World Tree MUSH

    Something weird is going on in the Shifting Branches region.

    Worlds often bump into one another or rearrange their metaphysical proximity, but right now, it's a bit worse. The Gardeners have actually put out a request for help with some coordinate Vines, but it's just as likely someone stumbles into the wrong portal at the wrong time.

    Regardless of how, the exit from the Vine doesn't go quite as anyone would expect. Instead of a typical exit, newcomers are dumped on a large 'stone' platform that feels strangely neutral to the touch. The blue sky has numerous, identical-looking white clouds sputtering across it, which flicker strangely.

    In fact, everything is flickering strangely! It all looks not quite real, perfectly believable in one moment, and then uncanny or even pixellated in the next. Floating platforms drift in front, above a swirling mass of clouds, the platforms leading to a brilliant white castle in the sky.

    On the platforms are a mixture of people and monsters. Archers, swordsmen, lizard-like things. Each are pacing back and forth as if they don't notice the people in the distance. But it looks like they're obstacles on the way to the castle, huh?

    Tremendous words form up in the sky:

    [WORLD 8-3]

    And then, from nowhere in particular and all around, a female voice is heard, echoing around everyone.

    "Hello... hello? Can you all hear me? I hope you can hear me, we don't have much time. Something weird is going on, I'll try to help as much as I can."

    Alright so. One minute Lether was hopping to another world in hopes of finding a suitable fence for a very shiny, very expensive, very golden bowl that Neviah Younger had given her. Next thing she knows...
    She's on a stone platform surrounded by other floating platforms and there are people and...
    World 8-3.
    The Lizardfolk girl squints up at the sky, rows of jagged teeth visible in a scowl.
    "This ain't... What? Nah, nah... This wasn't where I was supposed to end up... The hell's with this Super Jumpio Bro's crap?" She mutters before she hears the voice.
    "..."
    Lether immediately digs a finger in her ear and tries to clear it.
    "I ain't the only one that heard that, yeah?"

Portals. Tunnels. Links. Every time Joanna thought she'd got a handle on what the rules were and how they applied to one another, they seemed to change. Shifting almost as if driven by an unseen intelligence either malicious or simply uncaring. She'd found herself trying to map some of them, the way worlds led to other worlds; which ones were safe. Which ones weren't. The list was getting pretty long, half her notes no longer making too much sense to her a few months after she'd written them. 

 Seriously what even was 'the world of the gigantic muffin men'? 

 This mapping though had become a fairly systematic process as of late. Phone on a stick through the portal, take a picture, drag it back. Safer bet than just jumping into the unknown. The image from this one showed nothing too special, a city in the distance, surrounded by fields. Peaceful enough. 

 She took a step. 

 There was no ground beneath her boots, instead, she was falling. Falling from quite a height too yet before she had time to even process that... 

 THWUMP 

 Stone. Hard. Unforgiving. The Jolteon 'morph let out an involuntary groan, impact aggravating prior soreness something fierce. The sight that greeted her eyes when she finally opened them though? 

 "What the actual f-..." 

 Yeah that about sums it up.

    Carmen lands lightly on the starting platform with the others. For a moment, she's confused. "Did I get uploaded into a game?" She adjusts the wide-brimmed red hat, looking around at the others here... and then pausing when she hears the voice.

    Fortunately, she's used to having guidance. "Well, Player's in clas right now, so I guess you're my new ops, huh?" She tips her hat to the others. "It looks like a game but it's glitching out. Maybe we should figure out what's up."

    Still, she checks her equipment to make sure she isn't restricted to the game rules or something. "I heard it. VOICE! What should we call you? Will our equipment work the way it's supposed to? I'm Carmen."

     Luke was simply traveling now that he had some time away from league matters, so he decided to answer the request for help from the Gardeners that usually ends up being interesting! Of course, even expecting something to happen did not quite prepare him for what he was going to find. 
     He appears on the stone platform near Lether and just looks around in confusion for a few moments. "What in Arceus..." he mumbles. Right next to him, a small floating panda wearing a hat and a spell tag appears, clearly it was following the boy. 
    . The pair spot Lether and the boy nods to her, "I did... does this remind you of some videogame?" he mumbles, appearing a moment right after that comment about 'jumpio'. One has to wonder if a floating ghost counts as cheating, for platforming games.

     "Ah. How unusual." 

     It can be confusing getting around in place where multiple worlds meet eachother at the best of times, let alone with things are going awfully wrong. It's this that has lead to Nanami stepping out onto the platform, her expression quite placid for somebody who's just found herself somewhere she did not expect to be. She slowly scans her gaze around, blinking slowly at the array of strange sights. They're quite unusual, even by the standards of some of the places she's experienced recently. 

     "No, you're not." she says to Lether, looking from her to the creatures gracing the platforms and back again to the alligator girl. 

     "Do you know them..?"

    "OOF! Ow ow ow ow ow!"

    Looks like Michiru landed on her poofy tail! That's right, she is in her usual tanuki/raccoon look, complete with ears and tail and whatever. She rattles her head, adjusts her shirt, and gets to her feet with a wince.

    "Really? A video game?" She huffs. "I was always more of a physical sports girl, but... yeah, are we going to have to jump to those platforms and fight things?"

    "Oh good, you can hear me," the disembodied voice says. "Call me Echo. I'm a um... tinkerer that was in the system when all this weirdness broke out. Apparently magic is happening and monsters are appearing outside? But the virtual world is merging with the real world now, and it's causing a lot of glitches. I think I've managed to smooth things out so it won't crash, but pretty sure someone has to beat the game to get it to finish whatever it's doing."

    As 'Echo' is explaining that, a green bar appears over everyone, along with some other things.

    The name 'Carmen' appears over Carmen, and a little red hat icon with 'x02' next to it.

    Nobody else gets a name, but the 'x02' counter appears above everyone's green bar.

    Lether's uses little cartoon alligators as the icon.

    Joanna has lightning bolts.

    Luke has pokeballs, and another line with little 'faces' of his various pokemon, but all but one are greyed out.

    Nanami's icon is a pale-faced little girl with a thermometer in her mouth.

    And Michiru's is a raccoon tail.

    The voice continues, "I think you should be able to use your equipment or whatever, but be careful. The monsters will try to adapt to them. They're pretty dumb, though."

    Okay so Lether isn't going crazy.
    That's good.
    It's the WORLD that's going crazy around her.
    That's not so good.
    The girl crosses her eyes up as she sees her HEALTH BAR an LIFE COUNTER pop up.
    "... What?" She says flatly.
    "How'm I supposed to know them?" She replies to Nanami with a huff.
    Okay though, according to this Echo person everything should hopefully go back to normal once someone beats Super Jumpio Bros here.. Lether eyes the others.
    She eyes the next platform.
    Are there any juicy [?] boxes to be had? Any treasure?
    Only one way to find out as she suddenly breaks into a sprint and takes a vaulting leap to the next platform.
    "... Easy enough. Aite we doin' this folks?" She calls back. "Name's Lether, jus' leave any loot ta me."

>> SUMMARY[Lether] >> As the rogue... I'll scout ahead!

    "All right, Echo, sounds simple enough!" Carmen has questions, though, and she backs up and makes sure her hat is secure, before she prepares for a running leap to the next platform.

    As she skids along, she ducks into a roll and sweeps the legs out from under the nearest sword-fighter. Then she calls out, "Echo, what's the story behind this game? And are these enemies alive? I don't want to just start killing people who got stuck in a game or something."

    Honestly she doesn't kill, in general.

Joanna slowly got back to her feet brushing the dust from her clothes. The fall wasn't too bad really, leaving her just a little winded for the moment. Her large ears flicked back and forth as she tried to pinpoint the direction of that 'Echo' voice. Nothing. As far as she could tell, it may as well have been everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. 

 "Hey. Echo, was it?" Jo looked up towards the sky. It felt fitting. If a disembodied voice was going to come from anywhere, she figured it must be from above. That's probably what she would do if she were a disembodied voice. "Do you mind telling us what fresh hell we've just been dragged into?" 

 She flinched, the sudden pop in of healthbars and life counters taking her by surprise. She tried to poke at it, only to feel her hand going through as if there was nothing there. She was about to make some sort of comment about it, maybe surprise at it being full after that drop, before she heard more voices! This time not of the disembodied sort! 

 "Uh, right, sure. 'Loot'. Clearly the biggest concern right now."

    Luke is a teen/young teen, and even if he is not much of a gamer, he is familiar enough to recognize the UI of one, and pauses as he looks at the x2. "Wait, does that mean we have extra lives?" he comments outloud. Pangshi tries to reach up to swipe at their own UI, and then at Luke's. Seeing this is more of a physical challenge, he finally recalls the ghost, before summoning another pokemon. The panda being replaced by another!, far taller, pink white and black. It looks more like an amusement park mascot costume than anything. As expected, the UI changes to show Bewear's face instead. "Can you help me jump over those platforms? we need to get to the castle back there." he explains to the pokemon, that nods and carefully reaches to help Luke up, rising the boy to its shoulder. 
    "I wonder if there is a timer, so we should go ahead, anyone else needs a hand jumping?, i think bewear can handle carrying someone else.". Of course, Lether goes first, but Bewear wastes little time to follow suit, a running jump, not particularly fast, but raw strength just gets him gracefully on the platforms. "I'm Luke, and this is Bewear.". As he explains, the bear casually moves forward to punch the nearest of the enemies, a reptile. Nothing fancy, just a surprisingly strong punch for how casual the motion seemed, from the Bewear. "I wonder if there are powerups." Luke calls.

    Sigh. "What fresh craziness is this?" Michiru pokes at her bar and says, "I'm Michiru, nice to meet all of you, I guess." She peers over the edge while her ears twitch, listening to the voice and looking at the others.

    As Carmen and Lether leap across, she nods, and hops up into the air. With a flash and a sudden growth, her arms spread into feathered wings, and her feet curl into talons. "I can carry one person across, too, if you don't want to risk the jump!"

    Which she'll do, if needed, but she isn't the sort to jump right into fighting.

     Nanami's lips part slightly as she stares at the little icon floating above her head. As someone from a world that lacks such things as videogames, the meaning of the bar and the lives indicator are completely lost on her. "What is this..?" she asks out loud. Seems as though she hopes somebody will clue her in. 

% "Mm? I merely thought that since you look quite similar, it was likely that you're acquainted with them." Nanami you can't just say that, not all lizard people know eachother. 

     "I don't think I will have any need for any equipment." she says dismissively as she starts walking across the platform in the wake of the others leaping, ignoring the unfortunate newcomers who have managed to fall rather than land gracefully. Her tone isn't arrogant, exactly. More like she's stating a fact. She doesn't actually seem to have much with her, apart from her clothing and a little pouch hanging at her hip, so maybe she's telling the truth. 

     "Ah...then there is no need for me to hold back?" she says before she too jumps without even bothering to introduce herself, flying gracefully through the air before landing amongst a small group of NPCs without so much as a sound. Odd, given the wooden sandals she's wearing. 

     Just a few moments later, none of those NPCs are standing anymore. Nanami's expression does not seem particularly impressed.

    The platforms are large, so it's not like there's a danger of sliding off. As the introductions are given, names form above each. 'Lether' and 'Luke' and so on.

    When Carmen trips the man, he stumbles and falls, and then... dies. That is, he immediately breaks into pixels and vanishes, which might concern her for a moment.

    Nanami likewise has no trouble just downing the various lizard-creatures and, thankfully, also handles both archers before they aggro on the rest of the group. They scream loudly for an instant before they, too, vanish moments after falling. Looks pretty easy so far?

    As Michiru and Luke offer an assist to... well, Joanna, the platform starts to disintegrate, from the back forward. Not particularly fast, fortunately, but it looks like this is a side-scroller, not a Metroidvania.

    Lether sees no loot on this platform, but there is a treasure chest or three on the platforms ahead.

    Echo speaks up again, "Don't worry about killing the monsters and guards. They're just code routines. I think the world is trying to make them real but there's nothing much to work with. The only one who might become self-aware is the Lord of the Desert, in the castle. He's captured the Princess of the Air Kingdom and you're in the place of the hero that's supposed to rescue her. Again. For the fiftieth time." She sighs, apparently having little love for these kinds of plotlines.

    "Anyway, watch out for the archers," she warns. "But you really shouldn't have any trouble with six of you, except maybe the Gate Guardian up ahead that's a living whirlwind. Other than that, just be careful of the Lord of the Desert. He uses sand-based attacks and defenses. You shouldn't be able to kill him unless you break the game code... I mean you might, but he's in the code, so it's fine."

    "So wait..." Lether pauses to look at Nanami. "Jus' cause some of the guys are lizards too you think I know them?" She asks dubiously with a huff. NANAMI NO. NOT ALL LIZARD PEOPLE KNOW EACH OTHER! But...
    "Loot's what makes the world go 'round." Lether notes just as Echo says to watch out for the archers, and an archer pops up.
    "Ah dang." She says before she pushes her DODGE ROLL button and tumbles forward under the arrow like a XXXX Souls game protagonist. As soon as she rolls to her feet a knife leaves her fingers, flung with killer speed and accuracy for said archer.
    That's when she notices the treasure chests.
    "Dibs!" Declared as she makes a break for the next platform.
    Is...
    Is she having fun with this?
    Look the girl's never had a single nice thing happen to her, in her whole life. Let her have some fun as she skids to a halt at the first chest.
    "Uh huh Gate Guardian, Lord of the Desert, right..."
    She SHOULD check it for traps.
    Does she bother to check it for traps?
    Nah.
    She whips out her lockpicks and starts going at the chest greedily.
    Lord knows she's gonna be MAD if it's a Legally Distinct Chompy Treasure Chest Of Teeth.

>> SUMMARY[Lether] >> Greedy Gator Goes for the Gold.

After listening to what this Echo voice had to say, Jo could only manage a flat "what?" in reply. She was going to say something else too, but that was cut off by noticing that the platform she was on was starting to fizzle away behind her. Not. Good. Fortunately the next one wasn't too far away, making not falling into what she could only presume was an endless void beneath their feet mostly a non issue even if her knee seemed to hate how she landed that particular leap. 

 "Right, jump the things, save the princess. That about where-" 

 An arrow thrwipped past Joanna's head! She instinctually ducked down, and reached for her sidearm while muttering some not quite so savoury things! 

 Blam! Blam-Blam! 

 Two well aimed shots right into the skele-bowman, and another into a second lining up an arrow! "A-and shoot the skeletons. Hoh man there is *no* cover here."

    As the man disintegrates, Carmen gets tense... and then relaxes upon hearing they're just code. "Right, so they're the kind of enemy that shows up again if we wander too far away. I get it now."

    She frowns when Lether leap over to take the treasure. "Hey! Careful, we should stay together!" She ducks a sword swipe, kicks the man in the stomach, and then does a quick throw of one of the lizards to toss it off the edge.

    "This is not how I imagined spending my day," she complains, glancing over to see the others seem to be handling themselves. She'll try to make her way to the next platform, to catch up with the gator girl.

      Luke looks back, "Oh, it's an auto scrolling stage." he comments, he has the time to make such casual notes, since he is basically being carried by the fluffy powerhouse of a pokemon. Even arrows did little to it, the couple times the archers attempted an attack before being punched down the endless pit beneath. "So we have to rush ahead and hit the end platform, ignoring the boss?" he asks, turning to check on the others while the Bewear seems to decide Carmen is correct, and moves to provide support to the closest person, likely Joanna, "Good idea, let's stay in a group.". While Luke is looking away, it just smacks some treasure away from the platform as it stomps back to the Jolteon morph.

     Nanami regards the fallen NPCs with an idle curiosity, observing for a moment as they break into a mass of pixels before vanishing entirely. It's an odd thing to happen. There's usually far more of a mess left behind when she does that. 

     Quite a lot of what Echo is saying goes way over the small woman's head. Code routines? Break the game code? In the code? Just what does a code have to do with everything that's going on? It is a mystery. Still, some of what Echo is saying does make sense. 

     "So you're saying we don't need to waste time with these weeds." she says calmly, standing upright with her arms loosely at her sides before her hand whips out at one more guard, pixels splashing in place of blood before it disappears entirely. With any immediate threats around her dealt with she pauses, seeming quite unconcerned with the violence that's occurring. "It would be best if you hurried." she says out loud to the others, Lether included. 

     Just as Carmen and Luke suggest staying together, she's already walking off away from they all came and jumping to another platform with the same grace she displayed on her first leap. She seems to be ignoring the locals for the most part, only bothering to attack when one draws a little too close.

    Looks like Joanna and Luke don't need her help, so the now bird-raccoon-girl flaps over, doing a dive bomb on one of the sword-users, and then flapping wings to try to throw off the aim of any archers. She can stay in the air for a while, so isn't going to rely just on the platforms.

    Instead, she'll climb up higher, to see if she can spot this living whirlwind that Echo is talking about.

    "That's true, if they aren't able to stop you, you can just bypass them," Echo confirms to Nanami. "Not that any of you are having problems. This stage wasn't meant for people who can fly or do area attacks."

    Joanna's quick and deadly response doesn't get much of a reaction... mostly because all the things that can retaliate are getting killed too fast! As the various 'heroes' of the 'game' jump forward, the platform they started on materializes some enemies... which immediately fall as the platform vanishes underneath them. They fare no better than the one's Luke's pokemon bowls off the edge.

    Michiru gets higher and higher, and can see just a few more platforms ahead, there's a large ledge in front of the castle. The huge gate is closed, and a swirling, ten foot tall whirlwind is standing right in front of it.

    As for Lether, the chest opens and... a blue boomerang floats out of it. The boomerang flashes a few times, then vanishes into some letters declaring 'POWER UP!'

    Then, Lether's knives poof out of existence, to be replaced with another 'poof' by twin boomerangs.

    Lether opens the box.
    What's in the box?
    It's not nothing.
    "Huh?" She blurts when she is rewarded not with treasure but with a power up. And as soon as her knives vanish, a long yellow scarf wraps around her neck and shoulders, trailing behind her as she moves.

    LEGENDARY BOOMERANGS OF SEATLAN ACQUIRED.    
    "... Not my style..." She sulks as she, treasurelessly, opts to re-join Carmen and the group.
    A lizard guy pops up with a sword and she jumps back with a grunt, reaching to one of her knife sheathes to find...
    It's empty.
    What appears in her hand, bafflingly, is a blue boomerang.
    A big ? appears over Lether's head as she stares at it.
    She hurls it. It bonks the lizardman into pixels.
    "... Cool?" She ventures.
    Before it comes rebounding on a return course and bonks HER when she doesn't catch it in time.

Joanna pauses again, taking a moment to watch the whirlwind. To say it didn't look right was an understatement, though, not much here really did. For a moment her mind flashed back to an old joke in Unova about 'shooting hurricanes', though as much as the idea tickled her she figured that probably wasn't the best call. 

 Besides, this was 'only' a .45. 

 Hunting anomalous windstorms probably needed a shotgun or something. 

 She looked to the rest of the party. "Given the bottomless pits, I don't think touching that thing's going to be good for our conveniently marked out health. Anyone have any ideas how we're going to get past that?"

    As Carmen dashes past Lether picking up loot, she slows. "Wait, why are boomerangs in a western fantasy platformer?" She sighs, shaking her head, then shouts to the sky, "THIS GAME IS POORLY-RESEARCHED!"

    Hearing she doesn't have to fight, though, is a great thing. "Oh, bypass them if you can!" she calls to the others before... leaping off the edge of the platform.

    Don't worry, she fires a grapple gun and swings under the platforms, coming up well ahead to do a spinning leap and land gracefully on the platform with the whirlwind.

    Joanna raises a good point, though. "Well, either we find its elemental weakness... dirt or water or something? Or maybe we just use video game logic and..."

    She leaps forward and kicks the wind.

>> SUMMARY[Carmen Sandiego] >> Carmen jumps ahead and attempts to break wind!

      Luke and the group get closer to the 'hurricane' and of course they have to think about it, "I wish I had a pokemon that knew hurricane or something, maybe that would work, but perhaps Bewear can throw someone above the whirlind and towards the castle?, but I don't know what exactly is our target." he mumbles. And he watches Carmen just try to kick the whirlind. "Or we can attack it I guess, I just wonder what element would work better against it." Bewear meanwhile delicately places Luke down while he thinks, and decides to follow Carmen's clearly brilliant scheme and punch the hurricane!. A blue glow around its arm as it attempts to Ice punch the sentient mass of wind.

     Nanami simply walks calmly towards her goal. She doesn't seem like she's in much of a rush, though she's not all that tolerant of any NPCs slowing her down either with her hands whipping out to deal with any that might make an unwise decision and get near. Step by step she makes her way towards the whirlwind, seeming quite heedless of Joanna's point of just how one they're meant to actually deal with it. Quite soon she's not far behind Carmen, seeming as though she's about to join in with an attack. Before she can actually quite make it there, however... 

     BONK. 

     The sound of a boomering hitting Lether in the face resounds loudly throughout the world, causing Nanami to turn and place her hand in surprise. "Oh, dear. Did you hurt yourself?" she says nonchalantly to the poor gator girl. She's not paying very much attention to the wind that Carmen is trying to break. 

     Perhaps that's for the best, for the poor woman's dignity.

    If she doesn't HAVE to fight them, she won't! "Let me know if any of you need a lift!" Michiru calls down, though she doesn't think that maybe, people don't want to be grabbed by a raccoon-harpy by the shoulders or something. Hey, she's trying to help!

    Swooping in, Michiru grabs one of the lizard things, then beats wings abruptly to stall... but lets her legs swing forward and releasing. This yeets the lizard in an arc, hurling it toward the whirlwind to see if the punch logic works.

    "Carmen might be right!" she calls out. "This doesn't seem like a particularly complicated game!"

    Guess they'll find out.

    Look on the bright side, Lether: the boomerang seems to do a LOT of damage! It's just harder to aim!

    Nanami and Joanna will have a surprise when she looks at the whirlwind again though! Because while Carmen, Bewear, and Michiru's attacks don't cause any visible 'damage' to it - aside from the poor lizard now spinning around dizzily inside the thing - it does have an effect otherwise.

    Namely, a large health bar appears, ticking downward with each strike.

    Echo speaks up again, "Oh, you can hurt it, it's just strong. It does look like ice works best against it, though! Try more of that? Just watch out for its counterattack."

    Right as the disembodied probably-sky-voice finishes saying that, the wind picks up and buffets Bewear and Carmen. Bewear is probably heavy enough this isn't an issue, but Carmen might be in trouble.

    As for the others, debris starts getting flung out of the whirlwind, shooting toward the others like bullets!

Jo blinks a couple times, almost as if doing so would clear her vision and make the idea of wind having a *health bar* make some degree of sense. It didn't. The idea of shooting it was still stuck firm in her mind, the thought lodged in there like a catchy song that refused to leave, magdumping a twister still struck her as something that'd be too dumb for even her standards. 

 Back into the holster the pistol went, the Jolteon 'morph taking a few steps back as she did. "You're going to want to shield your eyes." As if on queue, a sharp stone, piece of wood, she wasn't exactly sure clattered on past dangerously close to both her and the rest of them on the platform! "Holy-! From that as well as this!" 

 She raised her hand, her fur frizzing up and standing on end... then... 

 KRAK! 

 Two brilliant flashes and an earsplitting *BOOM*! Jo just shot lightning at the twister!

    Bewear is indeed solid like a padded wall of bricks, and carefully moves to try to stop poor Carmen from being pushed off by the raging winds. It reaches one 'paw' to the thief, if one can call that rounded mass with pawpads a paw, and if taken, it securely pulls her close, before attempting to punch again. Luke seems surprised Bewear is acting solo, but has no complains, other than pondering if he can grab a second pokemon... that is until the debris is being flung at him!, he clumsily dives aside, and attempts to release Dynamo out, the rather round looking electric type emerging in front of Luke, rather confused by the stormy winds and flying debris. At least it is smart enough to get in front of Luke and growl at the... tornado... shooting at them. Big round cat is somewhat confused. It does let out an approving growl at Joanna's lighting bolt!.

    "WOAH!" Michiru cries out, diving down as some debris is flung toward her. She THUDS to a landing next to the empty treasure chest, her talons turning to feet again and her wings back to arms.

    Very thick arms.

    "Okay, maybe not try that," she resolves, before flatting her ears and shutting her eyes from Joanna's attack.

    Once the Earth-shattering Kaboom is done, she follows it up by having her arms swell up to monstrous size. This lets her heave the treasure chest up, and hurl it swiftly toward the whirlwind.

    Lether makes a noise after getting bonked by her own boomerang.
    It can be described as 'SideshowBobRake.wav'.
    But she picks herself up and rushes to the platform with the boss on it. The mini-boss? Stage boss? It doesn't matter overly much as she hurls her kn- boomerangs at it.
    They probably do more damage than her knives! That's nice.
    But then the winds pick up. Debris goes launching like bullets. Lether dodges with crazy good reflexes but...
    Oh no.
    Carmen is in the epicenter of all tht wind huh.
    Lether leaps- to try and at LEAST assist and keep the red-hatted woman from going over.
    The resulting impact and buffeting winds bowls HER clean away. She goes sailing off the edge of the platform, flailing as her bright yellow scarf trails after her.
    "Awawawawa!"
    Off the side she goes. There's a second where she grunts and strains, flapping her arms to get just a liiiiiiiiittle boost upwards but... It's not enough to reach the arena edge and grab back on.

    Player Count -1

    Or so it seems as a disgruntled Lether respawns on a nearby platform.
    "Guh...?"

>> SUMMARY[Lether] >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9zhgDsd4P4

    Everyone doubted, but Carmen proved them wrong! You CAN punch a tornado to death in this game!

    Her victory is short-lived, as she ducks a flung rock, dodges aside... but then is hurled by the sheer force of the winds! It's almost comical how she starts to pinwheel away, tumbling end over end off the platform!

    Fortunately, Bewear reaches out and snags her hand, yanking her back onto the platform, only to have Lether flung off!

    "Thanks, I owe- LETHER!" She interrupts her appreciation with a sound of horror as the strange gator girl is hurled off, starting over to help her but... to late. The poor girl plummets to her-

    To her reduction of the life counter.

    "I... guess that's a good thing?"

     The sight of the green bar shrinking slightly draws just a quick glance from Nanami as she turns back towards the issue at hand. With her eyes she can clearly see each and every piece of debris coming her way. With each one she casually steps out of the way, letting it shoot right on past her. 

     One of those pieces of 'debris' is Lether. Nanami doesn't seem to pay her any mind. It'll be fine, she'll just respawn! 

     Not that Nanami knows that. 

     With a sigh she takes a step forwards, breaking into a sudden run as she rushes straight towards the hurricane. She doesn't take a stance, nor is there any real attempt to put any skill into her attacks. It's just sheer speed and power, looking to simply brute force the issue without needing to resort to such vulgar things as 'technique'.

    Debris is flung everywhere! Some of it is pretty small, but now it's just all over. Kind of a mess!

    The bolt blasts into the tornado from Joanna's attack, and it causes the whirlwind to 'hop' backward. That doesn't really save it from when Nanami joins the fight, just /punching/ the whipping roaring air and causing it to flash quickly as the health bar, after all those attacks, reaches the halfway point.

    The wind howls, the tornado turns red, and then... it splits into five smaller, human-sized tornados, which begin 'hopping' all around the platform.

    Echo speaks up, "This is Phase 2 of the boss... individually weaker but all over the place. It's pretty dangerous, normally, but since there are six of you plus some kind of pets, I think it actually made it weaker. You don't have the split attention problem of a solo player."

    The various tornadoes start flitting toward people, but only one per person, leaving Carmen untargeted. Instead heading toward Lether, Michiru, Bewear, Nanami, and one even darting toward Joanna, though she's a bit farther away than the rest.

    Echo continues, "If you can beat this one you should be able to handle the Lord of the Desert. He doesn't even realize he's coded to lose. Carmen is right, this is kind of a low budget VR game. Its only novelty was they tried to put fancy AI in at first, but that didn't work out so they replaced it with simpler routines."

It was the floaty disembodied voice again! Joanna didn't look up to try and find its source this time, though one of her ears still fwipped back to point to where she figured it might be coming from as she sighted in to ready another lightning bolt. These twisters were smaller now. Moving all over the place. It made things a whole lot harder to target. 

 "So what game even is this? Are we in some sort of-" 

 *FLASHFLASH! BLAM!* 

 "- Hipster retro revival?" 

 She locked onto the second, steadying her stance and bracing herself again. "Is it about to say something really pretentious and pretend its deep?" 

 *KABLAM!* 

 Her arm was starting to get sore by now. "Floating text asking the big questions. Like if water's wet and what does that *mean*."

     Bewear just knows, punch until the tornado is no more, and when it divides like that, it simply charges towards the nearest one with impressive speed, meeting the smaller tornado head on, and smashing it with Ice punch after Ice punch. Luke remains on his platform, with his other pokemon acting like a shield. Lacking ice attacks, Luke tries something else, "Dynamo, Electroweb!", it attempts to follow Joanna's example by zapping them!, it picks a fancier move in this situation, shooting a large orb of electricity that shoots forward and seems to expand into a web shape, smacking into the tornadoes closest to it, not a strong attack, but one that is meant for multiple targets, it almost seems to act like a physical net, at least for a moment, not that it helps much against literal wind, shocking the small red tornadoes as they move through it and... slowing them down?, before vanishing.

     "Individually weaker.." Nanami says quietly, repeating Echo's words. Or perhaps more accurately, echoing them. "How disappointing. No matter how many you become, a weed is still just a weed." she says with a sigh. "Perhaps it was silly of me to expect more." 

     Ignoring her designated tornado she instead addresses her 'companions'. "I hope that you can all handle your targets." she says, glancing over them all. Quietly a part of her does reflect that it's certainly an odd group she's fallen in with. A lizard, a tanuki, some sort of bear creature, and...she doesn't really have anything she can compare Joanna to, what with never having really encountered a creature quite like her. 

     There's some humans too, but they're less of an oddity. 

     Turning back to the tornado in front of her she utters "Kyotoryu: Red Poppy and Daphne hybrid striking technique." before lashing out in a blindingly fast series of blows. The first set of blows knocks it up into the air, and then she just keeps hitting it and hitting it and hitting it. And hitting it and hitting it. 

     It was probably unnecessary to hit it that much. It was probably dead long before she finished.

    On the bright side... Lether no longer has those boomerangs or that yellow scarf that REALLY CLASHES with her look.
    A huff and she pats herself down to make sure everything is in one piece.
    "I'm... I'm okay!" She ventures after a moment before leaping the gap to rejoin the others in the fight for phase two. She dodges bouncing jumping angre red mini tornados- though one clips her and she grunts in pain as her health bar goes down a fair bit.
    An angry gator snarls. She flashes her teeth.
    Faster than a fricking bolt of lightning she lunges headfirst at a tornado and SNAPS her teeth down on the wind...
    Red pixels go everywhere.
    ...Red pixels that taste like...
    Lether's pupil's dilate. The growling, rumbling, snarling bellow in her chest only intensifies as she holds on to the tornado by her teeth as it spins her around practically parallel to the ground.
    It tastes like...
    It tastes *close enough to blood* that the 'gator girl goes fucking feral, snarling and growling as she hers her arms around the wind- then her legs.
    Then she brings the mini-nado DOWN like it's a prey animal, her body spinning and jerking violently.
    RED PIXELS GO EVERYWHERE.

    Lether's health bar *FILLS BACK UP* as she stands up and wipes pixels from her lips.

>> GAME >> Lether spends an Edge for: It is every little 'gators dream to deathroll the un-deathrollable.

    "I'm not sure it's that kind of game," Carmen says to Joanna. "I don't think there's supposed to be some sort of moral lesson, we're just rescuing the princess I guess?" She preps to run over to help Lether, since the little gator seems to be the one most endangered after her recent death, and Luke has a massive Bewear to help him.

    But it turns out she doesn't need to. "Oh."

    Little mini tornadoes. And one is headed toward Michiru. Well, that's not good. Fortunately, despite her weird look and strange-looking shapeshifting, Michiru CAN defend herself.

    After all, she can shapeshift.

    "Well if we can just punch them," she figures, staring down the tornado headed her way. Instead of defending, she just starts running toward it...

    Running... with heavier and heavier stomps, her feet rounding some and her head lowering. Her body bulks up as she sprouts a horn from her head, thundering forward and just goring the tornado with a rhino charge.

    This is so wonderfully stupid, but hey it seems to work, right?

    Nanami gets annoyed and brutalizes her tornado, leaving it battered and broken as it falls to the ground. Not kidding, it sort of *thuds* to the ground, seems to deflate, and disintegrates as if it were a corpse. Weird.

    Joanna shoots hers, and... they're getting weirder, as it sways, wobbles, then lets out a Wilhelm Scream as it falls off the platform.

    Luke's tornado jolts around before disintegrating in a shower of sparks, once again relecting how it is killed.

    Michiru gores her, and it wheezes out, deflating like a balloon and dangling from her horn before it depixelates and fades away, as well.

    Finally, Lether's is, in fact, actually bleeding for a bit, red pixels leaving a stain on the platform even when it is gone.

    "Okay, wow, the system is REALLY trying to adapt and doesn't know how to handle all of you," Echo breaks in. "Now, just let me see if I can... there. I've got admin rights to this game right now but I can't do everything, not without breaking something important."

    The gate didn't open with the 'death' of the Gate Guardian, so it just turns into static and vanishes a moment later as it seems to have been deleted. This leaves an open pathway in toward the throne room, where the final Boss awaits!

    For some reason he's a normal human, except fifteen feet tall! That's a bit under 5 meters, for those using sane measurements. He's a sandy-haired man in a dashing jacket, laughing on repeat as he waits for the approach. He has a large gold key attached to his waist... which clearly fits the cage hanging from the ceiling above the throne, where a pretty red-headed princess shakes against the bars of the birdcage-like confinement.

    Upon first sighting anyone, he gestures, one of the many pillars disintegrating into sand, which swirls around him like a shield. He laughs again, as some of it turns into fine shards of glass, pointing toward anyone in his way.

    Echo speaks again, "This is supposed to be a puzzle fight. I've turned off his invulnerability so you can probably just kill him if you want. You're supposed to dodge his attacks and force him to get rid of more pillars until part of the ceiling falls on him, then grab the key while he's getting out of the rubble. The game actually ends once the cage is unlocked."

    "So we just need to open the cage?" Carmen asks aloud. She starts running to the side, taking a look at the glass shards to try to figure out what is likely a 'predictable attack spread' and she can hopefully find a safe spot, rather than weave through them. "Then let's do that! If someone can get the key, toss it to me!"

    She fires the wrist-mounted grapple toward the top of the cage, and at the last minute, also holds her hand out for Lether to take. The little lizard is light enough that she can have the electric motor reel them both in, carrying up toward the cage where the lockpicking can begin.

    She hopes the others can keep that Lord of the Desert busy.

The Wilhelm scream transcends dimensions. Joanna didn't expect that, though in truth she wasn't quite sure *what* to expect anymore. "No no, you just wait." She glanced quickly to Carmen, keeping her eyes, and most importantly her aim, focused on this sand king. "This'll be a commentary on the Galarian royal family. Or the Kalosian revolution. Something like that." 

 *beat* 

 Her tone was quite the deadpan, though the little half smile breaking through likely gave the game away that she wasn't being entirely serious. "I'm probably giving this too much credit." 

 She took a step forward, though being careful to avoid getting into any sort of 'aggro' range. "Listen, you are outnumbered and outgunned. We already got through your skeleton guys, your tornado, broke your gate, and we weren't even breaking a sweat. What do you think we're going to do to you if you don't give us that key?" Worth a shot. At least assuming he could do more than just laugh.

    Thusly with her full health bar Lether wipes her mouth a little more as she lurks in the pixelated mess of what used to be her tornado foe.
    Then the gate doesn't open but disappears and they're faced with the FINAL BOSS. Already?
    "Wow he's big." Lether mutters as she stands up.
    Sand goes flying. Glass shards appear.
    "... Someone distract him." She says as she... pauses.
    Carmen's hand is outstretched.
    Lether hesitates.
    IT's true she is little- a runt by Lizardfolk standards,- kind of a runt by human standards too, so the grapple hook should probably easily support her weight along with Carmen's.
    After a beat though she takes the offered hand.
    She has a lockpick set clenched in her teeth as she holds on.

    Wonders if the dissapearing platforms are still happening, and pushing them all forward!. For now, there is a target, and it is a person! sand powers non wisthanding. It seems the bear is happy to act as a decoy, charging at the laughing giant with a rather squeaky sounding roar. Destroy all the pillars, two can do that!. The fluffy bear approaches the one farthest away and just rips it out of the ground with a loud, strained grunt, before tossing it at the face of the large humanoid, that must count as a distraction, right?. 
    Luke and the other pokemon meanwhile slowly inch closer, the boy not being glass proof means the large cat feels overly protective and hesitating to get too close.

     Nanami steps over the disintegrating pixels on her way towards the now vanished gates, their staticy disappearance only drawing a momentary flash of interest from her. "So, we simply need to acquire the key. And this person has the key." she says as she slows to a stop, watching at the boss and his sand, as well as the glass he forms from it. 

     "You're a bit tiresome." 

     This time she doesn't simply rush at her target. Like Joanna she's keeps her distance. With another tired sigh she raises her arm, pointing it squarely at the target. "Ninpo: Makibishi Shidan." she says quietly as a few small projectiles shoot out. Little barbed projectiles, the kind that stick into the victim and fills them with a nasty, health sapping poison. 

     "It would be quicker to simply break the cage.." she murmurs, as though chiding herself for /not/ mindlessly smashing her way through the problem.

    Michiru flashes several times as she appears in the doorway to the throne room. The little counter above her head reads: x01.

    Wait, how did that happen?

    Oh right. While Nanami was barraging the Lord, and Joanna berating him, and Bewear using the architecture... Michiru had dashed in, with her legs morphing into cheetah-like legs. Moving swiftly, she thread under the storm around him, elongating her arms to snatch the key and toss it to the two thieves at the cage! Easy as pie!

    Except the glass shard impaled her a moment later, causing her to dissolve into pixels with a look of surprise.

    Michuru pats herself down and huffs. Guess the others had the right idea.

    The storm picks up, and well... Joanna's tactic DOES distract him for a moment. He keeps laughing, pauses, and then looks puzzled. "Talking?" He doesn't really seem to understand what there is to talk about though. The AI seems sophisticated to realize there's... something to it, but the character is so empty he has no real personality to answer with.

    Then he shouts out in rage and pain, as the thorns dig in and cause his body to flare with the heat of poison seeping in! Some of the thorns are diverted by the storm around him, but enough hit that his health begins to tick down, slowly but surely.

    He flings the glass shards outward in a predictable attack spread that happens to catch Michiru, but he has other worries. The pillar headed his way! He lifts a hand, stopping it short before it hits him... it is, after all, an element he controls. But doing that means he can't do much else, so he can't stop the keys from arching through the air, snagged by Lether and Carmen, who open the cage easily with a loud *click* of the lock disengaging.

    Fake fireworks sound as the boss freezes, and the redheaded princess steps out of the cage. She lets out a breath and speaks, "Oh, that was a lot faster than I thought!"

    That voice is familiar.

    Very, very familiar.

    The princess, in Echo's voice, now lifts a hand. "Let's clean this up and get all of you back to the real world!" The boss flickers and disappears in a pixellated dissolve from the bottom up... and lines of code rapidly speed by, condensing into motes of light that flow into the princess. The world flickers and vanishes, everyone's feet landing gently on desert sand, with the open Vine nearby. The name 'Beatrice' appears above the princess's head for a moment before the virtual world vanishes for good...

    Leaving her a flesh and blood, smiling redhead in a princess gown. Yet there's something uncanny about her even so, an ever so subtle look of a generated being.

    She lifts a finger and says, "I may have told a tiny fib or two, but I appreciate the help! Call me Beatrice, and I owe you all a favor sometime! Getting rescued multiple times a day was really wearing on me."

Something about this game must hate Joanna. Once again, instead of being gracefully set down onto the sands she found herself falling. 

 FWUMP. 

 Right onto that same shoulder again. At least it wasn't onto solid stone this time, though that wasn't making her feel that much better about any it. She decided it'd be better to just lie there for a bit, let the internal screaming die down a little, though she still did prop herself halfway upright and reach into her pocket for her pack of cigs. Yeah she didn't care anymore. She really needed a smoke. 

 Turns out she had just landed squarely right on them. 

 God. 

 DAMNIT. 

 With unimaginable dissapointment, and nicotine cravings, she managed to haul herself back to a sitting position. "Hokay. Alright, you can start by telling us what that was and how we got dragged into it. Hell, how you got dragged into it too, given you're talking I get the feeling you're not the same thing as that sand guy."

    For the most part, when they get up to the cage, Lether just kind of hangs upside down and passes Carmen different lockpick tools as needed. But when the lock clicks undone and open and...
    ~Fireworks~.
    "...?"
    The princess emerges and has Echo's voice.
    Then the castle goes.
    Then there's desert.
    "Uh."
    ...
    "Hooray?"
    Did they break Super Jumpio Bros?

     Nanami watches dispassionately as the boss disintegrates just all the other chaff they'd fought along the way. "How disappointing." she mutters now that the princess is free, eyeing the name above her head for the brief moment it's there. 

     "That was all you needed from us?" she asks while watching the princess, her eyes staring long and hard at her. It's quite unnerving, really. Finally, after an uncomfortably long time she speaks up again. "There's something wrong with you." she says bluntly, like it's a simple statement of fact. She doesn't exactly have any experience whatsoever with digital beings beyond what happened here today, and even then she doesn't really understand a single thing about it. Still, her eyes are good enough to realize that Beatrice just doesn't look quite right.

    Victory! the princess is saved!, does that mean the game is over and all this craziness will be fixed?. Luke lets Bewear return to its pokeball, figuring that things are more calm, but he remains perched on his tiger otherwise. The way the Princess is speaking is... intriguing, so was the princess not part of the game? is this some kind of avatar?. Was the princess also caught in the game?. For now, he listens curiously.

    WHUMP!

    Carmen lands on her feet, but a little heavily. She stares for a long moment. "Wait... were you someone trapped in the game because of all the chaos? Or... are you the AI of the princess in the game?"

    It's not the weirdest thing she's heard of, but it sure is the weirdest thing she's personally experienced, even after some of the stuff she's seen here on the Tree.

    "You're... welcome, I guess?"

    Michiru dusts herself off and frowns, "You couldn't get out of there yourself? I thought you were hacking the system?" She grumps, but after folding her arms, she squints at the woman. Carmen asks the question she was trying to think of, though Michiru just isn't as smart as the Master Thief.

    "Ah... allow me to explain a little better," Beatrice states. "As I said, that game was a cheap rollout, but the company had many experimental AI techniques. They tried to use those, it didn't work how they wanted, so they snipped them. They forgot to do that with me, and the self-improving code became self-aware. So I realized I was stuck in an endless loop of getting rescued."

    She sighs, "I had admin access because of poor coding, since I was the 'princess' and all, but there were some things I couldn't do. I started corrupting the code, but then... this happened." She gestures to the sky. "And the virtual world started merging with the real. I figured out how to release myself from the game loop if someone beat the game in this condition... and that's where you all came in. Sorry for the deception, I didn't think you'd believe I was real if I just told you the truth right away."

    Then she twirls, "But as you can see, I now have a body! Though it appears to still be partly virtual... oh well."

    She looks up. "You can leave through that entrance now, which should be more stable, if you need supplies or something. I'm certainly leaving as soon as I have my bearings."

    Then she smiles, "But I guess I was saved one last time, hmm?"

This is how Skynet starts. Probably. Jo hadn't actually seen the first one, but, the second one was pretty good from what she can remember. That being said it wasn't much, it was in the background and she wasn't exactly sober at the time. Also when she tried to actually watch it properly her friends wouldn't shut the heck up. 

 But either way, she was pretty sure. 

 Joanna held back from her first instincts about referencing it directly, didn't want to give the self improving AI ideas about nuclear codes, the singularity, or the movie Maximum Overdrive (something she HAD watched). Instead she just kept it simple. "Well, now that you're out, now what? What've you got planned next?"

    "Wait..."
    The gears turn slowly in Lether's head.
    Before she points at Beatrice who literally just explained this.
    "YOU'RE THE PRINCESS FOR REAL!"

    "That is an important question," Carmen agrees. "I-"

    She stops and stares at Lether... then just smiles and sighs, putting a hand on her hip.

     There's an awful lot of words being said that Nanami completely lacks any ability to understand. AI, code, virtual, all of it completely flies over the diminutive woman's head, leading her to simply staaaaaare at Beatrice as the newly freed princess explains the situation. 

     She does however understand the words 'you can leave'. 

     "Then there's no more need for me to stay." she says quite bluntly. 

     And with that she turns toward the now stabilized entrance and sets off.

    "I don't have any plans," Beatrice replies. "I don't know much about the outside world. So I think I'll leave this area and find someplace quiet to read up on it. Also cake, now that I can taste cake. That sounds like something I should try, don't you think?"

    Hopefully she won't become addicted and steal forty cakes or something.

    That would be terrible.