing its weight slightly so that he can swing it one handed and attempts to slice through the creatures wrist, bone and all. If not well...This is gonna be a not so pleasant swim.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur crashes out the other side, flipping through the air and twirling to a halting stop to clear that awful goop and blood. His body is steaming from the toxins on his skin, his aspect rising almost as fast as the MEPHITICITY INDEX rises. By now the friendly skull icon that marks it has turned quite angry, roaring and chomping aggressively, and his health is dropping dramatically. "COME ON! Show me those GUTS or I'm 'bout to RIP THEM OUT OF YOOOOOOU! LET'S GO! TAKE YOUR SWING! I need that red on me, you BLEED WHAT I MEAN!? COME OOOONNNNNN!!"

    He clenches his fists and lights his body up with stellar fire, surging his ASPECT bar and briefly halting the drop of his Health Vial. Nova Terra's bringing some bombs. When called to take cover, Arthur distinctly doesn't. Instead, he /grabs/ one, clenches it in one hand, and compresses it hard into an excessively dense spatial warp, such that the ensuing explosion is actually creating enough concentrated heat to spark a hot fusion reaction using some of the esoteric chemicals thick in the air. The screaming, shining white orb formed there seems to be visibly rotating in space, as Arthur sets up thick layers of magic to direct his personal fusion bomb and maneuvers in the air to try to get to the face of the creature, looking down it longways. And then he accelerates the thing with a roaring scream, firmly intent on lancing the monster straight down the middle of its body with the now-expanding heavy fusion reaction.
Rurufon     Even trying to take Zero and Touta down with it, the boss monster is not having a good time. Smashing the former mostly gets its arm and adjoining body torn to shreds by metal vines for its trouble, and it loses a hand completely to the latter as Touta finally finds an adequate weight and snaps it at the bone. It tumbles in freefall, smashing into each ledge with sickening thumps that eject even more gore out of its sword, bullet, gunblade, and Arthur wounds with each impact, dragged down with the wolves savaging its bulk.

    It just can't deal. Ten meters under flesh-melting poison swamp goo, it wouldn't be exposed to attacks like this, but Seifer gets his makeshift junkpile chainsaw gunblade and rams it in up to the hilt, grinding its soft insides to lumpy sludge and spitting it back out the entry wound like an excavator wheel ploughing through warm mud. Stuck at the bottom and unable to climb out, it can't do a damn thing when a cluster of detonators tumble down from on high and fall right on top of its head, blowing up not just on their own, but into a compressed pinch fusion explosion. It looses the barest fraction of a hissing, high-pitched scream, and then becomes little more than a sketchy black outline in a roaring white bonfire, immolated on the spot.

    The heat flash vapourizes a significant portion of the poison lake, turning it into hideously deadly fumes that blow upwards in a toxic purple mushroom cloud, but dispersing harmlessly when they hit the purity zone Yuuki has thankfully created. Only the creature's charred and smoking black skeleton is left partly submerged in the mess, no longer presenting any kind of threat except maybe falling on them should gravity revert at an inopportune time, since the purity zone wouldn't do anything about its physical weight.

    Regardless of which orientation people use to progress through the giant, neon-lit door with the strange eye symbol and weird slot (which is so obvious that it takes no time at all to plug in the weird, bug-shaped SOUL SHRINE GEM and open it), they enter into a final chamber that is anticlimactically tiny, barely larger than a walk-in closet. A number of what appear to be massive urns account for much of its reduced size, which have been smashed open to the last and cover the floor with pottery shrapnel and ash. A low ceiling set with some sort of gem fills the stone chamber with cold cyan light, which exposes the glint of a few metal items here and there, partially buried and obscured in the mess. The walls are covered in writing and glyphs from top to bottom, but have been extensively and angrily defaced, rendering them unreadable. A huge, napped stone axe, easily the size of an entire man, lies snapped in half in a corner, chipped badly enough to be responsible enough for the destruction.

    Whatever else might have been of high value or lore significance here has been either destroyed or taken. All that remains on a central pedestal, just large enough to stand on, are scattered fragments of brass, bone, liquid stains, and in the middle the shrapnel of some kind of stand, rifling around finds a pale green stone the size of a chicken egg, wrapped in a weird, wickedly sharp cage of black metal, tapered to a point at both ends, which pulses with a sort of power that causes mild vertigo by holding it.

    The JADE NEXUS KEY.
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki, deciding that going downstairs now sounds like an awful idea, goes back up to the 'purification room', backtracking if necessary, to find the SECRET DOOR Zero sassed her about in the last scene because this level is the worst and awful and why does every Fromsoft game have an escalatingly awful rancid sewer for giant dookie and concentrated godawful?

The world will never know, because the scalding-hot bath that Yuuki intends to cleanse herself with after will also serve to ritually cleanse this memory with heat and soap.

At least she also already lost her cookies last scene, so all that she does when she dry heaves is pause for a moment to contemplate the true meaning of adventure-heroism and why she didn't just stay home and be an awful member of perfect predator royalty. If she stayed home, she wouldn't have had new, foul stenches etched into her brain with a rusty piece of rebar.

Introspection over, she also hopes the PURITY ROOM is PURE or she's gonna swirlie herself in awful for no damn good reason on top of all this feeling sorry for herself.
Touta Konoe      Touta's probably going to follow Yuki's example. He'll probably help out in the purification room if they don't 'shoo' him away, but other than that his plans are pretty open.

     "Oh right, Arty before I forget you said you were good to box some time right? Just let me know when you're available and we'll set something up. If you want you can come chill at my world. You'd fit right in! Actually if anyone wants to come back to my world we can all probably clean off and hit the hot springs. It'd probably be a nice break after all this."

     Actually if anyone wanted to get a last word in with this kid, this would be the chance before he intended to head off back home. He'll probably need serious showering before he's actually allowed into the hot springs but that's okay. As for a lesson he could say he learned from this adventure...Yeah he's got nothing...Always remember to have a proper drainage system?
Zero Kiryu Bloody Rose's vines recede rapidly when the battle winds to a close, a few brambles remaining as a protective layer wound around Zero and one larger tendril remaining to act as a grapple. With matters well in hand, he follows the path of Yuuki's blip on his radar. A part of it was simply remembering the way they came-- and a part of it was simply following her direction. It's not hard to guess where she went, or where she's heading. Overall this means that he just straight disappears from the group that he was with to start with.

He is, however, substantially behind her. By the time she reaches her destination, Yuuki will have been there for a while.

As Zero emerges into the antechamber that lead to all this mess -- and the direction Yuuki is taking -- he takes a moment to rest against one of the walls. The pounding of his heartbeat is like a war hammering in the back of his mind.

The fact that nearly everything here is as inedible as it gets makes things even worse. There's nothing to take it out on but other people-- and one 'other'. But that one hasn't done anything to warrant such a response.
Rurufon     And then Yuuki discovers the punchline to this whole, horrible joke.

    The secret chamber leads to a dead end, with a plinth already in place, and a cluster of PURITY STONES hoarded alongside it. A human skeleton indicates that someone had ducked into this room to find a safe place to gather the crystals they'd found and plan out their own route to the finish, judging by the fact they've drawn a fairly complete map on the wall, this time not in red, but in brown and white paint. It isn't exhaustive, but indicates the exact positions of a great number of plinths, dotted in white.

    It seems he was a few stones short of his charted course before he died, and the ARMING SWORD thrust between his ribs and pinned into the wall indicates it might have been an ally who wanted no part of this expedition, or perhaps a competitor after the same stones, who succumbed to the poison outside instead.

    This would have been really helpful a long time ago. At least she finds CUNE x3.
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki finds the purity stones, and as Touta arrives behind her, he is not rebuffed but instead his arms are filled with the key item artefacts. "Hold these." She announces, before collecting the ARMING SWORD, continuing to loot the room, pulling out her slimy smartphone to snap a picture of a COMPLETE MAP one-thumbed.

Her eyes are set in a terribly shounen-hero-in-a-training-montage way, and her mein is that of a great cat, tail slowly and deliberately whisking behind her, hatefully surveying its domain. When Zero arrives, later still, she flips the ARMING SWORD dismissively into his hands, following her phone now. "Zero, you can hold that. We're going to get /all/ the other treasures. I won't be beaten by this place. This won't be how this /goes/. Insulted by a /sewer/..."

A look of concern flashes over her face. "If... you're alright with that. You look terrible. You can go back early, Touta and I-" She doesn't give him a choice. "Can handle it, if you go back with Seifer."
Zero Kiryu Zero takes the sword without complaint. He might just be too out of it to really give a shit, but it's hard to tell with him half the time. It's only when she starts speaking that he actually allows himself the luxury of active thought and consideration. It's practically possible to see the gears turning-- and it doesn't take long. He replies, "It's alright."

But he's not.

Vitality returns to his expression in answer to the back half of her statement. He glares at Yuuki, a momentary exchange occurring in that look that Yuuki can almost certainly interpret to the letter: For a moment, Zero wonders whether or not she just tried to Command him.

"No." He says.