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Audrey Basque	Old royal crypts are always full of traps, and often, things left to guard them as well. And so to retrieve the Spinning Star, Audrey wanted help, just in case! The best case scenario is this being a walk in the park, so having people who know what they're doing definitely can't hurt.     An old castle, standing in the burnt ruins of a formerly tall and proud town, is not quite your target. The castle is in ruins too, besides, and not the "we can fix it" type of ruins. This is bricks and foundations left, at best! No, rather, your target is the royal crypts under the castle, accessed through small hills and barrows behind what's left of the town.     Thankfully, a Warpgate still stands where the town used to, though it crackles and pops from damage sustained during whatever burnt the town and castle down. And so it's a half a hour walk, less if anyone expedites it, from there to the crypts.     Given the nature of the area, Audrey is wearing her cloak today, the inside of the dark blue accessory shimmering like starlight. Otherwise, it's a white blouse and a dark knee-length skirt, with dark brown leather boots, barely heeled. And hey, for once she's not injured, don't worry Kukuru.     When you all arrive, the task becomes a bit more daunting right away. Visibility is incredibly poor owing to the skies being perpetually cloudy and supernaturally blackened, and there are dozens of burial mounds and entrances to catacombs, none of them marked, none of them particularly different at a glance. Audrey, small flashlight in her mouth, scouring through several pieces of parchment and maps she procured, frowns at the fact this one detail doesn't figure in any of them.     "Oh come on! It didn't say there was more than one crypt! Why did they need multiple? How long did this one kingdom stand that it needed like ten royal crypts?!" It's a lot of royal crypts!!     No, it's even worse than that. They're all locked! No mere gates bar your way into any of them, but rather large ornate doors, though the iconography of the kingdom has been angrily and evidently intentionally scratched off them recently. A large keyhole sits in the middle of each door, asking for a comically oversized key.     "These people really hated keeping accurate history of their own backyard..." Audrey whines, on the verge of discarding her stack of papers, or at least putting it away, unless someone wants a second go at it.
White	White arrives in her typical fashion, both in apparel and mannerism; a little early, in her usual dress and boots. The silk mantle she sometimes wears with her dress is present as well, mostly to keep dust out of her face as they explore today. The supernatural weather draws her idle gaze during the wait, her softly glinting eyes turned upward as if she's being contemplatively melancholy, but really she's just curious about what kind of absolute mess leaves a sky looking like this, even if that curiosity mostly only lasts until the group is mobilizing.      Though, the obstacle with the destroyed markings on the gates does have her quietly looming behind Audrey after just a couple of minutes of watching to see if their team leader would suddenly find the solution. White looks at the papers in Audrey's hands, then the damaged doormarks, and finally taps Audrey's shoulder. Almost like she's telling a secret, she whisper-asks "Do you... Know the name... Of the right one?" After all, if she does, White can use the Evil Eye of Analysis and hopefully see it come up when she looks at each of the gates. It's not like every door is going to have a proper name, but the gate to a royal family's crypt is a little like a dungeon entrance, right? And those are *always* named.
Audrey Basque	"Well, they just say *the* royal crypt. There's no way all of these are royal crypts, right?" Audrey asides to White, pointing at some vague excerpts on the parchments that speak of the staff's sealing for reasons that are missing because the paper's torn.     The Evil Eye of Analysis just turns out to be an all-around useful toy, though! There IS only one royal crypt, and it's one they can shuffle on over pretty quickly from where they stopped. Though, it's still hard to see much past your nose, flashlights aside, and it'll surely get worse inside.     "Okay... now that just leaves the matter of the lock. This is ALSO not mentioned in their oh-so-extensive historical documents, and I don't know how to pick locks. I'm loathe to suggest knocking the door down but..."
Kukuru	Today, Audrey's getting some of the expected help for the Spinning Star! Kukuru's here, of course, bringing along her usual assortment of snacks and drinks to pre-game before heading into the castle in a convenient cooler, and she's looking... Kind of tired, actually. She's putting on a brave face, of course, but Kukuru isn't great at hiding how sleepy she looks even on the best of days. Good thing the cooler has a high handle to pull it along, then, or else she might have to lean on Audrey to catch a few more seconds of precious shuteye! Audrey not being visibly injured does help the healer's heart quite a bit, though, and she breaks a into her usual broad smile when she sees familiar faces. "Auudrey, he-lloooo... Are you staying cool enough? It's been getting warmer again, so if you need something lighter to wear..." She yawns lightly, then pats one of her side pockets. She's wearing her usual white and green-brown getup! Looking up at the cloudy skies, Kukuru lets out a pleasant hum and looks even more ready to doze off right on the spot. It's not quite like the weather back home, but the dreary blackness hits her like a sudden safety blanket that nearly does get her to flop right over her cooler. Audrey's frustration at the number of crypts and locked gates, however, wakes her right back up, as does  White coming up with an answer on which one of these crypts is the right one. "This is kind of like the ones back home... Oh. Oh. I know what to doooo!" Chiming in helpfully, Kukuru steps up to the most royal of crypts, eyeing the gate and the walls surrounding it. "Let me seee... Okay. No breaking, right? Then that meeans..." It's time to start looking for holes! Kukuru leverages her fancy enhanced eyes to start looking for even the most minuscule gaps she can, whether it's between the gates, nearly shut windows, or even broken masonry that might allow her the smallest peek inside. "Aaany kind of hole... And I can get us in with one of these." She even pre-opens a dark cloud and jams her hand in for emphasis, ready to open the other side up to whatever interior she can see.
Sarracenia	Princess Sarracenia Sundew! ...is not here. A certain someone said some things she did not appreciate, and so she has vowed not to help a certain someone.      But, Sarra also said she -would- help with that certain someone's expeditions to gather artifacts. So, she did the only thing she could do.      She hired someone.      Just as Audrey whines about the lack of accurate history there is a loud 'pop' as someone pops some bubblegum. That someone is a piranha plant, but not the stubby little guys that usually make up the navy. This one is as tall as the princess herself. Atop its white polkadotted, pink, tulip-shaped head is a head (or more likely a wig) of long blonde hair with trimmed bangs framing its lack of eyes in front and a waterfall of blonde down its back and shoulders. There is a large pink bow on the back of that wig.      It still has leaves for hands, but it seems to have more definite arms than its usual kin. It is wearing a pink high school varsity jacket with black sleeves and a black undershirt on its upper body and a black skirt on its lower body. Thick root-like legs that are more human-like than typical piranha plants support it, and the curled ends that make up its feet are tucked into pink sneakers.      On the sides of the sneakers and the back of the jacket are power stars trailing rainbows with the words 'Rainbow Reckers' following the undercurve of the rainbow. On the front of the black shirt is a bob-omb. On one arm she is carrying a large duffle bag of similar color scheme to her clothes, and in one hand she has a chain leash...with a person-sized Chain Chomp bobbing at the end, looking about with its vacant stare.      As White and Audrey identify the correct door, the piranha plant blows another large bubble with another very conspicuous pop. "Blow the door. Got it." she says in a highschool or college anime girl kind of voice, then reaches into the large duffle bag she is carrying and pulls out a bob-omb. "Oh. Right. Almost forgot. Petunia Piranha Plant. Apparently the mighty princess was pouting so her butler hired me. She gave me a letter to read but...eh. It mostly just said something about not helping some Audrey until she gets an apology." she says, then looks toward Audrey. "Is that you? Doesn't matter much to me as long as I'm getting paid." she says, casually tossing the bob-omb up and down.      Kukuru seems to have another way inside, so Petunia lets out a slight 'tch' and holds off on throwing the bob-omb for now. "Fiiiine. If you want to do this without explosions, I guess that's your loss."
Petra Soroka	Petra isn't going to *cosplay* for a *crypt dive*. That's insane. She'd get all muddy and scraped up, and not even in the cool way of having her knight outfit damaged during the march or in battle. No, today, she dresses practically. Today, she dresses like lesbian Indiana Jones.     Sturdy khaki pants are made sluttier by a high waist cinched with a ratchet belt, with hiking boots for whatever crypt-based clambering she'll have to do. The interior white dress shirt of her Librarian uniform is tucked into it, with her black jacket unbuttoned over top of it. She has her Silver bottle strapped to her waist, revolver on the other hip, and the compact mirror pendant hanging around her neck by a cord, guitar case slung over her back like a messenger bag, with a baseball hat because she expected it to be bright, not supernaturally dark!     She narrows her eyes in irritation, and swings the guitar case around to place it on the ground in front of her. "What the fuck happened here? Why did it burn, or whatever? The Spinning Star's not gonna cause Hydrochoeria to burn up or anything, right?"     Eventually, Petra finds what she was looking for: a particularly straight and smooth stick that caught her eye one day when she was wandering in the woods. She pulls out Fourth Match Flame temporarily to touch the flaming sword to the tip of the stick until it catches on fire, and then smugly holds up the product as a torch. It's not a very good one, but she's not carrying a lantern or whatever, so this is what she's got.     "This is better for the ambiance of the crypt than if it was fucking, like, perfectly bright, or whatever. Though I can still barely see shit. Kukuru, White, do you guys just see in the dark?" "Oh come on! It didn't say there was more than one crypt!"     "Maybe the other crypts have fun stuff in them too," Petra reasons, trying to find the silver lining. Frankly she's a little more interested in the crypt history and the potentially booby trapped adventure than the relic itself, so this doesn't dishearten her much. Worst case, they're just forced to come back another day, or something.     "That's crazy though, right? If all these things are packed full of important dead people, then this place has got some *insane* history. And then it all ended abruptly from... what, a dumb fire? Completely abandoned. I wonder if the crypt's got plaques and stuff on the graves. It'd take weeks to properly archive all the info here, and... verifying it with the records of surrounding towns, or survivors if we can find them...." "Okay... now that just leaves the matter of the lock."     "Heh." Petra smugly puffs out air while smirking. She unlatches the bottle from her hip and flips it open, summoning a cloud of morphmetal to accumulate in her palm, and then stretch out into... an oversized key!     "I don't actually know how Xion does it, but if I poke around in there I'll be able to open it if it's not some magic bullshit."
Petra Soroka	"Petunia Piranha Plant. Apparently the mighty princess was pouting so her butler hired me."     Petra squints at Petunia for a few seconds, trying to judge whether this is some kind of childish scheme from Sarracenia to give Audrey the cold shoulder while not being too lonely sitting at home. It could even be Sarracenia herself in a big, racially insensitive costume. Petra wouldn't put it past her. Eventually, though, she relents with a shrug.     "Sorry you got dragged into her bullshit tantrum. I don't even remember what she's mad about. Audrey? I'm Petra, anyways."
Angela	Hod considers Audrey a friend, perhaps even a spiritual twin and companion!! And so, Hod has wanted the opportunity to lend Audrey a hand and now ... she has one! And also several four extra metallic appendanges strapped to her back, each ending in a very sharp blade. Her uniform has been replaced by white armoring. To those that have seen All ARound Helper, it sort of looks like EGO derived from that particular Abnormality. Hod herself seems a little uncomfortable using the EGO, especially since it comes a little pre-splattered with blood that never belonged to anyone. Angela has come along as well. She is determined to complete this adventure for Audrey while being actually present. She's been to all the other steps so far so she's not going to skip out on them now. This way she can help repay the debt she owes Audrey and she also gets to adventure! And that's important. Even if she's not entirely sure she's doing adventuring correctly but at least she's having a good time. It's good company, for the most part. "Do not worry, Hod. It is EGO. The limbs should respond naturally to your instinct." Angela says. She is wearing her usual Librarian Uniform, seemingly content on relying on her personal EGO for the time being rather than delving into using others--or multiple others--directly in the way Gebura tends to. Her eyes watch Fourth Match Flame for a long moment as it's drawn before ultimately nodding to Petra's suggestion that she use her abilities to break in. "Unfortunately, breaking and entering is a skill I've never had the occassion to practice." Angela says dryly. "Ahah....well... Me neither actually? At least nothing like this." Hod admits. "Um...Audrey .... Are you worried ... You're gonna get cursed? ... Crypts usually have curses right?" At least in fiction but Hod's experiences have taught her that fiction can be quite non-fiction in the current circumstances of her life. Angela looks at the pirahna plant. Petunia Pirahna Plant. "What is she even mad about?" She asks the universe more than Petunia. "Well nice to meet you Petunia." She seems ambivalent about Sarracenia and so Angela already feels sympathy towards her.
White	White nods gently at Audrey's assertion, and follows through on the idea; pointing out the one that stands out is as easy as pointing her finger, and from there she starts naturally helping Kukuru with the search for little holes. White... Can see through the gate, and could save them this trouble, but... Well, Kukuru is a sweetheart, and White doesn't exactly want to be doing *everything* for the group even from this early on. Plus, this way she gets to see how everyone else solves problems! She can see in the dark too, so she peers across the other side of the entrance, opposite from Kukuru and away from the light Audrey is holding.      She does start to slowly step back when she notices the bomb being half-heartedly played with by their unfamiliar new plant-helper Petunia, but that particular concern is verbally disarmed before long. Petra, meanwhile, asks about her and Kukuru's vision and gets a small nod and a brief thumbs up, though for some reason her mouth curves downward slightly. After the gleam in her eyes fades out (she has to turn off the Evil Eye to look directly at Petra without feeling needles in her brain!) she seems to be looking almost directly at the makeshift torch. Isn't it a pretty common foible to bring an open flame underground? Aren't there like, dangerous flammable gasses, or the risk of smoke buildup? Should she... Say something?      Well, she'll think about it. Maybe see if anyone starts choking or something. Maybe Petra knows something she doesn't! On the plus side, Petra does seem to have exactly the rogueish type of skill White would've expected from her- it isn't lockpicking, but making a false key is basically the same thing in spirit. She even gestures the 'go ahead' with a small sweep of her upturned hand; she fully respects the 'just jiggle it until it works' school of skullduggery.
Kukuru	"Petunia Piranha Plant." "He-llo, Petuniaaa. My name's Kukuru." Pause. "That's Ku-ku-ru. It's nice to meet you... Oh, you're one of Sarra's friends, right? Or hired... 'd's. Hmm. Is she making sure to eat and rest up alright?" A little bit a later, and she holds her hand up. "No explosions, dear. All that burning couldn't have been good for this place staying all shapey, and blowing it up might make it reaaally hard to find anything if it all comes apart." "Kukuru, White, do you guys just see in the dark?" "Mhm! Almost everyone at home can." Kukuru replies to Petra with a light chuckle, tapping on her temple once like that actually explains anything. "Although mom and dad have a muuuch easier time with it. Maybe it's because they don't have eyes...?" A pause, then a shrug. "I wonder... Oh. Whiiite. Does that hurt to look through?" She asks, pointing at her own eyes before closing and opening her hands once. "That... Little glow there." "It'd take weeks to properly archive all the info here, and... verifying it with the records of surrounding towns, or survivors if we can find them...." Kukuru keeps looking for a while longer, then pauses again when she hears that. "Mm? Oh... My handwriting's not super good, but I can help get all those records updated."  She offers with a gentle and slightly surprised smile. "Unfortunately, breaking and entering is a skill I've never had the occassion to practice." "Oh, Ange! Hod! Someone back home showed me these neat little videos about opening locks without a key. Maybe those could help get you both started." Kukuru pauses to tap her chin. "We might have some locks around town that never got put back on, too..."
White	White seems slightly puzzled by what Kukuru means for a moment, glancing her way and freezing absentmindedly in thought. The little gleam of her Evil Eyes flickers a couple of times, like someone's playing with a light switch inside her skull, and she shakes her head.
Audrey Basque	"Auudrey, he-lloooo... Are you staying cool enough?"     "I'm okay! Actually this outfit's pretty cozy, but maybe the cloak WAS a bit much for this." But in retrospect, maybe she does need a bigger wardrobe.     Something Petra's been trying to push onto her for months now, and that she's still barely coming around to doing anything about. Kukuru looking for holes.     There are none! It's an expertly sealed, expertly crafted, obnoxiously large door. Even the keyhole doesn't let you peek in! Perhaps they were worried about smells coming from inside, or something. Petunia Piranha Plant     "O-Oh," Audrey says, trying not to wear her own pettiness on her sleeves. "Well, please let the princess know I appreciate it very much," she responds, indicating by doing so that she is Audrey, presumably. "I would... perhaps avoid explosives, unless direly necessary, since this place seems quiet ancient. But I trust you to use your best judgment, as the princess' representative."     An apology, huh.     Audrey looks at Angela, a bit flatly.     Yeah... an apology... "The Spinning Star's not gonna cause Hydrochoeria to burn up or anything, right?"     "H-Huh? No! I'm pretty sure... I mean the staff is still sealed. It can't have caused this. This doesn't mention a curse, just that it needed to be urgently sealed by order of... "The King". How helpful." Petra jiggles the lock.     After a minute of trying, the door clicks, and rumbles as it opens. Dust, wind and bats escape the crypt, exposing a long staircase going down.     "Oh. Good work, Petra!" Audrey cheers. "I don't even remember what she's mad about. Audrey?" "What is she even mad about?"     Audrey scratches the back of her head, a bit embarrassed. "Oh, I, might have yelled at her. A bit. She was... trying to help me, but, at the wrong time, and the wrong way." Read: got between her and Petra. "Um...Audrey .... Are you worried ... You're gonna get cursed?"     "W-Well, I *wasn't*, but now I am. I don't THINK this place is cursed, I'm not picking up... I mean it IS a place of power, but it's not like..." Okay it's got SOME evil stuff going on but that's just how ancient crypts are. "I think we'll be okay."
Audrey Basque	YOU HAVE GAINED ENTRY TO THE CRYPT.     Of course the air inside would be dry and dusty, though there's, bless your luck, no awful smells unless you count said dust. Stairs lead down, a bit crooked and damaged, into the dark depths, for a good five minutes.     After entirely too many stairs, and hopefully no tumbles down, the party reaches a long hallway; both left and right, ornate, overdesigned sarcophagi remain sealed shut, with dates on them implying these are former kings (of course it'd be kings) for thousands of years back. The dust certainly makes that seem likely.     There are torches along the walls, unlit, you could light if you want to; otherwise, you're basically in the dark, minus whatever light you've got. Audrey has her trusty flashlight and it's really not doing all that much. Petra's torch definitely works.     To Petra's likely approval, there are various inscriptions on the walls, detailing a long and vague history of cataclysms and rebuildings. This may not be the first time the castle is torched to the ground. A lot of it's old and cracked, images, not words.     Reaching the end of the hallway splits it left and right, though in the end both paths converge back into the next room, another long room lined with sarcophagi, these ones damaged. There's also a huge crack into the earth, as the floor breaks off into what seems like a bottomless chasm.     The crack is about ten meters across (it's a big room!), and likely the result of an earthquake and not an intended hazard.     What IS an intended hazard is when floor tiles start rising from the ground and begin bombarding you like hard stone frisbees. And it's entirely too many of them! Though... you could certainly last it out, or pre-emptively destroy them all. There aren't infinite floor tiles here, they'll run out!
Sarracenia	'Sorry you got dragged into her bullshit tantrum. I don't even remember what she's mad about. Audrey? I'm Petra, anyways.'      As she is squinted at Petunia just keeps chewing her gum before she shrugs at the apology. "Eh, it's whatever. She's paying me, and I don't work for chump change."      'What is she even mad about? Well nice to meet you Petunia.'      Petunia shrugs once again. "No idea. She gets mad over so many things it's hard to know. Nice to meet you, though."      'He-llo, Petuniaaa. My name's Kukuru." Pause. "That's Ku-ku-ru. It's nice to meet you... Oh, you're one of Sarra's friends, right? Or hired... 'd's. Hmm. Is she making sure to eat and rest up alright?'      At the question, Kukuru also receives a shrug. "I'unno. I wouldn't say we are friends. Or acquaintances. I met her, I guess, then came out here. But yeah, nice to meet you, Kukuru."      'Well, please let the princess know I appreciate it very much,'      Petuna gives a light, dismissive nod. "Sure, yeah."      'No explosions, dear.'      'I would... perhaps avoid explosives, unless direly necessary, since this place seems quiet ancient. But I trust you to use your best judgment, as the princess' representative.'      Petunia sighs and puts the bob-omb away. Apparently the plant and the princess have at least one thing in common. Maybe that is why Petunia was hired. "Well, all I really brought are bombs and fireballs and stuff. I'll try not to burn or explode anything important."      'I think we'll be okay.'      As the door opens and bats fly out, Petunia follows after the others. "Curses, huh? If I get cursed I'm charging the princess extra. I know she's good for it." she says as she pulls out a fire flower. She blows another bubble and as it pops she's engulfed in a puff of smoke leaving her in appropriately fiery colors. She lights the torches as they go down. "Seems about equal chances trap and secret switch, so may as well right? Plus if not we have light so, win win."      When they reach the bottom Petunia looks around at the writing. "Neat. Bet these are worth something to someone." she says and takes out a phone to start taking pictures. Though, she quickly puts it away when those tiles start floating up. The plant pulls out a couple of bob-ombs. "Seems like a dire need to me." she says calmly, then chucks them at the tiles. Or...is that just the floor. "You guys can all fly or something if this collapses, right? Eh, I've got feathers if not." she says even as she pulls out a couple more bob-ombs.
Angela	Angela seems skeptical about the matter of apologies. Even after Audrey admits fault. "Mm... well do as you feel is appropriate." ''I think we'll be okay.'' Hod seems more nervous after this explanation rather than less. "Ahah....when you put it like that..." Hod says, beads of sweat dripping down her neck--she smiles at Kukuru and adds, "Um... Thanks for the advice. Maybe I'll check it out?" She is not planning on looking up how to pick locks at least not yet. How often does she really expect to be confronted with locked doors? ... Locked doors that can be handled with a pick? Not that often. "It is likely best for me to focus on my own strengths." Is Angela's own gentle rejection of the plan right now. She pats a hand on Hod's shoulder and promises her, "Remember. I will not let you die so most curses are likely to not be problematic for you." Hod lets out an enlongated sigh, her shoulders slouching miserably. INTO THE CRYPT Angela moves forward confidently with a, "Good work." To Petra. In truth, the real reason she's not worried is because White and Petra are around. She's very confident in the latter and the former feels like she'd be kind of ... ideal at handling this sort of scenario? Angela slows down once she notices the inscriptions. YEah, she's also quite interested in it. She makes sure to read as much as she can without falling too far behind, reluctantly. Put enough lore in front of her and you can keep her busy for too long. *CRUNCH* A tile slams into Angela's body, shattering against her body. Angela walks forward, fanning her arms to the side with a dull expression as tiles continuously slam into her body. Hod, of course, is not lucky to be protected by Angela and yelps in fear as she runs around, her terrible metal arms ocassionally slicing through a tile as she flees from side to side trying to avoid flying tiles. She is not actually a fighter by nature, EGO aside. As the camera fixes on other characters, Hod can frequently be seen dodging and weaving and freaking out in the background.
Petra Soroka	"Unfortunately, breaking and entering is a skill I've never had the occassion to practice."     "I can teach you sometime!" Petra cheerily responds to Angela, while sticking the big key in the lock. What she is doing is, actually, lockpicking-- once inside the lock, she doesn't try and mimic the shape of the original key or whatever. She just splits the head of the fake key into a pick and tension tool, working the morphmetal inside the lock until it eventually clicks. She just makes it *look* like she's using a funny big key to do it, because of Xion.     "I've done so much breaking and entering. A kind of ridiculous amount, actually. I'm kind of an expert on going into people's houses when they don't want me there." "Maybe it's because they don't have eyes...?"     "Figures. I guess you were lucky to get the recessive 'having eyes' genes. Or unlucky, maybe." "This doesn't mention a curse, just that it needed to be urgently sealed by order of... "The King"."     "Maybe he wanted it sealed because of a curse!" Despite complaining about potentially bringing a cursed object to Hydrochoeria, Petra seems very excited about the prospect that it might be. "I mean, some ancient fuckoff treasure, 'sealed away' in the *royal tomb*, by someone so long ago that they're just called 'the King'. Seems like they were building a village on top of an evil cursed staff." "She was... trying to help me, but, at the wrong time, and the wrong way."     Petra snickers, immediately understanding the unspoken context. She sheathes her key at her hip, where it dissolves back into her bottle, and pushes open the unlocked doors. "God, she's *such* a loser. And to think you would've been such an easy mark for her if not for me. And I bet she's totally convinced herself that she's completely right and you're just cruel and irrational for no reason, just like everyone else is around her. What a creep." "I don't THINK this place is cursed, I'm not picking up..."     "Wait, you can sense curses? Can you make them? Can you curse things? Could you curse my sword?"     Yay! Torches on the walls! Petra diligently touches her own makeshift torch to each one to light them up, properly filling out exploration progress through the dungeon by hitting every marker. She pulls her shirt up to cover her mouth and cough, probably because of the dust, but her dumb ass is not thinking about the smoke being a problem in an underground enclosed space at all. She is, seemingly, in very good spirits, bouncing down the stairs and holding her torch up to inscriptions on the walls to slowly read them out loud by firelight.     "This is *wild*," Petra hisses under her breath, while scanning through sarcophagus after sarcophagus. "There's gotta be thousands of years of this shit down here. I mean, I know Earth's got thousands of years old records and stuff, but I never *see* it. This is total fucking Library material."     When confronted with launching floor tiles, Petra puts a hand on her hip, fiddling with the grip of her revolver with the other. "Well, I mean, we're not really pressed for time. I figure we can just identify the mechanism that's firing them, and try to disable it or destroy the ammunition, and-- Ange?! Angela!! Did you forget I have to--?!"     Petra is immediately abandoned by the person she has to stick close to or else she keels over dead. Petra, of course, cannot walk into a barrage of stone disks, and staggers momentarily from the sudden psychic overflow causes by the growing distance between them. She hastily rushes out behind Angela, gripping onto her shoulders and ducking behind her to use her as a shield while stone shrapnel flies to either side of her.     "A warning would be nice next time, sis..." Petra complains while pulling feathers out of her throat. "I'm not actually invincible like you are."
White	White gives Petra a 'thank you' quarter-bow when the door comes open. The talk of curses doesn't worry her overmuch; keeping an eye out for traps and hazards is habit for her, and usually curses are a sort of deterrent, so they should be avoidable with some care, she thinks. Well, she'd be pretty distressed if not...      With that in mind, White walks ahead of Petra and Angela for the time being and focuses on watching with the Evil Eye for signs of traps or ambushes, trying to peek ahead through the walls into upcoming chambers. The glow of her eyes is subtle but visible to the others in the dark, so she might eventually end up spooking someone, but the darker it gets the more the glow dims; she wouldn't have been a very good stealth hunter as a monster if her eyes gave away her location constantly!      That leg of the delve into the crypt seems to go smoothly, but arriving in the sarcophagus chamber is another story. She's barely even begun checking the corners and the sarcophagi themselves before the floor tiles rebel against their fate of being trodden upon! Fortunately while being struck with stone tiles isn't *pleasant*, it's not the worst thing that could have happened. The first one to fly her way gets smashed under her clenched fist in a slightly awkward hammerblow, and while she'd like not to scuff her hands up doing this the quarters are a little tight for her to whip out her main weapon. And she'd like to make an obstruction with webs or stone, but...      Well, she can see behind herself, not to mention hear, when bombs start being brought out. Given how utterly humiliating it would be for some of the group to get caught in those explosions because she was trying to block the tiles, White has to hold off on typical defensive measures and settle for less, wrapping steely webbing around her fists mostly for comfort while she keeps punching other tiles down in brisk sweeps of her arm. Her dress is made of the same stuff, so at least it doesn't tear easily in the process if she fumbles a little bit. She also tries to prioritize making sure Audrey's head isn't cracked open until she can get her own defenses going, and then making some minor efforts here and there to keep Angela or Petra from being hit mostly out of courtesy; Angela would be fine, but it somehow feels unladylike not to dodge at all... One *could* criticise her for protecting Angela over someone else, but she only has two arms (right now) and she's never pretended not to pick favorites.      She'd like to slow the tiles down with the Heavy Evil Eye, but unfortunately if she does so it might just make someone else take a harder hit than expected if the velocity is too much to nullify, so she has to hold off for now. If Petunia's bombs don't cause some kind of accident, and they deal with the tiles all at once comfortably, all the better. If not, White is more than content just waiting the situation out unless something changes.
Kukuru	"The Spinning Star's not gonna cause Hydrochoeria to burn up or anything, right?" "This doesn't mention a curse, just that it needed to be urgently sealed by order of... "The King"." "That could be tricky... Do we have anything we could put it in if we need to?" Kukuru asks while putting her cooler full of food and drinks away, whisking it away into a pocket once it looks like nobody else is grabbing stuff out of it. "She was... trying to help me, but, at the wrong time, and the wrong way." Kukuru hums softly, a tired smile returning to her face. Or was it there the whole time? Probably the latter, even though she's really trying to fight off the drowsiness. "Hearing that could help smooth things over, I thiiink. Talking openly'll help, mhm." "Maybe I'll check it out?" "It is likely best for me to focus on my own strengths." "I can teach you sometime!" "Hehe... Okaaay. I dunno how useful any of it could be for us, but the people in the videos sounded like they were having lots of fun, mhm." Beaming slightly at Petra's enthusiasm on the matter compared to Hod and Angela, Kukuru claps her hands together once before squinting at another section of the gate. "It could even be a fun little bonding activity. Playing with locks, going into places without teleporting, coming back out without anyone noticing... It sounds kind of exciting, doesn't it?" "Figures. I guess you were lucky to get the recessive 'having eyes' genes. Or unlucky, maybe." Kukuru chuckles, but it's a dinstictly conflicted one compared to her usual airheaded sort. "Hehe... Yeah, I guess. I got a loooot of things different, for sure." She answers with a slight twist of her mouth, like she's not sure whether or not to hide a frown and just ends up scrunching her mouth up instead. INTO THE CRYPT Unlike before, Kukuru visibly grimaces at the stench of dust and ancient air hitting her nose. Corpses and rust are one thing, but all this dryness is doing a number on her sinuses. Wearing white in here was a terrible idea in retrospect, even though she doesn't actually tumble down those stairs even once. She moves along at a relatively brisk pace, hand pressed and occasionally dragged along a nearby wall for stability and support. Kukuru also does her best to keep everyone within eyesight, of course, committed to making sure nobody gets lost even while she doesn't bother with any sort of extra illumination. When she sees the big crack on the way into the long room, Kukuru moves forward about as quickly as she ever has to reach out and grab anyone that even looks like they might tumble. It takes another four or five seconds for her to actually remember to call out "Hooooole." "I wonder who put this here... That must've been really annoying to work around." Kukuru observes incorrectly, somehow convinced that such a hole could even be a common workplace hazard. Ignorant of the tile coming towards her, Kukuru steps forward and starts to open a portal to the other side before getting whacked right in the head with a tile. Whining lightly at the sudden pain, she gets beaned with a few more before realizing that the tile are, in fact, coming from straight ahead. "Maybe explosions...? Owie. Small explosions? Just-oof-to stop the floor from attacking us." Kukuru suggests to Petunia even as she takes her claws out to start slapping the tiles out of the air, possibly even smashing them on impact with how annoyed-fast some of her swings get. She'll wait until after the tile-menacing is over before opening up a proper teleportation cloud, too, ready to ferry everyone over to the other side that might need a hand getting past the big hole.
Audrey Basque	Hod lets out an enlongated sigh, her shoulders slouching miserably.     It's Audrey's turn to be the one to give a reassuring shoulder pat tonight. "It's funny how reassuring statements can be scary anyway, huh?" "Wait, you can sense curses? Can you make them? Can you curse things? Could you curse my sword?"     Audrey avoids talking too much ill of the princess while in the company of the princess' hired muscle, but it's clear from the smiles she's picking up on Petra's vibes. Or maybe she's just happy not to be the loser, this time. Instead she focuses on the question: "H-Huh? No! I just mean-- usually, if you put a curse on like... a place, it becomes part of that place. I can't really sense that here. There's corruption, but not a curse. This is pretty common around like, really old graveyards and such." "That could be tricky... Do we have anything we could put it in if we need to?"     "Oh, yeah, I can just put it in my cape or something."     It's like a bag of holding! Petunia and Petra light up the torches.     A CHEST APPEARS, once every single torch is lit. No, really, a chest just materializes out of thin air, on the other side of the chasm. If someone braves it, the chest contains A KEY. It's a regular, ye olde style silver key. It probably fits into something or another somewhere in here! You should hold on to it. THE TILES.     Petunia unleashes BOMBS. This is terrible for some of the sarcophagi, two of which explode in a shower of... that's not gold coins! Those are gems! There's green ones, and blue ones, and rarer red ones. Do they just bury their kings with money here? Gems, specifically? But damage to the history of the crypt aside, bombs are very effective and reducing the amount of floor tiles that are flying about. Angela acting as a human shield is good cover, and Audrey can be caught sometimes catching the tiles with her own magic and sending them flying back at other tiles. Having cover from White certainly helped her catch her breath. Kukuru and White aren't slacking either; with this many hands on deck destroying the tiles, it's only a minute or two before there's none left to launch at you. It wasn't a mechanism! Just... magic. Seems like a really inefficient and only-fires-once kind of trap, though. THE CHASM.     Petunia offers feathers, for those who can't fly! Audrey simply teleports across, refracting like she's stepping in and out of a broken mirror, slightly pearlescent. And then Kukuru can ferry people across too. So that chasm is barely an obstacle!
Audrey Basque	The crypt depths are a bit more spacious than the rooms leading in; there's no deep chasm into the bowels of the Earth, but the massive main room is like a mall, with three different levels, massive stone columns, and countless side paths leading into smaller chambers where individual kings (and sometimes, queens!) are entombed. It's big, but between collapsed staircases, columns that have cracked and fallen down to block paths, and a rare cave-in or two, a lot of it's inaccessible, unless you're willing to spend a long time clearing paths you likely don't need to.          "It's a pretty safe bet we're looking for one of the deeper chambers, but we can always come back and check each of these rooms later or... something," she trails off, realizing she's off-handedly suggesting desecrating the tombs of possibly hundreds of ancient kings and queens. That's how you end up cursed, Hod already brought it up! Audrey's still fairly sure it's *fine*, but couldn't say for sure. It is her first crypt, after all.     At the far end of the large chamber is a set of double doors, creaked half-open already. There's clanking on the other side, slow shuffles, hollow thuds and metallic echoes like weapons trailing along the ground. Whoever decides to fully open the doors first to look-- or even whoever just creeps up to spy through the half-open door-- gets a ZOMBIE JUMPSCARE.     It's a thin, tall, lanky, mummified one, with enough of its jaws left to SCREAM. It's an awful scream, even, high-pitched, supernatural, capable of inflicting straight up paralysis! And if it works, the creature attempts to leap at whoever it was!     Behind it are dozens of skeletons warriors, most wearing bits and pieces of once great golden ornamental armor, with triangular iconography on most of them. Swords, axes, spears; they've been alerted, and they start pouring in through the doorway.
Angela	Angela's opinion on picking locks changes immediately. Well, not really. She doesn't think it's a skill she really needs, but she's happy to do activities with Petra. What she's excited for is to learn how to pick locks from Petra more than actually learning how to pick locks in of itself. "That could be fun. Let's do that, sometimes." Angela says, a faint smile flickering on her lips. "You have a great many skills, Petra. But more than that, you know how to properly leverage them. And that is not a skill I am sure can be taught." Angela startles. "Was I too far? ...Sorry, Eonni...It's hard for me to judge the distance. Are you okay?" She hadn't meant to move forward so far. "Perhaps I should get in the habit of saying when I intend to move. 'Moving Forward Now. Moving Back in ten.'. That sort of thing." But in truth she does see Petra as a kind of invincible. "Yes. I will endeavour to do that in the future." Hod had given Audrey a long nod, now she's shrieking her name while running away from tiles. Eventually she hides behind Petra who is hiding behind Audrey. MEANWHILE AT THE LIBRARY A number of shelves suddenly tumble over. Malkuth swears under her breath. "Angela....!" HERE STILL Angela doesn't take a feather. She is now being extra careful to not move on from Petra. She actually reaches out to hold her hand to make it harder for her feet to lead her astray.
Sarracenia	'God, she's *such* a loser. And to think you would've been such an easy mark for her if not for me. And I bet she's totally convinced herself that she's completely right and you're just cruel and irrational for no reason, just like everyone else is around her. What a creep.'      "She can be both of those for sure." Petunia agrees, then blows another bubble and lets it pop. "She really needs to get a grip sometimes. And what is that 'aspiring hero' stuff about? She is soooo not the hero type."      Petunia manages to explode most of the tiles, but a few slip past and smash against her, staggering her whenever they hit. "Nng. Wow, that stings." she says, holding a place on her side after the last hit. "But hey, explosions worked." she says, giving Kukuru a leafy thumbs up. She's not magical or observant enough to realize she might have interfered with White.      The chest appears, and Petunia immediately calls out, "Dibs!" Once the tiles are dealt with, she pulls out a feather as she charges toward the chasm. She is engulfed in a puff of smoke and emerges wearing a golden cape, and with a practiced leap she flies right over the chasm and on to the chest, leaving a few feathers where she jumped for any who can't just fly or jump over.      She collects the key, then looks around at all the gems. "Sweet. Finders keepers." She doesn't really ask anyone before she starts collecting plenty of those as well. Once her duffle is in danger of overflowing she finally stops.      At the double doors, Petunia stops a good distance away and blows another bubble. Pop. "Yeah, I'm not going first here. How about you, invincible lady?" she says, looking toward Angela.
White	White settles quickly once the tiles stop moving, doing a quick check for any more magical ones that might hit them in the ass but letting her hands drop from something adjacent to an amateur boxing pose once they're clear. The threads wrapped around her hands untwine and weave together into a plain cloth, and she briefly checks that the others are okay, particularly stepping around Kukuru to look at the spot where the tile got her in the head before. Kukuru has the cloth given to her so she can wipe her face if needed, and then she's back to business.      The key found earlier could be in anyone's possession and it wouldn't bother her, though she does admittedly consider stealing the treasure chest... The only reason she doesn't, is it feels a bit like trying to steal an animatronic from a theme park ride. It's part of the experience! The hole in the ground, of course, isn't an obstacle to her. *Bwip* goes the little flicker of blue-violet magical light of her teleportation, and she's there with Audrey again. The others have plenty of ways across, but she'll help if needed.      Moving on ahead, White is back to her security duty, and thereby notices the mummified undead and its bony friends early by peering through the doors from across the room. The main sign of the danger she gives the others is preemptively aligning an airborn array of dark magic spells overhead, ready to fire on the enemy once they come into view! ... But she doesn't say anything aloud, because she simply doesn't think to, and assumes others will take the cue from her visible glyphs.      Unfortunately, the only thing protecting her from the paralysis is distance, but fortunately if it's only her body being impeded, her magic is barely hindered at all. Still, it might keep her from directly helping if someone does get grabbed immediately. While she'd like to use Black Bullets (her easy to use, explosive spells), the lingering concerns about damaging the crypt make her resort to the safer, more precise Black Spears instead; the impact and penetration is enough to go through multiple targets when aimed well, and the decaying effect makes it effective even when grazing a skeletal target.
Petra Soroka	"...Sorry, Eonni...It's hard for me to judge the distance. Are you okay?"     "Mhm, I'm alright." Once the barrage of tiles peters down to nothing and Petra avoids being beaned in the head by a sharp corner of stone that would kill her instantly through Angela's shielding and White's assistance, she droops her head on Angela's shoulder. She's much more drained by *not* participating in disabling this trap than she would be if she'd gotten bruised and scraped up by it.     "I don't think you need to tell me every time you move. Just, like, if you're about to walk somewhere that'll kill me immediately. Like off a cliff. Or into a giant fire. Like, I'll survive if you give me a sec to prepare, but I'm not even wearing EGO or anything."     Petra squeezes Angela's hand, and waves for Kukuru to teleport them across the chasm. Petra could just wallrun it, but then she'd be painfully far from Angela!     "Oh shit. A treasure chest." Petra wanders towards it, drawn inexorably in by the allure of Reward, and then pauses. This hesitation gives Petunia more than enough time to grab it herself. "Why the fuck is there a treasure chest here? Who made this place? Is that some dead person treasure? This is a fucking crypt, why would they encourage *looting* it? I'm not fucking touching that. No way. ... Oh, it's just a key. Weird."     Now that she's recovered from the psychic shock, Petra can bitch about the monetized nature of the crypt more freely. "And what was with that explosion? I mean, I wouldn't be thrilled about blowing up some ancient coffins, but those were just piñatas of fucking money. This is some con artist shit. If I'm not satisfied by this place's fucking lore when I come back and comb through it, I'm gonna blow it all to fucking smithereens. I'll make it so this place never existed." "It's a pretty safe bet we're looking for one of the deeper chambers, but we can always come back and check each of these rooms later or... something,"     "It's okay. I've desecrated worse," Petra says offhand, as if reading Audrey's mind. "Though I'd rather have the chance to study them first."     Petra has... very little resistance to being scared by the undead! When the zombie's scream pierces through the crypt, Petra shrieks and tightens her grip around Angela's arm into a side-hug. Being girlishly scared is connected to the neural pathway for infinite retributive ultraviolence, though, and her flinch response includes grabbing her revolver, rapidly thumbing the cylinder full of Silver bullets, and then emptying the entire cylinder in the direction of the zombie and skeletal soldiers, where the telekinetically controlled bullets veer to pierce through and home in on multiple targets, precise enough to shatter bone rather than passing through.     "Come on!!! Who the fuck was that! That was a *guy*! Whose corpse is that!" Petra pouts and fumes. "I guess we're probably going the right way at least. But are they *defending* the Spinning Star?"
Kukuru	A CHEST APPEARS Is it brave if Kukuru can just vwoop over there? She absolutely will if nobody else goes to grab it, leaving the contents of the chest for Petunia while taking the chest itself. It's something she could sell later, after all, and it might even be valuable for storing more stuff! "If the Spinning Star is really dirty, we could put it in here instead of your cape." Or that. PETRA WAVES That's all it takes for Kukuru to make sure Petra and Angela both get across at the same time, and she even holds in a quiet giggle for after they're safely on the other side of the chasm. GEMS The temptation is so strong to take some of them. Kukuru knows it's wrong, but they're so shiny and probably valuable. Would they really miss them? She peeks into the sarcophagi they come out first, though, to make sure there's nobody inside moving around to try and reclaim them. The undead need gems, too, and Kukuru was taught better than to steal from them! If there aren't any undead coming out to gather up their gems, though, she is absolutely going to gather up those gems into the chest to bring back home and pawn off later. Clearly, Kukuru isn't as worried about getting cursed as Audrey is, and all those tile-inflicted wounds  are totally unrelated to this. Probably. "Thank you, White... Aah, where did you learn how to punch like that? Does it hurt wearing those like that?" She asks while taking the cloth from her gratefully, dabbing at her bruises and cuts even as they're stitching together right then and there. She circulates some healing nanites around, too, focusing a healthy dose of them into White's hands in particular. SKELETON WARRIORS At first, Kukuru's pleased to see so many walking undead! She greets them with a pleasant wave and bright smile, approaching the shambling creatures without a care in the world. She only gets out a drowsily cheerful "he-" out before they start attacking, though, and she lets out confused and disgruntled noises once she realizes they might not actually be friendly. "Ow, heeey. That's not very polite, you know. Cut that out." Kukuru firmly chides the undead, even going as far as trying to reach into what little/any semblance of minds they might still have to try and convince them that we're friends here, so please let us through. We have important work to do, okay? With her healing prowess, she's even heading straight in to try and weather their first attacks at moderate risk to herself! If they're insistent on biting and stabbing her, though, she'll start swinging those claws around just like she did with the tiles. The zombies get treated more harshly than the skeletons, weirdly enough.
Sarracenia	She may not have gone first, but Petunia still gets stunned by that zombie scream that seems right out of another Nintendo franchise. After a few moments to shake it off, which she spends watching White and Kukuru and Petra unload on them, it looks like there are a lot more undead than she thought. And from the sounds she already thought it was a lot. "Ugh. Undead. So gross." she says in her bordering on cheerleader accent. "Who's corpse it is doesn't really matter, does it? It is trying to make us even more dead than it is. And I'm not about to miss out on cashing in all this loot."      Petunia gives Kukuru a look that would definitely be raised eyebrow if Petunia had eyes or brows. "Undead aren't known for their reasonableness. We're better off just getting rid of them." she says, and pulls out another fire flower. A steady stream of fireballs follows with Petunia backing up to keep plenty of distance between the skeletons and herself. And not so secretly using the others as a shield.
Angela	"I don't make a habit of going off of cliffs. ... Or into fire. ... THough I suppose I did go into fire." Angela frowns. She seems happy to receive a teleportation rather than risking flight or some other method. Angela hesitates at Petunia's suggestion and then looks to Petra and then shakes her head. She is now in the mood for excessive caution and is now exercising it. "It is strange there is a treasure chest. But I suppose that is part of the adventure? Hm... Perhaps the people down here wanted to be buried with their treasure but why would they put it in something so designed to attract looters?" ''And what was with that explosion? I mean, I wouldn't be thrilled about blowing up some ancient coffings, but those were just pinatas of fucking money.'' "Truly," Angela says. "There is no respect for the dead anymore." She says this right before Petra says she's desecrated worse. "We are respectful tomb raiders." Angela adds. "Thank you for the assist, by the by, Kukuru." Hod, meanwhile, grabs onto Petra during ZOMBIE SCREAM. She is so scared. But she lets go shortly after when she realizes oh they're only zombies and skeletons out to murder them, not curse them. "O-oh this actually isn't so bad--" She decides, shortly before she uses her horrible metal blades to start cleaving through them. "Perhaps it is intentional emotional assault." Angela suggests. "Frighten the intruders to make them act inefficiently when dealing with the skeleton warriors."
Audrey Basque	"I'll make it so this place never existed."     (?) The Hylian Kings of old will remember that. "But are they *defending* the Spinning Star?"     "I-I don't know!" Audrey, who is straight up paralyzed from the awful, horrible screech for a moment, tries her best to guess. "It might be like... because of the sky outside, ambient corruption leaking in, or they're defending the place, or..."     Your guess is as good as hers. THE UNDEAD.     White planned ahead! Being briefly stunned doesn't matter when you've set up spells in advance, and dark spears plow into the undead with-- reduced efficiency, presumably some kind of mild magic resistance, but still enough force to shatter a few of the skeletons apart. The main zombie seems tougher! In a game you'd surely complain it has no business tanking hits, it's a *zombie*. And yet there it is, not a muscular, armored warrior but a thin, frail-looking though exceptionally tall mummified zombie.     Petra, on the other hand, has cool seeker bullets. They're not weak to morphmetal, but they don't resist it either! The lanky zombie at the front takes a few bullets with ease, continuing to shamble and try to grab someone to... well, you should avoid finding out. But the skeletons are a lot easier to break, especially when the bullets curve and keep going and going.     Kukuru finds that these undead have no mind! They're bodies, not honor-bound undead protecting a tomb. Animated by ambient dark magic, perhaps the same that burned the town. Her claws and strength will do the job, though, slicing through the horde of skeletons without much trouble! She even scores a few good hits on the lankier skeleton, lopping an arm off!     Petunia uses FIRE, which is extremely effective! Not only are the skeletons thinned out, but even the larger zombie takes substantial damage when it's set on fire, its march slowing and its screams stopping.     Angela is spot on, those screamers love to stun prey for either easy picking or their brethren. And Hod is quite well equipped to deal with undead! Those extra arms and blades come in handy, cutting apart the already mangled zombie, and what few skeletons remained. The chunks of golden armor are probably worth a pretty penny, or you could consider them historical artifacts too.
Audrey Basque	With the undead dispatched, it's possible to keep going! Past the doors (for real, this time) is a triangular room, with broken sarcophagi lining the walls. Judging by engravings on the walls, this room was reserved for... royal guards? No, maybe heroes of some nature or another. Though the years on the sarcophagi are all too close together to be from across eras. There's something about a flood, that looks like it might have swallowed the whole world at some point? The room's insisting on it, so it must be the heroes of that particular time.     The room being a triangle, you actually enter it from halfway between two points. There are two doors, between the other points; one of them has a fancy looking lock, matching the key you found earlier. The other one is collapsed in.     In the middle of the room, on a triangular platform a few steps high, is a large treasure chest. It's locked! There's a skeleton chained to it, wearing jester clothes. It's not animated.     Audrey points at the chest, excitedly.     "Wait, that's it! That's the-- look!" She pulls papers out, shining her flashlight to show the exact chest scribbled onto one of them. It's unhelpful in every other way, but the star must be in it.
White	White's response EARLIER, to Kukuru, is quite simple... She shrugs lightly. She never learned from anything except blindly doing, or maybe imitating things she'd seen other people do, or seen on TV. The only reason she can get away with that kind of thing is her superhuman body- she doesn't even really apply footwork when she throws punches. Fortunately her reinforced handwraps reduced whatever minor scuffs her hands might've taken, and her own healing alongside Kukuru's makes even the smallest marks go away so quickly that most of the others probably missed that they were even there. The other question, about whether it hurt to wrap her hands like that, is met with a slightly uncertain head-tilt. It doesn't hurt *her*, no... But she has a different sense of pain these days than most people do. Is she being a bad role model? Maybe she should look up how to wrap her hands more properly...      But, back in THE PRESENT White recovers from her momentary immobility, her mental support chorus going double-time on the spells while she can't pay much mind to using her body. It takes barely a moment to justify the reduced effectiveness of her magic to herself; she too had resistance to Dark magic and vulnerability to Fire, when she was an underground monster. Granted, she wasn't undead...      But, in the end, it's just a modest ambush, and their group is flexible enough to handle it with relative grace. Once the screams stop White is free to pace the perimeter of the group and help finish the job. She never had to deal with undead monsters in her world, so she's not quite sure how careful one has to be to make sure they actually stay dead, and that is easy to infer from how particularly thorough she is about using small Black Bullet blasts to scatter the skeletons' limbs after they're down on the ground, even if she approaches it with all the gravity of someone sweeping up dust.      The group moves on again, and White does her best to stay focused. She'd actually expected more floor spikes, or wall-scythes, or dart shooters, but it doesn't seem like this is that kind of dungeon- she means crypt. It's a little easy to get into the gaming mindset after seeing the chest appear earlier, is all... But, at least she manages to look a little relieved when they arrive in the right place before much longer. She remembers concerns about teleporting the other Stars in previous outings, and considers the chest, the chains and the skeleton. She's tempted to just teleport the chest away from around the Star, but first decides to examine the corpse more closely! Someone who died with that kind of identity-displaying clothing, in such a suspect condition, makes her think there must be something about this arrangement worth knowing, if her Evil Eye can draw conclusions. Or, maybe she'll just get some trivia about a dead jester, but maybe Petra would enjoy that.
Audrey Basque	White's Eye reveals:     Banni     (Formerly) Jester of the royal court     Dead (starvation; roughly 7 years ago)     Notable skills: jester, use magic item
Petra Soroka	"Though I suppose I did go into fire."     "And a little while before that, you went off a cliff." Meaning, in the pyramid on Io when the floor fell out. Petra knows that wasn't Angela's choice, but it was the first thing that really hammered the threat of 'Angela rapidly entering a dangerous situation' into Petra's mind. "Maybe we really should tie our wrists together with rope or something, but I can imagine *so* many ways for that to go terribly wrong. You'd fall off a cliff and I'd get my ass Wile E. Coyote'd on the spot." "Who's corpse it is doesn't really matter, does it?"     Petra pouts at Petunia. Now that she's gotten over the basic primal shock of the undead, she's not really concerned for her life at all, so she's much more worried about *informational* survivability. "Yes it *does*. Like, do you see all of this? Every single one of these people had entire lives, and those lives defined eras that probably thousands or tens of thousands of people had entire lives in. It's practically genocidal to destroy whatever records are left of them."     Once the undead are dealt with (Petra doesn't bother taking out Fourth Match Flame even when it becomes apparent fire is effective; she just spikes out the morphmetal bullets lodged in the big skeleton to do damage over time), Petra scurries over to the armor left in the putrid corpse. Preemptively, she waves off Petunia and whoever else from looting it. "No, no-- no. You can have the gems and whatever. If you find more gems, go ahead and take those. But we're not *melting down* a historical artifact, dude."     Then there's some kind of sacred treasure clown. Petra is much more interested in this than the door she doesn't have the key to open, and she wanders right up the stairs to inspect the jester. She has one hand on her gun just in case it leaps up to start jingling menacingly at her, but when it doesn't, she squats down next to it to examine it more closely.     "Well, now what the hell's up with this guy? It's like everyone's watching him from the sarcophagi around the room. It doesn't seem like a particularly *venerated* position to be in, given the chains, but there's either some intentional dignity or humiliation in the choice to keep the clothes there, that echoes the engravings on the sarcophagi as like, an identifier of the person long after their death. There's so many flood myths across so many worlds, but I dunno any that have clowns involved. But *heroes*... if they're ancient heroes, I doubt this would be a class thing."
Sarracenia	The scream stopping draws a relieved sigh from Petunia. She watches the skeletons and zombie burn and be otherwise destroyed from a safe distance, then blows another bubble before heading inside the last chamber.      'Yes it *does*. Like, do you see all of this? Every single one of these people had entire lives, and those lives defined eras that probably thousands or tens of thousands of people had entire lives in. It's practically genocidal to destroy whatever records are left of them.'      Another bubble pop. "From what I'd heard about you, I thought you hated people. Why are you so gung-ho about preserving their history?" she asks Petra, then shrugs. "Sure. The armor's all yours." She doesn't argue about the armor. If she can get more gems, she doesn't need to. But, she does need a way to get the gems back and multiple trips is a lot of work.      "Hey. Ku-ku-ru, right? You have portals or something. Can you help me get all these gems to a merchant?" She doesn't volunteer a share to Kukuru, but doesn't seem like she'd fight too hard if Kukuru asked for one.      Petra analyzes the layout of the room and the bodies, and Petunia looks around in mild curiousity. "Huh. But, jesters aren't like...respected, right? And heroes aren't always nice. Or even heroic." she says before blowing another bubble. She sees the chest, and wonders. "Do you think this key goes to that?" she asks no one, then approaches the jester and the chest. Whether the key opens it or not, Petunia intends to.
White	White frowns slightly, her eyelids lowering a bit as she reads the analysis result, even murmuring "Starvation..." from beside Petra. In her strange way, she seems to fixate on that, enough to be quite gentle about removing just Banni's corpse from where it's bound; she spins out pale cloth from her silk into brand new burial wrappings and teleports the skeletal remains into them, delicately carrying Banni off to the side of the room where they won't be further disturbed by the inspection of the chest or its contents. "Miss Kukuru," she faintly asks, "Something... For Banni to eat? Please." Assuming Kukuru gives her something, she'll set it alongside the body, like laying out flowers at a grave.      That's the most she can think to do for the dead, though. White is still White, and while she continues to think about it in a corner of her mind, she has other things to think about too. The expressive momentum of that brief moment of effortful sympathy, though, offers her the ability to ask one more thing, "Shall I?" about the sealed chest. She's far from concerned with looting the place; she didn't even give the jewels earlier a second glance while the others were collecting them.
Audrey Basque	Petunia's key does not match the chest's lock!     Perhaps it matches the locked door's though.
Sarracenia	Petunia's key is obviously for that locked door over there, but the chest was still worth a shot. Since it didn't work on the chest she heads over to that door. "There so better not be another of those zombie things in here." she says before opening it.
Audrey Basque	"Well, now what the hell's up with this guy?"     "No idea. He's not mentioned in any of the papers, but..." She raises them, to show that some of them are clearly torn, or otherwise illegible. Possibly because of what destroyed the town! "Shall I?"     "Unless someone has a better idea to open it. Using spatial magic on it might be a bad idea given the staff, but it's not like brute force would be that much better. It might damage it. Unless Petra or Kukuru want to try their luck jiggling this lock open too?"
Petra Soroka	"From what I'd heard about you, I thought you hated people. Why are you so gung-ho about preserving their history?"     Petra rolls her eyes. "Heard from the fucking Princess, you mean? She doesn't know a thing about me. She'll lie for hours and then swear she was telling the truth, and it's impossible to tell whether she's retarded or a morally bankrupt narcissist. The answer's both, though."     "And anyways. I don't go around murdering random people. And 'people' are comprised of information that other people recognize and remember. Even if they're dead, I feel like there's a second sort of death when your existence stops impacting people at all, even if it's in small ways, so not caring about recording this stuff is basically a kind of murder." "Starvation..."     "Huh. Starvation?" Petra steps aside to let White relocate the skeleton, tagging after her to keep theorizing about lore. "So probably they were chained there before they died, with the intention that they'd starve or whatever. But that's weirdly malicious, isn't it? I wonder if they were trespassing? But why them? Why here?" "No idea. He's not mentioned in any of the papers, but..."     "But, yeah, like ninety percent of this whole place wasn't. I guess I can try picking it open. Treasure chests don't even usually have that difficult locks, according to the videos I watched."
Kukuru	White's shrug tells Kukuru quite a lot, even if she might not be able to glean all of the answers from just that gesture. White still gets a giggle out of her, though, along with an understanding nod regardless. "That's okay. Sometimes, just picking up stuff is the way to go... I still need to find more people that fight with these to steal moves from." She clacks her claws together before smacking a skeleton's arm off. The headtilt, meanwhile, gets a smaller chuckle out of Kukuru. "Ah, don't worry. If it hasn't bothered you by now... Well, no, that's not a good way to look at it. Hmm..." She'll need to think that one over a bit more when she isn't busy fighting skeletal guards. "Undead aren't known for their reasonableness." "That's not nice to say, Petunia. There's plenty that are." Kukuru replies curtly, even frowning slightly without even the slightest attempt to hide that this might be a slightly touchy subject for her. The fact that Kukuru's beating up those same undead doesn't seem to change her mind one bit about that. "Can you help me get all these gems to a merchant?" Despite that earlier disapproval, Kukuru still manages a smaller smile and nod towards Petunia. "Of course. I know a few that come by on weekends to buy all our stuff at home, but if you know aaaanyone else that'll buy these directly from us..." Kukuru doesn't need a share. She's been gathering plenty up, too! "Thank you for the assist, by the by, Kukuru." Angela always manages to know how to get her mood right back up, though! Or her timing's just really good. "You're welcooome! Oh, just watch your step if you gotta back up. We don't know how far that hole goes..." She pauses, then glances back at the hole, then shakes her head in quick succession. "No, no time. Gotta focus, because Audrey's counting on us." She affirms with one more pump of her fists, then slaps a skeleton's head right off its body. She doesn't feel as bad about battering apart the undead now, at least. The golden armor gets scooped right up into the chest she's also stealing from this place, of course, because stealing from the dead is apparently less bad to her than stealing from sapient undead. Once the undead are cleared out and the armor is sufficiently harvested, Kukuru trudges along! She does slow down to 'read' the story told by the engravings, though, going all around the triangular room to get a full read before finally looking more closely at the platform with the bigger chest on it. She sets her own chest besides that platform, then peers at the chained jester. "I wonder if the staff used to belong to them... Oh. Maybe they have something to open it up." Kukuru suggests, joining White in checking the jester's corpse. She pats their clothes down gently, seeking out whatever might feel like a key or other small object to retrieve that might help with getting the chest open. She does pause, however, to beam at White when she asks for food. "Of course, dear. Banni, Banni, what would Banni like..." Kukuru asks herself, taking only a moment before figuring out something that'd be perfect for a once-starved skeleton: A full breakfast platter complete with poached eggs, buttered toast, home fries, and a bottle of orange juice that's the only 100% store-bought item.
Audrey Basque	Petulia opens the door!     There's a bunch of treasure chests, unlocked, arranged like they're meant for someone to be able to walk in and just stand between them and flip direction to open them. It's kind of like a storage closet then? Or like a tiny treasury.     One chest contains a BOMB BAG. It stores more bombs than your average bag!!     One chest contains a MEGATON HAMMER. It does what it says.     The last chest contains A LOT OF RUPEES.
Angela	"Well that wasn't ME going off the cliff, that was the ground underneath me going off the cliff." Angela grumbles, if mildly. "But ... It does seem like we are pulled apart by circumstances nearly as often as by choice. Perhaps I should--once we are done helping Audrey--wait some time before going outside again until I've farmed more Light. To make it less dangerous when we step apart from one another. It need not be so far as across a City, but in different positions within a building..." Angela quirks her head at Audrey and adds, "Mm... Are you sure? Because --- it is a jester, after all. Are you sure it's not a joke on us?" Hod says, "Or maybe it's a joking star?"
Audrey Basque	Banni does not in fact have a key!     Or anything of value at all.     Petra is right, though, it's not particularly hard to jiggle this one open, or to ruin the lock and pry it open. And so...     Inside the CHEST is the Spinning Star, a completely yellow magical wand, carved in the shape of a shepherd's cane, more or less. It doesn't look cursed, or particularly evil. It actually looks harmless!     Oh, there's a note in the chest, too.     >> BY ORDER OF THE KING OF HYRULE     >> Banni, former jester of His Majesty, is to be imprisoned post-haste along with the strange magical staff he has been using to prank the court, despite repeated requests to stop.     >> To dissuade would-be looters, and to make an example of him, may he starve chained to the object of his obsession, within the royal crypts.     >> Remove his body afterwards.     >>    - RUSSELL, CAPTAIN OF THE GUARDS     Audrey ohs, looking between the skeletonized jester and the wand. "I... guess they forgot, huh. This is why they locked it here?"     She takes the wand, points it at the chest, and tries to see what it can do. The chest flips upside down with a *doip*.     Audrey squints.     "I mean... it IS technically manipulating space. Kind of. Hang on, can it do anything else...? What if I like..."     With another *doip* she flips the chest back proper.     "No it just does that..."     She tries one more time to be sure.     *doip*     Upside down chest.     "I am... not sure how I feel about this."
White	White nods back to Audrey. "If Miss Petra... Would like." she assents, giving her the right-of-way on chest-cracking techniques after the key is confirmed by Petunia not to work with the chest. She notes the opened treasure-room off to the side, but other than a mild interest in the strangely heavy, stubby hammer there isn't much for her to linger on there... It isn't as if she carries bombs, and more gems are a bit redundant when she's already being paid for her time and cooperation as a Partner. Once the chest does come open, the staff inside proves... Quaintly simple. Though, actually, White does lean in a little bit as her imagination sparks, seeing it flip the chest. She seems more excited than Audrey is, at least in what few ways she can show it! "... Is there... A size limit?" ... Of course she's already thinking about flipping skyscrapers or Gloria-Tetra tanks.      The note, despite Banni's impish behaviors described therein, only manages to cement White's disdain- actually hold on a damn moment, that huge guy at the fete was talking about a Hyrule! They really are awful! The worst! She starts to tense her face in a way that makes her seem like she's holding back petulent irritation, even though she's still looking at the Spinning Star in Audrey's hand. For a short, confusing moment it's like she's really, abnormally annoyed at the funny magic stick, and not contemplating backing yet another dark warlord sometime in the future.
Petra Soroka	> One chest contains a MEGATON HAMMER.     "I'll double whatever the princess is giving you if you give that thing to me and tell her I have a hammer now."     Petra immediately interrupts Petunia's looting of the treasure room, sliding up behind her as if all that rambling about lore and death and humanity didn't matter at all compared to *this*; the elemental core of Petra's being: spite. "I... guess they forgot, huh. This is why they locked it here?"     Petra frowns as Audrey reads the note out, one hand on her hip as she looks over to Banni's corpse. "Well that's... wildly and needlessly cruel," says the girl who is known for never once being needlessly cruel. "I'm glad these suckers got wiped out by some doom apocalypse." "I am... not sure how I feel about this."     "... Oh my god." Petra stands in awe of the staff for a few seconds, as Audrey just pointlessly flips the chest upside down and right side up again. "That's so fucking funny. That's amazing. This is the coolest thing ever. I wonder what horseshit you can get up to with this; like, I wonder what size, or how quickly you can do it, or what happens if you use the wand twice super quickly, or... use it on a person? Try it on me. You gotta."
White	White manages to rouse from her grumpy distraction to the words 'try it on me', and shuts her eyelids briefly to block her Evil Eye while she looks at Petra. "... We should... Get you a helmet..."
Audrey Basque	"Mm... Are you sure? Because --- it is a jester, after all. Are you sure it's not a joke on us?"     "I... ah... I... might be able to get... some kind of... l-like, learn something from it?" She eyes of cane. "I think. It's certainly not doing it my way, so..." She's trying not to say 'maybe it's useful to redecorate'. "... Is there... A size limit?" "I wonder what size, or how quickly you can do it,"     "W-Well, okay, maybe there IS something to study here." "Try it on me. You gotta."     Audrey points the cane at Petra.     It flips her baseball cap upside down with a *doip*.
Kukuru	*doip* Kukuru stares at the wand, then the note in the chest. She reads it over a few times, then watches as Audrey tests the wand. Seeing that chest flipping over, she starts getting an idea, and she digs around in her pockets. "Oh. Audrey, can you make it flip..." A little more digging, and she digs out a frying pan and an egg. "Can someone heat this up? I need to see if it works on juuust the egg." She explains, cracking the egg onto the pan and pausing to look at Petra's flipped cap. "How silly... Hmm. If it can flip eggs without breaking the yolk, though, that could be real useful for..." Kukuru's not sure who it'd help. She can already do that without a funny wand. "... Someone that's bad at flipping eggs?"
Sarracenia	'Heard from the fucking Princess, you mean? She doesn't know a thing about me. She'll lie for hours and then swear she was telling the truth, and it's impossible to tell whether she's retarded or a morally bankrupt narcissist. The answer's both, though.'      Petunia listens to all of that, blowing another bubble in the process. It pops right after Petra finishes. "Actually, it is just from hearing you on the radio. Like I said, I don't really know the princess. I'm not about to go ice cream shopping and fireworks watching with her."      'Even if they're dead, I feel like there's a second sort of death when your existence stops impacting people at all, even if it's in small ways, so not caring about recording this stuff is basically a kind of murder.'      "If you say so. Seems like history remembers mostly the events and not so much the people. But, good on you I guess for trying to keep them alive." Petunia says.      The door opens!      Petunia aquires a Bomb Bag, a Megaton Hammer, and a Lot of Rupees. "Score." she says, stuffing the rupees into the bomb bag and strapping it on before picking up the hammer. "Maybe the princess will pay extra for this hammer. Rumor is she lost her last one." she says, then goes to rejoin the others.      The wand just flipping things makes the piranha plant laugh in that kind of 'are you serious?' way. "That's really all it does? Well, that is definitely good for pranks." she says. She watches the antics for a bit, but then gets curious and goes to check the collapsed in door.
Angela	Angela says, "Yes, it seems like it is not very ..." *doip*. "...Actually." Angela says after a moment. "This could be a very useful tool. I mean, the idea of turning anything upside down... Especially if the power is amplified, that could ... have some startling implications, even if there are limitations to what it can flip." She taps her index finger against her cheek lightly. "I wonder if they used it on our old Sephirah bodies if it'd work..." Hod wonders aloud. "Science must be done." Angela agrees.
Sarracenia	'I'll double whatever the princess is giving you if you give that thing to me and tell her I have a hammer now.'      Petunia is obviously caught off guard. "Er...well, sure. But, she hasn't even offered me anything yet. Hang on." Petunia pulls out her phone and starts to dial, then pauses. "...although...if I did that it would pretty much ensure I'd never get a job again from the Sundew. Not sure that's worth it. Sorry. Can't be burning my most profitable bridge."      The plant girl doesn't put the phone away though. Instead, she smirks a shark-toothed grin. "But, if you can pay enough that I could retire somewhere and live like a queen, then..."
Audrey Basque	"Can someone heat this up? I need to see if it works on juuust the egg."     Audrey experimentally attempts to flip a cooked egg, if someone heats the pan for Kukuru up, and reveals it can in fact select what it flips. And since it's flipping, and not subjecting things to spinning physics, it doesn't break the yolk!     "I am so conflicted right now," she intones flatly. "That's really all it does? Well, that is definitely good for pranks."     "I'm starting to understand why they locked this man up if he was rampaging around the castle with this incessantly." "Science must be done."     "I mean, I can... do that already. But it's true this is kind of... effortless, comparatively. Point and click. If I can learn a thing or two about how it's automating that based on... is it my will, or what I'm pointing it at?"     She points it at the chest, while thinking about Petra's cap. The chest *doips* back rightside up. "Okay, it's what you point it at. Makes sense."
Petra Soroka	"... We should... Get you a helmet..."     "I'm prepared to cartwheel out of it." Petra is extremely confident about that despite the fact that she is not holding her arms up in preparation to land on them when she gets flipped or anything. And then, *doip*     Petra's HAT is now UPSIDE DOWN.     "Huh. So... what, it just can't affect people's bodies? What's the magic behind that? Where does it draw the limits? If you aim it lower, would it flip my shoes upside down and break my ankles? I mean, both of them are equal amounts of 'being worn', and I dunno what kind of magic would be able to differentiate between how awkward the angles might or might not be."     Petra, now upside-down-hatted, does not have her enthusiasm decreased at all, just angled differently. "Er...well, sure. But, she hasn't even offered me anything yet."     Petra rolls her eyes at Petunia. "For the job, I meant. And what, you're a mercenary or whatever, haven't you heard of 'lying'? Tell her I grabbed the hammer before you or whatever, dumbass. What's with the graverobber honor code all of a sudden?"     "... I don't have enough money for *that*." Petra frowns, irritated that she had to say so. She has access to enough money that it feels like it should just be infinite, but, it isn't. "I only have one castle." "I'm starting to understand why they locked this man up if he was rampaging around the castle with this incessantly."     "Well, we have to honor his memory by going around flipping stuff upside-down incessently."
Angela	"It is an opportunity to learn, Audrey." Angela says. "And to experiment. I'm getting more excited the more I think about testing its limits and finding atypical applications of flipping." "And fwopping." Hod adds. "Yesss...." Angela steeples her fingers together.
Sarracenia	'For the job, I meant. And what, you're a mercenary or whatever, haven't you heard of 'lying'? Tell her I grabbed the hammer before you or whatever, dumbass. What's with the graverobber honor code all of a sudden?'      Petunia shrugs. "More about reputation. A mercenary that is untrustworthy doesn't get hired by the higher paying clients. So, if we're doing this you have to 'rob' me. -After- transferring..." She pulls out a notepad and writes down a number that would be somewhere in the two hundred thousands in US dollars. "...this much to..." She pulls out her phone and after some taps holds it up to show a temporary QR code. "...this account. And if she finds out I get to charge you that amount about a hundred more times."      Petunia catches the tail end of the conversation about the flipping wand. "You all are not quite normal, are you?" she says with a bit of a snicker.
Petra Soroka	"-After- transferring... ...this much to... ...this account."     Petra narrows her eyes at the figure Petunia writes down for a minute. Of course she's getting scammed. It was a really stupid way to go about it, in retrospect, to allow Petunia to essentially declare any amount she wants to extort from Petra, because Petra can't know what Sarracenia actually promised to pay Petunia. Is two hundred thousand credits worth making Sarracenia irritated?     "... I could just *actually* rob you, you know." Petra says huffily, before turning away grumpily. "Or I could just rob the princess. Maybe I'll do that next time I see her."
Audrey Basque	Audrey slides over towards Petra and Petunia.     "I'll foot half the bill."
Petra Soroka	Petra opens her mouth and hesitates, with a complicated expression on her face. "I-- okay, like-- hm. I just got... isn't there something...."     She struggles to find her words for a minute, and she eventually works her way towards an answer she feels makes sense to her difficult-to-pin-down feelings. Her hands do a lot of the gesticulating work where her words fail, though they don't really help clarifying any of it.     "... Like, you know... isn't a hundred and fifty million ahn a lot? Like-- for a joke. Sure, I mean, I've got it, but I just had the thought like-- like... you know. Isn't it a little fucked? Isn't that weird? What are people doing with a hundred and fifty million ahn? What am I doing with a hundred thousand credits? Can't I-- don't I have... better things to... do?"     Finally realizing that what she's experiencing is a crisis of conscience, Petra's expression furrows further. It's a novel and frustrating experience for her. "Bullshit."
Audrey Basque	Audrey, rich girl from birth, who has never thought about if she deserves her money or not, and is unlikely to start now, places her hands on her hips as Petra starts having an odd crisis over it.     "I'm surprised you put so much value on money. I thought you'd be of the opinion money is kind of ridiculous and only works because people collectively agree it works."
Sarracenia	Petunia has no stake in the feud, so she really doesn't care much either way. And while she is telling the truth, she doesn't care to prove it. She blows a bubble as Petra considers, then lets it pop after Petra speaks. "If you think the number seems off, just think about being a princess who never had to work for her money. Half of this is basically nothing to her. She didn't want to be accused of sending unqualified help."      Audrey offers to help cover the bill, and Petunia makes a motion toward Audrey at Petra, and even giggles a bit at Audrey's argument about the value of money. "Come on, it's a good deal. Way less than the 'retire as a queen' amount. All you have to do is never tell her our bargain."      Petunia listens with hardly a care as Petra stammers through her crisis. At the last word she shrugs. "Hey, makes no difference to me if you say no. If this thing with Audrey carries on I stand to make a lot more." She rests the hammer over her shoulder (with some effort) then starts toward the exit. "Good doing business with you both either way. Look forward to more adventures." She could easily still be stopped and seems to be in no hurry.
Petra Soroka	"I thought you'd be of the opinion money is kind of ridiculous and only works because people collectively agree it works."     Petra rolls her eyes, glad to have some avenue to huff and bicker about that isn't directly related to the uncomfortable feeling of 'having empathy because of the apocalypse'. "Of course that's how it works. That's how everything works. You only exist because people collectively believe you do. If everyone turned around and looked away from you and erased your name from everything, you'd stop existing. You're not strong enough to define yourself out of nothing."     "That's sort of the problem. Obviously you've seen how *I* don't give a shit about money. I can just walk around and steal whatever I want for me because none of it's real and society is a fucking paper shield against anyone with any fucking guts. But the problem is, like, there's fucking, Hydrochoeria. And the Library. And District 12. I can't force people at gunpoint to, like, improve the plumbing system for all the people living there." "Way less than the 'retire as a queen' amount. All you have to do is never tell her our bargain."     "Uuuuuuuuuu....." Petra groans like she's being physically pained. The siren song of irritating Sarracenia is *so* strong, and not taking advantage of it makes her feel like Sarracenia is scoring a win against her without being present at all. But her head slumps forwards.     "Nooou... I really shouldn't. I don't think I'd be able to face Rita if I flushed more money than most people in the Backstreets see in their lives down the toilet for, like, pissing Sarracenia slightly off for a day or two."
Angela	''A hundred and fifty million ahn a lot?'' "For a ''hammer''? Surely a thousand ahn is being overcharged." Angela says. "But how much you wish to pay for ''this'' hammer..." Angela considers. "Well it's how much you want ''this'' hammer..." ''I don't think I'd be able to face Rita if I flushed mor emoney than most people in the Backstreets see in their lives...'' "..." Angela finds that interesting, considering, but she supposes that Rita CAN still make her feel shame so she ultimately settles, "Perhaps something besides money. A quest of some kind..."
Audrey Basque	"You're not strong enough to define yourself out of nothing."     "... ah..."     Audrey frowns, in the way only two people can really get out of her. It's not the frown of someone losing a debate, because clearly she nailed Petra's thoughts, which is huge progress for a change. More the frown of someone being reminded once their little moment of triumph ends they're still just trash. "A quest of some kind..."     "A-As much as I'd say a favor from Petra is worth a thousand times the amount being asked for... maybe it's just not worth it."