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Priscilla     The sudden recall into the Nothingness is simultaneously less and more jarring than before, with the summons of unspoken words. A step through a Warpgate by the right people at precisely the right time takes them not to their envisioned destination, but the floating blackness of the space outside of time, levitating but walking through the void and its eerie, self-silencing susurrus of conspiratorial voices. A Warpgate at least remains behind them, little more than a white dot in space, above which are the inexplicable words world map? are inexplicably stapled to empty space.

    When good and ready, Zone 1 is equally as simple to access. Walking through the black, surreal, somehow low-definition patterns begin to emerge, of a dim green and bending, forking nature that brings to mind indistinct thoughts of the floral patterns seen on the crowning and furniture of buildings from last century. Another white dot, similarly strange and formless, accepts the Leo Card like a commensurately outdated factory time punch card, and drops you into another world.

    It isn't entirely unlike Zone 0, but certainly more well defined. A winding land-bar turns at hard right angles through the ocean that surrounds it; an oddly squared and rambling edge of an island or coast, given to a sharp drop rather than a sloping beach, into endless, sloshing waves of pale grey-white liquid churning and splashing rhythmically, which you know by now to be liquid plastic. It is raining right now, more of a heavy drizzle than a storm, noisy and persistent, but only a mood dampener rather than a hazard. Sticking out one's tongue is inadvisable, as even the rain is nothing but heavy, pelting drops of viscous plastic gel.

    Rather than shades of saffron and marigold, everything solid around here appears to run the spectrum of greens, with the 'earth' being hard-packed gravel and powder rather than soil, which definitely appears to be comprised of mottled hues of greened metals, low-quality gems, and worthless minerals, crushed to varying extents; while walking across it doesn't feel too different, the complete lack of any organic substance is telling. Even the air tastes very faintly burnt, as if it'd come out of a dusty vacuum cleaner running too hotly.

    It seems that the Batter is already a little ahead of them. The tall and absurdly serene man with his detached bearing and crisp white and black dugout uniform and billed hat is already further up the road, where the plastic ocean retreats back, and the land is surrounded by a metallic fence, featuring what appears to be a train station on steel rails, but rather than a train, an out of place city tram is sat at the curb, attached to overhead cables and everything. A stark white sign with bold black letters marks the station as 'ELSEN', but half the letters are backwards for whatever reason. With a lack of any other obvious landmark or way to get around (asides stepping on rails that may or may not be electrified (it's uncertain if electricity is even a thing here)), the tram is boarded with varying degrees of confidence, and a long commute is shared with the mysterious Batter, completely silent unless especially prodded.
Priscilla     The repetitive chugging of an engine that shouldn't make a train noise and the clattering of tracks that have no crossbars anyways eventually comes to a stop at a station titled 'DAMIEN' in similarly randomly mirrored font, arriving at a cluster of squared, bright green buildings of excessively simplistic and all-metal design, arranged around a plaza of more attractive patterns and arrangements of sand and minerals, as well as odd plastic cubes, that give the impression of something vaguely like a garden. The east leads to a sharp rise in the landscape, where stacked and clipping cubic mineral formations create something like a mountain of dull, acid green pyrite, a prominent tunnel bored into its front, where further rails descend into the dark. Judging by the number of hard hats with mounted lamps, it's probably a mine.

    The hats are on people, obviously, but not people quite like you're familiar with. Zone 1 is indeed populated; the houses are inhabited, the mine is worked, the trams used, and the ladders and rails given purpose, by sparse and scattered crowds of uncannily near-identical beings that are the picture of incongruous blue collar lifestyle. For all of their wearing of miner's hats, each one of them is a pasty, paper white man in a starched white shirt, pressed black tie, and black business pants and shoes; an office drone if one was ever seen. They look . . . human at least, but with distinctively squarish heads, bald in a way that looks more like a cancer patient than aged, helped by their dark, sunken eyes and greyish freckles and blemishes. They mill about in the rain in oddly somber quiet, few sheltering indoors during the rain.

    One of them, in his mismatched mine hat placed atop his office drone head, approaches you, and speaks in a voice that is a nervous, wheezing whisper that is so much a dejected sigh that it becomes eerie, almost ghastly.

    "Uhm . . . uh . . . visitors?" he(?) wheezes. "I . . . uhm . . . welcome to the smoke mines. Uh . . . may I know who you are? Are you an inspector?" As helpfully un-verbose as usual, the Batter only answers "No. I'm the Batter. We've come to exterminate the impure spirits."

    "The . . . Batter . . . the . . . impure spirits? Are you some sort of . . . prophet? Or perhaps a man of belief?" the wheezy miner/office worker asks. "Yeah. Something like that." replies the Batter. "I . . . Who sent you?" the miner asks. "Nobody. I'm being lead by        . These people are here to remove the impures as well." says the Batter. Once again, that particular name is . . . not comprehensible. It slips in one ear and goes out the other without registering, as if censored out, or not spoken with real words. "Ah. I don't know her. She must be a member of the superior personnel . . ." answers the Miner anyways.
Priscilla      "In any case, that's good. It means our requests have been acknowledged . . . Here, I'm going to explain your task." says the miner. He rustles around in his pressed pants pockets, and comes out with a sheaf of papers too big for them, presenting and pointing to a variety of diagrams that are both useless without any of the attached information corresponding to each number, and also so old and grainy they look as if they were drawn for factory work during the industrial revolution; oddly 'compressed' pictographs in black and white hatch shading, depicting mining tools and workers using techniques from at least a century before trams were ever invented.

    "Um . . . You're at the smoke mines of Damien, the southern part of Zone 1. Here, we send workers into the deep tunnels to excavate the ground, freeing embedded smoke that was trapped in the depths. Thanks to a variety of tools, we are able to put some of it into bottles, which the Queen sends to other Zones. The rest of it flows free, forming the air that our lungs inhale and exhale . . . uh . . . so we can live. As the first of four elements . . . It's an important element. Because without smoke, people would have nothing to breathe." he puts away the papers without them being helpful in the slightest. "Uh . . . there we are. And so . . . There are many spectres in the mines. They are becoming more and more aggressive. But uh, in fact, it would be better if you didn't enter the mines . . . Because . . . Because the regulations forbid visitors to access them."

    What an absolutely useless person.
Aoko Aozaki     "Soooo, how long passed in here while we were gone?" Aoko asks the Batter as they all board the tram to commute, still dressed in her average white t-shirt and blue jeans, like fashion isn't a thing that exists and concerns her. But then again, when you have that mane of anime-red hair, you don't need any particular clothes to look good!

    "Could swear someone or something mentioned time'd be running weirder in here while we were gone. So, slower, or faster? Guessing slower. It's been about a week for us, by the way."

    Did she imagine that? People were making such a big deal of how weird a place this was, she might have.

    But they do arrive finally, and are greeted by weird identical people. This is less weird to a magus than others, probably.

    "Huh, neat. You guys breathe smoke? Do people in other zones breathe smoke, too? Is that why you export it? Oh, can I have a bottle? Just curious. Anyway, don't worry about regulations, we're grown ups and we can handle ourselves. Besides, we're going in whether you let us or not! It's better for you guys if you do, you don't get hurt trying to stop us AND you get rid of your ghost problem! Win-win."
August Kohler August Kohler has been remaining armed constantly, waiting for the time they might be pulled back to help the Batter. He's wearing a thick winter coat, a custom reflective revolver at his side as well as a combat knife, a mirrored bracelet at his wrist, the redhead fully prepared. So a trip through the warpgate network leads to August appearing at the Nothingness, and when he sees the words 'World Map?' he blinks a few times, but he sees others with him. Stepping forward with others at the weird dot, touching it...

He appears in Zone 0. A plastic sea all around them, and plastic rain as well, as they're on a little land-bar. Pulling up his hood to block the rain, August nods to the team. "Looks like we're doing this again." Travelling up the road and towards the Batter, glancing from the metallic fance to the train station to the tram, August greets him. "Batter. Have you been well?"

And then, August waits patiently on the tram. When they reach the Damien station, apparently mines, August is cautious to step out. He's even more cautious when they see people...weird, identical people. Humans, at least, which makes August more comfortable. They're approached, and August nods his head, waiting near the Batter, listening to him introduce their mission.

As the guy speaks up and pulls out useless papers and tells them about how they breathe smoke and other weird stuff, August latches onto some primary things. The office drones have a Queen, which might be important information later, and also there's spectres deep in the mines. They're not allowed in the mines, however.

But screw that. August just asks the guy the obvious question. "Where's the mine entrance?" They're unarmed, so...as soon as August can either find the mine entrance with his eyes, or the drone tells him, he gestures to the Batter. "Come on. Let's get to work." Hopefully, the miners won't try and stop them.
Thomas Alva Edison     On his way to visit Dr. Strange about setting up the controls and test subjects in reguard to that strange magical drug going around his New York...only to show up once more in this strange land. The King of Inventors is thoughtful, as if recovering all of the information he had in his brain, and then bringing it back out. He starts taking in things again, the World Map(?) just seems to be a void with weird words on the edge of perception, and each world is just a weird dot there. Touching it brings them to Area 1, to which things are...

    Samey than Area 0, but also differenty. Obviously a different area, but much more grim in color. Earthy, but also smokey? Weird.

    Thomas walks towards The Batter, while still trying to analyise what he can. There has to be a rhyme to this place, and slowly he looks towards the man who they are supporting. "Batter, good to see you again," He says, calmly. Taking a long look at the name on the trolly. If it was drawn in crayon...it could be...

    Slowly, he walks over towards the rail itself, holding a hand out and starting to spark just lightly with electricity, trying to provoke a spark from the rail. He was curious if this thing ran on it...but if it didn't...?

    "Who did you play for?" he asks the Batter, "I mean before this."

    The trolly ride over and then meeting the absolute most useless person to ever person. Edison stands easily above these men, with his barrel chest. He stares at them...they are like charactures of every weak willed person in politics ever. They breathe smoke...digging it out of the ground..?

    Edison seems to think about this, calmly, trying to put the pieces together in his head. It's like form follows function...

    Other people ask about the smoke, but the man gives them grainy photos. This only seems to make Edison think about this more, these were like photos from slightly older books when he was a human. Taking a breath, he speaks.

    "Do not worry, I am Presiking Thomas Alva Edison. I am working with The Batter, and as such we have permission to go, if you are worried about it, then tell them that Diplomatic Immunity prevented you from stopping us," he explains to the drone, looking towards August. Hm..
Tina Natsumi      Being called into the strange dreamlike world for a second time is not nearly as surprising as it was the first time, although Tina still needs a moment to acclimate herself to the odd low-res world. She tips her hat back briefly as she considers the rain, watching it come down curiously while keeping one hand held over the phone peeking out of her pocket.

     She tastes the rain, of course, and spits it out with a confused "ugh". Spying the Batter up ahead, she approaches him with a light wave and a bright grin before taking a moment to snap a picture of the ELSEN sign. "Hey there! Hope y'ain't been waiting long. Let's see if we can't get you closer to getting through that whole purifyin' business, huh?"

     On the train, Tina busies herself with mirroring her picture of the sign just to see if it really is just mirrored letters, or if there's something else to it.

     Once they're at the mine, Tina starts her recording, complete with whipping out her phone and belting out that ever-obnoxious greeting. "Howdy, y'all! It's FreedomWithFries, comin' at you from... Wherever the hell this is!" She waves her phone around once, taking particular notice of the odd miner/office worker giving them their task before slipping the phone into her pocket with the top sticking out.

     "So lemme get this straight. Y'all want us to go into the mine to get rid of these ghosts, but we're not allowed in?" Furrowing her brow, she glances towards her more charge-y partners in crime today and laughs, then turns back to the miner.

     "Hey. There anything around that these ghosts like? Y'know. Like bait or whatever we can use to draw 'em out here? Or... Permits so we can get in as employees?"
Zero Kiryu Zero Kiryu wasn't here the last time. This time he happened to be with Yuuki, when she got pulled into it. So whereas the others generally have an understanding about what's going on... Zero follows Yuuki in and finds himself in a world that is raining plastic. He raises a hand slightly to examine the droplets, his expression not quite revolted but certainly not pleased. Then again, it's hard to tell the difference between his normal sourness and directed sourness.

He's glad it's always cold enough at home to warrant a coat.

He drifts alongside those who seem to know what they're doing, checking his underarm holster to ensure that -- in fact -- whatever had called them here had not disarmed him in any way.

His mind's eye swivels about, feeling out the surrounding entities. There's not much he can sense offhand. It's all very strange.

The explanation of the situation here and the appearance of the surroundings makes him seriously wonder whether or not some sort of child deity had constructed this place-- or perhaps, merely a child in general, in some parallel world.

The nonsense about /smoke/ certainly doesn't help that notion. The hunter's attention swings towards Aoko Aozaki for a moment, dim familiarity stirring in the back of his mind.

"Why are visitors forbidden?" He asks, after lingering in silence for an awfully long time.
Starbound Flotilla "So they made it through past Zone 0."
"Well, it wasn't like that'd stop 'em."
"Then we should move immediately to--"
"Nah. You guys have jobs. You got shit to do."
"You know, for once, I'm agreeing. Can't put everything at risk at once."
"...Hmm. Indeed. We will keep our focus on our tasks."
"Floran will deal with problemsss later!"
"Worried. Well, hopefully there won't be any problems, as long as they..."
"Don't worry about it."

"It'll all work out, at least for now."

    George is already past the world map? as they head in. He looks a little worse for the wear about something, still bandaging up a wound on his arm. He's about halfway between the group and the Batter, smoking as he wanders behind. He doesn't smoke on the tram, though, because city trams are no-smoking zones. "'How long' is probably misunderstanding the nature of stuff. It's always a little more complicated, and pretty much impossible to properly understand. Just go with the flow and work with your assumptions, and you'll usually settle in easy." He heads in too, and as he does, he lights up another cigarette when they reach the smoke mines, because of all the places in the world, there's no chance that this is a no-smoking zone.

    "So, we can't head in. But, I think some of my friends are for sure gonna wanna run in. So, anything we can do for you, so we can be not-visitors, and so it won't be breaking regs for us to wander on down in there? Ought'a save us both some trouble, wouldn't it?" George suggests, pressing socially against the miner who seems terribly anxious and vulnerable to pressure like that. He's taking Tina Natsumi's approach further, it seems.
Sho Fukamachi Sho was expecting to head home when he stepped through the Warpgate. He did not expect to wind up wherever the heck he did, but at the very least he didn't seem to be alone, and it seemed as if some people actually knew what was going on, so he'd just pretend he totally meant to end up here and quietly tag along.

     The scenery was weird, very weird. Weird enough to get Sho to remove his phone and take several pictures. If anything, this weird detour would provide some good pictures to help Tetsuro's writing, even if this place was more surreal than science fiction.

     The people are even more unpleasant and odd to look at than his surroundings, and when The Batter converses with one of them, he can't help but feel a bit sorry for them. They clearly aren't healthy? Or at the very least, they appear unhealthy from what he knows of basic human anatomy. Then again they aren't human. Either way, the conversation clues him in as to what they're to be doing, but it raises several questions.

     "Wait, Zone 1? Are we in a video game? Can Warpgates do that?"

     They aren't very good questions.
Yuuki Kuran "But you breathe air..." Is the first thing that Yuuki says. Her thoughts, as before, begin out of order, 'waking up' after the strange tram ride from reverse-letter zone, and into DRONELANDIA, home of the most depressing, zombielike hard-hat drones.

She tries to figure out what's going on with the papers, but her brain just refuses to function, creating the shoujo equivalant of an engine failing to turn over - the alternation of empty 'thoughtful noises' and her index finger lightly held between her teeth.

So they bottle... air here. And there's spirits, sure, which make things bad. Right. So..."

Yuuki's nostrils flares once, as her brain finally re-engages to the fact that people that aren't her or Useless Drone #298 - "Zero, oh, thank goodness. You can help us figure out..."

Aaaand August is just going. Well, he's Very Unauthorized.

"... handling our Sacred Mission. It's like the tower but less, uhm... Killy challenge-y? We're here to help the Batter." She points at him. "To get to the end and finish things. We're the Choir, the 'backup' for him. Like being extras, in a play."
Priscilla     "A few minutes. Maybe." replies the Batter in his usual fashion to Aoko, deeming that question important enough to respond to, if only just barely. Most of the other dialogue doesn't seem to provoke a response, whether or not that means he isn't interested, or there is no answer. He doesn't speak much unnecessarily. Pushing an electric charge into the rails works . . . but there doesn't seem to be one presently. Yet again, mechanical things operate around Edison, but he has yet to find any evidence of electricity, gears, or magic.

    "This is Zone 1." is the becoming-characteristically barely helpful response to Tina from the mine worker. He looks at Aoko more than a little confoundedly, blinking his dark, almost blank little eyes multiple times before replying "Um . . . you're breathing the smoke right now . . . aren't you? Who . . . doesn't breathe smoke?" Hesitantly, the worker points to the obvious cave and what are probably minecart rails. "Uh . . . right there . . . But you're not supposed to go in. It's for workers only." he nervously sighs. "D . . . Diplomatic Immunity? That sounds like . . . something someone from the . . . superior personnel would have. Did         make that assignment?" he asks, essentially rhetorically.

    The repeated threats are starting to get him to sweat, visibly shivering with increasing nerves. "Uh . . . um . . . I suppose that sounds . . . all in order. Visitors aren't supposed to enter by the Queen's decree . . . The regulations oppose it, but I suppose I'll have to let you enter the main gorges then. I suppose this is a very special case . . . as stated in paragraph five." Caving in to the mounting social pressure and his evident lack of questioning of why the regulations exist, he scribbles something down on a notepad, rips the sheet off, and hands it to the Batter, likely some certification of some sort. "Um . . . please sign your names as well, if you're with mister Batter." the drone indicates to Yuuki. "I think a Choir makes sense under provisions for religious observation . . ." he continues confusedly. "Got it." says the Batter, handing over the scrip of paper with utterly unintelligible handwriting on it.

    The mine worker looks glad to step out of the way and allow you to pass, tipping up his helmet and wiping sweat off his bald brow with his starched cuffs. Trudging down a brighter green path, past 'shrubs' of plastic cube formations, you wind up passing more near-identical wheezy workers in conversations about "The phantoms down there keep us from working properly, but now it's break time for me anyways." and "What are they doing here? Are they the inspectors?" The mine entrance itself turns out to be a perfectly squared hole bored in the metallic floor, with a series of impeccably cut metal steps all the way down that would be a lethal staircase to fall down for sure, past which the ground goes from sea green to deep, royal purple, descending some kind of nonsensical strata of how the earth here is layered by shades of junk minerals.
Priscilla     Eventually, they meet pillars and struts and crossbeams across the walls and ceilings like a mine should have, but made of hard resin instead of wood, obvious at a casual tap. Even the tables and chairs set up in a sort of break room are the kind of hard plastic one would find at a shopping mall or cheap conference room, which is lit by old-style gas lamps on the wall which seem to just passively give off a fluorescent white light rather than actually run on burning gas or oil. One of the samey employees on break ask "Who let you enter? Normally the regulations prohibit external visitors . . ." but the garbage handwriting on pocket notebook paper seems to suffice. Another only looks glad, saying "There are phantoms in every corridor . . . be careful." The one closest to the way through cautions "The lamps don't always work in the endmost corridors. And since everything looks the same around here, it's easy to get lost."

    Another one of those cubic, banded 'chests' sits in a corner, which nobody seems to notice, despite its incongruity with its surroundings.

    The burnt dust smell is especially strong down here, albeit the view isn't particularly smoggy. It's like the air was recycled a trillion times through a gradually failing carbon trap, but you'd expect 'smoke' to be more obvious, confusingly semi-vindicating Yuuki at least. Going any further in takes them to a spread of rectangular corridors and square rooms, indeed being exactly as samey and confusing as warned, lit by simplistic lamps and supported by plastic crossbeams even though they're practically natural metal vaults. There doesn't even seem to be any real evidence of mining beyond a simple minecart rail, which only goes down one passage. Very very quickly, all evidence of even the workers themselves disappears, verifying that there is indeed nobody willing to work in these supposedly phantom-riddled corridors.

    Many paths lead simply to dead ends. One leads to a wider space where the lanterns have blacked out, leaving you to bump about in the dark over several solid objects, and where further progress is apparently blocked off by an inexplicably placed, large and heavy cube of something or other, as if transplanted straight from Zone 0 (possibly a security measure used by the miners? It'd be odd for a puzzle to exist here). The other leads to a dead end chamber that has its lights working at least, which is inhabited by a very large, very strange looking, very white housecat, with a very oversized head, very large and unblinking eyes, and a very very big and wide, toothy grin. The Judge is seated before some sort of hovering apparition, pawing at what appears to be some kind of ghostly sphere or bubble, which is all but completely see-through when looked at dead on, but which catches the light at its edges and bends them with such intensity of fresnel effect that its outline appears to glow, giving it the appearance of a bright white halo that looks the same from every angle.

    The Batter, at least, takes the latter path, and upon seeing the cat, just drops the question raw "Are you the spectres' leader?" The Judge turns about from unsuccessfully paw-batting the glowing Thing, purring through its grinning teeth. "Well well, who do we have here? Is that not our inquisitive Choir and their picturesque jumping jack, the Batter? I must answer with a resounding claim of certainly not. I am only passing through, not unlike the smoke which is being extracted from this pale and metallic place."
Aoko Aozaki     "Oh! You call air smoke. I think? Hm. I'm pretty sure that's air we're breathing, smoke'd be really bad. Then again, who says this place has to follow any kind of rules," Aoko muses, though still insists to obtain a bottle of "smoke" for later analysis. She'll just get some in the mine, if needed.

    Well, certification obtained, whatever. Aoko catches up with August, blurting out a "wait up!" and entering the mines as soon as possible. This is an Adventure, so of course she's onboard, regulations and authority be damned.

    Wouldn't have gotten anywhere in life if she's followed them.

    Warnings about low light are heeded, and so a blue sphere of brilliant light starts to orbit around Aoko, flaring occasionally as if it were a tiny sun. It emits a an irregular and unstable light, but a bright one at least.

    The sight of the chest in the corner immediatly draws her attention, the promise of treasure to great to ignore. And so Aoko detours, having seen Gilgamesh open one before, to do the same.
August Kohler When the batter lingers, August waits near the entrance, though he signs his name if the certificate is brought to him. He doesn't leave the Batter behind, after all, because the Batter's the most important member of the team in his opinion. As they move down the stairs, August is careful but keeps a steady pace, and eventually, they reach the break room. Hard resin pillars...interesting. The redheaded German moves over and nods to the employees. "We're here to purify the spectres. Don't worry." When he sees the chest, August turns towards it. His 'inside a game' hypothesis makes him think, and he's about to point it out, when Aoko goes to crack it open. He steps up towards her to see what's inside. "Hope it's something good for the Batter." If either of the guys look at them funny for taking it, August doesn't care. It's for the mission.

Once that's done, though, August will move to catch up with the Batter, and see the Judge and the weird glowing object. "Judge. Good...to see you again? What are you poking at?" He sounds curious, crouching to get a better look at it, before he gets back on subject.

"Have you seen the spectres? It'd help us if you could give any information about where they are."
Thomas Alva Edison     "Indeed, there you go. I had faith in you, miner leader person," Edison says encouragingly to the drone. With the Batter he walks, apparently having a conversation through radio, though he keeps himself calm and talks quietly. Though he notices the Batter says nothing to him, only answering the one question. Still...this is fiving him more and more information. This time someone else goes after chests, and he lets himself go. Though when they find the cooridor with darkness...Edison slowly nods to himself.

    "I will scout this way, if I run into anything dangerous, I will returnt his way," He says, calmly. Unless anyone stops him, he will start navigating the darkness, and does not object to people coming with him. As he walks, the bulbs on his shoulders start glowing, attempting to cast a light farther out so that he can navigate the cooridor better.

    It also gives him time to think, trying to put the pieces together. Things work because they do, again another idea of form giving function. It is as if someone who does not understand these things, were to create a world with them. Maybe a child from an age such as his, with out an understanding of smoke being released from buildings...trollys just working but not understanding how they are powered...but what about the plastic water? How does it fit...
Tina Natsumi      "Thank ya kindly~ We'll get it taken care of, don't you worry now." Tina reassures the first worker before heading down with the rest of the group, turning around multiple times to make sure she's capturing all that sweet, sweet weirdness on her phone. Hearing that the lamps are having issues working, however, draws a more confident smirk from the blonde. "Ah, if we got any issues with sight or whatnot? Leave it to me. I've got a few tricks up my sleeve that'd be perfect for that sorta thing."

     Never mind that phones have flashlight functions for a reason.

     Tina gags slightly as the scent of burnt dust hits her, and exploring in the dark gets to be quite the nuisance. Not so much that she actually uses anything except for her phone's flashlight to add some consistency to Aoko's light sphere, but she does at least consider going overboard with her Persona once or twice.

     Only considering. She doesn't actually do it, though, since she needs to save her energy for the spectres! And in case anything pops out of that chest. The Judge/cat is most definitely not a spectre, though, and Tina's quick to turn her attention back to the fuzzy little creature. "Howdy! That's us again. I didn't reckon you'd be down here yourself. Or... Are you here to see what we're up to?"

     She squats down and holds her hands out to beckon at it, offering it a spot in her arms should it draw closer. "We're on the job today. Say... You know if the spectres are after the air... Er. Smoke in here? Or just the miners themselves? I figure if we can bait 'em out with something, that'll save us a whole load o' time than just runnin' all around."
Zero Kiryu Zero makes an affirmative noise at Yuuki, understanding immediately when she refers back to the Tower. He supposes he can see the similarities-- this is a very odd place, and so was that. But the oddities are different. This feels... benign, by comparison. He hopes it remains that way.

Presuming that failure to enter the mines will simply stop them from having any influence at all over what happens here, he chooses to simply go on in, trailing after August. His attention settles briefly on the employee who demands who let them in. When asked for a signature, he offers simply a stylized 'Z', not willing to commit to put his actual name down in this freakish place.

Seems like the sort of thing to get you trapped by faeries or some shit like that.

Afterwards he takes a moment to examine the gas lamps, which... are not gas lamps. Zero frowns at this, but the logic still seems to hold up. It just so happens to be strange children's logic. Whether that pans out entirely though, remains to be seen.

The bizarre-looking white cat that finally gets more dialogue out of The Batter. It seems more animate than most things here, but just the sight of it makes Zero sigh heavily.

He doesn't have a good track record with mysterious cat creatures in otherworldly labyrinths.

"The people here," Zero asides to Yuuki while other people deal with the cat, "What do they smell like to you?"
Starbound Flotilla     George passes on in. His signature has no last name, it's just: "George M." When asked who let him enter, he responds exactly as one would expect him to. He pulls out a miner cap of his own from his Matter Manipulator, and says, "Don't worry. See?" He does double-fingerguns and clicks his tongue at the mysterious employee, and continues to wander further in, as if that's a full explanation.

    Once he arrives at the Judge, he greets him brightly. "Heya, J. How's it? Where you passing through to? Hope we won't be missing you all of our time in Zone 1, y'know." He jabs a thumb back. "Saw that big barricade before. Any chance you could point me at some floaty blocks to mash in sequence, or something? Considering our choirly duties of using that tired organ and all. Or maybe things are a little bit more solid around here? Either way, we haven't exactly gotten any miners down here to open it up for us."
Sho Fukamachi Sho didn't expect an answer to his question, but at the very least he learned twice now that they're breathing smoke. So that's nice? Also they have written permission, which is even better.

     As the group descends into the deep dank mines potentially full of ghosts, Sho decides that now's a good of time as any to suit up. With a shrill cry of the alien suit's name, various tentacles and armored plating would warp themselves around the boy, transforming him from a mild mannered teenager into a mild mannered teenager wearing a biological weapon. It's an upgrade at least.

     Following closely behind the Batter, Sho would notice that rather than talk to the weird big-headed cat, she'd seem more focused on... Treasure? Isn't it dangerous to open random boxes like that? At least from what games he's played, there's a high chance the box is rigged to blow, or has a cursed item, or has a monster. Or has absolutely nothing and was added there just to waste the player's god damn time. Well, whatever is in there, he's not going to let that trouble maker go it alone, so he follows behind her instead, an armored hand outstretched as he calls out to warn them.

     "H-Hey, be careful! You shouldn't just open random boxes without safely checking first."

     Despite the weird filter on his voice, he still clearly sounds like a concerned kid.
Yuuki Kuran "Like... very bland... people." Yuuki replies, as she busts out a fountain pen and starts signing in people. Everyone.

Yuuuuuuki... Kuuuuuran... (the messed up eurokanji probably mean 'snow-dumb-eyes-complexcharacterinvolvinggirl' 'superkingevilmonster')
Zeeero Kiiiiiryu (killmurderangst thunderdragon???)
Etcetera etcetera.

"They smell so similar, like siblings, or twins. They want the same, think the same, are the same. Don't worry about them, I think."

With the REQUESTED ACTION (signing the ENTIRE BLOODY CHOIR IN, including Sho 'probably a nice guy' (that's what she writes down) with a fountain pen) complete, she carries on. "To catch you-" and everyone else who wasn't here last scene "-up, Zero, we can't actually really kill the enemies here - only the Batter can. I'm sure we could eventually defeat them, but it's not really... correct. And he can't do the puzzles! We do those. So just support the Batter, suppress the enemies, and complete the puzzles."
Priscilla     Aoko baps the square button in the middle of the chest's bisecting black band. It pops open without any visible mechanism to make it do so.

    A Joker has been found. She knows it Restores 1 Hype. Whatever the hell that means. This place explains nothing and makes less than no sense.

    Pestering mine workers for bottles of smoke mostly tells her that none of them keep any on hand. After all, it's a "Very important export . . . It's necessary that we not slack off, or else the supervisor won't be happy. Nobody should take the smoke home . . ." She'll have to acquire some herself, deeper into the smoke mines where it is bottled.

    Lighting up the dark room, you find that you've has stumbled into a storage room of sorts, where huge chunks of waste earth have been piled up, boulders of quartz, amethyst, pyrite, slate, granite, bismuth, and everything else that shouldn't go together has been arranged in neat stacks, all of it the legitimate article, having been removed to free smoke that has somehow been trapped underground. There are indeed, finally, pickaxes, shovels, chisels, hoses, clamps, hefty bottles with metal caps, and all sorts of more strange and unfitting tools heaped in here, as well as a couple of chests that actually look like intentional emergency storage. A switch is on the wall, like an extremely old-fashioned electrical breaker --the kind that look like mouse traps mounted on a wall. Some tape has been put across it to discourage its use, but it's just tape.

    The Judge fixes his questioning acolytes with his unnatural rendition of a Cheshire grin. "In a quite contradictory fashion, the mundane order of events would be that I myself interrogate you, to confirm or deny the veracity of the idea that you are the ones following me." Asked what he's been fiddling at, the Judge turns back to regard the floating, slowly bobbing halo of light. "To tell the truth, I am as perplexed as your merry cohort of like-minded exterminators declares. I think it is one of those peculiar objects called a spherical Add-On. I have very well tried to accroach it, but the operation has failed systematically so far. But I have been thinking . . . Maybe the very model of a purifying marionette that is yours to steer about as a toy duck on a string, who does not have a physical order, will succeed in affiliating this spiritual entity to his."
Priscilla     The Batter, as he does every so often, acts as he does to approach the glowing ring silently adrift on an invisible rising and falling bed of waves. The Judge looks on, though speaking to people more specifically. "It is my duty to inform you that the workers here are hardly bright enough to distinguish one end of a pick from the other, if it is not explicitly provided for in at least three paragraphs of needlessly convoluted regulatory prose. A puzzle is right out of the question for our endearingly empty-headed squares, but then your especially hurried and narrow preconceptions wouldn't make paws or tails of the legislative gobbledegook most necessary to scurry about this maze in the first place. No need for concern, my friends. Simply venture along as bluntly as the tip of the holy bat of your vanguard can point."

    By the time he's done talking, the Batter comes back with the animate, omni-angular halo floating in tow, bobbing behind him like an imprinted baby bird. "What an exceptionally intriguing phenomenon . . . I must admit that I remain perplexed by this unexpected metaphysical reactio, but fair enough; since it has decided to accompany you, I know only to advise you to urge the best possible usage of it." Despite not even the Judge knowing what he'd just scooped up, the Batter nods in the affirmative, eyes sagely closed. "Got it." A pause. "The spectres aren't here?"

    The Judge turns back to the group at large. "Sorry, but I fear I have to respond in the negative. Apart from this Add-On, I have not crossed the way of a single soul in this lieu. Our familiar asthmatic dolls wouldn't settle so close to the ectoplasms they are so deathly afraid of. Simply head inexorably onwards, to the literal and metaphorical light at the end of this tunnel, and no doubt the subjects of your most righteous crusade will accost you of their own accord. In fact, it would be quite impossible to go through the entirety of this passingly characterized labyrinth without meeting a vengeful spirit of any sort. Watch your back, and do endeavour to remember that this is a mine; not all tunnels have to lead anywhere in particular."

    Dicking about with the chests in the other passage, no doubt the route of main progress, given the inexplicable barrier cubes, returns another Luck Ticket, and a quite literal Eye. The bizarre items keep piling up, but this Zone isn't specifically set aside for predestined arrivals of vaguely biblical, prophesied figures. They must be for the workers as well, possibly worth examination.
Thomas Alva Edison     Thomas strokes his chin at the emergancy chests. He decides to open up just in case to see what was inside, and of course, take anything that isn't obviously mundane and mining equipment. However, once done...

    Edison looks at the switch, taking a moment to try and analyze it with his actual specialty to try and figure out if it's actually something with logical, or it just works because it just works...and why it oculd be taped up. Reguardless, unless the answer he comes to is devistatingly bad, he removes the tape...

    And turns the switch ON.
Zero Kiryu "I see. In that case, then my expertise is suboptimal for this please. A strange arrangement." Zero observes, in response to Yuuki's catching up. But that doesn't seem to bother him in the least. For all his standoffishness, he's not a big fan of the bloodlust that he experiences. Having a firm excuse to minimize fighting is well enough by his reckoning, even if it does somewhat limit his usefulness.

How to stall and harass /ghosts/ if it should come to that, he doesn't really know. Maybe the normal way of such things would work.

The straightforwardness of the Judge's interactions with them is a pleasant turn of events. Some tension bleeds out of Zero's posture as that situation resolves amicably, with helpful advice, even. With the most immediate 'obstacle' called by Kohler and with Edison already farther in the tunnels, he mostly sticks to the middle of the group and extends his senses outwards to try to get a fix on any hostile entities.

It sounds as if these spectres are quite predatory, so he should be able to get a fix on them if they're anywhere at all close. It does occur to him, though, that they might be too high up in the mine.
August Kohler As they learn from the Judge about the thing, and the Batter gets it, August blinks a bit. "Do you have any idea what that does?" He asks the Batter, but doesn't expect an answer. He just nods to the Judge. "Thanks for the intel. You're helpful." He's biased about talking cats, obviously.

And then, knowing where to progress, August moves to head over to the barriers. He waits to see what happens when Edison flips the switch, but if it doesn't solve the problem, or someone doesn't find a potential puzzle, he'll summon the Tin Soldier, and try and melt through the barrier with the Persona's gun-leg. The fire is powerful and useful for shaping terrain, but it may be difficult, since the blocks seem to be made out of weird material. He'll put time and effort into it if he needs to, because if it's not the switch, and there's no other puzzles...this is the fastest way through.

Or at least, the most direct way through. And August is becoming a very direct person.
Aoko Aozaki     Huh, neat. Another one of those tickets. This one's a 'Joker'? Aoko hands it to the Batter, because whatever Hype is, it probably helps the whole purification thing. Probably.

    In the storage room, one might certainly notice Aoko swiping some chunks of precious minerals and stuffing them in her pockets, provided nothing can stop that. Those are paying her next hotel rooms! Five star, nothing less. She's sure there's quite a few magi who'd pay for off-world gems.

    Offhandedly, and idly, Aoko slides towards Yuuki and Zero, while others see about opening the way.

    "So, how've things been since the Forest? Still holding on to that half of the Fruit? And any weird side effects from eating the other?" She's curious, not concerned.
Starbound Flotilla     "Well," George says in an easygoing tone. "I know mines well enough. It's a real good thing that you don't always have to be going somewhere in the first place to do something worthwhile, huh? Alright, light it is then." George presses on. "Come on, Bats. I think the other guys are getting anything gear-wise. Nice halo there, lookin' real holy."

    George's unusual senses, which is to say a little mining scanner furnished to him by Seft, are perfectly suited to, uh, a mine. So he flicks a switch and starts scanning around for ways to head forward if the block vanishes, and also for interesting-looking dead-ends. For now, he leans against the block and smokes. "Don't worry too much about 'em, Gus. You don't gotta justify crashing through barriers, you just gotta crash. Considerately or inconsiderately, don't try to let it bother you too much until real mistakes pile up. Someone getting anxious isn't a mistake, losing something is. You got plenty of time to make the real mistakes, so make sure you get those done first before you worry about the people."
Sho Fukamachi The Guyver scratches its chin as Aoko is treated to...Whatever the hell she pulled out of the chest. He's mostly relieved that nothing unsavory popped out of it, but at the same time he's somewhat mildly disappointed.

     "Uh, well, I guess I was worried about nothing, haha."

     Sho just kind of awkwardly shuffles away in defeat, following the rest of the group once more. Rather than awkwardly comment on things and be mostly unhelpful like he has been at the moment though, Sho decides that he'll try to vaguely helpful instead.

     The metallic orbs on the side of his head move back and forth against a track of exposed tentacles, doing their best to pick up anything that stands out via various methods of sonar, infrared, and electromagnetism.

     He's not expecting much personally, truthfully. This place is weird and he has severe doubts that the sensors in his alien suit are made to deal with this level of WEIRD.
Tina Natsumi What's someone to do when there's an odd, potentially sentient light following one of their group?

Wave at it, probably. Tina steps right up to the Batter to eye that halo thing following behind him, waving her hand at it a few times to see how it reacts. If it doesn't move away, she'll even try touching or moving her hand through it. It's light! How dangerous could it be?

Very, but so what? She needs to do something to get views here, even if it is a crazy weird dream land of sorts. Taking note of the barrier, Tina glances around to sort out what could even be a puzzle in this area. There's that switch that Edison is working on, there's this mysterious halo thing, and there's those rocks that Aoko's snagging...

Tina turns away quickly. It'd be awkward if anyone called her to testify against her stealing gems from this place or something.  Instead, she moves to grab a pickaxe, then approaches August to aid him with the barriers. "Hold up. If this is a mine, then fire might make the whole place go up. Mmmaybe."

She's pretty sure she heard about that on TV once. Shrugging once, Tina hoists the pickaxe onto her shoulder before getting into an optimal whacking stance. "Lemme take a few cracks at it if the switch doesn't work, alright? If it doesn't work, then blast away~"
Zero Kiryu Zero glances towards Aoko, momentarily distracted from his radar pinging. He considers the question for a moment, and then replies, "Life has been life. A few extra incidents-- a rebellion in a city of interest to the Concord, a... murder Tower. I'm not aware of any changes in Yuuki that would have been brought about by external causes instead of the progression of time and experience. She is probably more stable than she would have otherwise been."

"I do still have half of the fruit, for the time being. Probably... not for much longer." For all the uncertainty of that 'probably', the vibe that Zero has made his decision is hard to deny.

The fact that he answered in that much detail at all is probably telling enough of how much has changed.

"And you?"
Priscilla     "No." the Batter admits to August in a completely blase fashion, confident in allowing the 'Add-On' to follow him anyways. Or perhaps it's faith. "Think nothing of what little efforts I feel disposed towards scattering across your trail like breadcrumbs." the Judge says, in a roundabout sort of 'no problem' sense. Poking the Add-On just results in Tina's hand phasing through. 'Spiritual Entity' seems to be a very accurate descriptor, rather than purely fanciful, as comes in equal admixture from the Judge's giant, fanged mouth.

    The Joker Aoko finds is a literal joker. As in the playing card, albeit with added text, and a great big bold X on its reverse side rather than a brand. Pocketing chunks of minerals might be a little silly, but underneath the pile, she is actually rewarded for her thorough kleptomania, liberating one of those floating cubes, this one of a purpleish palette. Edison jamming on the switch at first does nothing, though ripping off the warning tape is easy. Bopping the cube into activity and then pulling it from its ON state to its OFF state suddenly results in the barrier grinding back down into the earth, almost phasing through it, without an obvious hatch. Some two-key authentication stuff going on to turn off mine security, or something like that. The switch *is* somehow 'electrical' as far as Edison senses. It works on electric principles. Bugger if he can tell where it comes from, though.

    George keys his mining scanner as the Batter group heads back to the mine pass group in the dark. He ascertains that they are indeed surrounded by metal and minerals on all sides, of a hideous mishmash that bears no resemblance to natural order, without so much as a hint of soil or limestone that would come from organic processes. There are indeed many pockets of gas deeper down, but they factually aren't just plain air; they contain significant quanities of trace chemicals and complex, supposed-to-be manufactured hydrocarbons and microplastics that would be more typical of factory exhaust and the neutralizing products injected into it to prevent it from being acidic/toxic/environmentally ruinous.

    Strictly speaking, it shouldn't be breathable, but here they are. Mixed with the Guyver's suite of extra senses, the danger of getting lost is instantly trivialized. A map is rapidly painted out on sensors, pointing out all the dead ends cautioned against. Nothing seems to be unusual or dangerous about them, aside from the perfect right angles the miners seem to be adept at. Some even contain more emergency supply chests. What's so dangerous about that?
Priscilla     When the two groups join, and the barrier grinds open, the lanterns suddenly sputter to life again, but it doesn't seem to be related. Ghastly pale light radiates from the walls, followed by the sudden, hair-raising, goosebump-inciting feeling of another presence in the room, thick and uncanny, despite the lights mysteriously turning *on* rather than ominously going *out*. There is a Moment. One charged with a highly specific kind of tension. One where the Vampires can sense the many eyes of something like predators, but, somehow, disarmingly 'empty'. Despondent, even.

    The Batter just raises his voice, speaking out loud to the air. "Show yourselves, corrupted children!" he suddenly yells out. "I'm the voice of forgiveness that'll eliminate your calamitous forms!" he shouts, with all the tenor and gravitas of a preacher. Before the echo has even faded, you find yourselve suddenly surrounded on all sides, pale white shapes materializing out of thin air with a series of janky pops like skipped film frames, one moment absent, the next moment a ring of empty-eyed gawkers, surrounding the group on all sides.

    They look almost like bedsheet ghosts, simplistic and malformed, with slack, gaping mouths and stubby arms, floating eerily off the floor on bodies that taper into blank, colourless nothingness, but the empty white orbs of their hungrily staring eyes are surrounded with the grey shadows of a critically sleepless patient, on the verge of insomnia-induced death. An intense aura of fear, of physical hunger, of desperation, surrounds them, filling the room like a miasma.

    "Prepare yourselves to suffer my judgement." the Batter says.

    PURIFICATION IN PROGRESS . . .

    The spectre's assault is immediate. These are larger, stronger, more tangible and direct than the swarm of proto-phantasms birthed by the misuse of a space-bending box. They swarm in from all sides, bearing down on you with dead stares and desperately empty mouths, alighting on the living and 'biting' into them in the way of a starving dog. Blood splatters from the imaginary wounds they inflict, no rent flesh or teeth marks to be shown, but vital essence escaping all the same, with a cold, dead pain that sets into the flesh that is more severe than the mere nips of the will-o-the-wisps fought before.

    The Batter used Wide Angle.

Common Spectre x 8
Mysterious ectoplasmic incarnation. Light resistance against smoke.
Thomas Alva Edison     Edison tries to make sense out of all of this...and yet...

    There is something vaguely electrical, likely because everyone understands switches are electrical...at least from a layman's term.

    Well, with nothing else to do, Edison heads back to the main group.

    "Hey did any of you do anything? I had to hit the switch twice..." a beat, "Also, I could not make sense of the electrical wiring at all. Again, it as if someone understands cause, but not exactly what intricancies of something working. Like they see one thing lead to another, but make a simple application for it...much like.." He says, leaving it for someone else to finish the sentence...

    Or because they are surrounded by Spectres.

    Edison starts generating power as he moves to defend himself from the mouth bites of the spectres, and grunts in pain. He has had worse, but he doesn't like this one bit.

    Once more, he starts releasing power, a spotlight appearing over the Batter, as he might feel himself be bolstered by the power of SCIENCE! Lighting gathers on Edison's hands, as he aims it towards the nearest of spectres and watches it chain across the entire group.
August Kohler Well, looks like August doesn't have to burn down the barrier. But while he waits, he seems...confused at what George has to say. "So, what, just...hit things head-on, crash through my barriers, don't worry about things? Is that what you're saying?" August seems like he can sort of accept that, nodding, though George might want to clarify before August just accepts that. Either way, the spectres are soon attacking, and August draws his revolver. It's shiny, reflective, and fires from the bottom of the barrel. "Let's try her out in real combat."

August moves to fire at one of the spectres, though others come in and bite at his flesh, drawing blood without a real wound, a numbing strike. August pulls back, in pain, and as he moves to blast spectres with his revolver, two shots out, he goes for the one biting at him, quickly drawing a knife with his free hand and moving to stab it into the monster, over and over, with a fury. "Batter up!"

If August can get the monster over to the Batter to execute, he will, and his skill with the knife and pistol isn't negligible. He's been practicing...though soon he'll need to summon his Persona.
Aoko Aozaki     "Oh, you know, wandering, defying The Man, living on the edge of my seat!" Aoko responds, as if those were perfectly fine answers. She examines the cube she found, pondering what it is. Valuable, maybe? Some kind of puzzle box? Boy it's never getting opened if it is. Maybe it's this world's rendition of 'a piece of ore'? What a pain! Couldn't just be something something. Had to be a cube!

    To Sho, Aoko responds, if a bit late: "Oh don't worry, I can take... whatever might be hidden in a chest, usually. If something explodes it's more likely to be my fault!"

    Case in point, there are ghosts.

    And they wound Aoko!

    She looks where the specter struck, and finds no gash or rent flesh. Huh. Okay, sure, fine. That's how ghost works, the imaginary blood is the weird part.

    With a snap of her fingers, Aoko directs her little sun to hurl itself at the specters. It goes supernova rather promptly, and a few more appear to take its place around the magus, blue spheres of impending laser death (and light!).
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki taps her nose with a finger, a knowing smile playing at the corners of her lips as they walk INTO THE MINEEEE. THE MINE!

Maybe they'll find gigantic glowing blue crystals, and sell them to dwarves! The potential for adventure is high! Also, the potential for being trapped in a cave for weird suits that don't understand Straight Logic, only Bureaucracy.

"I'm sure you'll be useful, but this place is refreshingly direct. And I didn't try out Artemis on them, but... Bloody Rose will certainly be useful. Control and suppress, Zero."

Aoko brings up the question about the Fruit of Einhash, and Yuuki makes a strange coughing noise, like she was awkwardly caught in some sort of compromising situation, looking away for a moment. "N-no, no branches? It just... took the edge off. Permanently, I think. But for Zero..."

He explains it.

"And that's how that works, for now. If you'd like to, maybe, since you helped us so long ago... come along to set things right? Maybe if Zero wants..."

And this deep conversation is genuinely why Yuuki Kuran is useless for an ENTIRE puzzle-adventure section before the battle!

"The Batter seems fired up! He wasn't this animate before."

As for the Attack, the spectres indeed bite into Yuuki, but she just doesn't seem to care, the ones that attach to her - or even get close - getting thwacked back with her hands as they close. "Just... sort of hit them towards the Batter?" She suggest to Zero. He's probably got this.
Starbound Flotilla     "What I'm saying is... do you, and don't justify it so much. Don't worry about what other people worry about. Just worry about you. If you decide to hold back on the barriers, that's fine. But don't worry about justifying." George says, before the barrier grinds down and George flicks the butt of his cigarette under the thing before it phases down, letting it dispose of the little source of smoke for him. He heads on through...

    He's taken off-guard by the Batter's sudden speaking. He's got almost no sensitivity to tension -- or if he does, he only showed it by abruptly refreshing his cigarette. When the ghosties emerge, he gets his welding mask again, and brings out the wrench alongside what looks like some kind of heavy, powered clamp. "Alright, spookies, let's tango again." He rushes in silence to the nearest of the ghosts, shifting out of the bites quickly and calmly, maneuvering through things as best he can and evading the worst of the "blood" being drawn.

    He grits his teeth and tries to start slamming the big clamp around the bodies of the spectres, and then plunging the teeth of the clamp into the walls to pin them there. With the amount of the tools he has in his inventory, he apparently intends to continue this, trying to slam the ghosts into the mine terrain and pin them there. He's... trying to set them up, like one might set up tee-ball in youth baseball. Hey, if that guy's the Batter, he might as well.
Aoko Aozaki     "Help, huh? Sure, you guys kinda helped me out with the Forest, I technically owe you a big one. That's good, though! Nobody'd ever managed to reach and eat that Fruit before, so there's no records on if it might have side-effects or anything. Good to know!" Aoko responds to Yuuki, mid-fightan.
Tina Natsumi      And the way forward is open! Tina's not going to question it, but she is going to keep her pickaxe for now. It could come in handy later! Maybe.

Probably not, but it makes her feel better. The Batter's not the only one that can go around carrying something to whack ghosts with! With the halo not quite able to be touched normally, she leaves the thing alone to focus on finding some ghosts to mess with.

Ghosts just happen to be what they run into, too, with that ever-present feeling of dread becoming all the more annoying as the spectres rush the group from all sides. What's a pseudo-cowgirl to do in this situation? Use her skills from playing the old American pastime, of course! "Giddy up, Uncle Sam! Time to shed some light on these fools!"

A pose for a selfie later, and a larger-than-human sized robot appears behind Tina, decked out in red, white, and blue panels along with a star-decal'd gatling gun. As the blonde clambers onto its head to avoid getting gnawed on by ghosts, the robot starts firing into the ghosts, aiming to pin one or two of them down with sustained fire to try holding it in place for the Batter later!
Zero Kiryu Yuuki already told him that they can't 'kill' the monsters themselves, and since these are /ghosts/, Zero assumes that if that's the case and the apparent actual goal here is what it appears to be, wounding them with Bloody Rose would be counterproductive. So he goes barehanded as the cartoonish ghosts push in and inflict strange, phantasmal wounds that nevertheless measurably saps the energy from him. He pushes out into the attacking spectres and seizes at the nearest one, grasping it -- paradoxical as that /sounds/ in the circumstances -- and attempting to steer it towards the Batter.

He assumes that the Batter knows what he -- it? -- is doing and whatever that happens to be will tackle the matter as soon as possible.

"They feel..." He grunts, turning his head slightly to look towards Yuuki, "... Strange. Empty."

To Aoko, he replies, "Not very specific. Had a bad time finding what you were looking for?"

Yuuki's interjection concerning their three-way conversation gives him momentary pause. Zero squints over at Aoko, and grunts lightly, "I'll have a high degree of control over what happens, so I suppose..."

He trails off. That's as much assent as you're going to get.
Sho Fukamachi Hell yeah, Sho is mildly successful at helping! Or rather his suit is, but the suit is his so he'll take that as a victory.

     What's less of a victory is when a bunch of bed sheet ghost show up and... Hurt him somehow? He's not sure how exactly, but if this place really is some sort of video game, he can assume it's some sort of backwards video game logic.

     "Wait, didn't say we can't kill these guys? How are we suppose to deal with- O-Oh right, herd them up for The Batter...All right, I got this!"

     The Guyver does something not all too smart, and decides the best approach is to just... Throw rocks, specifically large chunks of tunnel walls that it rips off with a bit of effort.
Priscilla     Something else Edison will recognize is that, though the spotlight certainly energizes the Batter once again, it doesn't have much to do with the actual spectres themselves. Though ostensibly a highly supernatural phenomenon, their lack of a real order to them is a sort of double edged sword as far as his powers of deduction and illumination of mystery are concerned; they aren't a part of science and reason that his Noble Phantasm would admit through, but they don't seem to be especially magical or divine or rooted in Mystery either. More questions to analyze later.

    Chain lightning works well enough, as do bullets, putting ink black holes through their ectoplasmic bodies, letting you see through to the other side like so much punctured paper mache. Blades render bloodless slashes through their papery forms, and blunt tools knock heavy dents into the sides of their heads as if made of plastic, cutting, burning, puncturing and deforming them so that they swoop around in various states of crippling damage. The magic bomb going off vapourizes several of them immediately, whereupon they start slowly reforming again out of their scattered tatters, having only flat, black, almost cartoonishly featureless insides to contrast to their stark, colourlessly pale outsides, almost like a drawing come to life, but exuding far too much hollow, starving desperation to be amusing.

    Those thrown or knocked towards the Batter are the first to go. Taking the absolute epitome of a 'batter up' stance, his wooden bat strikes them with a sort of brutality that is such a startling departure from his usual serenity that it seems almost like all of his vivaciousness is saved solely for the purpose of savagely executing 'impure' spirits; a zen saint one minute, and a ruthless bludgeoner the next. Bright red blood explodes out of the ghosts in unsettling quantities, crumpling them out of existence in a heartbeat. This time however, the glowing halo *joins in*, flying from his side to strike the apparitions more severely weakened by the heavier hits from the group, causing bright white flashes of purifying energy on contact that bloody and banish the spectres alongside the Batter.

    The swarm of common spectres is handily wiped out with only modest effort, clearing the way forward. The batter looks to the Add-On with a rare, tranquil but analytical glance. "It's fighting by our side. That's practical." he remarks.
Priscilla     There's not much for it but to push further into the mines, 'inexorably towards the light at the end of their metaphorical and physical tunnel', as the Judge said. Mapped out as it is, it's not hard to pinpoint a passage that leads above ground again, further to the east, down several sets of ladders and back up again, past blind turns and over chasms of semi-excavated smoke pockets. The thickness and bitterness of the air gets more and more dense as they descent, yet becomes almost oddly refreshing, as if each inhalation contained more invigorating oxygen as well as its exhaust-like byproducts, paradoxically factorial as well as outdoorsy.

    Not far in, they're ambushed again by the sudden appearance of a series of what appear to be floating heads. Patrolling the corridors, the pallid, slightly warped, and more than a little deranged faces atop cleanly cut neck stumps turn towards the living and blitz at them like startled bats, trailing tangled black hair and opening mouths that have been split almost to the back of their skulls, like the unhinged jaws of a snake. Most of them result in the same bloody-yet-woundless injuries of the common types earlier, but some of them specifically aim for the head, causing flashes of white, spirographic sparks where they make contact, instantly inducing hideous migraines as they devour something other than vitality.

    The Batter used Wide Angle.

Magnolia x10.
A severed head, floating in the air. Light weakness against ????
Tina Natsumi      The bullets worked a little too well, it seems! Although Tina was hoping to just pin her target to a wall, blasting through it probably works just as well. With the Batter focusing on finishing things off, Tina's feeling pretty good about how the whole encounter went down.

     She's also going to stay right on top of her America-themed mech while advancing further into the mine. No sense leaving herself defenseless while something might pop out! "Good work, pards! Let's see what else we can round up here today, maybe get some eyes on other types of ghosties out 'ere."

     Alas, she does need to dismount once they reach the ladders. Then it's back down, and it's soon time for a new encounter against things that are at least scarier than the sheet ghosts! Tina's not so lucky to avoid it completely this time, groaning as the migraine hits her almost immediately. It doesn't linger for long, thankfully, and she brings up her pickaxe this time as she opts for a different strategy.

     This time, she's gong to try whacking the flying head things right at the Batter. "Swing, Batta Batta, swiiing!"
Aoko Aozaki     "Well, it's more like I have no idea what I'm looking for," Aoko answers Zero, laughing it off as if that, too, were perfectly normal. "But yeah I mean... you guys had nothing to gain fighting an Ancestor but you did it for me, so whatever you have on your plates, you can ask me anytime."

    The specters are defeated, and the party advances, only to meet MORE GHOSTS. These ones are just floating heads. Aoko squints, especially as one attempts to FLASH HER. With a migraine.

    A responsible person would handle the headache now.
    Aoko is... Aoko.

    There's a flash of distorted blue light, as Aoko mutters something under her breath entirely too quickly to understand. The flash of light released by the Magnolia targetting her disappears! Or rather... doesn't happen? It's Weird.

    Time appears to have bent over backward for a moment there.

    With Aoko backing away to avoid being hit again(?), she stomps her foot down, and a column of blue light gushes out of a spell circle that momentarily appears behind the specter, trying to laserblast it towards the Batter!
Thomas Alva Edison     Edison's ability to understand them is...simply not there. Is it because he is trying to use logic and reason...or is it because he's not part of this world's 'order'. It's bizzare...though maybe he would get more answers if he became part of said order, but likely such a thing is not necissary...it is likely also dangerous. He dismisses the notion for now, they get through the first ambush. The spotlight continues to stay on the batter as they move, Until they actually see light, there is no point to it. He will try and get all of the data that he can, that way he is sure his decision will be as informed as he can make it when the time comes.

    When the heads appear, they (fortinately) do not try and give him a migrane, and instead just try and bite him. Will become a head zombie ghost?! Nah, but it' hurts. Shaking the monster off, Edison, switches from ranged into his boxing gloves, aiming to punch the offender towards teh batter, before he gets into full on fisticuffs, aiming to try and weapon a great number with a DC powered MEGAVOLT PUNCH!

    Which is just a lightning fueled normal strong punch. BUT IT SOUNDS COOL!

    "So those words you said towards the spectre's before, what do they mean to you?" he asks The Batter.
Starbound Flotilla     George, at some point, actually finally puts on some power armor. Less for the protection, and more for the fact that there's so damn many ladders down here, and George's knees are old-man knees, so some power-armor assistance helps. His fancy EVA hardsuit in crimson still mostly fits the engineer aesthetic, at least. When the heads come in, though, he doesn't regret it. The helmet going up deflects much of the potential headaches, and George surges into action calmly again, doing his best to keep the danger dulled through swift, surprisingly agile motions.

    His industrial clamps are not as useful here, with these things having no body. Instead, he brings out heavy industrial drills with tremendously long drill bits, one in each hand, intent on jamming them through the heads straight through the mouthes of the beasts, and skewering them so he can hoist them for the Batter's assault... Or, it seems, the Add-On! He knows he can't much hurt it, so sort of jamming the drill section into the sphere-like halo after it skewers a head should... work, in a way, right?
Zero Kiryu The sudden appearance of murderous disembodied heads really should surprise Zero more than they do. He's on the ball when one comes straight at his head, deflecting it to the side with a sweeping block and taking a 'bite' to the shoulder for his trouble. He comes about on it with a single rapid-fire punch that isn't particularly harmful in and of itself, and seems more reflexive than particularly directed. He certainly doesn't angle it towards the Batter this time.

Abruptly considering the circumstances, Zero makes a vague vocalization that seems aimed towards the Guyver, "I 'cannot kill this', does not mean, 'Do not attempt to kill this.' You seem to have the idea but you should make this a reflex. If something is a danger to you, pressure it back always. Don't give ground infinitely unless you have no choice."

Back to Aoko, "I have a tricky condition that I'm managing. I'm sure you understand. We intend to do something to resolve the bulk of it. It is... unorthodox."
August Kohler As they get through the spectres, August is drained, but keeps going. The air doesn't feel like smoke, regardless...it feels more and more like oxygen. What the hell is up with those guys?

And then, there's strange floating heads with deranged faces. They come to bite and draw more blood from August, so he pushes another off him with the knife, and stares into the revolver's reflection of himself.

"Light em 'up, Tin Soldier!"

The robot soldier appears, the Persona raising its gun leg and focusing on the Magnolias threatening August. The leg lights up with fire at the barrel, before sending off a smoking plume, moving to engulf them, set their hair aflame, and preferably almost-incinerate them for the Batter to finish off. "Batter, another swing!" August is getting kinda into this.

He might even be enjoying it.
Yuuki Kuran "They do." Yuuki agrees, as Zero comments as to the spirits. "Even less like the strange people above. They're empty, and the blood..."

The batter's bloodthirsty swat at the spirit she sends his way sends a slick spray of blood across the dusty, 'smoky' ground.

"Empty. It's nothing, it doesn't taste like... anything."

Translator's Note: Actually it tastes like blood, but...

"But that's a good way to see, mm?" Yuuki gives her best 'expectant tutorial praising' face to Zero. "It's much more relaxing, really. To be in the background. Much more..." She draws in a breath, the spirits dead, and the thicker 'smoke' from deeper inside makes her cough once. "Oogh, it's... so weird!" She complains, scrunching up her nose like a child at broccoli. "In my..." She forces air out of her nostrils alternatingly, holding one closed and the other with her fingers as the party continues.

This time, Yuuki is not tutorializing - this time a strange BOOM HEADSHOT moment as she collapses to her knees with painful, awful migranes. The noise she makes while recovering moves from pitiful to snarling, as she throws out a hand to engulf the migrane-inducing Magnolias with a surge of nearly-invisible telekinetic force, smashing it on the ground twice before tossing it the Batter's way. "Almost as bad as... Cross Academy - don't get hit in the head!"
Sho Fukamachi Ghosts, now... Floating heads? Well they did say the mines were haunted so... Well, it's whatever. Dealing with them should be the same as before, spook them so that they go towards The Batter so he can dispense wooden justice.

     Doing his best to shrug off another attack(?), The Guyver points its head at the enemies and begins firing off a small barrage of lasers. They aren't exactly very devastating, but maybe if he shoots enough of them he can push them over towards the one guy who can feasibly handle them.
Priscilla     Pickaxes are a fair substitute for bats in the arena of inflicting sheer violence, even if they lack the mysterious holy properties of a baseball bat with the signature 'Harold' on it. Thomas' mighty American fists, in traditional sportive pastime, knock the mere heads around exactly like boxing is all about, trading migraine for concussion instead, if spectres indeed have brains to rattle about in their phantasmal skulls. There's certainly a satisfying crack and splatter as George minces them with his drills, especially as they burst into so much disintegrated matter (and water balloon quantities of shockingly red gore) when rammed straight into the glowing Add-On.

    Saturation laser blasts, flamethrowers, and waves of kinetic force, straight down narrow and boxy tunnels against adversaries that have no feet to root them to the ground, become absurdly effective. Those that aren't burnt to a crisp or pulped against the walls are handily sniped out of the air with rapid beams from the Guyver and pulses of purifying light from the Add-On. Stomach-churning cracks sound from the bat hitting the sweet spot on each head --heads coincidentally being relatively ball-shaped. And in short order, these abominations are purified as well, the Choir and Batter a little worse for wear again (despite the latter's continually immaculate uniform of no team), but moving inexorably forward.

    In the aftermath of that skirmish, Aoko is in luck: she all but kicks over a number of bottles turning the next corner in her agonizing (but fading) headache. Thick vials of hard, transparent plastic capped in metal roll away from her, each containing the air in some kind of condensed or pressured form, sort of like liquid oxygen, which appears as a dense, fuzzy, grey-white vapour, gyrating inside the bottles in the opposite direction of their spinning across the hard metal ground.
Priscilla     Clearing out the swarm of 'Magnolias' affords the party further progress. Twice ambushed in ten minutes, the smoke mines are living up to their apparent reputation as spectre-infested. The Batter's intuition, or guidance on his holy mission, or perhaps the mysterious knowledge of the unseen 'puppeteer' somehow vaguely associated with him, has been bang on the money.

    A few more corners affords them a stash of emergency supplies, containing two Luck Tickets and another Silver Flesh unhelpfully insisting they Restore 5 Drive. in terms that make no sense, as well as another skirmish with an ambush of common spectres that assault them from behind this time, however caught by your early warning sensory abilities.

    Down another two hallways, a descending metal ladder, and a blind twist in the dark, a long splatter of dried blood, dragging all the way down the rest of the corridor and around a corner yields a hideous piece of generally offputting Belial's Meat which Cures abnormal ailments at least vaguely obvious in use. The immediate, dreamlike recognition of the names and vague purposes of these things goes from simply intrusive to somewhat ominous, as the gradually growing small mound of items in your collective possession goes from quirky, native 'supplies', to something found raw and bloody on a metal floor and with some translation of biblical pretense.

    Descending another set of echoing rungs and past another brief and bloody skirmishes with a roving trio of 'Magnolias', the embittering smell of the chemical air starts to fade around the time a faint draft can be felt coming from above. The lamps are almost universally out here, and so when you arrive at an especially tall ladder (so much that it seems impossible that it can stand up without snapping in half, given that it soars well out of the radius of your lights), you are assaulted straight out of the blackness, further compounding the gauntlet of endurance that is crossing this haunted gorge of elemental smoke and metal.

    This time it is a sole figure that menaces their path, tall and lanky to the point its bald, almost pinheaded scalp scrapes the ceiling, yet its elongated, sharply pointed fingers brush the floor. Its face is almost human compared to the others, but with deep black pits for eyes, in the continuing characterization of spectres as things without colour or structure, presenting as only strange shapes of misfitting, stark paleness, lacking substance yet maintaining their capacity for inexplicable violent behaviour. This one even has legs, bowed and awkward as they are, and a length, spade-tipped tail like some sort of gremlin, despite its ungainly size.

    The Batter used Wide Angle!

Januaryx1
A ghoul with dire, dusty breath.
Light weakness against ?????.


    It lunges from out of the dark, occupying the entire hallway with its blender of flailing limbs, super-extended arms slashing and swatting and battering across the entire breadth, pressing you up against the ladder and the steeply unyielding wall behind it. Getting closer, it exhales deeply with a wheezing roar that sounds like the bellow of a dying chimney, gushing a torrent of acrid, caustic, skin-blistering smoke and particulate along with its manual assault.
Thomas Alva Edison     Alright, that was enough...
    The breath of smog was litterally the worst thing. Forced to try and perserver against a smoke stack output itself, the Spectre was causing Edison some discomfort. Of course, another ghost that was...weird.

    Edison, however stood fast, and pushed ahead of the group. He swung his massive fists, aiming to try and take the thing by surprise, and using the small tunnel to his advantage...

    The chest blaster started to blow. He stares down at it, before the RED!, WHITE!, and BLUE! beam of energy soars down the way, hopefully trapping the beast within it's powerful light. The light of an America FREE OF SMOG!

    Of course, Edison was pushing himself a bit harder, he would enjoy some time to rest.
Aoko Aozaki     Today is a good day for Aoko. A weird purple cube and bottles of 'smoke'! With any kind of luck, these aren't just bottles of oxygen, but finding out will have to wait. Right now, she surely looks rather silly holding two of the bottles under one arm and a third in her hand.

    To Zero, she asides: "Oh, I get you! You know, depending on replicability, I'm pretty sure the Atlas Institute and the Church would pay a small fortune for your recipe. Something to keep in mind if you ever feel like filling a pool with money and swimming in it."

    Of course, descent continues into the labyrinth of a mine. Just when it looks like they have the last of the spirits handled, there's another - or is it a zombie? It looks more like an undead horror than a ghost, for a change. It also hurts like one, flailing those arms around!

    Aoko ends up square on her ass, scrambling to keep her precious vials of "smoke" from shattering on impact. Fighting one-handed it is!

    "What a pain. This is why I don't take jobs from the Church!" Well, last time she did, the vampire was a forest. So that wasn't fun.

    "Barrels, set. Deploy!"

    Spell circles shaped like the barrels of guns appear, and begin peppering the THING with a constant stream of short, bright blue laser bursts, with no particular aim other than "at it".
August Kohler As they wipe out the Magnolias with all sorts of attacks, including August's fire, the redhead cringes as their heads crack from the bat. As they push forward, and Aoko finds 'smoke', August glances at it briefly, before continuing. He helps gather the stash of tickets and silver flesh, though when they find the Belial's Meat, it takes him a few seconds to swallow before he elects to be the one who picks it up, having dealt with hunting and meat before.

Now with horrible meat in hand, August moves to ascend- when a tall and lanky figure comes forward with extremely long fingers and slashes at the group. The Tin Soldier dives in the way of August, taking the blow and getting raked up, metal scraping as August reels back, injuring the young man and forcing him back against the ladder. "Guys...I think it's time for an all-out attack!"

The Tin Soldier raises the gun again, firing a burst of flames to try and push January back, before moving to follow it up with it works with a fast punch. Trying to pummel the monster, hopefully, together, they could wound it enough for the Batter to purify, permanently.
Zero Kiryu "Have you..."

"Already tasted some before now?" Zero answers Yuuki, with a slightly irritable tilt to his voice. Even setting the tutorializing aside, he's aware that she came to a Weird Place like this before him. It's not as if she can talk frankly with many other people, after all.

He makes an affirmative noise concerning witnessing the Batter's ability to splatter ghosts, but immediately falls back when Yuuki is brought to her knees. Zero didn't take a strike to the head, so he doesn't know what she's actually going through. He'll take her word for it, but in an immediate sense his priority is getting her properly mobile. While she directs telekinetic force, Zero seizes Yuuki's arm and dips down underneath it to pull her back to a stand.

Although he has never been as strong as Yuuki...

Yuuki still has the mass of a Small Euro-Japanese girl that couldn't weigh over 100 pounds soaking wet. It's not hard for him to hold her up and move in spite of the awkwardness of their height disparity.

But it also makes it awkward for him to fight hand-to-hand.

Which is why Zero just draws Bloody Rose from its holster and takes a hipfire shot down the hallway towards the ghoul. Nothing fancy-- he doesn't have the time for anything fancy. He doesn't attempt to dodge, either-- it's a particulate cloud in confined quarters, so he relies on his regeneration.

His skin blisters over and goes through the healing process in rapid realtime-- by the time the particulate has cleared, he's already 'back to himself', more or less.

"It will not lift the condition," he says to Aoko, "merely alleviate the symptoms. If that's all you were looking for, we already have someone who does that sort of work. But it's not mine... and I'm not interested in making money off of it."
Sho Fukamachi The Guyver powers through the monster's caustic breath, and while Sho is safe inside the confines of the armor, the armor isn't as much. Several features on the alien suit are now melted, mainly the organic ones like its arm blades. The weapon stored in its chest is also mostly unusable thanks to the armor platings being melted firmly together, and Sho doesn't feel like spending a stupid amount of time ripping them open at the moment, or probably more importantly risking some sort of cave collapse.

     Pressed for options and in a bit of a panic, something subconsciously clicks with him. The Guyver places its hands out in front of it. A black, slightly transparent ball begins to form, growing in size rapidly before Sho pushes his hands forward slightly, causing the orb of condensed gravity to zoom off and hopefully slam into the monster's chest.

     Knowing whatever he probably did still won't probably kill it, they can only hope that it at least causes it a minor inconvenience. In the mean time, they just look down at their hands, completely and utterly confused at what they just pulled off.
Starbound Flotilla     George is swiftly pressed back against the ladder, and blasted with the acid. His armor sears, but only for a second. "Woah there, big guy! Let's take it easy with the halitosis!" He jokes, microjets on his armor blasting to help drive him up the ladder. He leaps over and around! Then he dives hard under the laserblast of energy from Thomas Alva Edison and Aoko Aozaki. Just after the Tin Soldier blasts the thing with flames, he rushes in, leaping atop it as best he can, grappling with its thin limbs expertly. "Don't worry, buddy! I got the cure for what ails you. Just gotta /shut that trap/!"

    In one hand, he's got a big, beefy industrial bolt-driver, meant to pound bolts through steel, like a nailgun on turbo. He intends to jam it under the jaw of the creature during his grappling, pointed up, and blast it upwards several times! If all goes well, this thing should bolt the spectral creature's mouth shut, forcing it closed and giving the Batter a good path towards it that is unimpeded by the breath attack.
Yuuki Kuran "That's okay." Yuuki interjects into the Aoko-Zero about LOADSAMONE conversation. "I think I actually literally already have one?"

Swimming pools of money, of course.

Taste some, taste some. "Not really. It doesn't taste like anything. And, remember..." Yuuki groans, into Zero's heaving arm, as she's not hefted so much as scruffed up back to her feet, her posture unsteady but her feet, with a little support, steady enough. "This whole thing is strange, isn't it? It's all so empty. Empty people, empty places. Empty spirits with empty blood, leaving bits of... colored flesh with strange names and empty flavors. Even the plastic is empty..."

Yuuki squints, shielded from further harm by Zero's broad shoulders and PERFECT HAIR.

"Well, okay. It's actually just plastic." She finishes with a defeated murmur, picking a bit of semi-dry plastic raindrop from her long, long brown hair. There's more. It'll take Advanced Hair Care to be restored.

The whole mine-maze, similarly, is empty. It's just as Yuuki begins to say, 'You know, even the name of the Puppeteer is--' when they push in a massed Adventure-Stack towards the Januaryx. January? Ryx? Janurarurarurx?

The ferocious attack of slashes and gumby-like lims flailing and smashing the party back draws another spray of crimson, this one around Yuuki as her uncovered side is angle-attacked, tearing up part of her open jacket and top underneath, leaving dark splotchy rents across her front, but no residual drippage - a flashy AND painful strike.

Biting her own tongue to stifle the rather loud cry she would have otherwise made, Yuuki toughs through the pain, focusing not on her own recovery, but of blasting the thing away. Dead - well, spirit recovering - was the status effect she had wanted to apply, joining Edison in casting forth a far less flashy blast of her own, an earthcracking downward smashed plane of force.

"Is this..." She coughs, her lungs not clearing. "The source of the smoke?!"
Priscilla     "They mean what I said." the Batter replies to Edison, swatting away the January's claws with the tip of his bat, advancing forcefully through the torrent of awful smoke to deliver an obscenely vicious strike to the side of its head, plastering the entire right side wall with blood. "I've judged these spirits impure. Through purification, they will find forgiveness. By destroying their twisted forms, they will be purified."

    Just as the spectre goes to take a big nasty bite as retaliation for its hideous injury, George robusts its face up and down and literally rams industrial bolts through one jaw into the other. Meanwhile, AMERICA's dedicated effort to ENVIRONMENTALISM blasts aside the killer smog in a heartbeat, lancing the January spectre straight through the chest. Even as it tries to advance through the gaping, mortal hole in its chest, a solid wall of rapid-fire lasers batter and blast it every inch of the way, causing its wild swinging to eventually become desperate attempts to shield itself, like swatting away flies that keep atomizing chunks of its ghastly corpus. The wash of flames following it combines to completely halt its progress driving it back with a piercing, terrible wail, thrashing its limbs now in a pure panic.

    Yuuki's second kinetic blast flattens the thing, immobilizing it throughout Sho's charging sequence, so his gravity blast can land straight in the giant hole opened by Edison and suddenly crumple it inward, contorting its limbs with nauseating dry snaps. A shot from Bloody Rose goes right through its head, pulled in by gravity --and ejects dark, ventral blood across the floor. It's the wine-black shade of deoxygenated cruor, spent and on the way back to the heart, as opposed to the vivid claret the Batter splatters everywhere with casual abandon; an arterial spray still full of vitalizing life and energy.

    The Add-On seems to finish this one off its last few proverbial hitpoints, suddenly surging with an inwards light that causes its refraction to reverse, becoming a white point surrounded by a translucent, glassy field. A lattice of shining beams suddenly converges around the spectre in complicated sequence, collapsing in geometric progression until an explosion of white-hot energy takes it out completely.

    Adversaries Purified.
Priscilla     Taking the long climb up the dusty ladder, each metallic step echoing in the vacant, smoggy shaft, you ascend to an altitude of more agreeable aroma and breathable texture, yet somehow less potent air, resulting in a brief few moments of feeling as if you're short of breath. You emerge blinking into the somber light of Zone 1's continuing dour and moody rain, showered again with a spitting drizzle of cold plastic and party to the distant sounds of a churning ocean, clumping through samey green metal towards the sight of civilization.

    On the other side of the mines, there are fences everywhere. Fences that surround what appears to be an inland lake of plastic, for certainly falling in must not be terribly safe, but fences surrounding the path of softer, viridian sand, as opposed to the forest green metal pushed aside it, fences outside of the wider, squatter, almost warehouse-style buildings, and fences dividing up broad stretches of field, almost like pasture.

    A lot like pasture. Quinting into the rainy distance, peering through the depressing rain and listening for the nervous quiet, you spot the unmistakable shapes of cows roaming the fields in the distance. Though their spots and splotches are shades of steely grey rather than their classical mottle of iconic black and white, they're clearly living livestock, milling about their emerald fields of finely groomed 'soil', grazing fluffy croppings of feathered crystal that at least looks like grass.

    Of course, they're attended to by the very picture of a depressingly dispirited cubicle dweller, copypasted over and over again until a swarm of suit-and-tie dressed nobodies fills out an entire ranch. Rakes and hoes and watering cans can be seen stacked alongside bales of wire and palettes of tied packages, at least looking the part, but the sight is surreal nonetheless. One the farmers(?) notices you climbing out of the mineshaft immediately, already intensely confused by the sight, his mind almost unable to process it.

    "W . . . What? Did you come from the smoke mines?" he asks in an identical nervously sighing tone as the mine operator had. "Yes." says the Batter. "But . . . But . . . But there are loads of spectres down there . . ." he stutters. "Yes." comes the equally nonchalant, almost amused reply.

"Are you a spectre?"
"No."
"Then who are you? Have you been sent by the Queen? Or by Dedan?"
"No."
"But . . . But . . . But . . . You still know how to fight the spectres? You . . . You could destroy them?"
"Yes." It's almost like a game now.
"Oh. That . . . That would be great . . . We . . . We have . . . uh . . . spectres in our big barns."
"Barns?"
"Ah . . . uh . . . yes . . . Uhm . . . You're at the metal farmsteads of Pentel, the eastern part of Zone 1."
Priscilla     Then, just like the mine worker, this farm worker produces his own sheaf of papers; no doubt an equally convoluted set of regulations in of themselves. These grainy, hand-sketched, poorly photocopied papers include diagrams up and down of cows, external, internal, anatomical, and of various butchers cuts and dotted lines, however it also contains detailed reference images of a myriad of what are clearly ores. What should correspond to the flank, striploin, sirloin, and similar cuts, are instead given labels of zinc, iron, silver, and such.

    "Our work consists of cutting livestock in two and extracting the metallic boulders that were contained in the cadavers. All the poor quality metal is discarded, forming the ground we walk on. The rest gets purified to make tools and other objects with. Some of it is also put into crates and sent to the other Zones, so they have tools and soil as well, I suppose . . . As the first of four elements . . . it's an important element. Because without metal, people would have nothing to walk on. They would sink and drown."

    The regulations go away again. "There . . . And thus we have spectres too . . . in the large barns. It would be nice of you to take care of them fast, because the Queen's inspector is going to arrive at any moment." the tie-wearing palebody finally coughs, now nervously twiddling his thumbs, shaking just to the faintest degree. "So . . . Could you please take care of the barns?"

    It multiplies.

    Though there is a telltale circular shimmer not far away. A warped passage that is almost invisible against the iridescent plastic framed behind it. A Warpgate?
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki Gets Past the pain. She Gets PAst the monster, crushed and blown apart before being Purified. Bloody Rose seems to not invalidate the purification, though Yuuki is a little too migrane-y and distracted to watch to see if it makes blood. The wall-painting quantities of blood surely bungle her senses.

But then, they're past that. Into... Metal cows?

"Yes..." Yuuki decides, slowly. Each part of the monosyllabic response drawn out in the laconic cant of an idea forming slowly, as it's spoken.

"I will wait."
"For the Queen's inspector."
"Here."