Scene #8958: Experience the GOATEL! 1 - The Great Lake Chippewa Floating Island

Owner	Pose
Madeleine Cadrasteia	The Wisconsin Capitol Warpgate stands at the heart of the capitol building rotunda in Madison, just slightly off-center so tourists can still get a good head-on photo of the richly decorated dome overhead. Madeleine, waiting leaned against a pillar in her punk-fetishwear-chainmail getup, sticks out like a sore thumb among the gray suits of senators and their aides cutting across the rotunda on their assorted business. She attracts a few strange looks from passers-by, especially as the other elites arrive one by one and gather near her, but she shoots them down with pointed glares. Madeleine happily makes small talk while elites arrive, but won't say a word about the mission, not in such a public space. Once everyone's gathered she leads them out of the building and walks a block and a half to a hotel parking lot, where a familiar-to-some grey-green van waits for them. "Saddle up, folks!" Madeleine says as she twirls the keys around one finger. She gets the angle a little wrong and the keys fly a dozen feet to her left. She curses under her breath and retrieves the keys while the other elites pile into the van. "So," she says when she finally gets in herself, "We're headed to Duluth. Anyone been there before? Nice little city just the other side of the Minnesota state line. Not the prettiest, but we aren't going for the view. There's a place there, calls itself the Goatel. 'Experience the GOATEL!', they've got billboards up halfway across both states. Goat-themed hotel, you say, what's wrong with that? Well, they've got goats alright and that's not a problem. It's their new main attraction, some kind of goat-MAN." As she pulls out of the lot and drives northeast up the Madison isthmus she continues to explain the situation. "That's great for their business, but this goatman has to come from somewhere, right? Goat people aren't natural to this world, so either this is some offworlder or it's a hoax. Either way the MCRD wants to get to the bottom of things, make sure nobody's being mistreated." "That's where we come in. We're a group of offworld tourists heading to Duluth for the freshwater aquarium, if anyone asks. And we'll just happen to need to stop for the night outside the city, and the Goatel will just happen to be right where we need it. We do a little snooping around, have a chat with this goat-man, make sure everything's on the up and up. If it's not, well, I have clearance to pull the plug on their whole operation and take the goatman wherever he wants to go."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Interstate 90 tracks northwest across Wisconsin's central plain, a landscape trampled flat by glacial migration. The interstates in this part of the country are hardly scenic routes even at their most presentable, and this is not their most presentable. It's a whole lot of... "It's not nothing," Madeleine insists. "Anywhere you look, there's someone or something that calls it home. If we stopped at any one of these little towns and asked the right people we'd get all sorts of stories." After about fifty miles the Wisconsin Dells put in an appearance, or the town by that name does. The namesake gorges themselves are a ways off the interstate, but the billboards make clear your location. 'Noah's Ark Waterpark - Wisconsin Dells - Exit 92', one proclaims. "I don't know why they chose to put so many waterparks here," Madeleine comments. "There'd still be plenty of good water features if they hadn't put up all those plastic slides. Now, the tours of the real Dells on those old Army 'Ducks', that'd be a treat I bet." She points in the vague direction of a billboard advertising just that, touting some sort of army-surplus amphibious vehicle. The hours pass, I-90 becomes I-94, and the plains give way to forests of maple, aspen, and red and white pine. Madeleine makes the executive decision to stop at a Culver's in the city of Eau Claire for lunch. It's the sort of fast-food joint where for a modest upcharge you can replace your value meal's soft drink with a cupful of frozen custard, and the huntress demonstrates a prodigious appetite for the stuff. "Gotta keep my energy up for the road," she says, as if that'll convince anyone of anything. Wisconsin's forests grow denser, and its towns fewer and farther between, as the vanful of elites travels north. Not long after lunchtime, Madeleine's route breaks off from the interstate onto state highway 40. The forest is, in time, granted a name: 'Chequamegon National Forest - No Littering', says a sign on the side of the highway. It's been four and a half hours on the road, not accounting for breaks - how's everyone passing the time?
Luigi	IT'S LUIGI TIME! "Duluth? No," says Luigi, as he totes in his tote bag. "... Goat people?" is his next statement. "Uh - we sure it's a hoax? Goats can be pretty mean, and if it's a goat person it's... probably doubly mean?" "Maybe it's fine right where it is, and we'd be bothering it by going snooping. Yeah." Reluctantly, Luigi throws his tote bag into the back, and joins the group anyway. "I'll take second shift on driving, I guess..." --- "They don't clean the filters on those enough," comments Luigi at the waterparks. "Especially the small ones, since the feds don't check on 'em enough. If you go to one, try not to let your head go underwater." When he gets a chance to get behind the wheel, Luigi turns out to be a great driver - but a bit too eager to press pedal against metal, and aggressively changes lanes to get ahead of every other car on the road. Food break! "I hope they have lots of spaghetti!" Disappointed at the lack of italian food, Luigi just goes for a burger and fries instead. The restaurant gets his order wrong twice, and after the third time he just takes what they give him instead of trying to get it corrected again. And then as soon as he bites into the burger, ketchup squirts out of it and gets all over his overalls. By the time he gets back from cleaning it up, seagulls have stolen all of his fries. ... Despite all that, Luigi's in relatively good spirits?
Ozhira	when Ozhira first arrives, they maintain their human disguise and sort of lurk around Madeleine waiting for the rest of those invited to assist the MCRD. Staying almost out of sight, watching politicians and assistants scurry about like mice. They are silent the entire time, even on the walk to the hotel and only make a noise-- a chirp-- when presented with the Maddiemobile once again. The Devourer circles the green-gray van once and then-- sinks into a sludgy puddle near the rear bumper, slithering up into the undercarriage around the rear differential and muffler. If someone were to duck down and observe them, they'd be rewarded with an impossibly wide smile comprised of entirely too many teeth and a distinct lack of visible eyes. "We like this." is all they say if questioned. But after some coaxing, the Beast does move to their assigned seat inside the cabin-- once again in their human disguise. On the road, the creature sort of... withdraws into themself. They almost look asleep, but their voice does ring out from time to time. "We understand. We will hunt, the goat-man. Without injury." After about half an hour and some thirty miles, Ozhira squirms in place. Their skin and clothing all fade into a bloody crimson-red sludge and they slide off the seat. Promptly rolling back, the Beast affixes themself to the underside of the van's rear-most seat in that hollow space between the seat frame and the springs supporting the seat itself. At Culver's, they have to be lured out with a hamburger; lunging at it with snapping jaws extended on a pseudopod of pulsating red mismatched muscle and flesh. When they miss (fortunately for the brave volunteer's fingers), the Beast slithers out and reassumes their human disguise to accept the snack 'normally'. Ultimately they have a strong appetite, are not picky, and enjoy the meal.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Shinmyoumaru would stand out pretty much anywhere in Wisconsin because she really doesn't go to any effort to fit in; a four foot tall girl in Japanese-styled robes also sticks out like a sore thumb, though she has at least worn a more practical outfit (by Shinmyoumaru standards) and not anything that's so ornate she has to ride her bowl rather than walk around and drag it in the dirt. She isn't riding her bowl today, though she brought it shrunken and tucked up her sleeve, so she actually stands out a little less by virtue of vanishing into the crowd (four feet tall, remember?) but she makes up for that when she catches up with Madeleine; the two of them definitely don't look like they belong around here, and that's even before anyone else gets in. "Nope, never!" Shinmyoumaru is only vaguely aware of where Duluth is; her grasp of American geography is not good. "A whole inn entirely about goats..." Shinmyoumaru thinks about that for a moment, and then cuts to what she feels is the heart of the matter: "Wouldn't that smell pretty bad?" --- Shinmyoumaru does not volunteer to drive. This is better for everyone. She's... honestly not a great passenger either, though, unless you like being asked a lot of questions or to have anything that crosses her mind said right out loud. "Maybe they really like water parks? What makes it a water park anyway, is it like... a pond or a lake? Can we stop to go fishing afterwards? - Wait, you can ride a duck?" Shinmyoumaru can ride a duck. She is slightly less sure that a human can. Shinmyoumaru likes the Culver's, though. And for someone who is a skinny four feet tall, she certainly has an appetite. She keeps up with Maddie on the frozen custard and she eats a burger (she gets mushroom and swiss because she's never had it before and seems to approve). She even offers Luigi a scrap of leftover cloth to clean up the ketchup. Shinmyoumaru spends a lot of the driving time looking out the window and asking questions, because she has so rarely travelled except for the last few months that things are still novel. Also, Ozhira still creeps her out a little and she edges about as far away from them as she can get, which becomes rather more difficult when they are under the seat. She keeps her feet pulled up so they can't be bit.
Dysnomia	"I don't know what a 'Duluth' is." Dysomia didn't look too off-base, for an extraversal tourist...Though, that asterisk was having to put in some serious work. Pupilless eyes glowed as she stepped through the gate, her mouth twisted in something that could have been distaste over the landscape, or could have just been the way her face...looked. She wore a gray hoodie with both hands tucked into her pockets and distressed jeans. Her radiant hair was tied up in a neat ponytail behind her, and gave the suits around them looks that promised she WOULD bite them if they got too close. "This is probably the closest I could ever get to being undercover," Mia snorted, when they finally had a chance to go over the details in private. "Goatel, huh. Bizarre..." The space wyrm had never faced this sort of empty Americana before, and as they rushed by she found herself enraptured by the passing landscape, leaning hard on the door leading out. "Guess I can't complain," she grumbled, in a tone that suggested she sure wanted to. "Hard to say whether they're pressuring them, if they're real." A pursed lips. "Hard to say if they'd even think of them as a person." When they stop for a snack break, Mia pulls out something glittering from a folded space under the table. She lifted up her burger's bun, slipped some gemstones into the ketchup, and then took a bite of it, with little more than an initial CRUNCH.
Rita Ma	Madeleine might draw attention, but there's no reason for anyone to stare at Rita Ma. She's a perfectly normal all-American girl, except for the part where she's Korean. Even at her new slightly-above-average height she manifests little sister energy; the only 'off' things about her are her slightly-too-warm sweater-and-skirt combo (she's dressed like it's autumn already?) and the somewhat melancholy look in her eyes. Her 'luggage' is absolutely nothing but a decently-sized cooler. Cars are still unfamiliar to her. Someone's got to help her buckle her seatbelt in the back. Once fastened in, though, she can't stop from being shyly wiggly, a little over-excited for the hours of driving to come. "I'm still not sure I've ever seen a goat before, Ms. Madeleine," she says, leaning around to peer up at the driver. "Well, the mountain-goats in National Geographic, but not just flat-goats?" She covers her mouth and laughs to herself. I don't know why they chose to put so many waterparks here "Yeah, what is a water-park?" she says to the inchling beside her. "Maybe they need it because there isn't much water here. It must be new to them." She sinks into stream-of-consciousness chattiness with Shinmyoumaru easily, and seems passively comfortable around Mia, but scoots away from Ozhira with a horrified expression when they melt and never really get un-shy about them again. At lunch, she doesn't even look at the menu and just gets some pre-made sashimi from her cooler. What a sophisticated young lady! As the hours stretch on, she contents herself with staring out the window and daydreaming. So much green...
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine is visibly unnerved by Luigi's aggressive driving, but doesn't say anything about it. She does, however, 'offer' to take back over after scarcely an hour of Luigi behind the wheel. "We will hunt, the goat-man. Without injury." "That last part's important. Top priority when we get there is the goatman's well-being, whatever it takes. And, Ozhira? We're probably gonna not want to do too much of... your whole deal, really, where people can see. This world's open to travelers but I don't want to draw too much attention." "I'm still not sure I've ever seen a goat before, Ms. Madeleine." Madeleine chuckles. "Well! We're probably spending at least a night at the Goatel, so maybe you can get to know a couple of the regular goats there. As for waterparks, they're like... you build a big plastic slide, then you pump water up to the top so it runs back down into a pool. Then people ride the water down the slide. I don't really see the appeal, to be honest." --- After four-plus hours on the road, traffic suddenly slows to a crawl, then a halt. "Oh, what now," grumbles Madeleine as a black-and-grey-uniformed woman approaches from a car parked at the side of the road. As Madeleine rolls down a window, the sound of engines - but not automobile engines, more like the put-put-put of outboard motors - makes itself apparent from up ahead. "Hiya! I'm Sergeant Kowalski, state highway patrol. I'm afraid the bridge up ahead's closed for a while yet, you'd better make yourselves comfortable." The patrolwoman gestures ahead toward what is indeed a small bridge. There doesn't appear to be any obstruction on the surface of the bridge itself, and at Madeleine's look of confusion Sergeant Kowalski continues her explanation of the circumstances. "One of the floating bogs is run up against the bridge after all the wind we got these last couple days. I know that doesn't sound like it should close a bridge, but vibrations from cars going over would risk damaging the bog and we can't have that. It's a protected habitat, for some kind of frog if memory serves. Anyway, it'll be another couple hours before the locals get it pushed out of the way, since the wind's still against them." "Hours!?" Madeleine exclaims. "We don't have that kind of time! I'm on a schedule here!" Sergeant Kowalski shakes her head slowly. "Until that bog's out of the way I'm afraid I can't let traffic over the bridge." She peers into the back seats, making brief eye contact with the other elites in the van and examining the eclectic mix of fashions on display. "I take it you folks aren't from around here? This happens now and then. I'm sorry to have to interrupt your vacation, but I gotta do my job." Madeleine looks back at the rest of the elites, her expression vaguely pleading. "We, uh. Can we help, maybe?"
Rita Ma	Rita is, for completely unclear reasons, slooowwwwwlyyyy reaching for her seatbelt buckle while smiling pleasantly up at the cop. Her middle finger is just starting to depress the clasp, thumb on the strap so it won't jolt when it detaches-- "help" "Huh?" Rita looks up at Madeleine like she's grown a second head. I wonder what the MCRD would think. "... Oh! Okay!"
Luigi	A SLOWDOWN "Oh, problem with the bridge?" Luigi climbs over the backseat, careful to not step in Ozhira, and goes to get his tote bag out - from which he opens up and extracts his toolbet, strapping it on. "Not a problem! I'm certified to work in protected habitats. I'll get that bog out of the way before the frogs can even get woken up for a midnight-" Oh, wait, there's girls present. "-cup of tea."
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Shinmyoumaru is pleased to have someone she can talk with in Rita, who she knows very vaguely from Lobotomy Corp (mostly that she exists) and the radio, so stream-of-consciousness chat is fine by her. "Maybe! There's some rivers though, or at least creeks, so there has to be a lake around here somewhere for them to drain into... But nothing like ocean or anything." She also asks about the sashimi, but that's with the attitude of someone who likes fish - she did, after all, express an interest in fishing. Every time Shinmyoumaru is reminded of Ozhira, she hefts her feet up, though they always end up back down eventually. She has a tendency to swing them - they don't quite reach the floor of the van. But eventually the van slows down. Shinmyoumaru straightens up so she can see what's going on as things slow down, and stop, and Sergeant Kowalski shows up. "Floating... bog?" Shinmyoumaru thought that 'bog' was something like a swamp and she's not sure how it can float anywhere; it takes her a bit longer before she puts together exactly what's meant, the kind of floating not-really-an-island that forms on top. "I could help pole?" she says, a little doubtfully. She, of course, can just float over to the other side if she takes out her bowl, and she could get the others over too, but adding the van is pretty complicated because she's not sure she can shrink the whole thing properly along with everything inside it. (Also, she does not want a puddle of Ozhira in the bottom of her bowl. She already spent ages cleaning it from the last time it got goop in it.) "At least let me look at it!" Shinmyoumaru is already thinking about other ways to help. Maybe - no, that's silly, they'll never get all the frogs out of it.
Ozhira	> "We're probably gonna not want to do too much of... your whole deal, really, where people can see." As Madelaine explains this, Ozhira straightens where they're seated, halfway through another hamburger, "We understand." This, plus the talk of exercise, may have made them realize that just Relaxing made them look weak or incapable; and so the creature resolves instead to remain in human disguise for the remainder of the trip. Likely to Rita and Shinmyoumaru's relief. At least they aren't under the seat snapping at tasty things anymore. -- The car slows. Then stops. Pulled out of a bored haze, Ozhira straightens in their seat and kind of--comes together a bit more as a result, glancing about the van's cabin. Eyes lock on an officer at the window. With no clear indicator of how they actually do it, the Devourer's body lets out a low, ultrasound rumble that vibrates through the van but doesn't really make it through the tires. Ozhira's failed attempt at echolocation is easily mistaken for the most powerful of growly stomaches in all of God's creation. "Floating bog," they repeat, "Stuck." Their eyes move not towards Madeleine but towards her reflection in the rear-view mirror, making Direct Eye Contact, "We will go. If there is water, it will-- not be a problem."
Dysnomia	"...Guess I could try to tug it from the road." Dysnomia said, slowly, frowning. "Don't know that they'd like that any more." ...But she also wasn't sure she cared. The seatbelt she was wearing phased through her body, thwapping gently against the cushion. The one she was actually used to working with. "I can get a decent grip on wide area of it. Maybe it would keep it from falling apart...?" Once, when she was younger she'd tried to lift up a planetary rover to help it out of a ditch, and ended up ripping off some of its instruments instead.
Rita Ma	Rita's a good actor, and saving some frogs is a charming cause, so she looks perfectly perky hopping out of the car and circling around to the bridge on foot. Crouching down, she waves and beams at the locals trying to push it, and then glances over at Mia. "Mmmm! I can help, too. If we all push on a different part of it, it should be fine, right?" It's easy to sprout a few invisible tentacles from her upper back and slither them out her sleeve- they barely make a sound, like a snake gliding over bedsheets, and her loose sweater only subtly squirms with them. It could easily just be the wind. That's her 'telekinesis'.
Dysnomia	Dysnomia slips from the car, stomping down the road to assess the bog, feet crunching under gravel as they approach the bog. She nods to Rita. "That should let us move plenty." Between her and Rita, she very much doubted that they were lacking in brawn to make it happen--the problem would be being gentle enough that they didn't accidentally rip the bog apart... Had the day always been gotten so misty? It must have been. And if it seemed to be unspooling from the strange woman with the glowing eyes on the bridge...That didn't make a great deal of sense, did it? Still, the mist coiled and wound around the bog, cradling it from all sides that Mia could see--splitting from the places Rita's phantom tentacles touched, moving in almost thoughtless chorus to reinforce Rita's intent. "We'll need someone to make sure the bog's still structurally sound, as we move it...You, in the green." She looks to Luigi. "That's your job."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Sergeant Kowalski looks a little confused. "I don't see how, seeing as you haven't got a boat, but you're welcome to come watch?" Madeleine pulls the van over to the shoulder and shuts off the engine, but optimistically keeps the air conditioning running on battery power. Walking up closer to the bridge, you see the source of all the engine noise - at least a dozen small motorboats are gathered around the bridge, all pressed up against what is indeed a floating bog! A great mat of peat, moss, grass and even scattered trees covers several acres of the surrounding lake. A few landbound locals are gathered on the near shore - some of them even brought lawn chairs and umbrellas for seating and shade. "Winds last night were something fierce," a balding man says to the gathering elites. "Bog's really tangled up in the bridge supports, folks have been at it for a while already and it's still not moving. Leinie's?" He reaches into a cooler and pulls out a couple bottles of pilsner. "I've got a few of the Summer Shandy left if you'd prefer. The one with the lemonade. I'm Bill, pleasure to meetcha." Closer inspection of the bog, bridge, and boats reveals a few issues. First, the bog is large. There's enough mass there to make pushing it with direct force slow going at the best of times. Second, the wind is against you, and the trees on the bog act like makeshift sails, catching that wind and pushing against the boats' engines. Third, just under the waterline the bridge supports are indeed tangled with assorted plant matter from the bog, which will need some unraveling if that bog's going to go anywhere. Finally there's the problem of simple organization - knowing where to push and when, and how hard, is difficult enough, but communicating the plan to a dozen boat owners each with their own ideas of what to try is another matter entirely.
Luigi	"Well there's your problem," says Luigi, after a couple moments of watching it. "It's gotten all tangled up with the bridge under the water. You're gonna need to disentangle it, or just cut it loose, before it can be pulled away." He glances over the rest of the group. "I'm probably the best swimmer here, so I'll just go ahead and take care of that part. I'll be back here in a New York minute." He checks his tools over one last time, and goes to dive in and start working.
Ozhira	With the van now pulled off and Aid now properly decided upon, Ozhira disembarks to approach the shoreline as well. They sort of-- drift through the crowd of onlookers, pausing when Bill explains the situation and offers beer. Politely, they raise both hands palms-out to decline, "We have-- work to do." Rita is being subtle about tentacles. Mia acts through nebulous clouds.The Beast can only act physically. Luigi dives and Ozhira takes it as an opportunity to act as his assitant, diving in behind him. Under the surface, the Devourer almost seems to dissolve, then reconstitutes as a swarm of crimson worms slithering effortlessly through the water. That rumble echoes again-- this time, amplified by the water, giving them a clear picture of what lies beneath the murky surface. It turns out that they are remarkably easy to work with, committed less to being an Assistant for Luigi and instead acting more like Every Tool Imaginable All At Once. He points and they act. Lashing down this piece. Unwrapping that. Stretching tendrils of crimson biomass across the bottom of the bog to pull it together while the others push on it. Not bad for carnivorous jam.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	"But I do have a boat!" Shinmyoumaru says, proudly. She pulls out her lacquered rice bowl from up her sleeve; it matches her lid-like 'hat' except in size. The bowl is too small to do anything with, but from her other sleeve comes the painted Mallet that people have seen her use before. She crouches down, rapping the bowl with the Miracle Mallet - And the bowl is suddenly big enough for her to hop into, sitting in the middle of it. She uses an oversized sewing needle as a pole as it hovers just above the ground as she coasts down to the waterside. "...that's a lot bigger than I thought..." Shinmyoumaru has seen bog mats big enough to support a couple people, maybe a little scraggly tree, but not an entire island! She figured nobody was going to be able to stand on it but her because of the weight, but they could get everyone on that with no danger and space to spare. But into the water the bowl-boat goes! Shinmyoumaru actually seems to be better at controlling it there, poling it even though she can't possibly reach the bottom of the lake, circling around the entire island while Luigi and Ozhira go straight toward the binding. "I'll help hold things together!" Shinmyoumaru remembers what Dysnomia requested - though honestly it seems pretty sturdy to her, she can identify if anything seems to be getting loose, and even sew it together, stitching it into place or tugging something along with a long line of energy topped with a shining fishing hook. Honestly, Shinmyoumaru is not big enough or strong enough to really pull the bog, even using danmaku and her fast-moving bowl-boat - the motorboats do a better job of pushing, not to mention Rita or Dysnomia. But once it's moving, she can help guide it, and she seems to consider that her job, with an appropriate tug here or stick there. She's never had to be a tugboat before...
Rita Ma	"I'm probably the best swimmer here," Rita looks charmed! It'd be rude for her to dispute Luigi's title. She's had performance-enhancing injections after all. Looking down from the bridge at the size of that thing makes Rita reconsider her plans. "It's nice to meet you, Mr. Bill," she says, perkily crestfallen. "Leinie's... Summer Shandy... Pilsner... um, I'm not really sure what I'd like best! Which one's your favorite? I'll try that." Whatever he gives her, she cracks it open with her teeth, skips back off to the van to adulterate it with blood from her cooler, and then returns sipping on it happily. The actual flavor barely matters. Properly refreshed, she sits down on the bridge's edge and thinks over the problem. A handful of invisible tentacles push against the island, and a handful more brace against the bridge, but that can only move the bog slowly... "Oh, Mr. Bill?" she says, looking back at the friendly man. "The wind is mostly the problem, isn't it?" She draws her other arm into the conveniently-loose sweater sleeve. Nobody can see it gnarl with scraps of dark scales, stolen from a dragon of folklore months ago. Surely it's a coincidence that, just a moment after she makes a twisting-pushing gesture, the sky darkens and wind reverses to push the bog out. Rita hums to herself and kicks her feet over the edge of the bridge. Sipping the doctored beer leaves her lips stained just a little pinker. Even though it looks like she's done nothing at all, she's enriched.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	With Ozhira's amorphous assistance and Luigi's technical know-how, the duo have the bog mostly untied from the bridge in a matter of minutes. Slowly but surely, Rita's and Dysnomia's pushes, supported by a dozen boat motors, begin to shift the bog away from the bridge. Shinmyoumaru darts around the perimeter of the bog, placing timely stitches here and there to keep the mat of greenery from splitting. Bill opts to give Rita a Summer Shandy - she asked for his favorite, and there's a reason he had fewer of those left. "Yeah, it's the wind that does it. Pushes against the trees like a sailboat... woah!" His gaze turns skyward as the clouds gather and darken. When the wind suddenly reverses, he looks at Rita in amazement. "You... did you do that? Wind doesn't act like that normally." He sounds more impressed than frightened, but there's at least a little of both in his tone. Untethered from the bridge and now with the wind behind it, the bog picks up speed until it's moving at a modest pace away from the bridge. It's only a few feet per minute, but that's many times what it was before, and with less risk of damage to the bog's integrity. A cheer goes up among first the onlookers on the shore and then the drivers of the boats. There's still a lot of pushing ahead of them, but with the wind at their backs and the inertia of the bog already overcome, it's clear sailing from here. And what's more, Sergeant Kowalski explains, traffic across the bridge is free to resume. Bill sits down on the bridge next to Rita and taps his can against hers. "Here's to creative problem solving, eh? Say, you aren't..." He narrows his eyes slightly. "You're not just a tourist. You're an offworlder, aren't you? Telling the wind which way to blow, that takes someone special. And that friend of yours, with her funny bowl-boat." Bill hesitates. "Since we started getting offworlders I've always wanted to meet some. Think I could get a group photo?"
Rita Ma	Once the bog gets about twenty feet from the bridge, Rita oh-so-carefully 'slurps' her cloaked tentacles back up her sweater sleeve, with not much more sign than a few water droplets dripping from midair. She looks up at Bill with slight surprise when he approaches, but her smile's earnestly reassuring. She's used to people being 'impressed and a little frightened', and less used to them coming up to her anyway. "I guess it's just good luck, Mr. Bill," she says. It's an obvious lie, but it's said sweetly enough for the true meaning to shine through: It's okay. I don't want to make problems for anybody. The cheer down below warms her, still, and makes her blush a little. She taps her can against hers. "Mmm! And to generous strangers." When he narrows his eyes, she blink-blinks innocently, and then laughs shyly. "That isn't saying much, Mr. Bill. You're an 'offworlder' to me too! But... I'll see what they think, okay?" She puts down her can as a promise to return, hops up, waves at her teammates down below to come up, and then knocks on the van's window. "Ms. Madeleine? There's someone here who wants our photo after helping with the bog. You'll come too, won't you? You always look really cool."
Luigi	Having a living polymorphic tool turns out to be really really useful! Luigi makes a note to ask Ozhira where he can buy another of them later. Luigi re-emerges. Bog weeds have slipped underneath his clothing, and he won't notice until the group's back on the road (when getting them extracted in front of everyone else would be terribly awkward). "Oh, sure, photos," says Luigi, making his way over after doing his best at drying off. "You want it signed? Or - ah, not an instant camera, right." Luigi goes to pose with everyone else who's lining up for it. Then, after the photo is taken: "Now, everyone make goofy faces!"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"Ms. Madeleine? There's someone here who wants our photo after helping with the bog. You'll come too, won't you? You always look really cool." Madeleine is about to grumble out a vague refusal, but the last statement catches her clearly off guard. "You think so? -I mean, yeah, of course I do. Sure, what's the harm in that." She hops out of the van and walks over to the bridge. "Hey gang! Gather round, we're getting our picture taken!" Bill waits for as many of the other elites as can be mustered, then pulls out his smartphone and lines up a shot with the floating bog in the background behind the team. In the first photo Madeleine's got her arms folded, looking as tough as her five-foot-four frame will allow, and in the second, 'silly' shot she turns her body to the side, holding a two-handed finger gun pointed upward in a sort of 'Charlie's Angels' pose.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Shinmyoumaru does her part - the occasional stitch, the occasional tug to get things oriented while the other people push it. It's easier to do that when the wind picks up and pushes it mostly the right direction - then she only has to tug gently to get it to rotate, in lieu of anything like a rudder. But eventually things start to move away from the bridge, and Shinmyoumaru can't help it - she cheers too, pushing her small vessel away from the bog to not get in the way of everybody who's still involved in moving it. She poles her way back to shore, stepping out of the bowl once she's gone up a couple feet and probably won't get her feet wet. The bowl continues to follow her, bobbing like a cork in a gentle current. "Hey!" she calls, waving her hand over her head. "I think it's good now! We've got it moving." She's beaming. Everybody managed to get it going, and while she actually kind of liked being able to get out and stretch her legs, she'll be glad to keep travelling again too... The question catches her by surprise. "A photograph? Sure!" Shinmyoumaru certainly doesn't mind; it's not like she's ever shied away from fame or attention. "And... yes, I am." An offworlder, that is: "I've only been to America once before, and not this part of it. I think." She glances toward the van, because Maddie has a much better idea of where they were camping than she does - her lack of American geographical knowledge striking again. Shinmyoumaru pushes herself to the front of the group for photographs, because otherwise nobody is going to see her. She is beaming. The second shot has a V-sign, because she's seen it and thought it looked fun.
Ozhira	Ozhira is as dutiful as they are versatile. Though their solutions to various challenges might be unorthodox, it gets the job done as far as untangling the bog from the bridge and helping hold the thing together alongside Rita and Shinmyoumaru. The slithering biomass of the Beast retracts once the bog is moving and disappears into the murky waters. A few minutes later, the human disguise that Ozhira favors just... surfaces, and walks out of the lake, sopping wet. At the shore, they shake violently, scattering droplets in all directions. Rita calls everyone together on behalf of a local tourist. Uncertain of this, Ozhira congregates for the photo. It's an opportunity to smile! Their human form's lips part in an unsteady, nervous way that exposes far too many teeth and looks profoundly uncomfortable despite their best efforts to convey happiness with their hands held down firmly at their sides. W-well, they tried.
Rita Ma	"Thanks, Ms. Madeleine! You're the best. I know it'll make his day." Rita is thriving when she skips back over to Bill. In the first picture she looks as absolutely adorable as she can by Maddie's shoulder, eyes shut in a sunny smile and hands folded behind her back- it's only somewhat tempered by the fact that she's clearly three inches taller than the much-more-serious Madeleine. In the second one she does a corner-of-the-mouth-tugging "bleahhhhh" pose, which would also be adorable, except her now-open eyes reflect the flash like a cat in the dark, and the exposed teeth look like she has a mouth full of nothing but oversized, extra-sharp canines. Nobody give her a copy. She can't be allowed to see this.
Dysnomia	She grunts with satisfaction as the bog begin to set sail in the direction they really WANT it to. Then, blinks rapidly as the weather itself turns to their aid. She grins sideways at Rita, remembering a similar time when a storm twisted abruptly to their aid, when they were contending with a homoculus from the illuminati, on Hibiki's world. In leiu of open celebration, she claps Rita on the back as if to say, 'nice moves.' "I don't know that we have time," she grumbled to Bill, rolling her eyes as she found the others volunteering. "Oh fine. Fine..." Her smile is thin, forced and uncomfortable when it comes time for the first picture; like she'd just been told to smile at the DMV. Ironically, it's not until the second picture that she really allows herself to relax, a wry grin bubbling itself to the surface as she put her hand behind Madeleine's head, index and middle finger extended, in an attempt to give her bunny ears.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Back on the road, the forest quickly surrounds on all sides again, and Lake Chippewa is out of sight long before it's out of mind. The county highway cuts through towns instead of going around them like an interstate would, so the tiny northwoods towns reveal themselves in a way they did not before crossing over the lake. Hayward and Minong (populations 2,533 and 858 respectively) spring up suddenly out of the dense woods before the highway turns north and makes for the border. The vanful of elites is just passing a minuscule municipal airport when a billboard looms around a bend. 'EXPERIENCE the GOATEL! DULUTH, MN', it proclaims. A brightly-lit photograph of a couple pleased-looking, slightly overfed goats accompanies the bold text. "I told you there'd be billboards," Madeleine says. "We're only about forty miles out now, so it won't be much longer." The next billboard teases the Goatel's main attraction with a blacked-out humanoid silhouette with what appears to be large ears and horns. "See the mysterious Goat-Man," Madeleine reads aloud as the van passes it by. "I sure hope we will." More signs crop up, advertising other businesses in the towns of Superior and Duluth. How's everyone holding up after six hours on the road?
Rita Ma	After hopefully being prevented from seeing how she looks in that second photo- if that finds its way to her wikelite profile she's having a heart attack- Rita beams at Mia in belated gratitude, and piles into the car again, this time riding shotgun next to Madeleine. She's absolutely giddy, and only partially from the blood-infused alchohol- something about making 'ordinary people' happy brings out her glow. "I like your bowl-boat, Ms. Shinmyoumaru," she twists around to say. "I've never seen anyone paddle with just a pole like that before. Is the stick magic, too?" And to Mia and Ozhira: "Thanks for being there. You don't get photos taken often, right? But I could tell it made him really happy. You were brave." And she doesn't say it, but her little extra smile for Luigi says she adored his silly-face idea. - - - - Rita takes 'being bored' very well. Having potentially-invisible extra limbs to fidget with is extremely convenient, but she's also great at quietly zoning out. After a while she pulls out her phone and records a message: "... it's going great, Ms. Grier. I'm making new friends, and everyone here's really nice. We still don't know if the goat-guy's real, but I got to help some nice people move a big floating island. When I get back, can you teach me to make a 'summer shandy'? I think I like those." "Love you, Ms. Grier. I'll see you in a day or two!" Click. A couple more hours after that, she taps Madeleine on the shoulder: "I'm going to go get something, okay, Ms. Madeleine? Please don't wait up for me! Thank you." And she just opens the passenger-side door, at highway speed, and hops out. . . . About half an hour later, she catches back up with the van on the highway at a superhuman brisk jog, knocks on the window for Maddie to unlock the door, and lets herself back in with wind-rumpled hair. "Sorry! Everything's fine now." There's a bit of red under her fingernails, and one less deer in Wisconsin's woods. She's got to stretch out her cooler supplies, after all.
Luigi	Rita gets an extra thumbs-up. --- When Rita goes to open the door to the van, Luigi sits up. "Wait, don't you want it to slow down-" And she's gone. "-First...?" Well, some people are just like that. He doesn't really think too much about being able to jump several times his own height. Luigi settles back down. And then she comes back. Luigi glances off in the direction she came from. The woods...? "... Hey, ah," he whispers to her once she's settled back in. "If you're that worried about the ones in gas stations, you can try stopping at a bank branch instead. They're cleaner there. It's a little, ah, life hack."
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Shinmyoumaru thoroughly enjoys being appreciated enough to have her picture taken. She's not that hard to keep happy, and she's having fun with the others. She doesn't even duck out of the way of Ozhira this time. Progress! "It's a needle," Shinmyoumaru says to Rita. "Though I can use a stick, too... it's just like poling, really!" Except she didn't hit the bottom. "I like to use a chopstick when I have one, but I didn't have one with me... the needle's useful if something's going to hunt me, but I was pretty sure nothing in the lake was!" She's in a van with what are almost certainly the two most dangerous predators in the state, after all, and they haven't. Shinmyoumaru, on the other hand, doesn't take boredom well. If she could she'd sew, but the van occasionally hits a bump or a jostle and she doesn't particularly want to mess up her stitching; instead she actually takes a nap, which lasts for about thirty minutes tops and ends when Rita opens the door and steps out. "Wait, hold on!" Shinmyoumaru doesn't follow her out, thankfully, because she's delayed by her seatbelt and Rita doesn't seem to be having a problem with leaving at that speed even on foot. But she does slide up to the window and look out with a surprised face, until she inches back over to her own seat and rebuckles her seatbelt. She's definitely getting a bit impatient with the ride, and is a little concerned that Rita won't be able to find them - but eventually she does indeed run back up, getting back in. Shinmyoumaru unlocks the door by hand if Madeleine doesn't beat her to it. Shinmyoumaru notices the red. But she thinks it's berry remnants, because she would have stolen berries out of the forest, and wordlessly offers Rita a little corner of cloth from her collection of reject scraps to wipe her fingers with. "Eh?" she half-says, half-asks at Luigi's comment, which she only half-heard; her ears aren't inhumanly sharp even if her eyes are. "Bank...?"
Ozhira	Rita praises them; Ozhira dips their head in acknowledgement of the taller girl's kind words. The little smile on their face is significantly more genuine, though also not something they consciously do. "Thank you. We try, our best." -- Back on the road with Lake Chippewa fading in the rearview mirror, the Devourer remains in their seat. No melting shenanigans this time, as made clear by Madelaine's words and the discomfort of their fellow passengers. Ozhira remains solid the entire time. When Rita bails out at highway speed, the creature leans forward in their seat and, without missing a beat, extends an arm unnaturally long to grasp the door and close it behind her. "She will be-- fine." is all they say about it, "She is... A mighty predator. Bigger than us. We could-- learn, from her. As we learn, from the Great Hunter." There is no attempt to pursue, only wait. When she comes back smelling of blood, Ozhira also makes no fuss about it. This is normal, as far as they're concerned. Madelaine draws their attention forward with the billboard readings, leaning forward between the front seats, "We near. The hunt-- is about to begin..!"
Rita Ma	"Oh! Um, thank you, Ms. Shinmyoumaru," Rita says with immediate embarrassment while taking the cloth scrap. Of course she'd forgotten something. Scrubbing the blood from under her nails takes only a moment; for some reason, she shoots an apologetic look at Ozhira too. "I'm sorry. I just..." She turns and looks back at Luigi, completely blank for several seconds. Convenience stores?? Banks?? What could he possibly-- "Ah... but you're not supposed to go to blood banks, you know. That's actually really bad. It's for sick people only." She nods firmly, having imparted an important truth.
Dysnomia	As the hours go by, Dysnomia becomes a little more idistinct. She stares out the window, and up, knuckle pressed against her cheek. "You'd think it'd be the planet that's most different." She said, finally. "And so did I, at first...But it's really the stars." "The stars shift with your orbit, with your planet's rotation, with your place on the hemisphere, but you know, your place on the canvas might change, but you're looking at the same picture..." She pressed her hand against the glass. The tips of her fingers were smoky. Misty. Unreal. "...It's not until you go to a different star system that your whole perspective changes. You look up at the sky, and it's all unfamiliar..." "...It's nice." Dysnomia knows exactly what's happening, when Rita decides to go for a hunt; she has no intent of peeking through the veil of her friend's thoughts, but the constant murmur of Rita's hunger had slowly risen and risen in pitch, until she left them. Maybe it was silly, the way relief(?) shuddered through her knees. It was ridiculous to think that Rita would...Hm. She considered. It was silly to think that Rita would allow herself to become hungry enough that she'd feel compelled to prey on them. "Welcome back," Mia said, when Rita clamored back into the car, reassured by the subdued tenor of her hunger. "Madeleine was just telling me that there are more than five guys working in 'Five Guys.'"
Luigi	Ozhira is talking something about hunting? Being a hunter? He wouldn't have figured her for it, but... Maybe Rita's just more comfortable in the woods. Luigi blinks at Rita when she talks about blood banks and sick people. Oh she's... anemic. And needs transfusions, but feels guilty about it? That must be it. He looks over at Mia next. "Yeah. I mean. It's also kinda... sexist? Saying you only have guys working there." "The world needs to know that girls can grill a burger just as well as guys," says Luigi steadfastly as he settles back down in his seat. He's such a good ally.
Rita Ma	"Thank you, Ms. Mia!" Rita, who certainly can't read minds, remains blissfully oblivious to what her friend's thinking. But if she heard, she wouldn't object. 'People who consider her completely safe' have never sat quite right with her. Isn't that just shifting the burden of caution to her? In a way, she's more comfortable with the MCRD's probing questions and wary looks. "Actually... I've been thinking about it. They're the same stars I have at home. It's an Earth even if it doesn't look like it. But here, they're 'faded'. All the light from the cities keeps the sky from getting dark enough. And isn't that sweet? There's so many people here, it makes me happy. And like Ms. Madeleine said, everyone's having their own lives..." She nods along extremely seriously with Luigi. "Well, sometimes 'guys' means everyone, but sometimes it just means 'men'. Maybe they only have five men working there, but a lot of women? That could be it."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine curses in surprise when Rita jumps out of the moving van, but does as asked and doesn't stop to wait for Rita to catch up. When she does, Madeleine is too focused on the road to open a door, so she lets Shinmyoumaru get it. "It's true," she says, about Five Guys. "Sometimes there's six or even seven, on a busy day." In time, the shores of Lake Superior come into view on the right side of the highway. Minutes later the crew of elites find themselves in the town of Superior, Wisconsin, just on this side of the state line. "Almost there," Madeleine says, with more than a hint of fatigue in her voice. "I just hope we can find a good hotel, wink wink." The huntress follows signs for the Richard I Bong Memorial Bridge, and chuckles softly to herself at the name. The nearly two-mile-long highway bridge connects Wisconsin and Minnesota over the St Louis River. A large sign halfway across the span bids the elites 'Welcome to Beautiful Minnesota: L'Etoile du Nord'. It's only a short drive out of Duluth along Interstate 35 to find the Goatel, as advertised by the increasingly-urgent billboards. 'ONLY 1 MILE TO THE GOATEL, EXIT 250'. It does its best to look like a farm, with a cutesy red barn and white wooden fences, and sure enough there are plenty of goats out and about on the fenced-in yard. A few people wander among the goats, feeding and petting them while plain-uniformed staff look on. Although supposedly a hotel, lodgings appear to be individual cabins spread across the complex, with a central building presumably containing the cheaper single rooms and the dining areas. As well as, the sharper-eyed Elites may notice, a recently-constructed additional wing with suspiciously few windows. "Wait here, I'll check in and get our keys. We're in one of the cabins." Madeleine parks the van in front of the central building and hops out, doing her best impression of nonchalance as she walks through the sliding glass doors into the Goatel lobby. It's only a few minutes before she comes out, and she's holding the keys - but something is wrong. Madeleine's always pale, but now she's white as a ghost, and are her eyes just a bit wider than usual? And why is she holding a newspaper? She offers no explanation when she gets back into the van, and keeps the folded paper face-down in her lap. A minute later she parks the van at the elites' rented cabin, staggers inside, and collapses into an armchair. "So much for an undercover mission," she murmurs to nobody in particular before tossing the newspaper face-up onto a coffee table. "They recognized me at the front desk." The newspaper reads: OFFWORLD ODDBALLS IN BOG BONANZA Over a familiar picture of six elites pulling an assortment of silly poses. "Somebody order a pizza," Madeleine says. "I need to lie down."
Rita Ma	Rita is thoroughly zoned-out by the end, but when she hops out, enough of her alertness comes back that she notices something wrong. She walks alongside and cranes her neck to try and get a good look at Maddie's face. "Ms. Madeleine? Is something the matter? You look--" Thump. The newspaper hits the table. Rita leans over to look at it. She's met with herself, horrid carnivore fangs bared and eyes eerily reflecting the flash. She looks like a ghoul. She looks... Squelch, sshshshsh, squish. Nothing like the fetching young woman standing in front of you, freckled with short dark hair and a nice windbreaker. The process of Rita becoming someone-who-isn't-Rita went by in an eyeblink, but you might swear it involved squirming motion and pulses of chromatophores. "It's a good thing we don't have any oddballs here, Ms. Madeleine," she says smoothly, in exactly the same voice as always.