Scene #6015: The Jade Nexus

Owner	Pose
Rurufon	With the amount of blood, sweat, and tears (especially blood. lots and lots of that) it'd taken to get the JADE CHASM KEY, it seems almost strange how little fanfare there is to finally using it. The object, basically a chicken egg of what would only believably be jade if it weren't constantly pulsing with weird light, wrapped in a strange cage of uniditifiable greenish black metal, corresponds to another door, seeming to be the universal connector bricks that stitch this bizarre nexus of realms together. Beyond it is nothing but a seemingly bottomless shaft deep into the well of the Abyss, with walls of something blue, like granite and bark and shot with vericose veins of metal. A single spire of green-black metal runs up its center, attached to a platform of tooth-like stone just barely large enough to cram half a dozen people on, and affixed with a head-sized 'eye' of jade with a radioactive green glow. The key is jammed into it and slashed across in a way that feels uncomfortably reminiscent of slitting an actual eyeball, and the anticlimax is that the platform begins moving upward like a spiral elevator, carrying riders up and around an indeterminate distance a shaft with seemingly no beginning and no end, visually or extrasensorily. It simply deposits them at a new floor, where another, identical door grinds open, and deposits them at a different arrangement of winding, haphazard organic catwalks over nothing, branching crazily into three, slightly more difficult to reach, Realm gates. Certainly, being stuck here would thus be absolutely maddening, if this is the reward for surviving so long. How many floors are there? If precious stones are the theme, there are a lot of those that could theoretically make up a spectrum. The rune of the Tower is embossed on the unidentifiable substance of each gate, as before. One is worn away as if by wind, covered in fine yellow dust. One is speckled with tiny, multicoloured growths, something like coral polyps or petri dish cultures. One is wet with a thin film of something like machine oil, and bares partially exposed 'roots' of something. Standing by a shining blue beacon, at the nexus of the doors, certainly so that if someone were to die, they wouldn't start from beginning again, is the first they've seen of the mysterious horned woman in quite a while. The white portion of her clothes is slightly bloody, as is the inside curve of an utterly ridiculously huge and baroque scythe, apparently just recently used. "Congratulations are in order. I anticipated at least two thirds of you to die in the first Chasm, but you've exceeded my expectations. The last Realm in particular is an especially difficult draw for newcomers, as of late. Maybe this Chasm will be more appropriate for your skills. I warn you though, this is typically as far as humans go, if they aren't killed below."
Klasi Stryde	Klasi Stryde has found the Eldorado. After only a month as an adventurer, he's done what many have spent years trying to do. He's dressed in his finest suit, anticipation causing him to wring his hands, as he steps through the catwalks and towards the beacons. Of course, his lead is a hand-drawn map he bought, having haggled the multiversal salesman as low as he'd go. Made out of a surprisingly strange material he hasn't seen used before, it led him to this tower, labeled as 'EL DORADO'. Moving up towards Rurufon, Klasi beams a grin, waving at her and moving towards the group. "Hello! I didn't expect other people here, which is a bummer, but maybe you can help me! Where are all the mountains of gold and paradise? I want to start digging into the lap of luxury immediately!" Klasi's eying around the place. There's gotta be treasure. This is Eldorado, right? If he has to adventure for it, that's fine...though he is kind of surprised he didn't have to find Goliath to find the Eldorado. Maybe this is the power of the Multiverse!
Zero Kiryu	HOURS BEFORE... Zero Kiryu stood in front of his mirror. The sun had just risen a small while ago, and the slow but sure urge to sleep tugged at the back of his mind, increasing in intensity as the minutes ticked forward hours. He looked like hell, and he knew it. His skin was inflamed, his eyes sunken and glassy. It was bearable. He could stand there and exist like that. Talk, act, move around. It was a routine that he had engaged in for years. He blinked at himself, hazily. Out came the paper packet full of pills. Check that, it was empty. He'd chewed through the whole lot of them and found himself short again. The empty packet fell from his fingers onto the vanity, joining a pile of them that had been collecting for months. Blearily he drifted to the icebox, and looked down into it. Ordinary food sat untouched alongside packets of blood that were always allocated to him, but which he hadn't used. Zero braced himself against the edge of the icebox, dozing on his feet for a moment before his sagging brought him back to awareness. Finally, bereft of all energy, unable to summon the will to be a stubborn asshole one moment longer, he takes one of the bloodpacks in hand and drifts off towards bed. NOW Zero arrived with Yuuki. He always arrives with Yuuki, and he always looks like he drank a bottle of vodka and then did jumping jacks through a hangover after dressing himself with clothes carefully wadded up into a single pringles can. Right now, he looks like a human being. His skin is neither pale or inflamed. His eyes are clear and sharp. The clothes he's wearing are clean and his tie is actually properly tied instead of left hanging around his neck as an afterthought he realized he couldn't get away without but didn't care enough to actually do anything with. The most remarkable thing of all, though... "I haven't seen any gold here, but if it's valuables you're looking for this place has things like this." He reaches over to Yuuki and unsheathes a dagger hidden on her person to display it to Klasi without missing a beat. ... Is that he's simply more willing to talk.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur gives space to the elevator, freeing other people to step on it. Klasi is invited too, despite unfamiliarity! Unless someone else does, he's going to release the JADE CHASM KEY from his universally-accessible DUNGEON INVENTORY interface, letting it perform its motions. He's a videogame character after all, and he can let items do their own pre-programmed interactions! Which is why he regards the "keyhole" such as it is in this context with a wince. Jeez, kinda "gory" process and results. As they ascend, Arthur snaps and points to Klasi, immediately approaching him and foisting a cool-kid handshake on his arm with several daps, pounds, fistbumps, low-fives, finger-wiggles, elbow-wobbles, and other such accessories. "Looks like you got a BAMBOOZLE there, dawg. This isn't GOLD PARADISE, it's FIGHTS PARADISE. They're selling SUPER-POWERED SPEAR at the TOP of a DEADLY TOWER, not MOUNTAINS OF TREASURE, homie." As things head up, he emerges while still drifting through the air. "But hey! STICK AROUND for some GOOD ADVENTURES! Maybe not TONIGHT, but NEXT TIME, if there's more DOORS..." "HELL YEAH, HOMIE! We bring that POWER up in this MOTHERFUCKER." Arthur says, immediately swooping over to Rurufon and assaulting her arm the same way he just barraged Klasi. "You gonna SLIT US on these NEXT BITS? Fuck yeah, bring me that PAIN homie, I wanna feel that IMPACT from your TOWER, dawg. Best not be HOLDING BACK on me, motherfucker, I SHRED ADVENTURES up in this!" He peers out over the unnerving organic walkways, noting the trio of doors. "Looks like we got another TRIO on the menu." He flits between all three. "This one looks SICK in the BAD WAY, maybe some CORROSION stuff up in that motherfucker? This one... That's lookin' HEAVY on BIOHAZARD maybe, talkin' hella MEAT LEVEL or some GROWTH bullshit. And..." He stops near the third one, peering at it and checking the odd oily surface. "Is this one MECHANICAL? No-- ROOTS? Hmmm. Maybe some kinda TREE-MACHINE place? Shit, I kinda wanna try THIS ONE FIRST."
Seifer Almasy	Seifer Almasy's been here for exactly one floor and he hates it so much it might actually make him some kind of Hate Buddha. It was full of bullshit poison, bullshit acid, bullshit poison acid insect monsters, bullshit puzzles, and bullshit of various other degrees. Seifer did not know he could hate a thing this much. There are degrees of hate he was familiar with, the personal, the impersonal, and the absolutely core, but this is a hate that transcends all three. This is some kind of Hate Enlightenment. "This," Seifer announces to the world, "Is worse than the fucking blood monsters." Arthur's bit about 'meat level' and 'biohazards' gets a groan out of Seifer. "God damn, what's wrong with something you can just fucking /fight/?" He demands, tapping his gunblade over his shoulder and giving Klasi a distant eye. Other people have already covered Klasi's error. He's in no hurry to help. They got that covered. Instead, he just sort of plays with the fox-emblem chain around his neck and looks at the woman. "Yeah? Well." "Gonna set a new record, then, babe."
Yuuki Kuran	Yuuki is here because, originally, she was bright-eyed (and brother does she have some eyes) and bushy-tailed (in an idiomatic sense). Originally. That had died in the Violent Poison Area. This was no longer a Tower of Fun, no longer a Tower of Adventure. Yuuki was no longer the plucky adventurer. Yuuki had discarded the pretense of being normal with the Concord. And, after the Violent Poison Area, Yuuki had discarded the pretense of coming at this tower as anything but a conquerer. In it for the long haul. FUCK this place. Yuuki looks distantly sour when she arrives with Zero, her clothes 'tactically fashionable' in that they are light and easy to move in and have very little wasted frills and fluff for looks and not function, like softening the collar. And Zero just grabs a knife she had stashed in her coat and produces it. "H-hey!" She argues, the DIRK from the Violent Poison Area being flashed to the new guy. "We fought hard for that, and it was in a secret area that we skipped. That whole place... was awful. Maybe there'd be nice bugs to carve through instead of the sewer. That'd be good. And...-" She waves at Rurufon conversationally. "If we've put the grossest area behind us, then it should be smooth going." It's a FromSoft game. They've not put sewers behind them, FromSoft games are Eighty Percent Dank Awfulness per-game. But she's allowed her foolish hopes still.
Zero Kiryu	"We fought hard for that," Zero agrees as he passes the DIRK back to Yuuki, "but it does fit the definition of 'treasure'."
Rurufon	"Gold is of no worth in the Tower of Shadows." Rurufon insists, basically looking and talking over the second occurrence of elaborate ridiculous handshakes, and flicking her scythe off. "No two Realms have agreeable or interchangeable ideas of worth. What is valuable is what helps one to survive, nothing else. The currency that some predecessor of mine set out aeons ago belongs to no Realm at all." She then produces a flat, semi-rectangular metal bit, etched with incomprehensible figures like a serial, and otherwise unadorned, to demonstrate. "Cune." she states. It's that thing people have been collecting in little bunches for a while now. That's money. There's gotta be at least twenty of them jingling around in the ol' inventory by now. "This time only, you are permitted to see all three, before committing to the draw of your new hand. Do not expect to go far. The World at the Cliff, the Hidden Waterfall, and the Scouring Rush, if memory serves. The Abyss has found stronger foes for you, rather than more intense environs." She considers for a second. "This is convenient though. There is a man here who happens to have stolen some of my belongings. If you happen across him, feel free to kill him. I'll have a reward for you."
Klasi Stryde	As Klasi is told he's been rused, he seems really concerned...but that dagger is super cool, which proves there's treasure here. As Arthur gives him the bro handshake, Klasi tries to keep up and do it back, and probably fails terribly but hilariously. Pulling out the map to show to Arthur, who might be able to tell the texture is actually skin, "How can you tell me this isn't the right place? It says that it's Eldorado right here!" But then Rurufon calls it by a different name. Tower of Shadows. That's not what the map told him...and that's not in any of the legends...could have it gotten a new name? Or was he lied to? He's not sure. But, Arthur seems like a cool dude, so Klasi turns to him. "But I'm all for adventures! I'll help you guys explore and...hunt this thief? Alright! And then if we find any treasure or this Cune, I can collect it!" "And after some consideration, Klasi crosses his arms and speaks up. "Let's check out this Scouring Rush! The name sounds cool, so it has to be cool, right?"
Seifer Almasy	"Sure, whatever," Seifer says in Klasi's direction. He doesn't really care about weird Cune or Treasure, he's here to make a name for himself and carve it deeper in his legend. He's fine with wherever. Really, the fact that next time it's just /strong enemies/ rather than /obnoxious murder swamp/ is a blessing in and of itself.
Arthur Lowell	"HOOOOOOOLD UP." Arthur says, floating right back from the door towards Rurufon. "Are we talking, uh..." He zooms up, putting his hand approximately eight feet into the air. "About YEA BIG, BALD, has something against SHIRTS? A THIEF like that?" An ENIGMA SCRUTINY bar has popped up over his head; it's at two pips of completion, and a third is now flickering uncertainly.
Rurufon	"The Spear King's bodyguard? No." Says Rurufon. "Though he is human, if a mad, conniving rat. Unlike who you are taking about, he stands no possibility of moving between the Chasms freely on his own. You were fortunate to even meet the former."
Zero Kiryu	"Your disgust is unwarranted," Zero asides to Yuuki as he surveys their options, "there is no task more revolting than separating the Day Class and the Night Class. The surface is cleaner, but..." "The sewers do not compare to the thoughts." He concludes, with a flat expression. He folds his arms over his chest and glances towards Arthur. The truth is that his spot check has been severely impaired whenever he's been here previously. Whatever the young (?) man is talking about, Zero just hasn't caught it-- if he was even here to have the context for it in the first place. Like all good aloof brooding sad boys, he only became a part of the party midway through this experience. So he missed some plot. "We should assess the potential battlefields... but I don't like the sound of 'The Hidden Waterfall'." The last stage was enough of a water level for him. Going from water level to water level sounds like unnecessary misery.
Yuuki Kuran	Yuuki listens to this, their sidequest, Rurufon's explanation of the local currency, and the areas that spread out before them. And the sass from Zero, especially. "Oh. Is there actually a Spear King we should look out for? I think he messed up the treasure room before we got there. It was a little disappointing, it being so empty at the end. Doesn't the tower reset mostly between... uhm, runs?" Zero sass gets a sour face from the shoujopire. "I thought that was fine! It was fine. You're just a curmudgeon who'd rather nap in the stables of our stupidly rich school than do your job. So, actually, it was you! You who had made it terrible! But, no, I'd rather deal with dumb girls and pretty boys than killer sewers." Yuuki baps Zero on the shoulder. "So I think between a 'Hidden Waterfall' and a 'Scouring' anything, I'd go with the not-those ones! Violent Poison and Scouring sound really close."
Arthur Lowell	"So, SCOURING RUSH..." Arthur says, pointing to the dusty, wind-blasted one. "HIDDEN WATERFALL..." He points to the one with the odd coral growths. "And WORLD AT THE CLIFF, right?" He points at last to the one with the roots and the machine oil. "Well, shit, homie, we talkin' a VERTICALITY CHALLENGE I gotta get all up in THAT, I bring that GRAVITY. I'mma take a HARD GLANCE up in that place, get the SCOPE on it." Arthur whirls about, swooping around and then sort of slides headfirst towards the door, looking like he's relaxing on his back, lacing his fingers behind his head and only unlacing them to snap his fingers and pulse a light bit of gravity to open the door over there so he can check out what's beyond it and get a little preview of what stuff's beyond!
Zero Kiryu	Zero meets Yuuki's sour face with a withering look. It's not entirely serious-- it's a familiar enough face, his usual batting-back-at-Yuuki look. He makes an indistinct noise and then replies, "It's one thing to say so, but..." He points at her, "You're one of the girls." "Come on. We want to be near him when we check that one, if it's anything like he thinks it is." He changes gears abruptly, jerking a thumb towards Arthur and JOINING ARTHUR AT THE GATHER-PARTY POINT.
Klasi Stryde	As the others head towards the oily door, Klasi looks at the other two doors. "We better split up if we're going to cover all this ground! Let's see...eenie, meenie, miney, mo..." He waves his finger back and forth, clearly trying to decide, before picking the one with the polyp growths. "Alright, I choose you! You're the Scouring Rush!" The brunette moves to open the door and push himself inside, wanting to get in on the adventure. He could probably use some help. He's not going to ask for it, though.
Rurufon	"Of course there is a Spear King." Rurufon almost snaps. "A thousand years ago, he brought the Spear to the Earth Realm, used it to raise a nation, destroyed his neighbours, became god king, and then returned to the Tower, though in Earth legend, he 'mysteriously disappeared', and his kingdom fell into ruin without him, as expected of a nation founded on the assumption of an omniscient ruler. His royal bodyguard has wandered several Chasms in search of him, seeking after him during the dying days of his country, when the king did not return. I can't tell whether he doesn't know that there's nobody to go back to or not. It might just be sheer, bloody minded stubbornness, like the living are known for. The poor fool has died thirty times since I was here." Going to the door bearing a room slicked with oil and penetrated with grey roots quickly leaves them in another dark, claustrophobic space, as Arthur seems to be really good at choosing. When the door grinds shut behind them though, striking up any form of light works fine; it's simply black inside because there is nothing casting any illumination. Though they're standing atop a platform of something like white limestone, descending in a sideways ramp, the room is square and clearly artificial, with thick metal walls, covered in plates, girders, pipes, and beams of old alloys covered in verdigris and layers of caked on smog. The air smells faintly of fumes, as if from burning fat, unpleasant, but not toxic, seeping through high mounted grates in the dingy recesses of harshly angled architecture. Metallic groaning and pinging can be heard in the distance like echoing walesong, along with the occasionally startling clatter or bash of uncertain origin. Just looking at the proportions of the place, with its low ceiling, wide spaces, lack of insulation, and barest nod to air circulation, it seems like a crawlspace, like one would find for engineers aboard a ship, save that whoever was supposed to shimmy though here would have to be very big. Much, much bigger than a human. he more outstanding feature is that there are indeed 'roots' here, or else something like them. Though they'd barely been exposed through the recess of the rune on the door, here they're fully on display, and absolutely massive. Huge, winding growths shoot directly through the ceiling and into the limestone (or vice versa?), appearing less like the growth of a tree up close, due to being made of some solid, sickly grey metal, segmented like the body of a worm. Despite having a mechanical appearance, they certainly don't look manufactured, more like they'd spread throughout the place like the creeping tendrils of a choking shoot.
Rurufon	Wandering only a little ways in, the whole character of this place is informed through a small but drastically different change from below. While the the Deformed Insect Territory had been full of the bodies of intrepid explorers, treasure hunters, and wandering mercenaries, armed and clothed with whatever their respective era gave them access to, rounding a corner results in kicking a carpet of brass casings, sending them tinkling and rolling across the floor. There are hundreds of them, spread around from a semicircular point; 5.56mm if someone here knows their guns. Way too many for a single person to have used. There are scores of bloody corpses packing the three halls that lead into the intersection, making each one difficult to get into, but whatever they were, it's no longer possible to discern; they've been shredded by gunfire, started to rot a while ago, and have been picked over by something eating them, though they clearly weren't human. It's not hard to tell what's been consuming them though. They immediately spot . . . a deformed insect. One from the hive below. Just one. How it got here might be a mystery, but there's something very wrong with it -more than usual. Its whole carapace is an algal off-green, and some cancerous growth sprouts from the upper side of its abdomen, blooming into the fleshy petals of some toxic-purple and warning-yellow appendage that looks an awful lot like a flower. It scissors into the dead flesh easily, chopping up bones with its mandibles, but doesn't cart it back to a queen; it just devours it on the spot. Klasi gets a very different experience. When he touches his door, he is immediately kicked squinting into the light. It seems as if he is outdoors, surrounded by a perfect circle of towering stone edifices, pouring crystal clear water from dizzying heights which yet fails to crash and foam as a waterfall of any height should, instead pooling ankle deep and then vanishing down a deep, dark hole ahead of him, broken into a perfectly level slate floor. Looking down, he can spot tiny orange lights, like the photo negative of the usual sea blue that goes with bioluminescent fish, but staring up, he is confronted with a sky of bleary, sterile white light, as if he were under an operating table lamp, rather than any kind of sun. There is in fact no sun, nor clouds, nor shred of blue. It's just light in his face; enough that it hurts to look at directly. The plus side is that he immediately finds an INFLATABLE VEST propped up against a wall. Doesn't really help get down though.
Yuuki Kuran	Yuuki's bap on Zero's shoulder is not as soft as previously. "We were both prefects, Zero. You just had a harder time not because you're not into boys, but because you're not into anything." She counters, as she follows Arthur into the NEXT ZONE('s PREVIEW). It's dark, but not unfortunately so. It's not MAGICALLY dark, so Yuuki's eyes just sort of alight internally as she walks, two expressive points of glowing (or really Cyborg Ninja-y if you're like that) light trailing in the dark surrounds. "It's... stuffy. It smells like death, but most of these places do. Death and... Gunpowder." Yuuki picks up a handful of shell casings, inspecting them in the dark before letting them slip through her fingers. "Watch your step, everyone? But... this doesn't seem so bad. It's just dark and humid, not swampy. Like a tropical forest."
Seifer Almasy	Seifer has a Job that he Does, and that Job is generally Protect Cute Girls and Princesses. That he is now married (?!) does not really change that it is a Proper Knight's Thing To Do, and Seifer Almasy is nothing if not the kind of guy who really thinks of himself as a Proper Knight despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. With gunblade over his shoulder and his usual distant look of mild irritation on his face, he walks in behind Yuuki. Unlike Yuuki he cannot see shit. He can, however, hear the brass casings tingle, and he doesn't really need to see so long as Hyperion is in hand. He crouches and picks up a shell thoughtfully. "I'd say this is pretty bad," Seifer observes, "Casings like this you don't find in this kind of mass often. Either there was a big battle, or there was one guy with a ton of bullets, and if there's one guy with a ton of bullets, and the Abyss found us stronger enemies, it's pretty possible we might be in for it."
Zero Kiryu	The amusement bleeds out of Zero's features immediately. It was subtle to begin with, but it was... /there/. Yuuki could definitely see it, but it vanishes as soon as she's done speaking. He may be trying to take care of himself a little today, but these things don't just happen overnight. Today, he's fed himself. He's slept. But he's not really any better at talking about his feelings. It's possible that he never will be. His mind drifts back towards the night he attacked her-- the night, in his mind, that everything got so complicated. It wasn't the thing itself that he focuses on, though. Like a film on fast forward, his memories drift on. To when she was feeding him. To what he saw in her blood whenever it was going on. Brass scatters on the floor beneath him. The decision to say something is a difficult, grinding thing. Like a beast of burden hauling something terribly heavy up a hill by itself. Zero's jaw moves visibly, the way he's breathing changes in that unique little way it does whenever somebody is considering speech and not quite getting there. Finally... "I was, and am." He states to Yuuki, not quite reeling back in to matter-of-fact tone like he'd have liked. Immediately afterwards Seifer reminds him that there are other people here. Zero's gaze sweeps into the distance, unafflicted by the dark. He can see the insect out there. "Bugs. It's bugs." He doesn't point out the specific location of the sickly, cancerous bug because he's pretty sure Seifer would charge off into the dark after it.
Klasi Stryde	As Klasi moves into the blinding light, he goes to cover his eyes. Tilting his head away from the pain, he instead blinks to find what is a lovely water area with tiny orange lights. Seeing how crystal and clear the water is, he moves to scoop it up and put it in his mouth for a drink, his swarm moving if there's any toxins in there to try and prevent them from killing him. After that impulse, Klasi sees the inflatable vest and moves to grab it. It takes him only a few seconds to realize it's something you wear, and he puts it on over his vest. But now there's the problem of how to get down and investigate further. Klasi decides to move for the edge and grab it and try and climb down. He thinks he can beat the water pressure and find a way down safely. Klasi's hand slips. Klasi Stryde goes falling into the deep dark hole below, probably to plummet hard. He thinks 'only if I could fly', and his body starts trying to work to create him something with which he can, in fact, fly. But it might not be fast enough, and he might go splat...which he could probably still 'survive' anyways, as long as he doesn't get vaporized or fall into an abyss.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur sniffs at the air, wrinkling his nose at the unpleasant sensation. With a quick snap, he summons a modest circle of light with his videogamey reality systems and deposits himself on the ground, moving to investigate. He spends a little while looking over it, trying to determine if this odd, invasive growth is more fueled by strange pseudo-biology, or more fueled by some kind of magical effect. His analytical ability should be able to determine at least that much! He also heads forward, immediately stressing the moment he sees an inch of red. AUGH! AUGH AUGH AUGH! Wait, no, those aren't human bodies. That's easier to deal with. As long as Arthur can pretend it isn't sapient, he can deal with a corpse. He focuses as he realizes that, listening keenly to the others. "Yeah, maybe it was like... a TACTICAL SQUAD of dudes? Makes sense some dude might hire a DOZEBN MERCENARIES to run around this place, yeah? SQUAD GOALS." He then advances enough to see the insect, and has to hold himself back from striking out immediately out of surprise. Before he strikes out, he's going to peer as closely as he can without alerting the beast... is that weird mutant growth similar to the metal growths all around? And THEN he's gonna try to blast the motherfucker with a massive unload of fusion energy and a big hearty broom-bash, and possibly head back to check out Scouring Rush.
Rurufon	Fortunately enough, the water does appear to be save to drink. It is in fact extremely pure, or better described 'sterile' in a really unnatural way, but then there's no real telling what, if anything, exists beyond the cliffs. Putting on the vest, and falling over the edge, Klasi pretty quickly learns what life vests do when he strikes the water above the sharp, deep blue dropoff, and they just sort of swirls around in circles as the buoyancy of the vest beats out the mild drag of the drain spiral. Up close, he can see multiple levels of caves below, separated by oddly thin and flat layers of stone almost like the floors of a skyscraper, dissected by the hole punching through it. Down below, he can see the water visibly twisting as the pressure, and thus the speed of the vortex, grow more intense, until far below it turns completely pitch black, and would probably suck him in and crush him. Before that however, there are entire gardens of strange undersea weeds, floral colonies, and calcium formations he's never seen before. Various shapes can be seen flitting through them- or can they, actually? Squinting as hard as he might, there's certainly a lot of movement suggesting sea critters -the twitch of a frond here, the splash against a rock there- but there are none to be seen. Putting his ear under the water, he can tell there are pockets of air here and there, out of his sight, by the way the sound travels, and that the slurping of the column he's sat on is intense enough that he might be dragged under if he tries to swim down more than maybe two levels like this. It'd serve the function of an impassable barrier if he were 'walking' through them.
Rurufon	Judging by the spread, a squad of guys with automatic weapons, in actual formation around the passage they'd come through, seems pretty likely. It'd be hard to get so much brass in a wide ring like this otherwise. If it is one guy, however, he'd have to be a damn scary one to hold off this many enemies at once and walk away, as there are no human bodies, or even human blood. The weird tendril growth is metal through and through, but fibrous and pocketed inside, like a cross section of a bone made of plant matter. Though it is metallic, it is also firmly organic, and can be considered a living thing without any asterisks or qualifiers, albeit a really weird one. It's difficult to make heads or tails of any kind of metabolism though; it respires so slowly it might as well not be at all. The creepy 'flower' growing out of the deformed insect like a weird case of cordyceps doesn't appear to be made of metal, but who knows with this place. When Arthur blasts it by surprise, the creature doesn't make the barest hint of a hiss or screech like the ones he had cooked a floor below. Instead, the smoke clears to show about half of a cauterized insect corpse, headless and missing two limbs, which then begins to drag itself towards him like a zombie, coming after him despite having no weapons with which to attack. One of the dead bodies rolls and falls from the pile, as another hideous shape rises from the other side. This time, it's one of the fire-bearing cyclopes from the Place With White Walls, just as sickly green as the insect, with a similar floral protuberance blinding its singular eye. Attracted by the noise, it begins loping forward like an animal, using both hands as well as feet, as it appears to have no flame.
Klasi Stryde	The life vest is possibly now Klasi's favorite invention as it saves him, but now, he also has a pair of...wings? growing out of his shoulders. They're like big dragon wings, and as he listens to the water, air pockets...huh? The various gardens and formations are strange, though he hasn't seen normal ones either. As the vortex starts sucking him down, though, he realizes he needs to get back out of here. The others are busy, so... Klasi starts flapping those wings. At first, they don't do much, until he starts straining, and they finally push him out of the water, pulling his body into the air. For a moment, he goes 'woah', practicing flying around in this area, before he moves to see if he can get a better look at anything down here that way, spot anything different now that he's in the air instead of at risk of getting pulled under. Whether or not he can, once Klasi's done, he moves to fly back up the drop-off, clumsily, and ends up bonking the wall head-first. He manages to pull himself up anyways, but that's definitely a cool new ability, and also intel. The group will love him when they hear he has intel! And also a new plan to get rich. He just needs buckets...
Zero Kiryu	Zero manages to tear his attention away from his apparent relationship drama to pay attention to the things around them. The nature of the /things/ coming at them clicks with him pretty quick now that he's paying attention. Unfortunately that really doesn't make this any easier, unless it just so happens that they manage to encounter a small enough number of these things that they don't actually /have/ to cope with letting them get too near. On the upside, that sort of threat is the kind he's well-suited to dealing with. He'd /really/ prefer things not go that south, though. There is the rattle of a chain as the hunter draws Bloody Rose, training it on floral cyclops. He takes his time lining up a shot -- it's a big target, and he can afford to take his time for the moment -- and squeezes the trigger confidently, firing towards the floral mass rather than the cyclop's own mass to see if he can confirm his suspicions. "... Hey." He says to Arthur, "Can you do that portal thing and get them turned around if they get too close?"
Seifer Almasy	Seifer is from a world where 'one guy holds off a ton of enemies' is more likely than 'a squad holds off a ton of enemies.' It's a natural assumption that one guy walked away from all the bugs. It's a natural assumption because Seifer would naturally assume that, in the same circumstance, he could do that, and therefore if Seifer Almasy can do it, somebody else might be able to do it too maybe perhaps possibly. The fact that this has never been tested does not appear to have registered with Seifer Almasy. "Bugs," Seifer says to Zero, "Fuck. This place is weird as shit." The cyclops thing rises, sickly green, and Seifer prepares to go charging in until Zero says 'wait maybe we shouldn't do that.' Seifer's face takes on a frown, but, well, the sickly green cyclops, the flower, and the dragging bug all convince him that nah maybe Zero has a point. He falls back, getting in front of Yuuki on instinct. Protect the Princess. "I got some Fire Drawn," Seifer says, and then holds up a hand. A fireball gathers in it. He launches it at the cyclops in time with Zero, a few blasts of light flames to keep the thing at bay. Plants probably don't like fire, right? "Best I can do if I can't get up close."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur pulls back, not in a panic, but in a controlled retreat. Zero's got some kind of idea here, and Arthur's willing to give it a shot! His broom's already out, and so he channels his magic into it, sweeping it hard in a broad half-circle, trying to block up the passage with a bit of fancy twisting of geometry. By redefining what a straight line is when they try to approach him, fracturing the space in the area, Arthur is trying to force them to get turned around by attempts to run in and melee him. As long as they don't spend time prodding the "barrier" for gaps and approach only in dumb ways, they ought to be held back by it for a damn long time, right? "Hell yeah homie, I bring the sick flow GEOMETRY-WISE." Arthur says, smugly flipping his broom into the Strife Deck again. "We should FOR SURE check out that LAST DOOR though, this is some FUCKED UP STUFF. Gotta know what's behind DOOR NUMBER THREE before we make our DECISION." He's already planning on trying to head back to the nexus, and off to the yellowed door.
Yuuki Kuran	Zero's grumpy relationship issues are known to you, dear reader, but to Yuuki, they're a sort of extant truth that she pokes and prods like a puzzle, trying to tease out a solution. But, like the two little trick rings on sticks you can manipulate but visually cannot untangle from each other. You tug and you tug and you tug, and certainly could just pull the metal apart, damage it, and then try to bend it back into shape. But Yuuki doesn't want that. She wants to twist and turn the puzzle, with words both gentle and emotional. She wanted Zero to get teased out of his shell. Instead, they get disgusting bio-metallic fungal creatures that Zero directs gunfire towards (and points out, by proxy) before getting Arthur (an expert at FUCKING DEATH GAME mechanics) to shunt away any creatures that get close. It's... "You know it's not as bad as the sewer...?" She offers, helplessly. "Well... it doesn't smell as bad." Her eyes downcast, though it's mostly to watch where she's stepping, now. "I don't think it'd be a good idea to send my familiars out there, though. If it's parasitic fungus or something, letting it into them could let it into... Me?" She shivers. "That's an even grosser thought, thanks you guys."
Rurufon	By all accounts, what happens next is odd. When blasted with fire, both organisms blaze like a torch, steadily crawling/loping forward without seeming to feel their exoskeleton/skil blacken and burn. The already half-dead bug expires completely, while the merrily flaming cyclopean leech thing, rapidly turning into charcoal, is stupidly redirected through the geometry puzzle and shot in the flower, which spurts a surprisingly high pressure volume of thick, soupy green gore over the walls, like a badly popped blister. The memory trivia game should turn up that these creatures didn't have green blood. The whole thing slumps over anyways, if not dead, then soon to be, with the fact it burns like a dry log. It doesn't quite add up, because the encounter is trivially easy. The environment itself doesn't seem to be the challenge, and the enemies are stupid, predictable, vulnerable to fire, have telegraphed weakpoints, and everyone is already familiar with their abilities, yet this place is billed on being harder than the floor below? Even if it were a real maze (and it probably is), all these corridors do is make a hypothetical zombie shooter scenario really really easy for a group powerful enough to just burn them down, rather than than trying to navigate around them and getting cornered like a game of pacman gone wrong. It's hard to anticipate if this one is just a wild miscalibration, or else what could possibly make it difficult. That's not really the case with Klasi though. The more he stares, the more he should be /absolutely sure/ there are fish down there -and big ones- that he just can't catch sight of no matter how hard he tries. They must be really really fast, already gone when his eyes catch the motion, or something like that at least. The air isn't a great vantage point for peering deep under, but moving away from the center of the vortex, he can spy a human skeleton leaning on a crude stone lever rammed into a wall, and a sodden pack of what he won't personally recognize as C4. The skeleton is missing its entire lower half, and the oxygen tank the enterprising former owner brought with him indicates why, for it has been blatantly bitten in half along with the rest of him.
Zero Kiryu	"I agree with Arthur." Zero holsters his gun underneath an arm as their present enemies are dispatched. He didn't expect it to be that easy, but he doesn't want to find out the Shitty Twist tonight. He jerks his head in the direction that Arthur went, and falls back in beside Yuuki-- coincidentally also Seifer, since he decided to play tank a moment ago-- and tries to urge her to move on with their enthusiastic Party Lead. His expression is... mixed. He's trying to puzzle out what the hell is going on with Yuuki. "What do you mean, 'Drawn'?" He asks. To Yuuki, he replies, "Yeah... parasites like that usually only get big enough to control small bugs. Ants, or wasps. Sometimes something like a mantis, or a roach. I'd rather not have to go pulling these out of people, and that was..." "... Too simple. This place doesn't pull punches like that."
Klasi Stryde	Klasi has never seen C4, no, but he can recognize bite marks. Klasi 'eughs', as he pulls back to return to the door. He sends a message over the radio for the rest of them, in the process. <"Wow, this guy got eaten by something! Is that normal in here?"> Once he gets back to the door, Klasi will return to the others and wait in the nexus to group up. He's not going to poke into the next doors just yet, not while he's soaking wet. He also noticeably has the wings that he didn't before, in case anyone would pay attention to that.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur has pulled back, heading away. "HELL YEAH you got that AGREEMENT, s'cause I'm MAD WISE on this bitch. This TOWER shit's basically the same class of bullshit REALITY CHALLENGE-CONSTRUCT I had to fight BEFORE." Arthur keeps a wary glance all around as he sort of re-navigates entirely backwards. "We're gonna be lookin' at a MAZE MINOTAUR situation or some shit. So we best get that good NAVIGATION KNOW-HOW up in this later." If he can get that door back open, he'll lean onto it and fall backwards into an anti-gravity drift, lifting off and lacing his hands behind his head again, drifting back into the main Nexus, checking back towards Klasi's door, making sure the guy's okay. Nice! New guy's fine.
Yuuki Kuran	Yuuki is really not enjoying this place, even when she had puffed up herself with Super Predator Power to become Shoujo-Chan, Weebest Dominator. It wasn't enough power. It didn't make her determination any stronger, it just changed her approach. She was still Yuuki, and still enormously grossed out by the idea of parasites getting inside of her. Perhaps, even moreso than other times where the hero would worry about evil parasites, because speaking of vile things that get inside you and completely change your life, hey-hey how about that. Pa-tterns. "I think we're super done, yes. This is done. I want... everyone! To be here. We're just scouting. I want to make sure we have our whole team not just wandering off." "I also want a shower." She turns to leave with the famsquad. "A maze minotaur? Really?"