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Xion The pitch is simple: MushroomFan666 had posted a request for three feathers of a cockatrice and a single tooth of a 'Stroper' (google is unhelpful), and directed people to, of all places...

London. But not the nice part of London, or the tourist parts of London. No, no.

It's the outskirts, by one of those very pleasantly manicured royal forests of such heritage it has actual dedicated conservators with peerage and title!

The summertime forest is bright, sunshine peeking and raying through the boughs and branches. A thin layer of twigs and leaves and undergrowth susurates with beetles and small woodland creatures, and birds twitter and cheep happily.

It's probably Bird for 'I WANNA SCREW! HEY! HEY! HEY BECKY! U WAN SUM--' and the like.

Near the outskirts, on a rolling hill, is a large single arch dominated by overgrown foliage that makes it look more like a stone tree than any strictly manmade formation, a square gateway with four entrances and multiple stories that goes nowhere with a high vaulted cieling held by resolute columns.

MushroomFan666 had indicated that the forest you're SUPPOSED to go to is 'through the gate and straight on', but there's no magical beasts for miles through the well-cared-for old forest the way you can see.

One supposes you'll just have to figure out the gateway.
Raziel 'The scenery was a dramatic change than the wastelands of Nosgoth.  It was a welcome change, I found, to be reminded of the life that once flourished...and a stark reminder of the cancer that caused its destruction.  The pang of loss was truly remarkable in these moments, only bringing me the urge to speed my endeavor closer to the front of my mind.'

Raziel arrives at the arches, running a careful claw over the archway's themselves and trying to get a feel for just how old this structure was.  His light-filled eyes seemed focused on every detail, nook and cranny he could find.  

'The path forward was not as obvious as the client said it would be, it appears that before we could continue farther, we would need to figure out the secret of this structure, so we could go to our destination.  How long has it been since the last time anyone traveled anywhere with these arches, I wonder?'

With a sense of wonder, Raziel continued to examine and explore the strange structure, looking for anything that could bring enlightenment to where they needed to go to obtain these items.  Still, it was a nice distraction from the serious problems weighing on the mind of the wraith.  

Though the lingering feeling of unbelonging filled him, once more reminded of what he was in such a place full of life.  Though he is also equally reminded of the importance of his task, and the duty and oath he swore to end Kain's life.  He would take this all one step at a time, and small steps can lead to a bigger whole should he play his cards correctly.
Roxas     MEANWHILE IN THE DARKNESS

Roxas cuts down a giant murderous flower, of which there were /several/ moments before he got to them. He heaves a great, exhausted sigh and whips out his cell phone to talk to the QUEST GIVER.

    Roxas#6186: @MushroomFan#0666 -- Hey, I'm not running into any stropers out here. Are you sure about this? Here's a picture of the plant monsters I have run into.

Attached is a photo of POISON PLANTs -> https://www.khwiki.com/images/1/1d/Poison_Plant_KHD.png
Tomoyo Daidouji     "What on Earth is a stroper?"

    That's the question that prompts Tomoyo responding to MushroomFan666's request. As a tailor, she must remain on the cutting edge of materials. Honestly though, she probably adds an air of legitimacy to this whole affair. Considering how a lot of these forests are protected land, a well-dressed woman flanked by security guards just makes it look like a distant royal and her entourage are paying a visit

    Tomoyo is enjoying the walk, the bird song (with no mind to what it probably means) and especially the old structure. A digital camera practically appears in her hand as she starts taking pictures of it from various angles. "Hmm... this seems to be the only gateway in the area, but..." Tomoyo muses aloud as she strides in and out of the tower, walking through each of the four entrances. "It doesn't go anywhere. Unless there's a trick to it?"

    She starts patting her hands against the stones within reach, seeing if any depress or are loose to see if there's a mechanism to it.
Note     A weird posting that made it to the request boards Note frequents is... all that there was to work with today. Feathers from Cockatrices and... what's a Stroper anyways?

    With nothing else to do after emerging from her daily training and still being full of energy, Note's leapt at the opportunity to rummage through a forest, hunt some powerful magical beasts, and maybe get a good dinner AND a reward out of the whole matter!

    "What's Cockatrice taste like, anyways?" She murmurs from a perch in the trees. Moving rather like some kind of monkey, she's been leaping from tree branch to tree branch and utilizing her prehensile tail to grab and swing from some of them.

    Eventually, this brings her to the inert gateway that seems to be in the middle of nowhere, leading nowhere.

    It all leads to her hopping over to a thin branch, wrapping her tail on it, and using just natural weight to BEEEEND the branch down a great deal until she's suspended about eight feet over Raziel, hanging upside down with her arms folded.

    "Hey... are you a Stroper?"
Rean Schwarzer A request is a request, and finding a cocatrice feather and...whatever the heck a stroper fang is sounded like a usual ingredient hunt. Tomoyo's already doing what he was considering doing, walking in and out of the tower until something happened. He taps a few of the stones with the hilt of his sword, trying to see if that also helps with Tomoyo's prodding. "...Maybe a verbal password, or some sort of physical item is needed as a key. " Rean says, surveying the tower, arms crossed. "We're probably out of luck if that's it, though."

He then notices Note hanging off the side of the tower. Hmmmmmmm. "Hey, think you can climb up higher on the tower to see if there's a switch?" He says to Note.
Xion As people approach the gateway, there is a lone figure inside: or, perhaps, a ghoul of some sort. With skin like a white peach, and hair like fallen ash, the girl's dark purple robes and russet-beige belt buckled in copper looks every bit the witch... or the necromancer.

Slightly sunken eyes with a lilac splash of eyeshadow (or... maybe just some HEROIC sleep deprivation rings) look up as everyone approaches, her image as a wicked witch broken up by the smartphone clutched in her hands. The screen would, normally, light her face up with the blue light of progress...

But she discords in Dark Mode, as any sane person would.

The girl looks up at 'are they a stroper', squinting at the speaker. "What? No. He doesn't have vines or tentacles or anything. That's just a..."

She rolls her wrist as if that explains everything... while not explaining anything.

There's the soft 'bink!' of Roxas' message, which the girl replies to with rapid teenage thumbtyping powers.

MushroomFan#0666: @Roxas#6186 those are heartless you goon.
MushroomFan#0666: but yeah bring some of those if you can. especially if they're the poisonous kind.

As people approach the gate - especially a VISUALLY CODED RICH GIRL with a goon squad, Sucy peels herself off the wall, still holding her phone close to her face. "If you're all here for the suff--fffffun, I'll open the gate if you're not magic. Sheesh. I'm Sucy, by the way. MushroomFan666 to most of you."

She whips out a small telescoping wand from her voluminous sleeve, which extends two tines and a mote of green between them that shines its way through the air.

With a swish and a flick, she taps the side of the archway 'facing' the forest, which immediately spirals outward and inward with a sickening visual vertigo as space pinches and tears, forming a green 'tunnel'. Going 'away' from the forest, is just an infinite spiralling green tunnel. Coming about the other side, reveals a short green tunnel towards a visually magical forest, with trees as tall as skyscrapers, flowers reaching as tall as men, and a whole host of imaginitive dangers. Far, far in the distance is a grand and overgrown tower entirely surrounded (or perhaps made out of) vines.

"That's the Forbidden Forest. The stuff you should go hunt and bring back? All in there."

Sucy re-'pockets' her wand, to go back to her phone. "I'll pay you if--... when you get back."

MushroomFan#0666: are you in the forest already?
MushroomFan#0666: we're outside London.
Roxas     Roxas#6186: ??? I know they're Heartless! But they're also plant monsters. They seemed relevant.
    Roxas#6186: Wait, you actually want some of these things? Are you sure about that? They're dangerous.
    Roxas#6186: I guess you must know what you're doing...
    Roxas#6186: Sort of? I think I'm technically a layer down, I'm wandering around in the Darkness. See?

Roxas attaches an image of the SWIRLY NONSENSE that is the interior of Dark Corridors.

    Roxas#6186: The forest looks a lot nastier from in here.

Roxas meanders on into the foreboding-looking thicket of The Wrong Side of The Forest's Tracks, which he's sure will come up again when something more horrible than ordinary moves in.

Possibly, he considers, whatever MushroomFan#0666 wants with Heartless and Stroper parts.
Raziel "I am no more a stroper, than you are a monkey," Raziel says with a touch of a sardonic tone to his voice.  "I am no monster, despite my ghastly appearance.  Trust me, it is not by my desire that I am here now."

Raziel turns towards Sucy who has decided to finally grace them with her presence.  Though her working the door for them DOES save them the trouble of having to figure out the puzzle, though her equally sardonic tone causes him to be wary.

'The young woman before us was ever the picture of either a witch or a necromancer.  Sunken eyes, either caused by choice or by sleep deprivation.'

Then with the opening of the portal, a new internal cutscene plays for those of you reading this inner monologue.  

'I started to feel a distinct sense of vertigo staring into the opening portal.  It appeared that it was as it was stated, a portal to another side.  I wondered if this was anything like the Underground or another realm that lay overlayed to this one.  The flora on the other side were tall, and likely hiding dangerous fauna.'

"A wraith.  I am a wraith," Raziel says towards Sucy.  Noting that lack of knowledge probably means she is a witch, not a necromancer.  Or at least, not a well-learned necromancer.  The list of ingredients similarly leads him to believe the former and not the later.  

"Through here?  Is there anything else we should know before making our way to do your dirty work?"
Tomoyo Daidouji     Tomoyo flinches as the girl she mistook for like, a pile of discarded rags approaches her, but to her credit, she's all smiles immediately. "Yes! A pleasure to meet you Sucy. I'm Tomoyo Daidouji. I'm curious though, what is a stro-" Sucy produces her wand, and Tomoyo's eyes light up. Ever the magic fanatic.

    Magic is done, the mundane forest spirals away, and a magical forest replaces it. The four tall woman with Tomoyo are immediately on-guard. Being transported somewhere, and only being able to leave with the permission of another could be called a 'hostage situation.' But their charge only has eyes for the massive trees and strange plants, dual wielding digital and video cameras to record everything.

    "A stroper, right? I'm sure we'll know it when we see it~" the tailor says, before striding off into the verdent green, forcing her black-suited guards to pursue.
Note     To be relieved or disappointed in Raziel's answer? It brings her no closer to knowing what the heck a Stroper is, after all! So Note sighs and spins about, grasping her knees in her hands and twisting her tail a bit to spin in place and face the girl who's just come forth... and promptly jawdrop at the way the gateway comes to life so easily. "Wow.... now THAT looks like an awesome place!"

    Sane, reasonable people would NOT have this response. To the eyes of a kid like Note, that impossibly huge forest is a big magical adventure just waiting to be seized! Surely there's lots of fun to be had in there.

    Who CARES if it has a grim and dangerous name like the 'Forbidden Forest'?

    "Looks like I don't gotta!" She exclaims to Rean with an excited and cheery upside-down wave... and releases her tail's grip on the branch. This means she plummets, but instead of toppling onto Raziel...

    Well. She just slows and stops, hovering while righting herself in the air. In no time at all she stretches her arms out in front of her and ROCKETS for the portal-- but then puts on the brakes JUST IN TIME and turns around at the last moment to ask Sucy, "Oh yeah! So what's a Stroper look like...?"
Xion MushroomFan#0666: I don't want a heartless!!! :angry:
MushroomFan#0666: I want the leaves. Or sap! I bet they could be great in a potion. all medicine is just a poison in precise quantities.

MushroomFan#0666: also I've never worked with it before

MushroomFan#0666: look just meet us near the Ley Line on the Arcturus side.

Raziel's question gets a dead (and Sucy's dead looks are Next Level) look. "What? No. I did all the work. Just..." She makes a 'shoo shoo' motion with her hands. "Go in there, find the stroper--"

Tomoyo provides her the perfect ramp. "You'll know it when you see it, definitely." She agrees, with an altogether all-too-why-are-her-teeth-sharky-triangles-dear-lord.

The party SALLIES FORTH (less one confused and weirded out teenager who will meet them later) into the FORBIDDEN FOREST.

The Forest of Arcturus is filled with all sorts of strange creatures and dangerous plant life. Enormous venus flytraps snap when a foolish foot finds their fleshy inner-mouth pads. Poison ivy coiled around into raised shapes capped with fanged mouths yet no eyes shoot seeds at the party.

Note, in the air, encounters an enormous spider in vivid green with long, spindly legs and palps that drool a hissing poison when she crashes through a web as fine as gossamer spun between two trees.

The party has to close ranks when they hear a 'ka-CAW!' that has a gravelly air split through the tree-line. The gnarled branches has a quiet wave of life fleeing in the entire opposite direction. Small birds, large insects, geckos and all manner of fantastical creature heck right off from the cry.

As the party approaches, though, the ground grows swampy like a mangrove patch, mud sucking at boots and shoes. Statues of creatures at full-pelt flight, of plants locked into stony stasis... and a crunching, gravel-being-chewed sound.

In the center of the mangrove swamp is not a cockatrice, or even a bird at all. It looks like an enormous overgrown lump of vegetal offal, limp tentacles and tendrils hanging off every available bit of space.

And the crunching sound is coming from it. Sensing danger, it turns, revealing the enormous side-to-side mouth filled with somehow-sharp vegetal teeth (they look more like bone, really) and an utter lack of eyes at all. Sappy drool filled with the petrified remains of whatever created the statues dribbles down its 'chin', as it wriggles meanacingly at the group.

The simple smell of it 'breathing' at the party is an overwhelmingly sickening effect.

Yyyyeah, that's probably the 'Stroper'.
Raziel Raziel, who was actually dead, returns a gaze as dead as one could possibly get.  He, however, does let it drop, as it was likely not to get either of them anywhere but frustrated.  Walking into the portal he arrived on the other side as his eyes look around.  

No cutscene this time, as they initially land on the other side, but Raziel moves through the forest like a stalker, aiming to keep his steps quiet, and his body low to the ground.  His body moves in a slightly unnatural way, thanks to the lack of certain parts of his anatomy being missing.  

Statues of creatures are found...

'The statues of various creatures littered our path as we made our way into a nearby mangrove.  This was likely the callsign of one of our targets, the Cockatrice was known for doing this to its prey.  However, there was a distinct sound of crunching nearby.  The sound was far too loud to be a beak...'

As they approached the Stroper is revealed, causing Raziel to jump back, and in one hand the Reaver Blade, a spectral blade, ignites.  His eyes narrow, as he speaks evenly.  "Well, I can dare say we found the Stroper, based on the vague descriptions we got.  I will attempt to hold it's attention on me, flank or stay behind it.  Go!"

True to his word, he dives towards the creature, instead of trying to flank it.  His blade swipes upwards, trying to get a slash across the creature's massive mouth.  The sickening smell was enough to even for Raziel to flinch.  
Note     The moment Note enters the forest, her spiritual senses are FLOODED with input. It becomes almost impossible to tell where anything is, because of startlingly potent life being present EVERYWHERE. Flora and fauna of epic proportions... the staggering number of presences make her suddenly feel very tiny. Within minutes of entering the forest her GUNG HO attitude begins to dry up and she slows her pace to stick with the others. "Uhhhhhhh..."

    What about this place is so great again? Was it just her imagination, or did it look like a MUCH more awesome place to explore BEFORE she went through the gate? Her tail droops down below her, losing the excited animus that had it swishing every which way earlier. She just sort of floats forward like a zombie while trying to clear her head and--

    And drifts straight into a big gossamer spider web. "Huah...?!" Pulling this way and that, she slowly comprehends what she's gotten herself into. "Is this a giant..." One glance up at a life force approaching her... "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" Nope nope nope NOPE DO NOT WANT.

    With a thunderous CRACK of unleashed power, a wave of fierce pressure bursts from Note, a flash of golden light engulfs her! The force tears the spider web almost instantly... but Note herself is changed. The smooth ponytail's now hoisted up by the force of her own ferocious power, split into a number of spiky locks and now shining the same bright golden hue as the blazing aura that rushes upwards about her like a fire, and fills the air with a energized, pulsing 'whoosh' noise. Green eyes narrow at the hideous spider and she flings an orb of blue-white energy from her hand at it. Perhaps not enough to kill it or even inflict serious harm - she'd rather try to scare it off first...

    But either way, she is NOT sticking around. She zooms -away- from that web and down with the group, hitting solid ground. "Spiders. SHOULD NOT. BE ALLOWED. TO GET THAT BIG! Eeeeeeeeee...eeeee..."

    As the group travels though, the aura dies down from a bonfire into a thin film of golden light exuding from Note's skin which periodically sparks, without all the noise.

    As soon as it gets muddy though, she goes right back to hovering, but this time stays at just a few feet off the ground. All until...

    "......EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW." Is her INSTANT reaction to the tentacled, drooling swamp-thing. She claps both hands over her mouth and nose and EVERYTHING else one'd expect from such a horrible nauseating stench.
Tomoyo Daidouji     It's a nature hike! One with a bit more danger than just 'spraining an ankle,' but Tomoyo and her guards are more than able to deal with it. The flytraps get stones tossed at their mouths to pre-emptively make them snap and easily side-stepped. Hiking bags are held up as barriers against the shot speeds. Against the gradually enswampening ground, Tomoyo just wades right in. Contrary to her rich-girl appearance, she's not afraid of getting dirty. Her poor guards, stuck with their polished formal shoes, get wet socks without the slightest complaint.

    And then the stroper comes into view.

    Tomoyo's pseudo-legendary compusure cracks when she gets a whiff of it, hands coming up to cover her mouth and nose. "Disgustiiiiiiiiing!" she sequeals as her guards squad up in front of her. Their eyes are watering a little under their shades, but they stand tough. One of them breaks off, tossing another stone to grab it's attention and lure it away from her charge. Should they succeed, the other three will rush its back and attempt to clamber on, producing hunting knives to start hacking at the tendrils!
Roxas MEANWHILE IN THE DARKNESS...

    Roxas#6186: brb bees

Roxas comes to the EXACT SAME MANGROVE SWAMP that the party 'above' does, only all the foliage has glowing yellow eyes and fangy mouths. It's not THAT DIFFERENT, it's just more badly-lit. A portal of swirling darkness spins nearby, offering an exit into the 'surface' swamp with the NORMAL ENEMY THAT IS REALLY JUST A BOSS RANDOM ENCOUNTER. Unfortunately it is because an ENORMOUS BEE HEARTLESS has charged him and forced him to parry its gigantic stinger with his keyblade, pressing him back into the ground and causing loose earth to build at his feet.
Xion MEANWHILE, IN THE DARKNESS...

Roxas gets to fight the Queen Bee. For the seventeeth time. He fights it every time he finds this part of the woods.

MEANWHILE, OUTSIDE LONDON...

Sucy Manbavaran gets a text on her phone. With a bit of surprise, she starts thumbtyping.

MEANWHILE, IN THE FORBIDDEN FOREST...

There is a canopy-clearing blast of power that flows out from Note as they unleash their golden glow and start leaking a big pile of energy into the atmosphere.

[Certainly Nobody Will Notice Or Remember This]

The Stroper expected more than one person to run at it, but Raziel is some sort of Ghostbreaker, and immediately launches in to get that good good emnity on. His blade sinks into the vegetal-matter-with-TEETH's body with a wet sizzle as the Soul Reiver sinks in, tearing a cauterized hole of spoiled cabbage and rotten fruit that rises, leaving a cleft 'chin' (and rest of the face) and causing the monster to rear back, pulling its 'body' out of the mangrove swamp - a veritible redwood tree-trunk made entirely out of thick roots that snap out to bash Raziel away - or into the muck of the swamp, rendered fetid by the Stroper's presence.

The screaming or retching upon the bank of the swamp draws the Stroper's attention, and causes the stinking offal with TEETH to burrow down a bit, before surging through the swamp, leaving a furrow of mud and mangrove root about it as it tries to bite down on both Note AND Tomoyo, not able to get all her retuine with it. Oh no!

If you thought that smell was bad, wait 'till you see the smell... On the inside! (It's not gonna shower off with one go through.)
Raziel The /EXTRA/ thicc vines of the Stroper were surprising as it unroots itself, aiming to swat Raziel out of its way like a fly.  The Undead knight goes rear over kettle as it's swatted away, landing on all fours as it slows to a skid.  Back on two legs, he runs for the retreating creature, aiming to leap from tree to tree to try and avoid running in the water.

Claws grip on one of the Mangrove trees before he flings himself towards the back of the Stroper, this time the Reaver changing colors from green to red, igniting with fire as he thrusts the blade into the top of the creature, trying to fill it with all of the fire he could muster.

Raziel's claws try to attach to the side of the creature, trying to keep its location behind it.  Hopefully, also providing a distraction for his allies to back away.  
Note     As things turn hectic, Note cranks up her power again. The calm aura crackles back up into the wilder, noisier state it was in earlier. Acting on pure PANIC at the HORRIFIC STENCH she's not of any mind to let that thing get close, and yet... that's exactly what the creature tries to do, much to her horrified dismay and disgust. Ewww EWWWW EWWWWW EWWWWW!!!!

    *CHOMP*

    Well, the thing gets its TEETHIES around her though. Note's clenched tight between the mangled mess of chompers, legs and tail thrashing this way and that outside its mouth as the only way she can show her -CLEAR DISAPPROVAL- of this turn of events.

    The problem this monster's going to find is that she's just too dang TOUGH for a casual bite to slow her down. And having her business end pointed towards its presumably softer innards is a bad, bad thing.

    Because inside the ODIFEROUS CAVERN of the thing's mouth, a choking, gasping, and close-to-vomiting Note screams BLOODY MURDER...

    And fires a WILD beam of power from her hands down the creature's throat with all of her Super Saiyan might.

    Seriously. Trying to swallow a Saiyan is a -really- bad idea...
Tomoyo Daidouji     The stroper bears down on Tomoyo. Her guards were scattered by the uprooting process, leaving her open. The four women look on, the nearest one trying to navigate the writhing vines to get to her charge, to tackle her out of the way of this thing's many tooth. But she can't make the distance, and the stroper leans forward to get a bite...

    But Note gets their arm in there first. Meanwhile, Tomoyo jukes low, crouching in that gap under the monster's jutting mouth, and produces a small jade hand mirror. She jabs it up, going for whatever 'throat' thing thing has before it discharges a jolt of electricity, hopefully enough to make the thing spasm. Hopefully not enough to make it bite down harder on Note.

    "Knock a tooth loose, and we can run away with it!" she shouts.
Roxas Somedays, Roxas runs into situations that are so familiar that he could've sworn he's done them a hundred times. Not seventeen. Not fifty. A hundred. In this case he's not /entirely/ wrong. He really has been in this forest before, and he really has fought this bee more times than would reasonably be counted by anybody doing the recording with anything at all besides a computer.

He bats a stinger aside with one Keyblade and dives to the side to avoid the follow-up charge, splashing through the muck of the swamp and coming up on the other side filthy and... well, mildly poisoned, actually. This isn't the first time he's taken that stinger attack and he didn't always succeed at PRESSING X TO NOT DIE.

He wobbles a little, turning to deliver a half-hearted swipe that cuts into the side of his opponent before rushing headlong towards the portal into realspace.

This Does Not Work Out For Him just yet.

After a moment, his voice crackles onto local radio, << "Hey, did anybody else take this quest? It's really weird to end up alone, even out here." >>
Xion Raziel's expertise in handling extra-dumb monsters that the Ancients decided to use as godsdamned doorlocks (how they even locked doors behind them was a MYSTERY, probably involving SLIDING BLOCKS) serves him well in flanking and harrying the Stroper, his Reiver making frankly excellent headway in carving off meaty (well, vegetally so) tentacles that smoke and steam as they ploop into the mangrove swamp, clearing off the bulb of the creature's 'head' of threatening masses as he went.

Inside the 'mouth', Tomoyo and Note are bitten, finding more smaller teeth inside, and a rather disgusting grouping of dripping vines, but no tongue per-se... because it's a plant.

That'd be silly. The reason it stinks is because it bathes its insides in nutrients, duh.

Note's terrible blast powers up, before shooting out the back and blowing right through the plantmatter, not even stopping at 'the back of the throat', though something odd occurs.

The rest of the 'throat' area legitimately begins to visually 'gather in power', and danger senses would be screaming that there is a really, awfully bad thing that's about to cover Note and Tomoyo!

Though, Tomoyo's plan to kick out a tooth and run is a good one, all told, she's talking to a saiyan! Thankfully, the burning power of Note makes it easy to scoop up a tooth if you're willing to get your hands dirty.

What Tomoyo is more willing to do, is spin around and aim her mirror - and the stunning thunderbolt magic - down the throat of the monster zapping it directly in its 'nerve center'...

And cancelling out the incoming blast of halitosis that would have no doubt melted flesh. With that, Note's blast can continue to carve off the back of the monster, leaving a column of light out to the sky.

Raziel finds himself eating the soul of a plant. Not only does it have one, but it's a fairly refreshingly powerful one. And vegan!

Which leaves the rather confused witch floating in the air high above the mangrove forest upon a broom, with a wand pre-whipped-out, and a large magic purple megaphone conjured before her. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING DOWN THERE? DON'T YOU KNOW IT'S DANGEROUS!?" The megaphone blast is magically audible even deeper in darkness than the layer the trio is on.

The witch descends, tall with a uniform that has extra frills and bits, with a more ornate belt in rings of gold. Her broom seems special as well, with a hook on the end, perhaps for a lantern. Landing with a start, she frets over the party. "I'm Professor Callistis. How did you all even get here? This area is not only forbidden - it's very dangerous! Not to say you're not capable, of course, but..." She frets. "I don't want to see anyone get hurt."

MEANWHILE: Sucy validates payment of the job through venmo, because she's going back to her dorm. There's a drop location - one Last Wednesday Society in London - that people can leave things, once they're done.
Tomoyo Daidouji     The boiling stench coming up from this thing has Tomoyo's hairs standing on end. This could go really really badly. Something is coming up, and only her compatriot's power is keeping it down. The arcing bolt impacts the moist plant matter, and seems to hit something important, because the roiling cloud is halted, and the beam cleaves the stroper into pieces.

    "We... we did it!" she cheers, eyes watering from the stink. Gingerly, she approaches the mass of vegetable matter and wrenches free one of the larger teeth with a hand protected by a handkerchief. "I think I'll have to burn this," the tailor bemoans, before stuffing it into her bag.

    And then, a witch descends! Tomoyo is all smiles once again, bowing to the professor. "Our most sincere apologies ma'am. We were just on a nature hike and wound up here. This place is a bit more dangerous than expected though, so we'll be making out way back now." Probably best not to mention they came here with intent to poach, just in case.
Raziel Raziel is very surprised to have gotten a soul out of that, pulling down the scarf-like fixture around his mouth and revealing the lack of a jaw as he sucks the thing into himself.  Wounds immediately start to regenerate, and he starts to feel better almost immediately.  This allows people to finally rip a tooth out.

However, this is all interrupted by the arrival of a second...witch?  Raziel uses Telekinesis to try and subtly grab a tooth on the sly so that they don't have to repeat this quest.  

He is, however, asked a direct question.  "We were paid to acquire a dangerous animal part.  If it was forbidden, then I will apologize as we were uninformed that the forbidden part of the name was not actually something actively being forbidden," A pause, "That is to say, you hear a lot of places called 'place of doom' or 'forbidden place'.  If we were trespassing, then I apologize."

Raziel finishes with a polite bow.  "As for how," Raziel looks off towards the nearby portal, "I know not the name of the location, but an old archway outside of London."
Roxas A swirling portal of darkness opens in the mangrove swamp as Roxas actually finishes his fight on the other side of it and pushes on through. He looks beat up to all hell, clearly having expended about three times as much effort fighting 'the same difficulty of enemy'. It shows, because he's definitely kinda purple-skinned and bloody. But he stops dead on the other side of the portal, something tucked under his arm-- wait, no, he's dragging something. He looks up towards Professor Callistis.

He's a little wide-eyed at the HOW DID YOU ALL EVEN GET HERE.

Slooooowly, as if it will stop him being noticed, he pushes back on the thing that he's dragging and just... sinks back into the darkness.

    TEN MINUTES LATER...

Roxas drags the back end of a dead bee Heartless to another corridor in the general vicinity and pushes right on through. He drops out of the corridor into what looks like a HOME LAB nook in a dormitory, dragging 1x GIANT BEE STINGER behind him.

This is because Sucy is the best girl, and the presence of her creepy toxin lab is sufficient to generate a corridor of darkness in her own dorm room.

"Hey, uhhh..." Roxas drones in a daze, "is one of you MushroomFan0666? I still didn't find any Stropers, but I've got one giant bee venom sac..."

He counts the contents of his STORAGE SPACE, "Ttttten poison plant petals, and ten poison plant seeds? Wow, I guess I ruined at least thirty of them, then, they've got /way/ more than that when I fight them."
Note     Whatever the thing does with its insides, it's clear that it doesn't brush or rinse. All the thrashing, well, it does a NUMBER on the thing. IN no time at all... she just bursts through the hole, that aura swerving into a ROCKET like form and shunting her through and out and swooping up into a tree where she spins around and aims her hands down at it again but--

    But with everyone else also going gung-ho on it, she sees no critical need, and instead...

    Instead, immediately loses her lunch, spewing over the edge of the branch and toppling down onto it, all her limbs drooping limply as she coughs and splutters, heaves and wheezes for ANY kind of clear air... "Hew... hewwha... ewwwwwwuuuuu!" Is all she can manage in any sort of response to the strange Which lambasting the gang.
Xion Professor Callistis seems more than happy that everyone is OK, clambering out of the Stroper's guts. "You were hunting it...?" She asks, tilting her head slightly as she looks pensively at the disgusting swamp, and the surrounding mangroves, and the group of rather competent individuals (Tomoyo's private security cowering in the corner while she Perfect Interrupts the monster's most dangerous attack are not as impressive, but they're also alive and unharmed, though, so...) arrayed before her.

"W-well..." She stammers, seemingly ENTIRELY CHILL with Raziel succin' up souls, but extra embarrasingly stuttery because she was put on the spot.

"Actually... Malboros of that size - Stroper or larger - are considered threats to nature and are exterminated when we can find them, for they'll turn beautiful forests into disgusting swampland with their overflowing, sewage-like presence. They're caused naturally sometimes, but only grow big on unnatural essence and disease... Like man's pollution."

She snaps up her wand while smiling, and a twinkling, yet refreshing and coolig breeze mists over Note and Tomoyo, a soapy smell falling over them as the disgusting smell of Stroper is wicked away.

"So I don't really mind at all that you did our work... And if you find some use to it, please, feel free. I don't think there are any beneficial properties, though..."

She points back the way everyone came from. "I can escort you back to the Ley Lines if you like. Most of the reason the forest is forbidden is not because it's dangerous - though it is! - it's because many of the creatures have effects that are very hard to cure! The Cockatrice and Basilsk both reside here, and Malboros of Halistroper or larger - or worse, Great Malboro - can hit you with practically every known disease and toxin. At once!"

"Curing those conditions takes an incredible amount of skill and time, and if they were to get out, it could be disasterous!"

She winks. "Still. That flashy sort of power you all have is rather impressive. Maybe sometime you can come visit Luna Nova Academy, and you'll see something impressive yourselves."

MEANWHILE:

Sucy Manbavaran is given an entire evil raidboss bee's poison sack, as well as A Round Thirty terrible quest reagents.

Her Terrible No-Good Evil Plan-o-Meter increases multiple pips.
Tomoyo Daidouji     Tomoyo winces as the others are more forthright with the whole 'hunting' thing. But thankfully, these things are dangers to the ecosystem so it's totally okay to kill them! And Tomoyo even gets a free magical cleaning on her clothes. "Oh, thank you very much!"

    She examines the stroper and rubs her chin. The idea of figuring out how to cure vegetable flesh like this for clothing would be a challenge. Let alone render it safe to wear, and inoffensive to the senses. "It would be a niche market for sure..." she murmurs to herself. But hey, she got paid for one of their teeth just now. The market clearly exists. Thus, she does retrieve a tendril for herself for her own experiments.

    "Thank you for your assistance Professor," she says, all manners as they head back to the ley line. Her own Totally Above Board Fair And Even-Handed Scheme Gauge has also increased!
Raziel Raziel nods once, though surprised that people in this world do not treat him as...well, odd as he is often treated in most other places.  Not that he blends in here, but he is only slightly less likely to have to explain his existence when he shows up.

"Much appreciated," He says, walking with the professor.  "I am Raziel, of the Concord."
Note     "Oh AWWWWWEEEE-SOME!" Some weird CLEANSING MAGIC is exactly what's needed to make Note's day out of all this mess. As soon as the smell's banished... she perks right up. And relaxing means the Super transformation dies down. Aura vanishes, her hair turns smooth and black and drops back into a quite normal-looking ponytail, and her eyes lose their green hue... back to black.

    She drops off the branch, snags it with her tail and swings around it a few times... and launches herself down to rejoin the group! "Oh thank you thank you thank you THAT THING STUNK like nothing I've ever..." She doesn't even wanna use the word smelled, because it doesn't do thjat horrible experience justice. All she can do is squeeze her nose and shake her head back and forth REALLY fast to clear her head of it...

    "Luna Nova....?"
Xion Professor Callistis, true to her word, immediately starts leading people out after they collect whatever Stroper parts they want. The teeth are disgusting, but easily collected after Raziel rips the animating force right out of the Captain Planet Villain Plant, and the vines are both thick and plentiful, the inside startlingly leathery in consistency yet bark-like in texture.

"Ursula." The professor returns to Raziel, giving her first name. "You may wish to be more cautious outside, in London. There are a number of people who report to Ecclesia that prowl about the RG, and they take far less kindly to the walking dead than even the White Council. While the Mist may hide your true form from most, they practice spellwork to reveal the hidden features of the world. You seem nice, though!"

"Luna Nova Academy. It is one of the last remaining schools of magic in the world! A joint venture among the Knights Templar and the White Council, to foster the responsible use of magic among young witches, wizard, shamans, and druids. It's just past the Forest of Arcturus on the Ley Lines - and certainly not forbidden. Though, parking on campus has a fee!"
Raziel "Thank you for that.  However, I am more ghost than vampire these days," Raziel says, his eyes expressive enough to get through that he was giving a smile in return.  "I have encountered those you are warning me against before, it did not go well for them."

"It is also not by my will or concent I am returned to the world of the living...but that is a story for another day." Wait...that name...

He swore he has heard of this place before, though he has not directly been.  More on that on another day, perhaps.
Tomoyo Daidouji     Tomoyo and her bodyguards trail along, listening closely to the discussion being made. Undead persecution and magical schools. Tomoyo's eyes light up at the mention of the latter. "Oh, so that's why you're a Professor? What subjects do you teach? Do you get many students? Why all the secrecy?"

    She takes in another breath to ask another question, but manages to catch herself, and produce a business card. "Where are my manners? I'm Tomoyo Daidouji, proprietor of Tomoyo's Boutique." She hands her card over in the Japanese way, presenting it with both hands text-side up. "Should you ever require any custom uniforms for your students, please get in contact with me."
Xion Ursula smiles and accepts the card, though her actually heritage seems to be more germanic or slavic than japanese. She is, at least, familiar, and bows back, accepthing the card. Out comes the wand and she doips a similar business card in a shining green puff of fire that leaves a plastic-like card.

"I teach Magical Astrology, miss Daidouji. As for the secrecy..."

She sighs, looking carefully at Tomoyo's card as she speaks. "Luna Nova is not so much hidden intentionally as it is tucked away. 'Through the gate and steady on' isn't some incantaton, you know!"

FLASHBACK

A dim memory of a faded engraving atop the north-facing gate back on the London side of the forest.

END FLASHBACK



"The Sorceress War left scars, and I'm sorry to say, that witches are not looked upon fondly in the modern world. But we do have open enrollment in the fall!"