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Owner	Pose
Rita Ma	OBTAINED: Cog's Jewels      (Enchanted to handle the clocktower's black-hole-threads, these stones from the Jewelled Cog survived Arkitekto Marcellus's final attack. They are every color of the sunset.)      OBTAINED: 7L2l4I2F3H      (... which is quite a lot of flower-money. Things that cost L are group buys, and your personal share comes to about 3l. Lower denominations are pocket change.)      OBTAINED: Black-Teal Ivy Key      (Arkitekto Marcellus's boss drop. It unlocks something. Your hand never warms its metal.      After waiting in the slightly-surreal backstage 'staging area', full of Paladins white-collars and folding chairs and coffee, you're given the go-ahead to enter Cinniuint again.      Once more, the artificial warpgate takes you to the Shop Area, emerging through a magic window!      BGM: https://youtu.be/r9jGvaEWEeM      The cozy plush-furnished lounge is familiar by now. So is the adjoining comfy fantasy convenience store, which has its doors open today.      Half of the portal-windows are still enticingly blocked with a white coral-like organic webbing, but the one that leads back to the Clocktower is unblocked, joining the Grand Hall and Dungeons. Given that Marcellus annihilated half of it, though, going back is of questionable utility.      The sign out front reads:      ROYAL CONSIGNER'S GENERAL SHOP - OPEN!!      New things daily! I hope it makes you happy!      RULE 1: No fighting      RULE 2: No stealing      RULE 3: Respect the castle's integrity please!      ... That last bit has just been scribbled-on.      When the floorboards creak and the bell rings, Miss Ritescu (still in stereotypical vampire regalia)] perks up from her counter-faceplant and waves, blearily excited to see you. "Oh...! Back again! Um, it's good to see you, I'm sorry I'm kind of a mess..."      There's a bottle of red wine next to her, and a half-empty wineglass too, but more pertinently there's dark bags under her eyes and her hair is slightly disheveled by exertion. Still, she bounces a little in her seat and kicks her legs with excitement as people trickle in.      The big countertop glass jar is getting very full of pretty petals.      As always, the shelves have basic adventuring and home supplies for cheap, and the wall behind the counter proudly displays...
Rita Ma	Sanctified Stakes      Good for climbing? On sale because they creep me out...      2l      Bottled Fairy      Don't worry! She likes it in there.      2l2I      Mirror Shield      Almost as tough as stained glass! Plus, always look your best!      1L      Muzzle      ... I don't really know why she wanted me to sell this one.      1H      Homemade Seaweed Soup      Keep your energy up!      2H      Homemade Yangnyeom-Gejang      Spicy raw crab, but be careful!      1F2H      Fairy Treats      Little honeycomb and herb. Dewdrop included!      1F      Sealing Scabbard      You can put evil things in it! It's supposed to be jeweled, though...      4L2l      Piece of a Broken Crown      I'm not sure where this came from. It's old and sad.      5L      Unfortunately, you can't afford both of the latter two.
Timespace Riders	Past the staging area and into Cinniuint, then into the royal consigment shop, Sougo and Woz peruse Ms. Ritescu's wares with their usual respective interest. Sougo's soft pastel pink button-up looks perfectly paired to the flower fragments; Woz's apocalyptic double-breasted overcoat does not. ... I don't really know why she wanted me to sell this one.     "For hope that it would be used," says Woz, glancing in Aidan's direction.     "Woz," Sougo lightly chastises. Motioning towards the front of the store (more specifically, the rules posted outside), he fixes Ritescu with a curious frown.     "I noticed you changed the sign a little. Have you been having problems with vandals or something?" He imagines that perhaps it's due to the general awareness of 'someone' progressing through the castle and the consequent collateral implied--but it might still be worth asking for her perspective.      Woz, meanwhile, peruses his book quietly.
Aidan Proudpick	"I'm saying," Aidan says as slips the coinage for the Bottled Fairy, fairy treats, another pack of chalk, the muzzle, "It could be useful! There could be some statue you need to put it on, you gotta think outside the box," unaware of the glances, a compass, 4 jugs of oil, earplugs, and a bag of marbles. He was going to take a trip to the Fantasy Costco, unfortunately, Black Friday and all that. And he'd feel bad not handing Rita money. "We get the mirror shield. It's been here for so long! And then, look." He starts pointing out on the Sealing Scabbard, "I bet this is where you put the jewels you got from the cog. It's obvious!" A glance at Rita, "Are you feeling okay, Lady Ritescu?" He looks at the bottle of wine, imagining it being more than Red Wine. Shudder. "Maybe the crown is from Lilana's previous life, if we put them back together, we can get her to see the error of her ways! Oooh, what are these!" Aidan shovels caltrops in his pile of adventuring gear. "Ooh, and a crowbar!"
Odette Raskins	After the last battle with Marcellus and his terrifying black hole and zombie backing, Odette's never going to doubt the power of Ritescu's items again. That's why she's looking pretty eager to be here when it's time to come back for another restocking session, although it's not just for the wares and the comfyvibe. It is a really comfy vibe, though, and she's relaxing even better in here than she did in the staging area. Seeing Ritescu again gets a relieved noise out of Odette, of course, as she's taken quite a liking to her little shop and that vaguely nostalgic feeling along with the overwhelming sense of safety she gets whenever she's around Rita, even though she's really only known her for such a short while. "Wonder if that thing was because of the fight... Er. Y-you don't think we'll gein trouble, do you?" She asks whomever will listen as she heads on inside, blinking slowly as she spots Ritescu in her relatively less-sheveled state. "Oh! Hi, Miss Ritescu. It's alright, we're... Um. Are you okay over there?" The EMT doesn't wait for an answer as she hurries over to the counter, of course, already leaning forward by the counter (since squatting would be way too low) to peer closely at Rita's face. She's got bags of her own under her eyes, and there's some bandages here and there on her fingers from all the scrambling she's been doing lately, but there isn't any fresh blood coming off her for once. Noticing the bottle of red wine, Odette lets out an understanding noise before digging into her trusty medical bag and digging out... Aspirin! In a little pill bottle, even, which gets offered entirely to Ritescu. "One every couple of hours, and plenty of water. Do you want the...?" Odette's hand goes up for a moment, but she stops herself from directing Rita's eyes to the lights and just moves her hand back down to her side quickly. "Want us to get the lights? We should be able to read the menu easily enough." She offers while keeping her voice down. Odette's recommendations for the new stuff on sale, meanwhile: "We should get the sanctic-erg. Sanctified stakes, in case we need them for.. Uh. Stabbing, or climbing. And to take it off Miss Ritescu's hands, you know?" "Fairy treats sound like they could be pretty useful... I mean, you never know if we'll need to negotiate with one, right?" "Oh, we should get the soup, too. I-I've got a feeling the next area might be pretty tough, and the other food's been really tasty." "And if we're getting food, we can't forget about the yangnerm... The gejank... The crab." "The muzzle's really cheap, too. I dunno if we're gonna run into any angry dogs, but it's super cheap. Just in case?"
Ivy Carrow	Ivy, of course, gave everyone who needed to know due warning that her runners were rejoining the castle raid.     Of course, 'everyone who needed to know' in her opinion was basically just the organizers (Dame Commander) and whoever she (Lilian) wanted to inform about it.     There was a flash of red, a gash in reality. And out stepped Ivy, looking...A LITTLE worse for wear, actually, now that she's through. But her prosthetic is back on, and she's grinning, that same (pained?) spring in her step. She clapped her hands together, surveying the shop, eyes eating up the sheer atmosphere of it all.     "Don't push yourself, Captain." Came Alex's world-weary voice behind her, stepping through the gate. "You're not at your best."     A pout. "Don't remind me." Nina eased through behind the pair of them, looking like she might jump out of her skin at a floorcreak. "A pleasant evening friends, ma'am Ritescu." She offers the shopkeep a deep bow, a flourish of her cloak.     She's on her bullshit again.
Angela	"Yuri it's fine," Cinder says over a phone. "It's been months, but we're almost done. I can't quit now. Oh--wait, everybody's back for shopping. There's some neat stuff here and I have to support Petra in whatever key items she wants to get. Yeah! 'Cause I'm a great girlfriend, you see." She hangs up the phone before stepping in. She wasn't available for the last fight due to a sudden PHONE CALL she received. That seems to be related to the very conversation she just finished! She steps back into the shop afterwards and is startled almos as soon as she gets inside, almost forgetting her girlfriendly duty of ensuring Petra gets an extra vote on any group purchase decisions because Ritescu... seems upset! "Are you okay, Rita--I mean Ritescu?" Cinder asks, completely unsure if this is part of the training or Rita's actually upset about something like for real real. "Wait..." She frowns. "Nobody shoplifted from ya, did they?" Her eyes narrow. Normally she'd all be for shoplifting but shoplifting from Rita is illegal! Unlike normal shoplifting. It doesn't LOOK like she's been robbed judging by how full that jar is. ACtually, where he heck would they put their petals now? ... Maybe if she ... smushes them down a bit so they're more compact? She moves to do just that. Smushh. "Oh! ACtually, now that I think about it..." Cinder brightens. "You've been so super helpful... Maybe..." She futzes around in her jacket pockets but only really has one item. She reaches into her jacket pocket and draws out... Her lighter. "Mm... You probably don't have a use for this." Rita doesn't smoke OR commit arson as far as she knows. "Well next time I'll bring something good." She decides, hesitates, and then mumbles, "Um...but for real.. is everything okay?"
Petra Soroka	Petra is personally getting severely tried by the obstacles presented in Queen Liliana Lycoris's castle. Her tragic backstory as a star-crossed heroine, her mysterious connections with Liliana's dark generals, the devastating blow of Hafren revealing the floor full of lust demons, and now, this: wine-drunk vampire Ritescu.     It's Liliana's most devious trick yet, to take advantage of their intertwined backstories and utilize the associations Petra has with red wine and vampires, in order to debilitate her decision-making as the heroes close in on the penultimate challenges. Surely, now would be a great time to push their advantage with the shopkeeper, while Ritescu's processing capabilities are limited and two valuable items are up for grabs, but how can Petra be expected to do anything about that, when she's too busy...?!--     Mostly too busy writing that narrative scrawl inside her own head, really. The simulation scenario lends itself well to a kind of derealization that Petra typically keeps simmering on a lower temperature, of the page-by-page conceptualization of her own actions and feelings as consumed by a hypothetical third party; and it's a convenient way to distract herself from getting too red-faced by a frazzled Ritescu.     "--Hey, Ritescu, are you alri...ght?"     Petra is back in her mostly-monochromatic period-appropriate outfit, an assemblage of her official workwear and some pieces of higher quality fabric from the shops in Cinniuint, along with the black and gold collar. Despite her intense mental efforts, there's no helping the fact that eyebags, messed-up hair, and wine are a net increase to the attractiveness of a woman, so rather than getting in fussily close like Odette, Petra mostly hovers just out of reach, fingers fidgeting with the cuff of her sleeve for lack of an untucked shirt hem.     "Have you been working on something, or something? Uh," "For hope that it would be used,"     "L-look, I don't think we need--" Petra automatically puts her hands up to deflect blame off herself, before noticing that no blame was pointed in her direction in the first place, and she accomplished the opposite of what she wanted. To save some of her dignity, Petra redirects where that sentence was going to go. "I think the stakes would be more effective on him."     Now, as for what she actually wants to buy.... Petra leans on some of the shop furniture, doing her best to look past Rita to the items on the wall, rather than indulging her critical curiosity as to whether any wine stains are on Ritescu's lips or shirt-- it'd complete the *look*, so, unrelated to any messiness, it's more like makeup for a movie! Sometimes, it's possible to carefully apply sloppiness in a way that better conveys an emotion, or a character, and everything about the castle is *very* deeply considered, so--     "Um... it's mostly between the scabbard and the crown, right? We can get the mirror shield either way. I think it's kind of dumb to, but whatever. And both of those are broken in some way. ... I like the crown, honestly. I feel like that's a more relevant thing than just 'safety' from curses, or whatever."     "And besides that... two orders of yangnyeom-gej-- gejang?" She almost got it that time! "A-and-- and we don't need the muzzle. We don't need that."
Timespace Riders	I like the crown, honestly. I feel like that's a more relevant thing than just 'safety' from curses, or whatever.      "As do I, for reasons I am sure you may imagine. However..." Woz closes the book with a definitive, one-handed thump.      "As it is written in this book," he says, holding it briefly aloft before tucking it back under his arm, "The evil-sealing scabbard will be of use to us very soon, and towards a similar end as the cog was before--making a dangerous encounter notably less so."      "By comparison," he says, "The crown's use shall be much later, and for a much subtler end. Accordingly, I recommend we pool our funds towards the scabbard."
Sarracenia	"...we are only -half- through with this place?" Sarra mutters with a flat expression as she looks at the portal-windows. "I am all for heroic adventures but...this is getting to be a bit ridiculous." she adds quietly.      When they approach the store, Sarra blinks in surprise. "Oh dear! Miss Rita...scu! Are you alright? You really should get some proper sleep!" Sarra reaches into her purse and pulls out...some eye revitalizer serum! Which she then hands to Rita. "Until then, please feel free to use this! It is the best eye serum to bad had in the Sundew Kingdom." she says, smiling the sort of smile one does when they are trying to reassure someone. "And take this as well!" She pulls out an energy drink full of B-vitamins. Piranha Plant Power Punch!      Odette gives Ritescu some items as well, and Sarra looks suddenly uncertain if her offerings are appropriate. Odette is a proper medical professional, after all. "In addition to Odette's medicine, of course!"      After that, Sarra takes a look at the wares. The princess has not bought much up until this point, but for some reason today seems like a day to make use of the store. She buys one of each of the Stakes, the Bottle Fairy, The Mirror Shield (if there is more than one), the Seaweed Soup, the spicy crab, and the Fairy Treats.      She blinks in confusion at the muzzle, then gets a devious smirk after hearing Petra. She buys a muzzle quietly, surely intending something not at all insulting with it.      When Ivy appears, Sarra seems concerned about her as well And Odette looks tired as well. "Goodness. It looks like everyone here needs some time to relax and recuperate." She hands green mushrooms to each. "If you would like, I can arrange a spa day at my favorite spa in the Sundew Kingdom."      Votes are cast for which item to buy, and Sarra hmms. "I also vote for the scabbard, then." she says after hearing Woz.
Powerpuff Girls	Blossom Utonium and Princess Morbucks have returned once more to the simulated campaign through Lilian Rook's supervillain exercise. Normally, for Blossom, she'd have to handle the whole problem in one long stretch, so it was a new experience to pause-and-go-back as she had. The surreality of the experience breaks up what would normally be a smooth-if-harrowing process. First, the day went south, and then, the day got saved. That was the Powerpuff flowchart, and despite some bumps and scrapes and strange occurrences, that was the way it worked out. Jumping in and out of the situation, leaving things undone, and the numerous answers that could have been chased down or interrogated more closely had the pace not been determined by the happenstance and guided by proctors and support personnel, Blossom wasn't sure whether to take things more seriously, as a point of pride, or less seriously, to control how much information about herself she simply gave away. Even arriving at the shop, arms crossed over V-neck sweater and turtleneck shirt, ribbon and skirt all fresh from prior activity, faintly floating in a suggestion of walking but really not, Blossom is in her own little world - thinking about the what her own goals for the experience was. Did she really come to get a good grade in heroing? It was normal to want and reasonable to achieve, but, hadn't she already? Was getting a fresh stamp going to make her feel... anything? Composed and floating at the back of the store, the red Puff frowns -- as Odette tries to buy the Muzzle. If checked, it might seem like she's frowning faintly at purchases, but she's truly not paying attention. "Be careful if you buy the soup, it's very spicy." The incredible nose of Blossom Utonium reports. Princess Morbucks... has not had the same experience in her life as Blossom, nor did she really have the long and trialed comfort with balancing and working with the feelings of extreme-stress situations. To her, as a 'Villain', she usually was the one with a power advantage *and* enemies trying to capture or disable her. Despite the mismatch of powers and mad desire to become closer to her rival-idols, she had rarely felt in fear of her life. So her trudge into the store is more plodding, less enthusiastic, less spirited than she had been before. Wariness was worn like skirts of subtly metallic gold and wraps of hornet black, the opacity of her pink crystal visor turned up so what she's looking at -- and how she looks -- isn't visible. The offerings are scanned, and dryly, the muzzle is lingered on. Woz, like a brilliant seneschal, reviews the usefulness of the items and helpfully divines which to buy in what order, and so the elbowgloved Yellow lifts hand in flourish of shrug. "I guess you don't have to wonder, huh? Looks like the muzzle's the most popular item on the list, a real loss leader."
Rowdyruff Boys	"Learning when to play by the rules and when not to is part of the job. Not saying that nobody did anything to prompt the sign, just saying that the sign being there at all can be an evaluation tool," Brick remarks towards Sougo, drifting through alongside Blossom. "Might also have scanned what some of us were thinking of as possibilities. Attacking the infrastructure is something that I did in the village segment, for example." //He looks at the bottle of wine, imagining it being more than Red Wine. Shudder.// That set of looks and reactions gets a glance out of Brick. "Do you know how much food just uses blood as a major ingredient? Grow up." What little currency he acquired is transferred immediately to Blossom, because Brick knows it's better to have the person who's been here more regularly handling any resources that can be pooled. Meanwhile, he's just kind of looking around-- Ivy's reappearance gets an acknowledging tip of the head that might or might not actually be intentional instead of just observant. //...we are only -half- through with this place?// "Could be closer to a quarter if we're unlucky," he comments. Exactly why he thinks this, Brick doesn't elaborate on. Boomer is also trailing alongside him, looking rather baffled at the situation-- he's been here even less than Brick has, so he's more than passingly lost. Also, sniffing at the smell of soup, trying to evaluate whether or not he can handle the spice. The answer is probably not, though he isn't aware of that yet.
Odette Raskins	"For hope that it would be used," "Looks like the muzzle's the most popular item on the list, a real loss leader." Odette looks over at Woz and Angela, follows the former's gaze to Aidan, opens her mouth to say something, then stops and puts a finger on her chin thoughtfully. She's not disputing it. "I bet this is where you put the jewels you got from the cog. It's obvious!" "It'd be a shame to break the cog, though. They're really pretty as they are..." "The scabbard vs. the cog" "That doe smake the scabbard sound a lot better... I-I'm just worried what might happen if the scabbard breaks." She pantomimes snapping something in half. "Like.. In the middle of a fight, or way later on, when we're dealing with something really tough after we've already used it to hold something. Still... Probably better than the cog?" "If you would like, I can arrange a spa day at my favorite spa in the Sundew Kingdom." "Oh? I don't know where that is, but that sounds really nice! I'd just need to.. Um. You know." She munches on the offered mushroom. "Put in time for that, if there's no work excuse to be over there. Th-thank you, Princess!" "Be careful if you buy the soup, it's very spicy." "Is it? Oooh... I'll accept this challenge!" She announces with the stilted cadence of an ancient Chinese general from a nearly ancient video game.  There is a twenty-or-higher-percent chance she will regret this challenge within the hour. "Could be closer to a quarter if we're unlucky," Odette breathes in, exhales, then pumps her fists at her side. She looks weirdly fired up, even though she's still kind of tired. "More time to power up, then. Get some real... C-combat experience and practice jumping around all this stuff."
Rita Ma	"For hope that [the muzzle] would be used..."      "I've been good," Ritescu burbles sleepily, before self-medicating with some more iron-scented wine.      "Have you been having problems with vandals or something?"      "Um. Are you okay over there?"      "Nobody shoplifted from ya, did they?"      "Oh. Um..." Her eyes slide up to Sougo's face, then Petra's, and effortfully focus. "Not really. Mr. Marcellus finally blew himself up, probably doing something dumb. So I've had to handle all the supplies to remake the clocktower. I've been reallllly busy." She smiles an exhausted, sincere little smile, and then gratefully pounds back a couple of Odette's aspirins.      When Cinder smushes the petals down, she finds they aren't very flexible, but a little wave of light runs through them at the compression. Huh. They might be... aggregately magical?      About Odette turning down the lights: "That'd be really nice. I can see well in the dark, anyway, so..."      In the new dimness, Ritescu's pupils gleam like a cat's.      She's sooooo out of it, but she still manages to give Ivy Carrow a sitting bow. It's their 'first' time meeting, if you don't count the moat. "Thank you! I like your clothes," she burbles, when they're suspiciously similar to her own getup. Cinder's lighter fascinates her- has she never held one before?- and after beaming her thanks and almost burning herself, she puts it up on the wall, next to Brick's American twenty-dollar bill. She's getting a collection of gifts!      "Be careful if you buy the soup, it's very spicy."      "Oh, you've got a good nose. But that's the crab you're smelling-" the 'yangnyeom gejang'?- "not the soup. The soup is salty-mild."      Sarracenia's eye-cream is accepted gratefully- "Do I really look that bad...?" she says while smiling, but she does. Mid-dabbing-it-on, though (in a way that betrays she's never worn makeup in her life), she has to hold up a hand to politely reject the energy drink.      "I'm sorry, Ms. Sarracenia. I... I have to watch what I eat. A lot of things don't agree with me, you know?" She's soooo good at roleplaying a vampire. She takes another swill of the red wine for inadvertent emphasis. "And I think the girl in gold might need it more...?" Ritescu has yet to see Princess having a good time.      "Do you know how much food just uses blood as a major ingredient? Grow up."      Brick's observation gets a little surprised-guilty 'wuh?' out of Ritescu first, then a nodding 'mm-hmm, mmmm'. Gathering confidence: "The alcohol keeps it from clotting, too. It's, um, really nice." As if she were a wise connoisseur.
Rita Ma	There's only one Mirror Shield and only one fairy, so Sarracenia and Aidan will have to work out how to share those. The fairy is a tiiiiny blonde girl in a white dress with dragonfly-gossamer wings, snoozing on a leaf like a hammock, and she only stirs to yawn when Ritescu delicately puts her down on the counter. "There. Um, just don't shake her..."      Being pulled in five different ways about the muzzle makes her hesitate and fret, so after fetching it and clutching it in her hands, she just foists it (for free) on the normalest-seeming adult who isn't actively displeased: Woz. It's very finely-made, black leather and brass.      The scabbard comes next, a thing of fine velvet and gold. You have six sunset-spectrum gems from the cog, and it has sockets for five zigzagging along its length. Which ones you use doesn't seem to matter, but you could make an ascending or descending blue-to-red scale.      Everything else is bought without incident. Except:      "And besides that... two orders of yangnyeom-gej-- gejang?"      "Good job, Petra," says Ritescu, by now a tiny bit wobbly. After pouring herself a second glass, she totters back to her feet, gets the gejang, slips around the counter, and...      Wraps Petra up in a big, sleepy, droopy hug. One drop falls from her red-stained lips and rolls down Petra's neck. Maybe it's because they're only entangled for a second, but Petra feels the distinct absence of a heartbeat when their bodies are together. Then she's slipping back to rest against the counter's front and placing the glassware crab-helpings in Petra's hands.      "There. Um... sorry. Again." She rubs at one gleaming eye with her fist, eepily. "I'll have things better the next time you come by. Promise. ... Good luck, whatever you're doing?"
Lilian Rook	Though the window-portals are certainly a concession made for the feasibility of the exercise, a great deal of thought has been paid to how they'd actually work within the fiction. As such, all the stained glass gates connect to Ritescu's shop 'in' the atrium, and from there, they spread to other parts of the castle, but they're meant to be used by the characters who already hold the keys. One will take you to the ground floor, near the exit. One will take you to the nexus of the underground, with an elevator halfway. One will take you to the tip top of the southeast tower, to skip a horrendous climb . . .     But none of them take you directly to the next sealed gate. Why would they? 'in-universe', Marcellus would simply take a jaunt down to the atrium through Ritescu's store, then walk up some stairs and totally ignore a level's worth of clockwork platforming hazards. You get the option of doing the scary ballroom and feasting hall again, or climbing all the way back down the clocktower in reverse. So clocktower levels remain basically the worst thing ever.     Once you're there, however, the black-teal key fits the lock with its crown wheel teeth, and the grand process of turning open a vast and baroquely mechanical door plays out like an effortful cutscene. Even when you have the keys, the doors aren't meant to be opened by normal humans. It does a lot to add to the mounting atmospheric feeling of scurrying between the gears of grand machinations, too vast for your eyes.     . . . That's funny. You definitely defeated Marcellus. So why is there music again? A piano, this time, accompanied by slow strings.     The windows from just before the next area show you that you're clearly above the halfway mark in terms of the castle's sheer height, the village far in the distance. Compared to the luminous aquatic blue and dark old stone of the dungeon, the baroque gothic basalt and ruby rose lighting of the lower halls, the sky and saffron and gilded white marble of the guest level, and the golden sunset and glittering brass of the clocktower, once again, the visual atmosphere is as utterly different from the last as its backing track, its threats, and its probable supervisory boss.     The far-too-large halls here are drenched in soft twilight, of the sort only natively found too deep in the halls of a victorian mansion for even the midday sun to reach. The floor is two-thirds covered with crimson wool carpet, flanked by quartz-flecked granite that glitters under the silver gaslights along the walls. At first, it appears as if dust swirls through the air, but the faint motes glow even far away from the lights. Spiral metal stairs lead up and down the multiple storeys that exist within this one 'floor', between countless overhangs, bridges, balconies, ladders, catwalks, and booths. The walls are covered in thick curtains more often than not, and host to exhibits pressed behind glass where not; fossil skeletons, pristine vases, ancient swords, gleaming geodes, historical wood block paintings, and so on.
Lilian Rook	And wherever you wander from there, it's books as far as the eye can see. Books, scrolls, slates, tablets, engravings, rubbings, portraits, diagrams, dioramas, and three-dimensional models. The shelves are so tall that perusing them without flight is a fool's errand. The sorting method is utterly arcane. Tomes of natural history dwell across the room from maps of fallen nations and an 'exploded' replica (hopefully) of a massive aquatic beast's skeletal structure. The routes and paths regularly change, too; you can only hear it in certain places, but the thudding of the castle's monolithic clockwork heart reverberates through the axles that regularly turn bridges, swivel staircases, and move platforms up and down.     You come under attack less quickly than before. Likely due to the nature of what's stored here, you don't encounter any more monsters or militant automata. Instead, the prelude is seeing a shadow figure reading by gaslight in a love chair; after which you're irregularly ambushed by the same beings as the area below, in a worse setting to deal with them. Progressing enough seems to regularly trip intrusion alarms, resulting in you being swarmed with flying tomes filled with pages upon pages of expendable attack spell diagrams, and accosted with flying curse talismans.     Your path is frequently blocked by one of many ribbon-decorated iron poles, which project space-warping invisible bubbles that turn you around, teleport you somewhere else, or trap you in looping puzzle mazes. There are scores of locked gates here, all with a noxious cipher or greeble slot. Every so often, a skeleton comes to life and tries to bite you in half, a portrait reaches out with shadowy hands to drag you inside once you turn around, a wall of antique weapons animates into a whirlwind, and other such classical hits expend your time and blood.     And the single worst part is that you don't even get to try and enjoy the atmosphere and the music and the spooky maze running where you vaguely hope the shadows are far behind. Because-- "Oh gosh. You're really in for it now~!" "That explosion yesterday was your doing, wasn't it?" "And you still have the gall to come up here? Hahaha no way!" "Well, either way, you'll make Lady Aria very happy."     It's those two. A few staircases and twisty ladders above you. Then again, in a different spot. The insanity of the layout seems to be properly shot through with private teleportation spots for easier navigation; or in this case, to let a couple of bratty nobles harass you like toxic Chesire Cats. "Just so you know, this isn't going to go like before~" "Overcoming the so-called 'heroine' was inevitable, given how many of you there are. Even inferior quality can be made up for with quantity. And Sir Marcellus chose to trial his personal experiment." "But you're not gonna keep getting your wa~y~ The upper castle is private, so you're going to get a taste of Northern-style justice any time now~" "Once Lady Aria is done thoroughly assessing your meagre capabilities and finalizing her countermeasures, of course." "Be proud~ You get to be notable stains on the floor~!" "We won't record your names or anything though. Just the security log. Maybe Lady Aria will order some of your effects to be put in an exhibit?" "Or your remains!"
Sarracenia	'Oh? I don't know where that is, but that sounds really nice! I'd just need to.. Um. You know. Put in time for that, if there's no work excuse to be over there. Th-thank you, Princess!'      Sarra is stunned for a moment, then deflates some. "I-it is...my kingdom? Princess Sarracenia Sundew? Crown Princess of the Sundew Kingdom?" she says, cheeks puffed lightly and expression and tone slightly pouty. Has she simply never introduced herself to or around Odette?      Woz is given the muzzle, which is probably for the best. But, it does increase Sarra's pouting expression. Rita suggests giving the energy drink to Princess. Sarra looks over and aws softly. "I see you are having even less fun than I am, Princess." she says, feeling odd about calling someone Princess as a name. "Perhaps this will help?" She nods a thank you to Rita for the suggestion, then hands the drink to Princess.      Sarra takes the clocktower route instead of the haunted rooms route. Platforming is still preferable to fighting through ghosts that might possess her again.      When the door opens, Sarra is once again amazed at the opulence and detail put into the rooms of this place. As has become her habit, she pulls out her phone to take some pictures. When she hears the music, Sarra hmms. "I suppose he left his ghostly ensemble running?" she says.      The amazement wears off quickly when things start attacking between teleport bubbles and locked gates and shadowy things.      And then...-them-. Sarra is panting and bloodied and her battle dress has scratches and cuts all over it by the time she reaches them. "We have not been stopped yet. What makes you think some mean girls will stop us now? I still have plenty of explosives, you know. I would be happy to give you both a repeat of what happened at the moat!" She pulls out a few bob-ombs, but she only menaces the girls with them for a moment before throwing them at gates and other obstacles. "Sorry, Miss Rita! I do not have any gate keys!" she says, remembering the sign outside the shop.      "Who is Lady Aria, anyway?" Sarra asks after a set of explosions. "Is that someone we should know? If you like this Lady Aria, you should really consider advising her to just let us through before she gets cured or hurt. Whichever is appropriate."
Aidan Proudpick	Aidan takes up the mirror shield, handing Sarra over the Fairy. Faerie? Farey. Handing over the tinkerbell to Sarracenia along with the treats. Even Aidan has seen better days, having leapt into the mouth of a dragon that was breathing fire. "Prooobably shouldn't put this on my arm yet, where is a good place to store this where I'm not going to get hit." He nods along as the muzzle is passed along to Woz. Woz certainly will know when and where to use it. "You had to get all the clocktower stuff up there? Wow. You really are working hard. Make sure you rest, okay?" He sticks the shield behind his OTHER shield and works on stowing his various gear around his body. "Yea, but not HUMAN blood." He shoots back at Brick. Pause. A turn towards Brick, "Right?" --------------------- Aidan goes for the clocktower with Sarracenia. He can't fly, but he can squirrel. And he really has some bad memories about being nearly turned into stew in the kitchen and the ballroom has awful reviews. Aidan sits on gears, avoids platforms by climbing down the walls, and arrives at the next sealed door. Again, gears. Aidan hums lightly to himself as he watches the gears move, focusing on one spot and watching it as it turns around slowly, then drifting his eyes to the next, following a single small part of the mechanism as it drifts across the entire thing. Ear perk. Tail goes stiff. Music. He turns around, walking backwards to talk to Princess and Princess, "Yanno, is it rude to ask, what do rich people do with all this room? These hallways are so BIG. This hallway is already bigger than my bedroom. Do you drive carriages through them or something?" Aidan grabs a book on ornithology and shoves it into his bag next to a pile of chalk. He finds a shadow person next to him just as he is shoving it in, squeaking as he pulls his head back, sudden flash. Then a glare as he remembers they AREN'T ghosts and slams his foot down where the shadow figure's foot would be and uppercuts one with his shield. "Whoever is here read a lot of b-GAH!" Grabbing another book gets a seecond to fly at him. He divesto the side. Two minutes later, Aidan pops back out of the time space puzzle with a little smirk on his face, bouncing a piece of chalk in his hand. He is about to proclaim how good he is at mazes when. "Oh gosh. You're really in for it now~!" "Suffocate me," Aidan mutters, looking upwards. He forms what is essentially a dodge ball made out of wind, spending a moment to conjure it out white wisps from his mouth, spinning it into a fine sphere. When they get all the way through the litany without personalized insults, Aidan blinks. He's sucked in this time, the ball of wind fading from his fingers. He could remind Sarra that he can pick locks, but it seems to be her way of working aggression out. So he waits patiently for the sound of them to stop ringing before he speaks. "Well, whatever Northern Style Justice is, it's going to have to be a LOT to get us down."
Timespace Riders	Mr. Marcellus finally blew himself up, probably doing something dumb. So I've had to handle all the supplies to remake the clocktower.     "Oh," says Sougo, frowning softly. So, it is collateral after all--in a sense, anyway. "That sounds pretty tough to deal with and run a shop at the same time. I know you'll do your best!" He gives her a warm smile and a thumbs-up. "And I hope you'll also remember to take breaks to rest and eat and stuff."     Having the muzzle bequeathed to him eatns Ritescu a grateful bow of the head from Woz. "You honor me with this gift. I shall ensure it is put to good use," he says, stowing it away in his scarf. ---     As had been promised to Petra, Sougo (as Kamen Rider Zi-O) makes an effort to 'scrape the sides,' just a little, on the way to the next sealed gate. Which is to say that while 'Woz and Zi-O, together,' only make one trip through the previous levels (much to the retainer's displeasure), 'Zi-O' makes one-and-a-fraction, occasionally darting backwards through time to clean up stragglers.     Accordingly, between the two, the Demon King is the more winded, the 90 gaming-themed Ex-Aid variant of the knightly, wristwatch-themed Zi-O II armor being put to particularly strenuous use. Catching his breath and leaning on his clock-hand silver greatsword for support, "Man... hah, hah... I'm glad these doors take so long, hah... to open!"     Woz, in the red-blue trivia-game Quiz variant of his sleek, silver smartwatch-themed armor, holds both arms wide, the head of his question-mark-tipped staff sweeping as he takes in what lies behind that door. "What a magnificent repository of knowledge," he says, his head tipped backwards just to see how high the shelves reach.     To his credit, his opinion of the knowledge is not lessened when it becomes animate and attacks. Shifting to the brute-force, robot-themed Kikai armor, he fends off the books by way of multiple golden manipulator arms which sprout from his back, their powerful clamps forcing the books shut or redirecting their attacks towards each other--or the shadowy figures from before.     Zi-O, having come in winded, fares not as well as his retainer. While the Ex-Aid armor's colorful HIT! markers make plenty of light to ward off hostile shadows, keeping pace with Woz and the others is a challenge for him--he's a little bit bad at puzzles and pretty prone to bumping into those iron poles.     Zi-O is therefore a common sight--either he's getting out of one of those puzzles or time looping backwards to give himself the answer and save a little time here and there. Banter from the Heathers      Perhaps the most daunting part of the gauntlet sees Those Two, awaiting above. "Hi! I have the gall to do a lot, actually... a good king shouldn't be indecisive, don't you think?" calls a winded Zi-O, cupping a hand to his colorful helmet before waving with it in greeting. "I'm really looking forward to that Northern justice. It'll give me a great idea of what not to do as king!"     "I admire your dedication to your ruler and to condescending repartee." He places a hand over his heart and offers a half-bow while his robotic arms beat harassing books back. "Today, you have met your match in both," he proclaims with an upturned palm lifted towards them. "Try not to be too disheartened by your inevitable defeat."
Ivy Carrow	"I hate this place."     "I love this place!"     Ivy and Nina spoke in dissonant chorus, gaze swinging to meet. The Captain chuckled, Nina's shoulders drooped.     "Nobody's forcing you to be here, Nina."     "I just want..." She grimaced, drawing inward. "...Nothing."     Ivy takes the lead in directing her little cadre of runners through the castle. She avoids long-distance teleportation, preferring to go for brief zips-atop that chandelier--halfway across that catwalk--on that railing, overhead. Only when she was on the opposite side of a room would she offer her runners a hand signal, and tear a portal for them to step through.     She clapped her hands softly together, looking over a particularly insidious piece of platforming. "...Alex....!"     "We are NOT putting anything like this in the Castle. It needs to be easy to navigate."     "Not even to that place?"     The Vice-Captain's face pinched into a thoughtful frown. He said nothing.     "Just so you know, this isn't going to go like before~"     "Have something else planned when we get through~" Ivy half-sang back.     Ivy's swordwork had plenty of opportunities to breathe in Aria's sanctum, smooth slashes through the neck of a skeleton, while her cloak intercepted a bolt of fire. She stayed at the head of her little group, intent on clearing the way for Alex and Nina.     But, she hadn't accounted for the possibility of an ambush...     Ivy was other the other side of the room as a hand untethered from the wall, casting a shadow over the trailing warprunners. Nina shrieked, sidearm in her grip, as bullets slammed into the hand. But it wasn't quite enough.     It seized hold of Nina, dragged her backward, up, up--halfway into the painting now. Ivy cursed, already slipping back through space, but her reflexes were only human--
Odette Raskins	"Mister Marcellus did do really good in his role. I mean, it was scary, he was tough, and..." Odette smiles proudly at Rita. "Your potion and the holy water really helped!" She explains, pocketing her new acquisitions of food and stakes away carefully after getting that light taken care of. She's also going to stare at Ritescu's eyes for a while once she sees that gleam, complete with dreamily fascinated 'oooooh' noises. "Take care of yourself, Miss Ritescu. W-we'll be back sooner or later, and we'll have plenty more of the little thingies for you when we come back. Um. J-just don't overwork yourself, okay?" Says the caffeinated EMT. "Princess Sarracenia Sundew? Crown Princess of the Sundew Kingdom?" "Oh yeah.. I-I've heard you say that before! Um. On the radio, anyway. Sounds like a really nice place, then, if it's named like that." Odette observes, noddings lowly while letting her mind wander just a smidge. "Or hot? Like a rainforest, if it's sunny and humid. Is that why you're named after...?" Wait. Does Sarracenia know? Would it be rude to say it? Crap, she already started saying it! Trying to act natural, Odette starts sipping some of Rita's seaweed soup instead, then lets out a pleasantly surprised noise that is not a subtle topic shift at all. "Oh, this is good..." With the options for getting to the next sealed gate all being absolutely terrifying, it might be surprising to-okay, maybe it won't be that surprising that Odette opts for the reverse clocktower challenge. Even if it's unfamiliar ground going in the opposite direction, it's also relatively less harrowing than the ballroom and feasting hall would be. She already used her holy water with Marcellus, after all, and she doesn't even recall it working on the dancers leading up to his battle! Plus, it's an opportunity to sneak in a little vocal training. If Petra goes the same way, she might even recognize the yelps Odette's making as she drops from gear to gear. At the gate, Odette spends some extra time tending to whatever scrapes and bruises anyone got during their respective descents. She's certainly getting used to applying medicated gauze or picking out pills for anyone that needs it. "Feels like we're using less of this stuff the more we go around this place... Th-that's a good sign, right?" As usual, Odette's marveling at the sheer amount and quality of the decor when she comes through. Seeing all those stairs and likely platforming challenges doesn't even daunt her, either, like something's bumped up her confidence enough to offset some of her usual jitters and freaking out. The presence of the music doesn't strike her as something to worry about, either, as she tries to enjoy the vibes on her way through. Sadly, there's some familiar voices that ruin that vibe for her, and she keeps her gaze down at first when she hears those taunts and jeers. "Oh no... I-it's them again." She murmurs quietly to whoever happens to be nearby, trying not to let either of the pair hear the dread in her voice. "J-just ignore them, just ignore them... Just distractions, can't hurt us if we focus on moving..." She mutters to herself, somehow keeping her cool despite her apparent discomfort just from body language alone. It's the roaming ambushes that get her to start screaming again in that way she often does, of course, filled with terror and activating her fight or flight response without any regard to how she might look. Like usual, she's all too eager to let her more combat-capable allies handle the actual fighting while she scurries around smushing healing gunk on their wounds and scrounges up those petals that scatter all over the place. There's a few moments where she brings out a wooden staff and tries jabbing it into a painting or tome like she's expecting something to happen, but little actually happens before she's back to running away and getting tripped up on skeletons or spinning swords.
Odette Raskins	Seeing Nina getting caught up by a painting, though, is when Odette finally puts her physical training to use! Sprinting at her from the side, she practically tackles Nina as she tries wrestling her out of the painting hands' hold, even going as far as taking out a bonesaw to start chopping (and screaming) at the hands if those earlier efforts aren't enough.
Angela	Cinder is happy that Rita takes her lighter. It's less part of her plan to do this dungeon and more because she pretty much digs Rita. Shajo and Nonon are always talking her up and she even hugged the Red Mist into submission, that's pretty amazing by her book! The lighter has a sticker of a fireball on it giving a thumbsup. It's also wearing sunglasses. Don't worry, Cinder has plenty of lighters. "Oh be careful--you don't want to put your hand where the fire's gonna be--" Cinder jumps a little when Rita hugs Petra and drips (blood)wine down her neck! She rubs at her neck sheepishly and looks away for a moment. "W..well, sorry about all the damage..." Did Marc really blow himself up? CAn he just do that and walk it off?? She wouldn't be surprised. They even have a home in SPACE. She's having trouble focusing on the mission all of a sudden and her face is feelign hot. She better just... try to focs on it. It's a little weird the scabbard has five slots not six. Maybe those jewels aren't actually going with the scabbard? Hoofh. Hoofh. She's probably overthinking it, she tells herself. She has time to cool off during the walk to the next area, watching around, listening to the piano, and wondering what exactly she missed with Marcellus. She can still fight, largely focused on setting the books alight with Fourth Match Flame, though she's a bit skittish about doing so at first. She yelps at the flying curses and swings her weapon wildly to fend them off as she can. She's panting for breath by the time she reaches the mean girls. "...Eh? Lady Aria?" She wonders which friend is Lady Aria. Is it Persephone this itme, she wonders, she's not sure she could fight Persephone even as part of training, so she hopes not. Oh gosh, she'd probably insist wouldn't she? Maybe it's someone else she just hasn't heard from yet? She listens to the two explain the situation and how they're going to die horribly. "Oh thanks for the tips." She says. "What's Northern style justice...?" There's so much lore for this exercise it's pretty fascinating.
Powerpuff Girls	Blossom, long ago, is corrected that the soup is mild and the crab is spicy. Blinking, as if to raise her voice and correct Ritescu, Princess looks at the red Puff with a faint look of 'are you serious?'. "It's the same soup as last time, red." "Ah. It must be very spicy, then." Blossom covers. The currency is passed to Blossom who then almost-sheepishly 'she got a 99 instead of a 100 on the maths test' passes her loot off to Woz and Odette as they make their notable purchases. Odette needs it, and Blossom... Wants to cycle the situation. Soon enough they're allowed to, sent to RE-DO the terrible CLOCKTOWER! Which, on the way back, isn't quite so hard. A red and pink-bluewhite streak zip through the timing traps and clocktower drop at such a blistering pace as to obviate the entire reverse run of the tower, bouncing and zipping and racing lights that overtake each other before Blossom forces Princess to hard stop and foot-tap impatiently through the deadly stroke of a trap while her test-drival continues on. At speed, it's like jogging after the orange hair and red ribbon of the girl in front of her, a bouncing step and a thump of heartbeat like they were five again and the world was simple and a hundred dollar bill felt like a large number. As slowness snaps back around Princess it becomes difficult to track, a zipping-ahead blur of red relativity she stands in place and watches leave, and it feels like more than just Blossom is getting away from her. Her eyes track to the entrance of the ghost-haunted ballroom and a cold flush of adrenaline veers her away from Blossom's glowing zip through that zone, instead taking the dining hall at a sound barrier violating burn. All that skipping and foolishness can't continue as they 'progress', the unknown a greater threat to speedily crashing into than any generally trodden ground. Princess is first to try elbowing through one of the ribbon-wrapped rods at high speed and is caught in the teleporter trap that spins her out in another portion of the maze, lost and alone for a second and frantically reacting. Isolated, her palms come up and the room is aglow with the pink crackle of barely-held power, and she listens to... Those *goobers* again? Those Cheshire cat *wannabes*?! "Didn't you almost get bombed for giggling and pointing at us, you amoeboid losers? If you jump me and get turned into charcoal and ash, it's on you!!" Princess stressposts as she burns through the maze, zipping randomly through rooms to brute force the pattern and add more data to her mapping HUD at high speed. Blossom, meanwhile, drops to a walk and takes the library maze like a real maze, following Odette and Ivy and delivering somewhat sedated open-handed chops to spooky zombies and ice-breathing dangerous sections of floor and flying books equally. "Excuse me! Are you, perhaps, hungry? And interested to be bought off by delicious soup?" Blossom tries, thinking of items and still consumed by the doubt of the usefulness of Spicy Crab (which isn't soup, Blossom).
Rowdyruff Boys	//Yea, but not HUMAN blood.// "You're not a human, you fucking goon," Brick replies, irritably. He sounds a little distracted because he is. He's thinking about the format of the scenario and the fact that the minions in the villages had disruptable supply lines. In fact, judging by how that shook out, he suspects that the scenario planner probably didn't anticipate for anybody to go after those things. Which brings him towards the fact that they have to manually route around the castle, through chambers they've already done. He's sluggish to actually even get started because he can only think of a limited number of reasons for a 'limited enemy' before and an 'unlimited enemy' now. In the end, he lags behind long enough to communicate something privately to Woz... PHONE: Phoning Timespace Riders, Rowdyruff Boys says, "Woz. I think you're the only one who can look into this practically at this point. I disrupted some magical supplies coming into the castle before things progressed to the interior. Not sure what they were for, just knew I wanted to deny resources. But it might not be a bad idea for somebody to check the front-end and see what that was actually about and what it disrupted, as well as whether or not anything was rerouted to compensate." The communication is followed by his advance, with Boomer following after him-- Brick is doing something. He's specifically trying not to demonstrate any abilities he hasn't already as he advances through the clusterfuck of new obstacles and the looping space puzzles-- he actually wises up to the space-distorters pretty quickly and starts checking his path with eyebeams to see if they curve anywhere unnatural. Boomer is a little more impatient and hasty and ends up lagging behind significantly, to his great distress, and only catches up when the chirp of his radio prompts Brick to physically grab him and drag his brother through using his own methodology. At one point he just starts using his brother as a shield because he's already holding him and adjusting posture to do anything else is too much trouble. But Boomer is actually pretty good at shooting lightning bolts timed with the blocks to make approaching this bizarre defensive arrangement dangerous. Brick literally dumps Boomer unceremoniously onto the ground and grows to giant size, shifting to make it difficult to physically see the rest of the group-- particularly Woz and Boomer, but he's trying not to look like he's actually obfuscating Woz. Boomer falls in next to Woz with the apparent intent of helping him in some way that's unclear, at the moment. There's a plan though, and Brick is trying to make it difficult to perceive around him. "Oh man, a goddamned gated neighborhood inside another gated neighborhood, haven't broken into one of those in ages. This place is too painfully victorian to have any VCRs to steal, so what've you got instead? Gonna show me an original of Roundhay Garden?" Brick demands, just scatterblasting belligerence and trivia knowledge into something semicoherent but still dumb enough to be easy pickings.
Petra Soroka	"So I've had to handle all the supplies to remake the clocktower. I've been reallllly busy."     "Oh, really? I mean, I could--"     WAIT. Petra was about to offer help reflexively, to Rita Ma, who isn't present! Ritescu is not so dearly treasured of a person as Rita, and in fact, Petra is supposed to be on the opposite side as her! However, the flashing notification in her head alerting her to the fact that she *is* in fact able to help, because she's done quite a bit of supervillain supply-side work herself, can't be ignored! Within seconds, Petra constructs a justification for why this is okay to do.     "Um, my-- secretary, Heyalexa, is good at stuff like that, if you want-- a second set of hands, or whatever. If Queen Liliana gave you permission to hire on help, I mean." See! If Heyalexa helps Ritescu in return for monopoly money, then that's actually secretly benefitting the group by letting them get the crown later! "Do I really look that bad...?"     "No," Petra interjects, hurriedly, into a conversation she wasn't part of. "Good job, Petra,"     Petra's loyalty score as recorded by Brick wavers. Her efforts to suppress her blush are in vain when exposed to a direct attack like that, and in automatically reciprocating the hug, one of her hands wanders to the back of Rita's head. Not to affectionately pat it because she's soooooo eepy, but resting there and putting a little more weight pressing Rita's mouth to her neck, just barely short of weaving fingers into her hair by reflex.     When Rita leans back, Petra is absolutely incapable of meeting her eyes, beet red. "U-um-- d-don't worry about it. I, um, love your shop. Good luck with all the, the, castle... tower, the tower rebuilding."     And then it's back to climbing! Petra is more than willing to scale the clocktower again, because she's begun skipping her daily exercises on simulation days in expectation of it. While clambering up spinning gears and between slicing mechanisms, Petra idly wonders about buying a labyrinthine-shifting platforming course for Hydrochoeria herself, for enrichment. She's got plenty of connections with supervillain material suppliers-- it's entirely possible that Lilian even used some of those same connections when building the castle, considering that Lilian has access to all of her phone contacts. If Petra goes the same way, she might even recognize the yelps Odette's making as she drops from gear to gear.     Petra is practically able to lap Odette in the platforming section if she really chose to, so when she hears Odette's noises, it's effortless for her to swing around to hang one-handed off a pillar of an axle, swinging her foot over the edge of a gear to look down at Odette. Flat-expressioned-and-toned in a way that she only is when precariously hovering between dry sarcasm and genuine advice, she calls down, "Try swallowing and holding."     In the new area, Petra is immediately sidetracked by wondering about the authenticity of the props that, plausibly, can't even be interacted with by the heroes. Not just whether they're real books, but-- "I wonder how much thought was put into these collections? Like, do you think we'd learn more about *Liliana*, or about whatever loser was here before her? I forgot her name. It'd be hard to individually curate all these books even for *Queen Liliana*-- and people don't even *do* that, anyways; I know most rich people's libraries are just bought as a set because their covers look nice together."
Petra Soroka	Predictably, pressing 'interact' on every lore prompt results in Petra getting got by every single ghost trap she could possibly trigger. She's dogshit at puzzles, bemoans ruining book bindings even when they're flying around and shooting arcane bolts at her, tries to take a mounted weapon off the wall only to cause the whole set of them to come to life, and so on, but she's doggedly determined to keep pressing forwards, and in part that's *because* of-- "That explosion yesterday was your doing, wasn't it?" "And you still have the gall to come up here? Hahaha no way!"     "Well, unless you actually manage to *stop* us, we're kind of right to keep having gall, aren't we? Until then, you're just coping about loooooosing!" Petra is invigorated by Posting back at Hafren and Elena, even while she's getting her ass kicked and the other two women are smugly cackling from the catwalk above. "Overcoming the so-called 'heroine' was inevitable, given how many of you there are. Even inferior quality can be made up for with quantity. And Sir Marcellus chose to trial his personal experiment."     "Uh huh, uh huh. So what's the excuse you've prewritten for losing this next time? Or are you gonna have to knock your heads together for a bit until you come up with one?" "Be proud~ You get to be notable stains on the floor~!"     "Ha! So we *are* notable, though! You can make excuses all you want, but we've *already* got farther than you wanted!" Petra snickers, and then yelps when a cursed talisman slaps onto her torso, and she starts swatting it off frantically while muttering about how she can't get cursed any more than she already has. She narrows her eyes at the cloud of talismans-- hey, are they seeking her out *especially* harshly? "I would be happy to give you both a repeat of what happened at the moat!"     "Hey-- what the fuck, Princess? Don't throw *bombs* at people for being *mean*," says Petra, who immediately realizes how this sounds coming out of her mouth. "Unless you have a good ideological reason to do that. Which you don't." "Today, you have met your match in both,"     When Woz's uplifted hand is done performing, Petra gives him a little fist bump in passing. "...Eh? Lady Aria?"     To all the questions about Lady Aria and her Northern Style Justice, Petra feels extremely smug in being probably capable of answering. Being familiar with yet another of Queen Liliana's dark generals only further cements her tragic backstory as a main character with connections to the primier villainess, and also, she gets to be useful!     "Pretty sure she's a witch-type. Watch out for, like, elemental magic, and stuff like that. Particularly with freezing stuff, or lighting, in my experience."
Timespace Riders	After a fist-bump is exchanged with Petra, Woz responds to Brick's private request: PHONE: Phoning Rowdyruff Boys, Woz says, "I concur. If you'd be so kind as to cover me, I can do so immediately. Otherwise, we shall have to wait for a quiet moment those two won't readily give us."     Woz gives Boomer a greeting by way of a flick of the wrist when he arrives to help, his present robot-themed armor sounding a little servo-whir as punctuation. He twirls to place himself back to back with the blue Ruff, cracking open that mysterious book of his for the second time today.     Counting on his superpowered ally to keep him mostly intact, he pores through the book with urgent little pageflips to investigate any logistical woes Brick's earlier disruption might have caused.
Lilian Rook	Sarracenia still existing gets Elena and Hafren to grab each other's hands and look down at her in mirrored startled-disgust; so much that they must have rehearsed it. Right? "Oh my god how are you not dead yet you psycho?!" "Are you really such a troglodyte that you can only bomb everything you come across?! This is a library!" "I think she might actually too much of a savage to even figure out a slot shape puzzle, Hafren . . ." "When have we ever seen her do anything but snarl and blow things up?" "Neanderthal." "Barbarian." "Thug." "Goon." "Savage." "Wait--!" "Excuse me?!" "Why are you stealing the books?!"     Well, now they're incredulously distracted by Aidan. "Oh my god how do you not even know where--" "The Queen came all the way from the North you cretin! And they chop the hands off thieves there! Whack! Never mind everything else you're doing!" "You'll beg for death."     Even here, the defenses contain stained glass petals. In the cover insets of books, under the skin of living paintings, and inside the braincase of ancient skeletons. They'd seemed to fit at least a little inside the animated armour and statues and such, but now their purpose feels even more out of place. The local colour commentary is moving to snootily rebuffing Woz, too distracted to notice Sougo. "Hmph. You would be too if you had any idea what she's like." "Even the Princess agrees on that." "Pssh! You actually think we're going to fight you?! Dream on! Hahaha!" "We're only here as Lady Aria's right and left hands, and even then, just barely~" "It's just her job, you know~! As Spymaster and all~!" "She's recording everything you do, every one of your reactions, every bit of your powers, and already plotting your downfall." "I don't even know how you got here. Did that experiment just self-destruct~?" "God listen to that sweaty little stuttery bitch scream. I hope she dies second." "Third?" "Third."
Lilian Rook	They change their minds at Princess. The way they look at her, even between teleports, would get a perfect grade in acting class for just how well it conveys a different feeling with minimal variation in expression. A kind of eye-rolling disgust mixed with lip-licking anticipation, rather than contempt bordering on the edge of fear. "Uh ohhhh, the gutless virgin's aura is spreadi~ng." "If you all turn out like violent hooligans who'd kill someone for looking at them wrong, so much the better as an example."     They pause at Blossom, glancing at each other, briefly lost. "I mean, kind of?" "No way I'm going down there with you psychos!" "Wait Roundhay--" "Huh? Aren't you supposed to be the loud sweary punk type? Are you dropping character?"     The opposite of Brick, somehow, Petra doesn't take them off guard at all. Elena softly covers her mouth, while Hafren shakes her head, the former turning to the latter at 'Ha! So we *are* notable, though!', and in her most solemnly disappointed-pitying voice, she whispers to Hafren "Oh no . . . She's retarded."     The relentless march through the endless-seeming library feels much less clear than any level before about where you are and how far you have to go. The stupendous size of it is just enough such than any given portable light source doesn't reach a clear defining boundary with any clarity, and there's no sign at all of the Gate; or even just the next level up. It feels as if you're fairly sure you've done several laps, for no good reason.     However, your forward momentum is, eventually undeniable, as endless stacks of lost and modern knowledge slowly peter out, and like a change in terrain, are replaced with desks and tables, lecterns and presses, alembics and crucibles and vapourizers, and shelves of vials, jars, crystals, incense, and bones. The curtains are stripped away, as is the carpet, removing your noiseproofing and causing the gaslight to harshly reflect across multiple surfaces at a time.     The threat genre changes as well, as you draw ever closer. Rooms that lock and flood with poison gas, poltergeists that love nothing more than hurling alchemical acid and thermite, doors rigged to blow up (someone else), and where the shadow people fade off, the number of mobile grimoires seems to triple, as they start chasing you en masse from the library.     If you had to guess, you'd say that the rooms look 'unclean' compared to the rest of the area; things are left half-done, hastily put away, or halfway emptied out. Even as a security measure, they shouldn't be so trigger happy with acid nozzles and gas vents, never mind exploding locks and floor tiles. It feels like a 'salted earth' strategy, almost.     But the words on many lips, 'who is Lady Aria?', are answered by a third voice entirely. One that had been at Glascail, flanking the Queen. Both girls harassing you gasp and go eagerly silent, when you hear the words echoing from ahead of you, through an enormous double-door gate of dull silvery metal, set with a key design that is sky-sunset and surrounded by a graphical half-mask and series of eyes, which is already open.
Lilian Rook	The words that reply to the question; the one that had popped up over several different places and times in this floor; come with the exact, easy air of someone who already heard everything.     "Our Mistress Lady Lycoris' very own left hand. Purveyor of knowledge, archivist of secrets, and a shining light that guides misguided foreigners and vassals-to-be towards harmonious lockstep in our journey towards the end and the beginning of all things."     There's no sight of her, but that's not too surprising for someone who'd been called 'spymaster' twice. What is surprising is that the ostensible 'boss arena', which you recognize as being at the center of the castle, directly under the singularity far above you, is totally empty. It's set up as an observatory of sorts, with that classic dome-shaped roof covered in a night sky (like the artificial daytime downstairs) matching to to the starts, and filled with countless platforms across the massive revolving rings that simulate gargantuan orbital measurements around the chamber. Where there should be a globe, there is clearly something like a gigantic 'crystal ball', though it looks like nothing more than inert black crystal now. Genuinely, no one is home.     "You, too, will be welcome to travel that sublime road with us. But only after you've learned proper humility for our Lady."     It's like the voice is simply originating right next to your ear; the air spontaneously generating waves, rather than carrying them from far away. You can smell a tinge of ozone.     "But for the time being, your grotesque naïveté has somehow become an interruption to my work. Instead of indulging your slaver-mouthed urge to destroy everything you don't understand, I think I'd prefer to watch a little bit longer."     No, the one thing that's been done to impede you is the stained glass window that should be your portal back. It's completely dark; inactive, and probably blocked. There's no way to set a checkpoint here; you simply have to take a second level in one stretch. Walking straight ahead takes you out the other side of the room, through an opposite gate (the key for which is simply left hanging politely from a hook), to the opposite tower quadrant of the castle, where you can go up to nearly the final level.     "Instead of wasting my time and resources on a messy little brawl like Dorothea, or risking my project without testing like Marcellus, I would prefer to see you decisively crushed with overwhelming force and swept away before you trouble the Queen any further. Those two are useful, but they haven't been with Lady Lycoris for nearly as long as we have."     "Of course, I advise that you surrender at your earliest opportunity. I'm only giving you a stay of execution, you know. General Satsui won't show you mercy even if you beg!"
Sarracenia	'Don't throw *bombs* at people for being *mean*...Unless you have a good ideological reason to do that. Which you don't.'      Sarra gives Petra the most incredulous look until that addition which causes a deadpan look before an eyeroll. "I did not throw a bomb at them, did I? And I have an ideological reason! They are allied with the enemy and trying to discourage us! Who knows if they are using magic or controlling some of these traps or something! I would say I am showing plenty of self-restraint right now!"      'Oh my god how are you not dead yet you psycho?!'      "I am not psycho!!" Sarra exclaims almost before they even done saying it.      'Are you really such a troglodyte that you can only bomb everything you come across?! This is a library!'      "You expect me to respect a library that is trying to kill me?! How stupid can you be?!"      'I think she might actually too much of a savage to even figure out a slot shape puzzle, Hafren . . .'      "The puzzles are not worth my time when I have an explosive skeleton key!"      'Neanderthal.'      'Barbarian.'      'Thug.'      'Goon.'      'Savage.'      'Wait--!'      'Excuse me?!'      'Why are you stealing the books?!'      Each word grates on the Sundew princess, causing her teeth to clench a bit more. But, just as she is about to start shouting... "...books? I am not stealing books!" she says before looking around. "...oh. What, you are not happy that someone is going to put them to some good use? If you like books so much, then perhaps you should experience them first hand like we are!"      And Sarra starts throwing books at the girls. At least it isn't bombs! "There! Have your precious books back!"      'Odette and Nina things happen!'      Sarra hears the screams and skids to a halt. "Odette?! Nina?!" She tries to find where they are in this labyrinthian library, and when she does she pulls out some fireflowers and throws them as hard as she can. It worked on the last ghostly things they encountered! "Use those! Maybe it will weaken them!"      'The library starts change to more of a...study hall? Lab? Sarra goes with lab after all the chemical attacks that follow. She just got over being severely burned, and having all this poison gas and burning acid sprayed at her is not fun in the slightest after that! "Okay, this is ridiculous! Was this floor designed specifically to torture us?! There is no way I am just going to run through this!"      Sarra pulls out an ice flower and in a puff is icy colored herself, then she starts freezing bob-ombs to form ice bombs. She throws ahead of herself into every room to try and freeze those gas and acid throwers solid and trailblaze some semblance of a safe trail for the others who aren't super speedy.      When she finally reaches the door she uses some green mushrooms to try and heal a bit and offers them to anyone else who wants them, then proceeds into the room. If not for it being an evil lair she might consider this room quite lovely. Even the singularity has a certain dark beauty to it, and Sarra looks up at the sky to appreciate it silently for a few moments before looking around for the spymaster.
Sarracenia	'Instead of indulging your slaver-mouthed urge to destroy everything you don't understand, I think I'd prefer to watch a little bit longer.'      "We understand that your Queen Liliana is a cruel monarch who cares little for the people in her kingdom!" Sarra calls out. "We understand that she is prepared to do much more destroying that we are if things do not go her way! And we also understand why you are hesitant to face us given what happened to your comrades! Maybe you are as smart as those trashy 'hands' of yours claim! Of course, if you were that smart you would just leave the service of Liliana and find a new, more benevolent line of work! Or maybe just surrender at -your- earliest opportunity! General Satsui will go the same way as the last two!"      With no boss to fight, there is little Sarra can do other than be loud and overly-confident. She huffs as she heads down the open hallway, picking up the key if she is the first to get there.
Timespace Riders	She's recording everything you do, every one of your reactions, every bit of your powers, and already plotting your downfall.     "Splendid. The sacking of this castle, the overthrow of the Queen and the liberation of the common folk will thereby be chronicled twice--once by Lady Aria, and once by myself," he says, stepping out from behind Boomer after stowing the book, his chin held upwards and one palm pressed smugly to his chest.     "Though mine shall naturally be more... complete, owing to the absence of any need to flee from peasant revolts. You *have* packed provisions, haven't you?"     It's remarkable--he actually seems to be fighting harder the more he's able to Post. The fact that he's doing it in a strength-forward form with multiple arms lets him freely gesticulate with his original pair, which can't be downplayed. Our Mistress Lady Lycoris' very own left hand. Purveyor of knowledge, archivist of secrets, and a shining light that guides misguided foreigners and vassals-to-be towards harmonious lockstep in our journey towards the end and the beginning of all things.     With *Aria's* right hands now silent, Woz still has to Post somehow. "And I am the somewhat unusual time traveler and Kamen Rider, Woz, prophet of the one true timeline, retainer to the rightful Demon King of Time, Sougo Tokiwa and chronicler of his glorious corontation. What a delight it is to finally meet you," he indulgently intones, bowing at the waist. "Though I'm certain you knew as much already."     "Hi!" the Demon King cheerily greets, lowering his watch-hand greatsword to wave aimlessly with his other hand. "Um... sorry, I can't really, you know, see you..." But for the time being, your grotesque naïveté has somehow become an interruption to my work. Instead of indulging your slaver-mouthed urge to destroy everything you don't understand, I think I'd prefer to watch a little bit longer.     "Mm..." Zi-O rubs the back of his helmet. "Well... Marcellus actually gave me an idea of what you were trying to do--about the kind of... force, that's water-to-a-fish to us. Invisible to us, even though it acts on us in a million different ways."     "Everything that exists on land now exists because something in the past made a certain decision." Between a weary chuckle, "Maybe it didn't even seem that big at the time, or maybe it was really scary. But there was a choice involved, either way."     He lowers his sword further and rests his weight upon it after a soft -tink- of blade on floor. "Coming along and taking *everything* out of the ocean, whether it wanted to go or not, that'd be wrong. It'd harm the things that lived, and kill a lot more besides."     "Haven't you ever heard that saying about judging a fish by its ability to fly? It'd be different, if the Queen just wanted to be 'the Queen of the people who left the sea with her.' But that's not what she's doing, is it? It's not that I don't 'understand.'"     Having caught his breath, Zi-O shoulders the greatsword, feeling its weight on the swept pauldron of his presently gaming-themed knightly armor. "I just don't agree--and there's nothing in this castle you can strap me into to make me agree. Even if you 'crush' me 'overwhelmingly.' Sorry."
Odette Raskins	EARLIER "It's the same soup as last time, red." "Ah. It must be very spicy, then." Odette looks up at Blossom and Princess in the middle of sipping her soup, looks down at the soup that is currently going into her face, then uses her quick thinking skills to make that extremely specific sort of strained noise people sometimes make when something's spicier than expected, but they don't want to actually admit it out loud. Sure, she's drank it before without incident, and it's not really that spicy at all, but it's the only thing she could think of to help Blossom save face! Or make things worse. Either or. LESS EARLIER "Try swallowing and holding." "Swallowing and...? Like, when I'm jumping?" Odette asks while she's draped over the side of a gear, half-dangling off of it while her upepr half  shoves herself away from where it's turning towards another gear so she doesn't get crushed between them. Glancing down at the next gear, the EMT does as Petra suggests, swallowing first and holding her breath before shoving off to fling herself to the next bit of relative safety. It actually works! Kind of. Instead of the usual yelping that can probably be heard on both ends of the clock tower, Odette's voice instead comes out in a half-muffled gasp that might sound way weirder out of context. It's not nearly as loud, though, and she's doesn't quite realize how weird it sounds, so she gives Petra a somewhat pained thumbs up before starting to do that each time she falls! Again. And again. And again.
Odette Raskins	NOW "God listen to that sweaty little stuttery bitch scream. I hope she dies second." "Third?" "Third." Just like all those other times, trying to ignore the commentary isn't actually helping at all. It's certainly making Odette more self-conscious about all those noises she's making, but-wait. Did they say- "-Third?" Is that an improvement? It's certainly better than second, but why's she so high on the list? Heck, who would even be ahead of her on that same list? It's really tempting to ask, but giving them attention-wait. Crap. She already gave them attention. Somehow, Odette gets her head back on straight long enough to ask: "Who're the first two?" She puts on her most disaffected voice as she asks that, trying to sound like she doesn't actually care, but her ability to act is terrible, and she really is curious, consequences be damned. "Use those! Maybe it will weaken them!" Odette doesn't need to be told twice to use whatever's sent her way. Gripping Sarracenia's hurled flow tightly, she doesn't really know how to use it properly until it just works on her, and she's soon being incredibly cautious about throwing anything past the first fireball. Ritescu's newest rule is still fresh in her mind, after all, and she's incredibly wary about destroying any of the decor, the books that aren't attacking her, the paintings that aren't attacking her... She does, however, keep a fireball in hand as both a deterrent in her efforts to get Nina to safety, and to just focus on how it feels in her hand, how it feels coming out of her hand, trying to internalize that feeling like it might help with other training later. In between freaking out at all those zombies and books and hands and other things accosting the group, she starts to notice the shift in decor, then in attack strategy. Where she could have relied on the various ambushers respecting the relative stability of the area, the addition of acid-throwing poltergeists and exploding doors really throws her off at first. Sure, Odette has her own array of chemicals to heal the various kinds of burns she and the others, but the shift is jarring enough to get her to ask: "Does it feel like we went somewhere we weren't supposed to? Or... No, like they're trying to evacuate this place?" Wrapping a cooling bandage around her ahead to treat some more acid burns and also keep her hair out of her face, Odette passes around some charcoal tablets and face masks to the group. "Like they don't want us to find... Um. Whatever it is that's supposed to be here. Or someone was... Here already?" Her questions are answered by the next voice in the next room, and she freezes up (predictably) at hearing the spymaster addressing everyone from right to her. Shivering uncomfortably and jerking to the side, she turns her head quickly, then looks in the other direction in confusion shortly afterwards. "Where are...? Ah!" Another jerk to the side when the spymaster speaks again, another glance at empty space. "Travel with...? Surrender? Wait, we're not... We can't do that!" Although her protests are pretty weak, it's still clear in Odette's tone that she's not willing to humor the possibility of surrendering. Is it knowing that this is an exercise, or is it a swelling ego thanks to her recent promotion? "W-we're here to stop Queen Liliana, not help her!" She shouts as defiantly as she can (and ends up sounding petulant more than anything else), soon starting towards that blackened window at a rapid shuffle.
Ivy Carrow	Nina is halfway into a painting when Odette slams into her, pulled down, inch at a time, while grasping hands seize and pull, slipping and trying to seize Odette by the wrist and instead pull, pull them both through--     --But by then, there's an opening. With Nina clear from the painting, Sarracenia has enough space to let loose her fire. There's a tenous scream, as hands retreat all at once...     Ivy is there, then, kicking Odette and Nina roughly away from the wall, sword held up. Her stare is hard, at first, but when it turns to Nina's rescuers, she's smiling. "Keep this up, and you might just leave a debt to repay." A wink.     "...T-Thanks." Nina's eyes are downturned. Fear is overwhelmed by disgust. By shame. Her hands curl into fists. "I guess."     She's ironically well suited for the horrors that the rest of this place leave for her to deal with. When doors close shut behind her, Ivy can teleport back through, using the others runners as an anchor point. Acid, explosives...With a turn of her cloak, the spreading kinetic force or acrid fluids or expanding fire vanished into a void.     But not all is well--she's left dodging and spinning through rooms as ghosts pelt her. Her blade of common steel couldn't cut them, so it was all she could do was to try to keep them occupied while one who could took them out.     When they walked into the arena, Ivy couldn't help but grin upward at the incredible skyscape of the night. The orange-rimmed void of the black hole, hungry, above them. Incredible. Just incredible.     Ivy's absence had robbed her of the insight or context to engage too meaningfully in the banter...Or so she thought. But Nina, tight fisted, did. "I saw what she did. What that did..."     "Carved up a mountain. Because some people weren't sure about her. Because we didn't like her forcing herself on everyone..."     "A 'better' world you have to drag someone to is just a jail! Just because y-you've decided you know them better than they know themselves! That's...!" A hiccup, and she lost so much of her momentum. "T-that's...Messed up."
Rowdyruff Boys	"I'm nearly two decades out of practice at pretending that I don't know anything, this is about the floor," Brick admits, dully. Which wasn't to say that he couldn't or wouldn't do the rambunctious thug thing, but he really didn't enjoy it the way that he appeared to as a child. He shifts in place a little as the need to obfuscate the others declines, and adds, "I'm also already pushing it with the swearing. Can't say I care about the cultural touchstones behind the entire idea of swearing but my partner's discomfort with it is enough to justify the PG rating I've worked my way towards. I could probably have turned 'daguerreotype' into something that vaguely sounded like a slur a fifteen-year-old made up, but I'm not going to double back." "... Huh?" "Don't worry about it." "... Hey, I'm not a psycho! I'm nice!" Boomer protests, pointing at himself. Brick cuts his eyes sidelong towards Boomer and visibly wants to tell him to shut up, but doesn't. He does however downsize back to his normal height, completely uninterested in being mega-sized for no real purpose. For the most part he tries to keep the advance boring, but he does stop to examine the gas lamps out of curiosity. There's not a lot of time for that, though, and the pair of brothers pointedly spend a while stacked up so that they're only going through the same types of traps and hazards; the idea seems to be not to diversify the sorts of effects that they assuredly cope with well. And there's not much they don't cope well with. It seems like Brick's previous assessment of just not caring about anything vaguely resembling a natural environment wasn't boastfulness; the closing trap rooms only seem to disturb either one of them as long as it's in the same zip code as 'a thing that might actually occur in nature', like a flood of CO2, or even something more subtle like nitrogen. More blatantly unnatural hazards cut into their bodily defenses, but those are far from less formidable than their sheer adaptability. "Aw, c'mon, some of this is so gross!" Boomer exclaims in protest, coughing his way out of some of the poison gas. He follows this up not long after by almost jumping out of his skin at the presence of a voice at his ear, yelping and looking behind him frantically. Brick keeps his cool and folds his arms over his chest, evaluating the situation, and what he knows about Lilian. Nobody informed him to avoid destroying infrastructure during this exercise, and the request to do so in this particular context came from the shop. Was it serious, or was it something that he should and is being expected to disobey as a command from an enemy? This is my first castle of an evil queen. Do subjects normally sell you magic artifacts? It's an abstraction, genius. Ab-stract-ion. ... Probably the former. Otherwise the scenario would've incorporated it outside the abstraction. //Instead of indulging your slaver-mouthed urge to destroy everything you don't understand// "S'cuse me," Brick pulls his phone out of his pocket and dials a number that inverts the color scheme of his phone in his hand. "I'm one of the Rowdyruff Boys. Destroying things I understand, destroying things I don't understand, that's basically my favorite thing in the universe. Blossom over there is my partner and my nicotine patch for destruction. What I'm doing is thoughtful ruination, not slavering destruction." "... leave a message at the beep! OR DON'T." Comes a voice on the line. There is no beep, just a disquieting and uncomfortable sound that aggravates tinnitus. Brick sighs and hangs up. "Anyway... want me to do it the other way? The signage said not to-- hang on."
Rowdyruff Boys	//Carved up a mountain. Because some people weren't sure about her. Because we didn't like her forcing herself on everyone...// Brick pockets his color-inverted cell phone and swivels towards Ivy, resting one hand on his hip. "No. It's because you put a target on it. There were dozens of places that a fortress could've been hidden, I even sniffed out one of them I would've liked it for. But making a bold entrance turned it into a liability. Nobody makes pop-up mountain fortresses that are friendly. Next time, find a cave, because the idea was otherwise a good one."
Petra Soroka	"And they chop the hands off thieves there!"     Petra puts a hand to her cheek and sighs sympathetically with Hafren and Elena, looking over at Aidan. "I've never gotten to dismember someone before... if we lose--" By which she means 'losing, like Dorothea', where she personally just gets corrupted, "--I call cutting them off." "God listen to that sweaty little stuttery bitch scream. I hope she dies second."     This is-- not about Petra! Petra win! She watches Odette struggle with freeing Nina across the long library hallway, at first just to entertain herself with the spectacle of the least physically competent member of the team trying to do a heroics, but then with mild patronizing curiosity for the same reason. She doesn't like Nina, though, so the outcome is mostly relevant in terms of how it affects Odette. "Who're the first two?"     Petra calls out, hand lazily cupped around her mouth, "It has to be princess-- *the* princess, Sundew, I mean, and Proudpick. It's hard to tell which one of you stuttery screaming bitches they mean, though? Do you think that portrait could grab both of you at the same time?"     Shit, Petra slid into backing up the mean girl duo automatically. As a feeble attempt to recoup her lost karma, she weakly gives Odette a thumbs-up. "But, also, maybe, zero of you!" "Who knows if they are using magic or controlling some of these traps or something!"     "Stop that! They're not doing that!" Petra waves her arms in front of Sarracenia like she's trying to spook an annoying dog into backing off. "Don't throw books at people! You're being a child!" "Oh no . . . She's retarded."     Petra whines, bravado completely robbed as a dozen more talismans swarm around her head and she's forced to duck and cover herself with her arms. "Well, fuck off! I'd be really good as a pinned butterfly or whatever! But I *won't* be, and you're just going to have to *deal* with that!"     Practically every tier of the castle has been suited to Petra in one way or another. The reasons for that could be anything, from her tastes naturally or artificially lining up with Lilian's, or her general capability to interpret getting beat up into something beneficial for herself, or because she has surprisingly well-rounded experiences in both wholesome and unwholesome ways; but with the Facility, there's no questioning it. Trying to shoulder-check open a door while poison gas floods a sterile marble room is, perhaps, Petra's natural environment.     Since she is, for once, in a scenario where using her dinky little hobby lockpicking set is appropriate, Petra keeps sticking it into every lock that presents itself. This results in her losing every one of her tension tools to explosions, and having the cuffs of her white ruffled sleeves be replaced with singed scraps. Unfortunately, that actually fits the look better, though whining and squeezing burn cream on her hands doesn't.     Stepping into the boss arena, Petra diligently encapsulates and then discards her train of thought about how this simulation could be used to incrementally repair her relationship with Arina somewhat by providing a situation where mutual but nonthreatening hostility allows Arina to cathartically beat Petra up some rather than being uncomfortable having her around. She does this in order to better reattune herself to the simulation tone, but it's also important because there is no such situation in fact, because the heroes are getting to the competent underlings now. "You, too, will be welcome to travel that sublime road with us. But only after you've learned proper humility for our Lady."     Petra opens her mouth. Several ways of responding vis a vis her humility towards Queen Liliana pass through her brain without being spoken. The one that ends up coming out is, "She can make me."
Petra Soroka	"Carved up a mountain. Because some people weren't sure about her. Because we didn't like her forcing herself on everyone..."     Wow... Queen Liliana forcing herself-- is not what Petra is thinking. Instead she's thinking about how difficult it is to formulate a spirited argument for what feels like making the world objectively worse, which strikes her as a little confusing because of how often she feels like she is intentionally making the world objectively worse. It's Milla's words that come to mind unbidden, in Petra's brief retrospective-- 'The goal is always the same: To help. To be kind. Isn't it? Even if it's just to some people.'     Oh no!!! Now Petra is locked into considering whether she's a kind person!! "It'd be different, if the Queen just wanted to be 'the Queen of the people who left the sea with her.' But that's not what she's doing, is it? It's not that I don't 'understand.'"     Is there a way Petra can angle the ideological caustics of her heart that allows her to agree with this? She does her best, at least.     "... Yeah. There's no big, unilateral decision that you can make for 'all of humanity' that turns out well for all of them. Either it ends up hurting all the people who won't fit in the new world, or it hurts all the ones that the new world was for in the first place. So-- so for the sake of everyone, actually, we have to stop Queen Liliana."
Ivy Carrow	"No. It's because you put a target on it...Next time, find a cave, because the idea was otherwise a good one."     "I-I..." Every retort that struggle to crawl up Nina's throat died there. Her shoulders slumped, lifelessly.
Rowdyruff Boys	"The point of this is assessment and feedback, and you're the only person who has messed up who hasn't done it for truly dumb reasons. It's just a normal mistake," Brick adds, and it doesn't sound like he's just trying to spare any feelings by the clarification.
Powerpuff Girls	'A long, frustrating puzzle that's a test of one's patience and stamina' is the kind that Blossom excels at, even if she's taking the area at a slower pace. Odette seems in a dire way, chasing after the momentarily imperiled member of Ivy's crew, and Blossom is quick to look that way in the topsy-turvy traversal... But it looks like the screaming medic's got this? Giving a well-appraising look to the tackle-save Odette gives Ivy, Blossom keeps advancing while Princess has a terrible time. "You kind of want soup?" Blossom asks, catching a book flying at her head with her shutting hand at a wooshing blur of speed and disappearing in a smear to put it, and the other dozen books that chase her firmly back in their places on the shelves, catching book and reading spine before firmly returning them into place on the shelf. The more she has to do it, the more she's lightly annoyed by the assault of literature, grabbing one tome while speedreading through another with spine-splaying fingers and page flicking thumb. "Coming down here, with us? You're not even here at all? Well that's really too bad." Blossom sighs, exhaling a puff of ice breath while speed-zipped close to one of the short shelves and index fingering in a struggling and bucking book back into the shelf while a ghost smashes a large vase of hissing over her head. Angry and spinning so fast the acid sprays everywhere like a very chemically active hair product commercial, Blossom glowing-eyed 'zorch!'-es the ghost with a puncturing red flash of eye-beams. "The spicy crab was new for this area, so I thought your lunch had been added - but," Blossom pushes on, through darkened ''checkpoint'' zone. "I'm sure we'll meet soon. But --" The Puff raises a finger at the Cheshire pair. 'She's recording everything you do, every one of your reactions, every bit of your powers, and already plotting your downfall.' "I have a TV show." She answers. Princess, on the other hand, is put through the salted earth wringer. Choked on poison gas and forced to adopt a black face-mask and a golden plate over her expression, the disgusted armored villainess nimbly dodges getting punked-or-worse by directed acid by heavy applications of brute force in turn and plasma washing rooms of gas and danger. "I know exactly what you are." Princess growls under her mask, partially suitmasked from the showing parts of her bare humanity being put under every needle and test a haunted library might muster and the frustrated beyond simple feeling. "Poseurs. Voyeurs. *Posters*." Venomous and bile-black it rolls from Princess as merely 'warm' thrown flame clashes with haunted candlesticks and shields of pink power crackle against the eruption of trapped doorways. She walks, smoking and angry, through more and more jumpscare-like insistences. "You're not *really* a part of this." Princess addresses the poster pair. "You don't *really* know. And I can tell, because you're doing what every gormless buffoonic Townsville normie does when they bet the Powerpuff Girls are just a holler away! That you're invincible, just like them, because only *terrible* people would do such a thing, and there's no *terrible* people in Townsville. Just Villains! And the Powerpuffs. Huh? So why're you two invincible, huh? Is it because of your wonderful, noble boss?"
Powerpuff Girls	Princess, who had been furiously counterposting, begins to finish her roll at the center of the dark checkpoint, accusatory finger heaven-raised and then falling in night-reflective gold. "I've got a review. I'm reviewing your awful business development process. If you were really here to invite me to join your enterprise you'd roll out the posh carpet, invite me by name, sit me down at a dinner without killer ghosts, and bid me on exactly how I need everything you're selling. Insulting my *sex* life?" Princess, a girl from what amounts to Los Angeles California, is not above petty bitch shit. "I know what you are." She growls. From the side, Blossom stands there staring owlishly with her arms crossed. In asides to Brick and Boomer, she leans her head. "Is she... okay?" Blossom asks, sotto voice. "She seems... un-usually set off." Princess, panting, is about to tap her mask and disable some of her more paranoid defensive measures when a sailing acid pot comes aimed at her head -- which she spots and catches with pink-crackling hand, smashing-unmaking the pottery and splashing her whole front with sizzling-smoking acid that eats and etches her suit and heavily producted ginger pompoms (for exactly this reason!). "I'm going to make a *gun* that shoots *ghosts*! And then for wronging me, I'm funding a second remake to ghostbusters!!"
Rowdyruff Boys	//Is she... okay?// "Uhh..." Boomer is uncertain. "This sort of thing is a worse experience for her than it is for us, and she's more of a..." Brick doesn't seem to know how to describe her. "... Poster," Boomer supplies. "We should make sure her social media posts for this date aren't a mess later," Brick asides to Blossom.
Odette Raskins	Nina gets a good closeup of Odette looking absolutely freaked the hell out, partially from scrambling to get her out of the painting, and partially because she's still in desperation mode just from scrambling around to not get pulled into paintings or chomped in half herself. "You're welcome okay come on come on gogogogo!" Even that hard stare isn't enough to snap her out of that panic phase, and Odette's practically trying to shove her and Ivy towards the relative safety of what will eventually turn out to be the Acid-Throwing Zone. She'll find out about that by the time they all get there, and she somehow looks calmer about that than the creeping horrors in the Book Zone. "It's hard to tell which one of you stuttery screaming bitches they mean, though? Do you think that portrait could grab both of you at the same time?" "B.. But I'm the only one here that's... Wait, no. I-I'm not a..." Odette mumbles, simultaneously looking and sounding defiant while also shrinking back in on herself at Petra's backing of the mean girl duo. She knows she's got that stuttering problem, but it's only when her nerves are shot like now! And even if she knows she's not a bitch, hearing it from Petra (who she nay have heard the word from more than anyone else collectively in her life) still hurts her right in the chest. The thumbs-up, sadly, doesn't even seem to help despite actually being able to get Nina out of the painting. What does help a fair bit, though, is seeing BLossom looking her way. She's a hero, right? Odette can trust that look! If there's no criticism, maybe... Maybe that means she did something right! Then again, Nina didn't seem too happy about it, but... Odette's mind isn't going to stop racing through possibilities anytime soon.
Lilian Rook	"Oh my godddd this is why you're such a lonely bitter loser! You act like fighting all the time is your biggest hobby and like the only thing you care about, and then you get soooooo mad when you actually get one! It's unbelievable!" It doesn't take a genius to notice Elena's character slipping when she gets yelling at Sarracenia in earnest.     "Yes! You're supposed to respect it!! 'Oooh I love fighting and battles are so important and I'm a cool strong independent princess who fights to save people blah blah whatever' oh my god we all know that you just like having infinity excuses to be as trashy and classless and nasty as you can be! If 'buh buh but you attacked moi!' means you're allowed to be as shitty as you want then going off into battle is literally just looking for an excuse! Even Petra can respect whatever she's fighting and that's why everyone likes her more than you even though she's a total fucking loser!" She is literally stomping her little platform in a fuming tanty.     "I'm telling! I'm telling on you to Ritescu that you blew up all the cute puzzles and messed up all the books!" "Elen--" "No! I don't care! I worked really hard on helping with this and she's making it suck!" "Oh my god shut up already! You have an actual job to do!"     Possibly to flex on her slightly less composed friend, Hafren puts a little sauce on the chin tilt and smirk down at Woz. "Oh please. This castle could burn to the ground and the peasantry wouldn't dare even set foot near its ashes. You're here because people want heroes, and people want heroes because they're cowards who wouldn't risk a fingernail to save the world."     She trails off again at Brick, though. It's hard to tell if she's just not getting good grist to Post about, or if it's something else. "Oh. That's fair I guess. Not wanting to swear around your girlfriend is . . . I mean it's really old-fashioned, but . . ." "Hey you have a job to be doing! You're supposed to be recounting the stuff that goes with the journal they find at the halfway point!"     Elena interrupts Petra solely to yell "No! Me first! I'm doing at least one!" Hafren is still struggling with the Rowdyruff and Powerpuff combo. "I mean, I can get soup later. Uh . . . I don't know, I just don't think it's safe? We kind of barely got away the last time, so i think it's better if we stay on a translocation array. Thanks I suppose?"     This is sharply undercut by Elena responding to 'you're invincible' from Princess with "That's right~! And what are you gonna do about it, huh~? That's what being on the winning side means, dumbass! All you need to coast through the easy life is to get on the good side whoever has the most power! People build strength because they want followers, and people follow them so they don't have to build strength; that's just like, the natural order, duh!" Hafren stares at her as if to question how much of that was acting, then visibly gives up.
Lilian Rook	'Spymaster Aria' maintains a better facade than both of them put together. The girls are excellent little liars, but neither has-- outside the story-- anywhere near the same training. Her voice remains perfectly haunting; cold and smooth, poured into your ears like icewater and dripping with wiser-than-thou affect.     "But not so cruel that it discourages you, is she not? I know everything, Princess Sundew. My eyes and ears know all about your tourism, your stay, your shopping spree, your little gifts. You adored the shape of the idyllic kingdom you saw beginning to form, and you leapt to be a part of it yourself." The laughter that follows Sougo is even parts dark and intrigued; what one would think is an ill fit for her 'natural' voice.     "An apt metaphor, but consider this. I have no need to judge the fish, no need for personal fault, in order to cast it aside. The world we live in has already killed countless trillions of life forms for failing to adapt, when the time came. When the time comes to shed the shackles of gravity, those who can't fly will tumble into the void without an ounce of malice in our hearts."     Odette has a very good question to ask. It's so good that Aria, in fact, pretends not to notice it, finding an easy excuse in Nina, and dropping her delivery to a rolling sob-story croon. "Awww . . . You poor thing. You just weren't sure about her! That's all! It's so unfair. Just for the thoughts in your head, a little private doubt, we all jumped down your throat! How intolerant of your quiet little thoughts that weren't bothering anybody."     She punctuates it with a certain kind of nose scoff at Brick. "The most sophisticated thinking-man isn't above destroying that which begs for it. So why are you restraining it? If destruction is what you are, you must be going through an awful lot to restrain it for so long, so that you can save it for a less worthy target than the comrades right beside you."     She trails off with a villainously sorcerous cackle at Petra, nailing the cryptic delivery of "She won't have to. What I have in mind will be sufficient." and "Be seeing you shortly~" before going silent.
Lilian Rook	The far doors open with even more convoluted mechanical effort than the last. The moment you succeed, you're submerged in the tide of heat that washes in from the other side. Your fourth atmospheric transition in the same session takes you through a single chamber transition, between the fading twilight of the library into the midnight black of the observatory, and the stinging brightness beyond it. Though you're clearly still indoors, and a row of stained glass windows (the regular kind) allow sunlight into a narrow gallery along the way, the ventilation has made Maxwell's Demon its bitch.     More importantly, now you can hear the regular stomping of metal heels, echoing down too many acoustic junctions to accurately place. The sounds of movement, from close and afar, left and right and above and below, jumble together into a kind of rhythmic drumbeat that feels as if you're already closely surrounded.     There's nowhere close to a hiding place here, either. What surrounds you is the stark, shining white of a museum. The pillars are seemingly made of solid glass, melted down and compressed into frosted semitranslucent slabs of geometry. The banners that hang from above don't reach the floor. Mirrors are set into each corner, and there are no doors to speak of. Even the ground; cross-hatched slats of scorched bamboo, fitted into a repeating weave and laminated over, transmits the sound of your footsteps like nothing else. The contrasts extend much further than the theme of day and night.     At first, the heat seems only due to the number of windows, set even in the indoors walls, carrying sunlight many layers deep, often via reflective surfaces and glass art pieces. Once you get far enough to separate the sound of marching from the clangor of machinery, though, you can start to smell the sweet smoke of gaseous metal, and understand well in advance that almost all of your paths will eventually wrap around and through a forge or foundry. It tracks with the metalwork all over the walls; murals, engravings, plaques, crests, and recesses for everything from swords to tea sets to statues.     Along the way, though, Brick finally gets to see his handiwork.     Much of the area seems given over to what could be called 'an Armory', in the proper sense, though it resembles someone's wildest-dreamt depiction of a historical arms museum just as much. Ranks upon ranks of various grades and models of autonomous soldiers stand poised like decorative armour, raised on tiered rows or set along spiral galleries. Vast quantities of spears, shields, axes, swords, crossbows, and bolts, are mounted on mechanical apparati that have to satisfy the need for hundreds of retrievals in minutes, practically spirographs of glittering arms.     As you travel, the gear becomes unfamiliar to you, showing types of warriors and weapons you haven't seen at all; and then eventually arriving at a single massive storage room (a former ballroom?) dedicated to sets in partial dismantlement, repair, or completion. And, as you travel, each room contains less and less materiel. The fullest parts of the armory appear to be the oldest stock, sitting around as a surplus garrison, while there is ample evidence of the newer branches being transferred or scavenged from. It's clear that production started to crater very recently; shortly before the 'elite models' that you find could be mass-produced, by the looks of it; both soldier and weaponry. But that doesn't explain why finished ones were taken apart.     Your enemy here is much more straightforward. No matter how you traverse the layout here, there's no avoiding contact; it's not even a matter of skill, but about the fundamental facts of a skilled military strategist hand-planning precise patrol routes of tireless soldiers they have far too many of. It's barely even a matter of time before a group of your size ends up in a fight.
Lilian Rook	And a considerably more brutal one than the ground floor rush.     There's no useful cover here, which overwhelmingly favours the heavily armoured enemies with superior numbers over you. The junctions are huge and open, which makes you easy to pincer, and the mirrors and windows give any enemy tremendous spatial awareness of where you are. The air is already hot enough, sapping your stamina at a tremendous pace, but once fire starts flying, it becomes a stroke-inducing oven, of no concern to soldiers made of metal and shadows. Your retreat means going backwards through the entire library again, whereas they are free to break off and cycle ranks as much as they like.     But most importantly, 'they' aren't composed of the same forces as the village or the lower floors. The black-armoured automata here are taller, more heavily built, with a greater quantity of metal, all livery merely cosmetic. Where they used to carry heaters, now they carry spike-bottomed tower shields to ram into the ground. Short spears are now long fighting partisans, and agile recurves are replaced with enormous asymmetrical longbows with solid metal arms. The designs of their helmets designate archers from defenders from 'ultraheavies' that wield tremendous glaives and axes from gunners which take firing stance lines that block entire corridors and use alchemical contraption rifles.     Not only are they better built and equipped, but clearly more magic has been poured into them. The armour is stronger, the weapons more lethal, the ammunition more destructive. That, and they drop much more valuable petals. Realistically, even 'Liliana' has limits to how much she can scrape together when it can't just be bought, but concentrating the whole batch here makes it feel inexhaustibly unfair. Most of their gear flames, explodes, or cuts with heat, synergizing with the atmosphere, though the odd archer has the opposite; ice arrows that capitalize on it with dramatic thermal shock.     There aren't platforming segments or magical traps here. The ghosts won't abide this much light. It's a purely military slog; brutally unforgiving to dawdling even so much as to catch your breath. Realistically, the castle should run out after a while, given what you've already seen, so Aria must really have meant it when she said she planned to seize the opportunity to concentrate as much force on you as possible while you're the furthest extended already. Once you've gone a ways in, waves of reinforcements start hammering you from behind, activating from the armories you'd already passed.     The forge should be the very core of the castle wing. It certainly seems to be saved for last, as the air gets hotter and tastes more and more of fire and steel as you go. But, oddly, what you run into just before is nothing at all like it. Your second to last stop actually appears to be a sort of conservatory. Closed off from the forge fumes, tropical greenery thrives in the heat, humidity, and focused sunlight being poured in through the faux-glass half-dome ceiling. The ground is mostly sand; the chamber smells of it in the sun; but between scorched bamboo walkways and decorative rock gardens, it's been carefully raked into arbitrarily complex designs with the kind of precision that can only be done without wind (thus defeating the point of the exercise).     The persistent assault gives you only just long enough to catch your breath and steal water from the fountain here. You don't have time to sit down, or else meaningfully recover, before forces gather for a rush offense, where the only way you have to go is clearly the last stop before the forge; and beyond it, the final zone.
Sarracenia	'Stop that! They're not doing that! Don't throw books at people! You're being a child!'      "I am nooooot!" Sarra whines in a very childish manner, but does stop throwing books.      'buh buh but you attacked moi!'      "Oh please! I have not said something like that in years! I do not get mad about getting in a fight! I get mad about people being unnecessarily nasty in the middle of a fight! Like you...you...worthless mean girls riding on Lilian...a's power the very way that she says she hates! Why does she even keep you around?!"      "And what 'excuse' do you have to be so mad about anything?! You know what is trashy and classless? Spouting all this venom just to be mean! And you know what is even more trashy and classless than that?! Getting upset when someone spouts it back at you after YOU started it!! Just like this library getting messed up! -YOU- all started it! You have NO right to complain about it being damaged after using it to attack someone!!"      'That's right~! And what are you gonna do about it, huh~?'      Sarra was really trying not to throw bombs at them. But, with a taunt like that...she growls. If she attacked now she would just prove them right, so Sarra has to just take it and move on this time.      Sarra does wince a little at the idea of being told on to Rita, though. She does feel a bit bad if Rita was working on this floor. She'll apologize herself next time she sees Ritescu.      Odette and Nina and Ivy rejoin them, and Sarra offers them green mushrooms. "Are you all alright? That seemed pretty bad back there." Brick goes in on Nina, and Sarra mmphs in annoyance. She does not like Brick, and is starting to wonder how Blossom likes him. His matter-of-fact evaluation may be correct, but it is too matter-of-fact for her liking. But, at least he said it was just a normal mistake for Nina.      But for herself, she has to ask, "What does that mean? What mistake have I made throughout this that was just dumb?" she asks, then hesitates. "...besides that...questionable thing on the first day."      Princess (the non-princess) does seem set off, so Sarra approaches her with a bit of a huff. "They are the worst, are they not?" she says, looking off in the direction of where those gormless buffoons might still be. She smirks lightly after that. "But, I think you gave them a run for their money. They will have to eat those words when we bring down their queen." Sarra pulls out a grapefruit soda. "Here. To wash out whatever nasty taste they may have left." She opens one for herself and basically chugs it.
Rowdyruff Boys	//Not wanting to swear around your girlfriend is . . . I mean it's really old-fashioned, but . . .// "I don't respect the social conventions that led to the request not to swear. Just the source of the request," Brick says, shifting his weight from one side to the other and scanning the surroundings. //And what are you gonna do about it, huh~?// Red eyes flick towards Elena. The hand at his hip rises, gesturing vaguely in her direction. "That's Princess Morbucks. She doesn't have powers like the rest of us do-- in summary, she's like you. Everything she has is something that she made or had made. Which is to say..." "... So long as she's here, threatening us with, 'We'll make countermeasures.' is boring. We already have our own specialist," he concludes. //What does that mean? What mistake have I made throughout this that was just dumb?// "Your priorities are so skewed that you can only be evaluated as a partial liability," he answers, coolly. //The most sophisticated thinking-man isn't above destroying that which begs for it. So why are you restraining it?// Brick smiles at that, lifting his chin a little.     "What are little boys made of?         Snips,             Snails,                 ... And puppy-dog tails." "My ruling element is loyalty. Not being 'destructive' isn't difficult, as a matter of loyalty. Even if I sometimes would prefer to handle things more decisively than the girls would," he explains.
Petra Soroka	"I am nooooot!" "I'm telling! I'm telling on you to Ritescu that you blew up all the cute puzzles and messed up all the books!"     Petra slowly goes quiet and lowers her hand from where she was waving it between Sarra and Elena. Her gaze unfocuses, letting the tantrums be exchanged in front of her without interrupting, or even reacting. Is this where she's at? Was this an acceptable cost in order to preserve the integrity of the narrative paradigm and the terms of engagement that they were given? Or even, just, the books?     In order to repair this blow to her psyche, Petra resolves to talk to Ritescue about the library next time they're at the shop. In a positive way; to foster a pleasant feeling and stable perspective on the environmental fixture, cleansing her mind of Aidan scooping books into his bag and Sarra and Elena stomping and acting like toddlers. Does Brick see this when he looks at her?     Somewhat relatedly, Petra falls in line with Cinder to walk the rest of the way through the library and boss arena. Without actually looking back to the girl in question, Petra says aside to Cinder, "I wonder if, like, sometimes I'm too hard on people. Like Odette. Or even Sundew, sometimes. But then also, like, I think maybe I'm not hard enough on them. It's hard to tell what the point either way is. I don't really like all the whining and complaining everyone's doing." "Destroying things I understand, destroying things I don't understand, that's basically my favorite thing in the universe. Blossom over there is my partner and my nicotine patch for destruction." "My ruling element is loyalty."     Sometimes, Petra thinks, the heterosexuals are okay. Brick has good opinions. On violence, at least; nicotine patches are cringe. Petra doesn't let her thoughts linger on the rhyme or the presence of puppy tails. "So why are you restraining it? If destruction is what you are, you must be going through an awful lot to restrain it for so long, so that you can save it for a less worthy target than the comrades right beside you."     This, too, is a good opinion on violence. Petra can't help but think about the final battle of Quicknest, when Lilian was spectating on a throne while Petra gleefully vented her violent urges on her typical allies, and how she was openly jealous of Petra's freedom to do so. "She won't have to. What I have in mind will be sufficient."     Caught up in that thought, among others, Petra's defiant response is: "No," A little thoughtful, resolute via a casually certain goal, "I'm really brave."