World Tree MUSH

    "These stairs... seem to have become more narrow." remarks Bronya as the group ascends. Her brow furrowed. There's a few mooks milling about, former Guard corroded by the Stellaron into chilled or burning zombies with weapons to match. Fluttering masses of ice and flame in the vague forms of birds. They're easily dispatched by the group's firepower, be it force powers an lightsaber, blaster bolt, or bullet of mundane or Originium make.

    Seele glances at Bronya, as if she's latching onto what others seem to already be figuring out. She's not the quickest of mind, after all.

    Further up, a slightly wider 'landing' splits two flights of stairs. Stelle drops another Anchor in the corner, while Seele remarks, "Almost there! I didn't expect this place to be so well preserved." she glances at Bronya, and huffs a little sigh. "Y'know, if we could've worked together to push back the Fragmentum... maybe we wouldn't have had to take off and leave our homes behind." Bronya, for her part, remains silent and pensive. Something is clearly weighing on her mind.

    Talia's lightsaber flashes to life as the zombies and birds come to haunt the crew. She deftly dismembers a chilled zombie before hurling its parts at one of the fire birds with a wave of her hand. It's simple, use fiery guys against ice guys and ice guys against fiery guys.

    "Funny how these things cancel one another out." She muses, as she stows her lightsaber and ascends. The fork in the stairs is enough for Talia to make a split decision, producing a coin. Flipping it, she gets heads and takes the stairway on the right. She'll leave it up to the Force for what happens next.

    Originium is expensive, so the bullets that Jessica uses for the small fry are from an offworld, 'normal' firearm instead. It's a fair bit weaker, but she's a good shot, so this is enough to keep things at bay with everyone's help. The cat is a little more comfortable with a narrowing path, probably. "I mean... I do wish people would work together against bigger threats more often. Even if it kinda would put me out of a job if they did that." She doesn't have a preference, since she knows nothing about either path, just following Talia if nobody objects.

Becca's bullets are pretty mundane. But the thing is... She has a lot of them.
    And a lot of bullets will handle all kinds of problems. Like zombies. Just shoot 'em in the head. Or masses of birds. Just use a shotgun to clear the swarms.
    The diminutive solo casually guns down another zombie on the way up the stairs.
    "So like. What're we expecting to find in this spoopy place?" She asks. "More supplies? Because I think it's a little too spoopy for me."
    She's not spooked. Not so long as she has a gun or ten in her duffel bag, she'll be fine.
    It is as Talia pulls out a coin to flip that Becca pulls something else out. It's a panel. And from each corner of the panel she tugs on an extendable leg.
    Becca sets the portable little table down for a moment.
    Looks at Talia.
    Looks at the table.
    And then flips the table.
    Don't ask where she got a portable table from or what she needed it for.

    Bi De has relegated himself to hanging back, given how much weaker he is in these circumstances. The rooster is still quite calm though... and even weakened, he can use his senses to keep track of enemies and help take care of the minor inconveniences.

    Watching the table flip confuses the bird, leading to a sigh. "I don't believe I will ever understand the ways of humans." He pauses, tilting his head as he peers to the side at Bronya. "Are you troubled by all of this?"

    Bronya looks at Bi De, and gives a little shrug. Seele gives a non-commital answer. "Like I said before, Wildfire's not been out here for a long time. Who knows what's taking up residence up there in the meantime." The pair of locals head up the stairs. There's only one, the 'split' is between the one leading to the landing, and the next set leading further up.

    As she crests the final step at the top, the area opens out into some kind of play-area, there's an old slide and a swing set, and some other fixed toys, all seemingly made out of scrap materials. "We made it! It's been so long... this place hasn't changed one bit." remarks Seele. "Oh!" she points. "Looks like there's a lot of stuff piled up outside. Lets go see if there's any rubbing alcohol for Nat." There is indeed a pile of crates, and a few drums on the nearest side of the large staircase leading up to the old Orphanage. Bronya breaks her silence to go back into work mode. "These have been here for years, right? Even if they have materials in them, are we sure they're still useable?" Seele scoffs, like this isn't something new. "Do you think Undergrounders care about expiration dates? Even having supplies is itself a miracle." Seele then goes through a few. "No... no... Empty! How can they all be empty!? Who could've--"

    As Seele's falling into despair, something rattles in the playsets.. and a towering figure of pure ice unfolds from some kind of dormancy. It emits a bellowing cry like someone blowing on a trumpet wadded with ice, and hurls a barrage of ice spikes at the group. "Careful! Enemy behind you!" calls Bronya in a clarion cry of a battle commander, as she grabs Seele and dives aside.

    Talia glances over her shoulder, seeing Rebecca pull out a whole table to flip. Where the hell did she keep that this whole time?

    With Jessica in tow, Talia takes the lead up the stairs and reaches the top. "You seem oddly familiar with this place." She muses softly.

    It seems they came here for nothing, and Talia sighs. "Blast..." She's unsure if she should try and comfort Seele, before suddenly a new challenge approaches.

    Talia draws her lightsaber and bats away the ice spikes headed towards her, melting them with every strike.

    "EEK!" An... expected shrill cry from Jessica. The catgirl's meek demeanor always seems to come through at first, but the way she moves is always to get to a better tactical position. Tumbling to the side, she comes up in a crouch, the ice shards having torn some of her coat. A dark seepage of blood is seen... the surprise attack actually caught her in an injury, but fortunately it seems rather minor. Probably shallow cuts that are just bleeding a lot initially.

    She doesn't waste time with the regular pistol. It's her native pistol that's snapped up and shooting a few shots before she rolls to the side again, keeping herself a moving target. "I'm not sure this is the thing that took the supplies, but we should figure that out later!"

    Annnnnd the boxes are empty.
    "Ah man that sucks." Becca says, putting it lightly. But then.
    Then an ice monster appears.
    In an instant Becca is dual-wielding assault rifles, the rapid fire chatter of fully auto-matic guns blasting resounds pretty loudly one Bronya has Seele tugged aside.
    "HEY. Big icy and ugly, look at me!" She crows, grinning as she just unloads at it.
    "I doubt it took the stuff, though." She does aside. "But it IS here and we gotta fight it now."

    "If you are certain," Bi De replies, still looking at Bronya uncertainly. Somehow, the nonhuman face expresses concern. He looks forward then, "Perhaps rodents? Fa Ram once had an army of rats attempt to raid it." His body shivers, some bad memory associated there.

    Whatever it was will have to wait though. A caw of surprise squawks out of the rooster as the enemy appears, making him flutter wildly and bound aside! A sparkling shield of silvery moonlight surrounds him, but in his weakened state it shatters quickly. Still, it did its job, preventing him from impalement from that first onslaught. He repositions himself, taking a better look at his opponent so he can plan an attack.

>> SUMMARY[Rebecca] >> Becca used TAUNT.

    "I've not seen a monster like this outside of the Restricted Zone!" Bronya says, standing and helping Seele back to her feet. Seele's pissed though. "I don't care how big you are! You dare sneak up on us from behind?! This is it for you, pal!" she snarls, charging in with her scythe forming in her hands.

    Talia's lightsaber bats the spikes aside... revealing they're anomalously durable, only getting gouges taken out of them instead of being fully melted by the plasma blade.

    Jessica and Becca tag-team with gunfire, blasting holes in the icy monster, which doesn't seem to slow it down all that much, but it's doing damage! Becca's taunt is unheeded, as the thing starts to draw air in toward it... and somehow flashfreezing the moisture and reinforcing its body.

    "Be careful! It can use ambient moisture to regenerate and reform those spikes! It also gets stronger the longer this takes!" calls Bronya, as she points towards the monster, then takes a step forward. "Lend me your strength!" her gaze lands on Seele, and the scythe user seems to get a bonus in her charging speed, blurring out a bit even without using that quantum teleport thing she does.

    Stelle, meanwhile, hangs around Becca, batting any spikes that come the smolo's way, each hit making the bat begin to glow that bit brighter.

    Bi De would be able to feel the energy surrounding this creature. Its unnatural, twisted... but where there are knots, there are loose ends.

    The rooster ducks to the side while keeping up his observations, able to focus on that more with the break in attacks. The collection of power actually aids the rooster, letting him see where the flow of energies go. Much like the flow of Qi through meridians, the martial artist quickly identifies key points.

    Of course, it is not quite the same. What Bi De does next is a deadly attack for a cultivator, but perhaps not quite so for an alien creature, especially with the rooster weakened. A quick leap and an arching slice with talons, reinforced with his own life energy, aim at one of those trailing threads... testing to see how effective it is, and hopefully slowing the power buildup, at least a little.

    Spikes not melting instant is a new one for Talia. She dodges and grits her teeth as one manages to slice through her arm, but it's a flesh wound. She'll worry about that later. There's no death, there is only the Force.

    Jedi are luminous beings, not crude matter. The Force gives them power beyond flesh and blood, and Talia focuses herself as she begins to stop spikes in mid air. Letting the Force take hold, Talia hurls the spikes back at their origin as a gift, sending the icy projectiles flying at high enough speeds to embed them in solid matter.

    So uh.
    It's not working huh.
    When the ice monster flash freezes the moisture in the air to heal itself, Becca pauses her wild firing.
    "Huh. SO WAIT IF SHOOTING IT WON'T WORK WHAT DO WE DO?" She snaps at no one in particular for an answer as she focuses on trying to shoot icicles out the air to cover herself and Stelle.

    Jessica comes up at another place, having shuffled to the side. Becca's screams of annoyance cause her ears to flick, but she quickly aims her sights at some joints, trying to slow it that way. She heard, but she also heard that it would grow stronger!

    So she offers the obvious solution.

    "I think maybe we shoot it some more!" As she unloads several shots as fast as she can, all at roughly the same spot.

    Seele bursts forward, during a lull in the gunfire, slashing at the center mass of the creature at about the same time that Bi De hits that energy weakspot. Two things happen then. The regeneration rate cuts drastically, and a big tear opens up in the mass of the creature, causing it to stagger and slump in mid-air.

    Jessica's plan to fire at a joint earns her a disconnected limb crashing to the ground and dispersing in sickly blue light.

    Talia's returning to sender works better than one may expect, the spikes slamming through the body causes the outer layers to crack. It doesn't seem to be able to immediately reabsorb the spikes.

    Stelle digs around in Becca's bag, and tugs out a grenade. She doesn't know what kind it is, but she tugs the pin out in her teeth and yeets the thing at the monster. "GET CLEAR!" she bellows to those in melee with the thing.

    Becca is entirely fine with people going through her bag o' guns. The more firepower the merrier, but then Stelle... Stelle tugs something out of that duffel and pops the pin with her teeth before hucking it.
    "'NADE OUT!" Rebecca echoes the call as...
    A can of fizzling energy drink goes sailing at the monster and splashes it with the electrolytes plants crave.
    "... That. That wasn't a grenade." She says as realization dawns.
    "AW MAN! Dude that was my emergency BRAWNDO. Now how's my thirst gonna get mutilated when I'm tired?!" She huffs as she resumes unloading her assault rifles at the ice beast.
    Thing is. All those chemicals in that energy drink?
    They are pretty flammable, causing them to go up like like an incendiary grenade anyway.

>> SUMMARY[Rebecca] >> It may as well have been a grenade though.

    "See? More bullets!" Jessica replies cheerily! Which was a bad idea, because she stops firing and starts to move again, but that brief moment was too much of a distraction. One of the ice shards still being flung about manages to slice through into her side, causing a mewl of pain and a stumble! That one seems to have actually cut through enough to get a deep gash! Doesn't seem to have impaled though.

    It also doesn't stop her from diving away from the... grenade? Except the fizzle isn't what she expected, so her ears perk up and she peeks up... just in time to watch the whole mess go FWOOMP into flames, a wave of heat knocking her on her ass! Not from the impact, she just got startled.

    The observations of what happened give Bi De an idea, as he retreats back. Feathers drift down from his dodge being... rather incomplete, but he doesn't seem crippled, just injured enough to force a retreat. "Hmn," the rooster's voice clucks, as he skids briefly before claws dig in. The pillar of flame that results gives him some breathing room, though. Weakened as he is, only the targeted attack really gave him the success that he wanted. It also gives him an idea, a silvery glow rising behind him... which brightens into a halo of a moonlike image behind the fanned tailfeathers. He stares, homing in on the largest flow of power. What would be the center of cultivation on his own world, a place where, when struck, can cripple spiritually.

    "Wheel of the Crescent Moon."

    That deep voice is announcing his attack for once, which may seem silly... except the explosion of motion from the bunch of feathers is suddenly so fast it leaves a searing, ring-shaped afterimage as he arcs up, flipping into the air, and coming down again in a rapid strike. Gravity and his own rotational energy aid in the spinning kick's power, his Qi forcing all of that power into a single, sharp point as he comes down in a focused strike of all his dwindled power.

>> GAME >> Bi De spends an Edge for: Wheel of the Crescent Moon Strike

    Talia takes note of her results, but Stelle gets an idea and chucks what looks like a grenade on first glance at the boss monster. And then...Oh wait, that was a soda. An EXPLODING soda!? Talia takes cover from the explosion, diving to the ground. "You -drink- that?" She says in confused shock.

    Scrambling to her feet, Talia begins to grab random debris and anything else she can find, wadding it up in a tightly clumped together sphere before she hurls it like a bowling ball at the Iceman.

    Jessica goes down. At least she's in cover.

    The drink grenade causes the beast to shriek as it's engulfed in flames, its form beginning to degrade.

    And then, Talia's wadded ball of stuff slams into it, knocking the thing over onto the ground, and opening it up for the dive kick from Bi De. This finishes it off, the monster dispersing again into motes of sickly blue light.

    Seele dusts herself off, panting. "Hah... hah... Th-That was it?"

    Stelle shakes her head. "It was seven on one." she reminds.

    "You think I couldn't do it alone? Please... but, still, fighting alongside you all... it was pretty fun." she sighs softly. "Should be clear now, lets poke around some more. The kids were always getting into scraps and scuffles out here. There should be some supplies for scrapes and bruises over in that corner."

    Bronya then pipes up. "So it /wasn't/ my imagination!" she says, looking around, and earning a querying look from Seele. "This building, the playground equipment. I've seen it all before."

    "What?! Come on, the over and underworlds have been sealed off for over ten years. It'd have been major news if the Guard came down here... let alone an Overworld Princess." Seele then seems to think. "Wait, unless, before that..."

    "It's a possiblity, that might explain why my memory is so blurry."

    As the ice beast is felled by the great and powerful Bi De, Rebecca crows.
    "Awwww man chick-a-choom that was some baller badass stuff man!" She goes in for the fist bump with a HUGE mechanical hand. But more importantly:
    "Yeah I drink that." She says matter of factly to Talia. "It's got everything plants crave, yo."
    But then BRONYA IS HAVING AN EPIPHANY.
    "What is it? Spit it out, gurl."

    "Not bad, Bi De. Very stylish." The Jedi says with a smile as Bi De finishes the boss off. She flashes Bi a thumbs up, before Talia brushes herself off as she gets onto her feet, coughing as she waves away dust. "Bloody hell." She mutters as she goes to find supplies, bandages and gauze, maybe some disinfectant, perfect for scrapes and bruises.

    "Sounds more like it's an industrial acid for removing paint." Then again she's had moonshine that long-haul spacers killed time (and braincells) with.

    Then she looks to Bronya, expectantly.

    Jessica sits up, her hair and ears a little... frazzled. She huffs, trying to smooth that down as she gets to her feet and winces. "I hope so." She does have some wounds, though it looks like they aren't life-threatening or anything.

    "Are you all right?" Asking that of the distracted-looking Bronya, while observing the damage the chicken managed to do to the smoldering corpse.

    While Bi De may have noticed Bronya looking thoughtful before, and he can tell something is bothering her, well... he actually is pretty clueless of most social organizations of humans, so has no way to guess what the issue is. He kicks a leg to clean off some of the gunk on it, and struts over, looking dignified despite a few missing bloody feathers. He IS injured, but fortunately cultivators heal quickly, if not instantly.

    "A good fight," he agrees, lifting a wing, which taps against the metal fist with a pleasant cluck. "My companion Tigu would get along well with you."

    Bronya looks around at all the people looking at her. "I... I need to look around a bit more to be sure. Lets find those supplies." she says, deflecting.

    Seele shrugs, and goes searching the corner where she remembered there being emergency supplies. "Aha! Found it, and it's pretty intact too! Nat wouldn't have expected her old supplies to be in such good condition.

    Bronya is a big stick-in-the-mud as always. "You should still check the expiration date on things like the rubbing alcohol and medicines. If they're expired they won't be effective, or may even be dangerous to use." she says. Seele relents at that. "Eh, true. Lemme check a few bottles... huh? What's this thing?"

    The black-purple haired warrior picks up a... snowglobe... it has a swooping owl bearing down on a fleeting rabbit-like creature.

    Bronya peeks over, then goes wide eyed. "This is..." she reaches for it, gently. Reverently. She lifts it up in both hands, clasping it as if it would crumble away if she let go. "This is something from when I was a child." Seele seems surprised. "Are you sure?"

    Stelle, a surprisingly astute woman at times, and a total moron at others, latches on. "So, could it be that when you were a child..."

    "Yes... I remember now, I used to live here, before the Architects took me away, before Madam Cocolia adopted me... I was an Undergrounder."