Scene #5967: The Place With White Walls-2

Owner	Pose
Rurufon	Things have left off with a group of Elites apparently conversing with the horrible-looking leech-men toiling away in this strange, dark, eerily identical white maze, specifically some kind of lowest class serf caste, coded by their red skin and small size. Mining away strange stones hidden deep in the weird, chalky substance of the walls that make up this realm, one appears to have been of significant importance to surviving the third and final Realm on this floor of the Nexus. A PURITY CRYSTAL. Arthur doing a bit of gravity mining himself turns up no further examples, apparently being quite rare, and most of the rocks and ores he digs up are just weird and kind of useless, with nonsense names like fictional materials made up for some space survival game's progression, though ostensibly they're real ores from a different world. The one that seems immediately relevant is a big chunk of weird, lumpy, purple stone, which terminates at both ends with vein-like webs of some red mineral, coalescing into stalks, sort of like a strange, extracted heart. He obtains a MAGICITE ORE, which is clearly highly dense with magical power. The red thing looks around, left and right, with weird twists of its eye-lump on its upper torso in a way that seems nervous before answering. "God has left us. We can hear him no longer. He cannot hear us. God must return, or we must find a new God." It looks to one of the dead blues as it is pointed out, and visibly cringes. "They are stronger. They lead the packs. The leaders of the wholepacks are stronger. The strongest is-" At that moment, the same, ear-splitting, wall-shaking roar echoes into the cavern, once again sounding as if it is alarmingly close, despite having moved on for a good twenty minutes since the last time the group had heard it. Every one of the odd creatures huddles low to the ground, shaking in abject, paralyzing terror, and remain that way for at least the next few minutes, completely unresponsive to prompting. When they regain their senses, they immediately begin fleeing, running on both legs and both hands deeper into the caves, leaving the mining site behind at high speed. Meanwhile, Touta finds that if he wants anything from the beacon, he has to pay up something called 'Cune' to get it. It does not accept Multiversal credits, and has nowhere to swipe a card. The plainer stuff costs only 1 'Cune', but some of it is bizarrely expensive, possibly owing to some special properties. The weird little occultic trinkets vary anywhere from 2 or 3 Cune to a solid 30+, and it's really difficult to tell what they're supposed to do, since at best they look like charms or bracelets with pre-biblical symbology on them, and at worst they appear as strangely twisted and etched bits of metal and stone. Orchid's selection is mostly just multiple menus of utility items, rather than much in the way of gear and weaponry like the others. She has the full run of equipment explorers would bring, as well as serums and potions, weird trinkets, one-use items of varying comprehensibility, and similar. Equipment relating to her genre paradigm appears to be incredibly rare. There is one extremely expensive item that looks to be some kind of deployable shield, and another very expensive thing that appears to be some kind of energy weapon. Apparently not many robotic challenges come through here. There is at least an entire menu dedicated to energy storage of various paradigms, meaning that she has access to charging up much the same way a human would have access to necessary supplies: for a price. Apparently idling is not allowed here. If you aren't pressing forward and gathering loot, you can very well starve to death.
Orchid	Yeah, Orchid didn't expect much for robots. The good news is that she'll be able to recharge if this goes on too long, but she'd rather find a quicker solution. Anyway, regarding that noise, she inspects the signal she gets from her spiders, trying to tell by volume differential which direction the noise is coming from... if it isn't just coming from the walls themselves, which would be an effective trick for hiding the source.
Note	Note was not among the initial aggressors, being more keen on trying to say HELLO to these weird creatures before anything else! But everything around her EXPLODES into a fight before she can even open her mouth... and then mystical energy bolts are flying everywhere! THAT she can deal with. Forcing a thin shield of Ki to envelop her hand, she slaps away the few blasts that come near her and directs them harmlessly into walls, leaving her hand only slightly pained by the energy that pierced her defense. She doesn't retaliate, instead listening to the red creature's strange explanation of matters.. and its message gets her to grin a little. "Alright! I'll take 'stronger'! Though... whats this about a God leaving? Are they not supposed to do that?" What would she know about Gods, honestly? Note's good mood has been restored with the possibility of facing down a strong opponent and getting to really test herself for once, so when the HORRIFIC ROAR reaches her... she only cringes a little, shuffling back a half-step... And answers it DEFIANTLY by focusing her energy until it roars up around her and explodes into a violently blazing bonfire of golden energies, hair simultaneously parting, rising up and color-shifting into golden spikes. Determined green eyes now glance every which way! "THAT thing?" She guesses. "Where is it? I wanna see it!"
Nova Terra	Nova holds one hand to her ear as another roar is blasted through the cavernous underground. She shakes off the loud sound for a moment and then begins, "I guess that's our-" She's cut off though as there's another, less impressive roar. Nova turns her head to just look at Note for a few moments as the Saiyan glows. Nova finishes her sentence, "I guess that's our target. The so-called strongest." She watches as the creatures begin to scamper away, heading deeper into the caves. She nods in that direction, "And I guess that's where we need to go." She begins to follow, gripping her rifle a little tighter in anticipation.
Hemlock	The 'wholepacks', the red creature mentions, sound fascinating. There must be a complex pack structure, Hemlock thinks. But before the creature can finish or Hemlock can ask more questions, there's that deafening roar, the journalist dropping to a crouch and covering his ears, as the creatures fall prone all the same...and then run off afterwards, unable to provide him more information. The human frowns, and then decides to investigate where the creatures are running. It's a better clue than anything on 'where to go'. Hemlock does this by trying to move closer through the caves, and if there's a fork, ducking low to the ground to figure out which way has more footprints and trails. He doesn't go too far alone, and once he's done with that little bit of investigation, Hemlock approaches the others. "We should continue deeper if we're to find anything. I can investigate which path to take if someone will lead the way." And if someone indeed moves to lead the way, Hemlock once again primarily takes the rear besides looking for tracks, because he is not remotely a tank.
Arthur Lowell	ARTHUR LOWELL still is frustrated by his inability to get a bearing on the source of that sound. Hemlock is focused on where the creatures flee to, but Arthur tries to focus on where they /don't/. After all, he's wanting to go after that rather loud leader, right? Whatever Lord there is of this realm, it must be the one making that noise! So he tries to gauge which exits the red leechmen have abstained from fleeing towards, and dash off towards whichever one looks most important. Captchaloguing the MAGICITE ORE in his Sylladex, Arthur takes off! "NO IDEA where it is!" He answers to Note. "But maybe THEY KNOW, and they'd know where NOT TO GO!" Best lead he can get. He also tries something stupid: Roars like that are produced only in social context where such sounds are important and relevant bits of communication. And so, Arthur can use his greatest power, cultivated in almost ten solid years of dedicated daily training: The ability to scream in a way that's hostile and obnoxious to every language and system of interpretation. He lets out a bellow that's meant to challenge the source of that sound back, a sort of pan-cultural insult to one's mother, to see if he can provoke it back in some way that can give him a better idea of where to go.
Lemeza Kosugi	After all the excitement of the Void raid yesterday, Lemeza had taken a bit of time to relax. "A bit" is the operative phrase here, as he realized a party had made their return to the Shadow Tower, and he was missing out! In his haste to throw together his gear, he ended up forgetting a couple things. Like his fedora. And those shiny new claws Kushiko helped him forge. Ah well, guess he'll do without his new toy for the time being. Unfortunately, he's playing a lot of catch-up: the rest of the party has already pushed forward into this Place with White Walls, and it looks like there's a lot of moving parts already. For the time being, he simply follows what looks like the path the others took, catches sight of Hemlock, and decides to stay close to the investigator. "Hey! Sorry I'm late to the party, had a bit of a thing yesterday. What do we know about this area?"
Rurufon	Orchid sampling the audio is in for some fun data. The amount of bouncing going on indicates that the sound had come from very far away, and gone around an absolute ton of corners. The walls appear to have an unusual degree of acoustic fidelity considering their seemingly random pattern, and whatever made the roar was very large and very loud. The direction seems to be . . . in the direction the creatures ran. If they're fleeing the sound, they're doing a very poor job of it. Granted, it was difficult to triangulate the source even with the drones, but still. Several people go scouting through the mineral maze. Hemlock pays closer attention than most, and finds a trail of liquid green stipples leading off the main path, most definitely splatters of blood from a severely wounded creature that wasn't part of the engagement they'd just started and ended. It peels away to the side, rather than strictly following the trail of the runaway pack. Those who follow those ones further on eventually arrive in a wider chamber that looks like it was being used for much more mining all too recently, with huge mosaics of abstract claw marks all over the walls that may very well be some kind of language. The first corpse so far is here, propped up against a pillar, but it's dubiously human, burned to a charred husk. It has an odd looking bow of some kind and a quiver of arrows strangely untouched by flames, a handful of those metal bits, and right by it, a rather elaborate, albeit crude, map of much of the surrounding area has appeared on the wall in red. The mystery of these indicators only deepens. There's no way an entity burnt to a cinder would have drawn that while laying dying or something. The other main feature is a huge bridge of that white chalk rock overhead, suspended by massive chains and pulleys, with some kind of bronze pedestal nearby it. It seems to span over the chamber, connecting other rooms to the east and west and allowing them to travel over where the Elites wound up as a shortcut. Directly ahead, a massive chasm terminates their progress, with an identical, weathered and corroded pedestal of bronze, almost like a sundial, with a deep depression in its center. Primitive wheeled troughs and storage racks have been built from dubiously acquired wood here, considering the lack of trees. The pack is still, somehow, nowhere to be found. Arthur raising hell away from the main group has the opposite response of what he'd probably like. He garners no response from the horrible beast somewhere deep in the labyrinth, which is strange since he's making a show of invading its territory and vocally challenging it. Not long after though, several packs of those cobalt-skinned aggressive types begin pouring out of the surrounding tunnels, triple the number previously, without any red workers amongst them. A much bigger, almost ogre-like grey specimen lumbers in behind them, its own symbiotic hand-fire burning a shade of deep purple. Within seconds, he's been mobbed by furious soldier packs, having magical flames slung at him from every direction. It's like they're trying to immediately quell the noise.
Nova Terra	Nova follows the fleeing pack into the next room, slowing down as she scouts it out. The suspended bridge above suggests more to this cave system than they've seen so far. Although right now Nova can't think of a way to reach it without causing a big mess she'd rather avoid for the moment. Coming across the charred corpse, Nova looks it over for a moment. To Hemlock she says, "Seems pretty obvious what killed the guy. The map is interesting though." Nova takes a recording of it using her visor. It might prove useful in the future. Also moving to examine the chasm and nearby pedestal, Nova huhs, "Not sure I would have thought of that." Unfortunately she's not the one who has collected any of the stones. She turns to look around, "I think Arthur had one or two." She pauses for a moment... Then asks, "Where'd he go?"
Orchid	Orchid is staying with the group. She's also making a copy of the map with her recording features. She also goes up to the pedestal, looking for levers or other forms of control. And if it is a sundial, where is the sunlight supposed to come from? "Well, I do have this," she replies to Hemlock, hoisting the glowing stone from before, that didn't stop being a thing. She's less interested in FIGHTING the blue warrior monsters than she is in solving this puzzle, so tries putting the glowing stone in place, and if it doesn't do anything by itself, looking at the shadows it may be casting around the room.
Lemeza Kosugi	Tailing Hemlock turned out to be a good choice. The green blood splatters he found point him and Lemeza to a hard-to-decipher series of claw marks. However, this is definitely a language! He swiftly pulls out his laptop, by now in an absurdly-easy-to-access side pocket of his backpack, and opens it up - READER.EXE already running and scanning - to read the claw marks and translate them. For good measure, Lemeza also scans the glowy red map and makes an attempt to transmit the data to Orchid's spiders. Assuming she's got some deployed and open to receiving external data. Huh. That red glowy map looks strangely similar to the red glowy messages from the Deformed Insect Territory. Worth saving to disk for later study.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur skids to a stop over the floor, shouting another challenge to the cobalt fighters. As they start slinging fire at him, he stands his ground, smashing and crashing away at the blasts, intercepting them with his broom in a constant dynamic block that turns it to bruises instead of horrible burns. Arthur's broom is beginning to actively rev and churn, sounding like a flywheel spinning up, before he slams it back for half a second. There's a noise like a gun being loaded, and he suffers the burns all on his own, before charging forward through the barrage of fire! The rocket activates with an explosive burst and Arthur tries to slam straight into the grey one with the purple flames, trying to knock it out in one singular charged-up prepared rush. He doesn't have a ton of time to focus on this, though. Whether the Big Grey takes him down, the blues pursue, or whatever other outcomes might happen, Arthur's likely to disengage soon. It looks like this isn't getting him what he wants, so unless there's some greater response to the roaring attempts to take down Big Grey, or unless it disrupts the social system again the way Arthur thought it might, he's going to have to break off and rejoin the rest of the group. "Where'd WHO go?" Arthur says, looking bruised and burned, somehow suddenly around Nova, drifting in antigravity. He's also got his Sylladex pulled up, and tries USE MAGICITE ORE ON DEPRESSION, hoping he can find a medication-free way of helping the sundial move on from its DEPRESSION.
Note	Oh hey awesome! Lemeza's here! Note looks over her shoulder, her aura still blazing and filling the chamber with a low thrum-whoosh noise. Not that it can compete with that dang roar! Figuring that he and Hemlock know what they're doing better than she does here, Note sticks with the explorer and investigator, floating along as they tromp along the liquid trail! But she's keeping her senses open for anything living that might approach... Which means that a DEAD BODY takes her by surprise. With a yelp she FLOATS AWAY from it in a hurry, looking on from afar... Though even from afar she can see that stuff left behind is odd... "... How come the wood didn't burn but the person did...?" She isn't, as it turns out, an idiot!
Hemlock	As Lemeza arrives, Hemlock nods to him. "Some sort of dangerous creature, likely the Lord, is lurking in the darkness. We have been trying to find it, but have had no luck. If you see eyeball creatures, blue creatures lead the red creatures. Red creatures cease fighting when the blue creatures are dead." It's not much to go off, but it's what Hemlock saw as valuable information, as he heads onwards, following the liquid green trail. Just to be safe, he draws his knife in the process, in case there's a creature there to attack him. He's not much of a fighter...but he can certainly defend himself if necessary.
Rurufon	Arthur ends up embroiled in INTENSE SHOUNEN BATTLE. It becomes much more difficult without a bunch of other Elites backing him up, and immediately involves him being surrounded on all sides, engaged in a bullet hell of flying blue fire, which would be made much worse by the hard draw distance cutoff of darkness if the flames weren't visibly marking out the attackers anyways, floating in the dark in that weird way that casts no surrounding light. It's a brutal ambush to be sure, but his opportunity comes when another one of those earth shaking roars occurs, and /even the soldiers/ abruptly stop what they're doing to tremble and quiver, allowing him to blast away scores of them with complete impunity. It's difficult to really believe it actually is terror that leaves them paralyzed like that. It may in fact be something more complicated. Only the huge, grey beast seems immune, and assaults Arthur with much bigger, nastier, explosive fireballs, but it is easily left in Arthur's dust when he rockets off to rejoin the others. Which turns out to be a good call. The big glowing rock Orchid grabbed doesn't fit in any useful way, just rolling around in the depressed portion. The mechanical portion of the pedestal is extremely simple, only needing to be pushed down and twisted, and having no real lock preventing them from doing so. It simply doesn't do anything when attempted. When Arthur shows up and jams the ore into it, rivers of light run through the corroded engravings and channels, and doing the same thing again causes gears somewhere deep within the maze to churn, and a huge set of chiseled white steps to come floating up out of the chasm dark, leading them steeply downstairs into unknown territory. The burnt body doesn't have much to tell them. The map seems accurate enough, and actually details parts of the walls that are cracked and easily knocked down, like secret passages, with dotted lines, but it isn't exhaustive by far, likely only mapping out the places the dead person had personally went to, and showing many tunnels that loop back in on themselves or terminating in dead ends, like there is no rhyme or reason to this place at all. There is a big, rough X slashed somewhere into the blank space of the map, likely an estimate as to a location that hadn't been reached yet. An additional 4 bits are obtained, and added to the slowly growing pile of them, as well as the unusual bow of unidentifiable black, springy material, decorated with the iridescent 'feathers' of something more like a sea creature than a bird. The BLACK PIERCEALL comes with 5 arrows with strange, split bident heads, made of a rough black metal instead of steel, and fletched with the same 'feathers'. It seems the archer used up the rest, and the quiver is easily large enough to have hold fifty or more of them. Hemlock, following the off-trail, eventually finds what appears to be one of the archer's victims: a blue specimen slumped in a corner, with one of those arrows sticking from its central mass, slowly bleeding out, and clutching an oddly twisted piece of blue metal in its clawed hand, as the first evidence of anything processed out ore. It 'mumbles' in grotesque pulsing and gurgling sounds, deliriously saying: "Where is a God that will not leave us. I can't hear anything. Can he even hear us?" Hemlock is mostly only in time for the thing to lose consciousness shortly thereafter repeating several keywords.
Rurufon	The steps, for those venturing down them, lead to a much more orderly, squared, and intentionally carved out room, notable for containing rows of cracked and partially broken white containers that very much look like coffins, being the first real permanent structures seen so far. Rows and rows of them stretch out ahead, as if they'd walked into a mausoleum, but the hall beyond that is instead studded with many stone doors along its length instead, carved with their own symbols instead of that of the Tower, internal to this Realm. At the very end is one especially gigantic gate, embellished with baroque reliefs and designs, tall and wide enough to drive two buses through abreast. It looks as if it opens from the bottom, but seems to have no mechanism to do so. The weird chicken scratch on the wall appear to be nothing but dates, over and over and over again. How anyone keeps time down here is a mystery, but they're spaced out by decades and centuries, indicating they'd been tracking some kind of event or occurrence here for a very, very long time. The oldest Lemeza finds dates back two thousand years.
Nova Terra	"Just this loud guy who's always getting into trouble." Nova jabs at Arthur, before watching as the pedestal mechanism is activated. Nova of course heads further down, following the steps into the large room full of coffins. Nova brazenly walks up to one of the coffins, attempting to glance in through one of the cracked parts. If that doesn't work, she just tries to open it. Just to be clear about what's inside. It might prove to be useful information. Of course, Nova already has her suspicions.
Hemlock	As Hemlock follows the off-trail, he spots the dying creature. The fact it's still alive means it was recent, as based on how the creatures fell before, they don't seem especially hardy. His first action is to write down the mumbling. "Where is a god that will not leave us...hm." His second action is to approach the clawed hand and try and pry it open so he can steal the blue metal, and then examine the blue metal to figure out what the purpose of it is. Is it a weapon? Or some sort of tool? And then, Hemlock will move to rejoin the others, with only some words to the creature. "Rest now. I will learn the truth about your god." After he's finally caught up to the others and heads down the steps at the chasm, Hemlock's going to just stick behind the others. If the metal has any fiddly bits, he fiddles with them. "Did you all find anything?"
Orchid	Orchid and her spiders are also going down the stairs, she's trying to get a sense for how big this space is. She looks through the mausoleum, and when she comes to the large door on the other side, she looks for any hidden mechanism, or perhaps, writings that instruct someone to say specific words to get it to open.
Lemeza Kosugi	With the lower offshoot path fully explored, Lemeza returns to the main path and heads down the newly-raised stairs to rejoin the others. The probably-a-mausoleum looks like it potentially matches up with the glowy hint-map, so once he's there, the archaeologist starts scanning the area for those secret passages the map showed. Clearly, the X is the goal, and a hidden passageway seems to be the way there. There's also some symbology to analyze; he sets his laptop to work recording all the cultural significance - and translating anything that'll translate. To include the symbols above the side doors.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur manages to get through the door! NICE. He keeps the key, just in case he finds any more DEPRESSION to solve, but he doubts he's going to fix any of his friends that easily. He tries his best to not think about the burned corpse next to the pillar, which is tripping all of his vomit-right-now impulses and he's having a hard time grappling with those, so it's lucky that he's not running into more monsters; he'd be suffering a really awful debuff by now if he did. "Yeah, this has something to do with the GODHOOD SHIT." Arthur says, peering at the coffins. "Got a BAD FEELING that whatever way they do WORSHIPPING isn't a GOOD WAY. I mean, you don't RUN AWAY from that shit down here where LORDS are IMMORTAL. Unless... Huh. Maybe they've got a HEAD PRIEST LORD or something?" He mutters, regarding the door. Now, how do they do this? Well, Arthur tries to gravity-shove it from various angles, despite its lack of mechanism, but that probably won't do much. Well, maybe it might jiggle the other end of the puzzlemechanism such that he could hear it somewhere, but there's no way it'll be that easy. While Nova checks an individual coffin, Arthur tries the doors, shoving into them to explore and try to find HIDDEN PUZZLES. Puzzles may be for nerds, but if he can get the door closed /behind him/ he can pretend they were already solved or that he just flipped a switch or something.
Note	Note really isn't sure what exactly to DO in this place what with everyone else grabbing the goodies, and nothing else jumping out at them. She's surprisingly cautious in these strange, alien tunnels, and it means she keeps missing out on getting the jump on things! So she decides to hop over to Lemeza and tail him as he starts futzing with his computer, looking over his shoulder. "Uhhh?" Her tail swerves around and points towards some of his work as she queries, "What's it say? This tower place is weeeeeeeiiiiiiird. I heard it would give good opponents but we keep getting weird monsters."
Rurufon	The stone coffins, bordering on chests, are too small to actually bury any of these creatures, or a person in, and yet when Nova ends up pushing the surprisingly light lid off of one with a quiet grind, she exposes a pile of jumbled bones from multiple different people that have been essentially crammed into the 'sarcophagus' like a storage locker, with only the barest resemblance to a coordinated burial. All the others are the same, packed full of seemingly random assortments, few with complete skeletons, all with multiple skulls, as the easiest to identify unique remains. Several contain some sticky, dark red liquid in the bottom which looks entirely unwholesome. If there are any further items here, someone would have to stick their hands in there to check, which is dubiously worth it. Tellingly, none of the bones show any signs of burns at all, adding yet more puzzle pieces to the table. The little item Hemlock picks up appears to be some kind of totem, involving a central spiral with flared 'blades' at each end, and odd holes as if it were meant to have several strings run through it. There appears to be no mechanical complexity, but it is /extremely/ fragile, such that he could easily crush it in his hands like a particularly hard, hollow candy. This seems to be intentional, rather than a product of age. He pockets the DARKLIGHT IDOL. As far as Lemeza can reference the map, the X is beyond the giant stone gate, but not directly so; unless the next chamber is absolutely huge, there is likely an intervening structure or complex. The dates don't leave him much to go off unfortunately, but line up in roughly chronological order instead of being scattered about at random, sort of like a 'hall of predecessors' setup, chronicling the coming and goings of something related. Orchid examining the gate itself finds no way to open it, to an actually suspicious degree. There are no convenient indentations for the glowing gemstones of various kinds they've found since the hive queen onwards, no keyholes, no handles, no secret levers. Even the bottom is slotted into a slight recess in the floor, making it impossible to hook fingers under and lift. It's like it's intentionally supposed to be impossible to open, which defies all common sense. It doesn't show signs of sabotage. It was /built/ this way. Arthur pushing it around confirms that it is indeed separate, and not just a gate-looking part of the wall, and it appears to be locked in place with /some/ kind of mechanism. It may only open from the inside, which is incredibly useless as far as gates go, since it'd be impossible to get back in after leaving. Starting to open the side doors, Arthur finds that each one leads only to a very small chamber -about the size of a walk-in closet- each, most of which are empty save for a mysterious glyph on each back wall, and the upper portion of a skull set beneath each. It appears to be the worst designed puzzle ever, until he manages to open one that puts him face to face with a hulking grey brute, its sawmill mouth as big around as his entire torso, leering down at him. A loud click follows, and several more choice doors open up, lighting blue flames in small hollows in the walls down the length of the hall. A full ten of the largest, strongest monsters lunge out, more than enough for one or two per Elite, using the element of surprise from their claustrophobic chambers to throw people against walls and into coffin-boxes, flatten them with overheads and punches, rip into them with giant claws, and burn them with exploding blasts of dark purple fire, if not just grapple and burn them right there. None of those chambers contain a skull, nor a glyph, raising the question of why some of these beings were just waiting inside of these blank units for god knows how long. Only one contains anything of note: an errand scribble of red, anomalously written in English.
Nova Terra	Nova looks into the coffin she opened... "Well, at least they actually got a burial. It's more than some can say." She looks in further to see the stuff collected on the bottom. Stuff she is very much not going to touch. Nova's inspection of the odd mass coffins is interrupted by the lumbering of the giant monsters as they exit their hiding places. They're unfortunately too close already for calm and careful shots, so Nova just unloads on the closest with automatic fire. Though judging by their size, it's going to take quite a few shots to slow them down. This is evidenced by Nova getting swiped by a giant hand. The Ghost is sent flying, bouncing on the ground for a moment before skidding to a stop. Getting up once more, a little blood dripping from some shallow cuts through her suit, Nova narrows her eyes at those closest to her. Soon enough, a number of those coffins begin to launch themselves at the giants, trying to smash into their faces as Nova sends them flying with her mind.
Lemeza Kosugi	So, the objective is beyond... an unopenable gate, Lemeza reckons. Side passages it is! And those potential side passages have enemies in them! To answer Note's question, Lemeza calls out, "The glyphs say it's FIGHTIN' TIME!" Not even close to an accurate translation, and he damn well knows it, but it'll do. For the time being, though, it looks like he's dealing with some heavy melee attackers. He barely gets a shield up before one of the brutes claw-slams him into the wall, catching him somewhat off-guard, but that doesn't stop him from countering with a a few strikes of his whip. He's going for where the limbs connect to the shouldesr, aiming to lash consecutive strikes in the exact same spot over and over, if all goes well deepening the gash with each strike and eventually rendering the arms unusable. All this while adjusting his shield positioning to do his best to absorb some seriously strong blows from the brute. Lemeza hasn't forgotten about those dates, either. But that can wait til after combat.
Arthur Lowell	OH NO OH NO HUMAN BODIES. Arthur is very glad that he hasn't been opening coffins, which contain exactly what you'd expect a coffin to contain. He then opens up one room full of murder. He looks inside for about five seconds. And then... Just closes it. "Guys, I think I found a thing." He says, as quiet as he's ever been. Another five seconds later, he's screaming and trying to jam the blender end of his battle broom into the skull of one of the monsters that's grappling him. "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK YOOOOOOU FUCK!" He shouts, pressing it as deep as it'll go and as high of a speed as it'll spin right now, gushing waves of star fire into the monster. "HIT ME WITH YOUR REAL POWER! BRING OUT THE BIGGEST, BADDEST LEADER FUCKER YOU GOT, LET'S GO! I'LL FIGHT A DOZEN MORE OF YOU AND I'LL STILL BUTCHER WHOEVER'S ON THE TOP, FUCK YOOOOOU!" He winds up screaming while burning alive. He starts tumbling around, using bursts of gravity to shove himself about and into better orientations, to pin the monsters down and beat them senseless, or at least to try to. He tries to take out the one that was burning him, before facing down another. Maybe...? Maybe if he can just... Maneuver it so that its fire hits the gate, or that its fire does something to a mechanism near it. He tries to antagonize one again with that obnoxious scream, but he's not waiting; the broom bashing and starlight shooting are rapid and brutal whether or not the idea works or they take any bait.
Hemlock	Hemlock prefers to fight from the back. Or not have to draw a weapon. He has bagged the Darklight Idol and is wondering what it'd do when they're ambushed, and he's charged and attacked. Bones crack from the punches, sending him knocked back, though he quickly draws his knife and uses it and his parkour skills to try and dodge actually getting beaten or burnt to death. As one of the creatures closes in on him, he starts to whistle. It's a lulling tune, something mesmerizing... Which is exactly what Hemlock hopes will happen to the brute attacking him. He wants to it to understand: you fight for me, and you protect me. Your fellow creatures are trying to kill me, and you need to stop them. Hopefully, this will make it fight on his side, with his skill at mind manipulation. Though, if the mind manipulation fails, he hopes it'll at the very least daze the creature long enough for Hemlock to leap forward and stab it repeatedly in any vital-looking spots, ducking and weaving and aiming for where should hopefully be a heart.
Orchid	Orchid starts a petition to be allowed to drink the red fluid. Well, no. Memes and idiots aside, Orchid won't be able to fit one of her spiders through the door, so helps inspect those other doors and what lies beyond. However, once the trap is sprung... Well, she's not a fighter. So she books it, going for the stairs up, and calling on the radio for one of the violent sorts to help.
Note	NOte's an incredibly curious child to say the least, so when Lemeza finally answers she's ready for anything - EXCEPT what he says. That has her eyes go widen at first with disbelief. Then twinkle with JOY! "R-really?! They do?!-- ooooh!" She does quickly realize though that no, they don't - but there ARE monsters now closing on the group! Note slams a fist into an open palm... and revvs up her Ki! Golden light flows every which way from her - might even force anyone too close to her to shield themselves from the windy force! Then, she's off liek a rocket, leaning forward and just BURSTING across the distance with FAR too much speed. A few kicks towards the creatures to knock them into each other is her opening volley!
Rurufon	In very tight quarters, without much warning, and against heavier opponents, the short-lived brawl in the cramped corridor and cluttered rows of stone coffins is something of a controlled disaster. The Emerald Nexus still has yet to offer truly formidable standard foes yet -the really strong monsters would have naturally trickled upward- but these ones are certainly many times more durable than their blue brethren, as well as many times stronger. Two of them can easily soak bullets, blades, and blunt blows from individual Elites long enough to power through them and swing back several heavy counter hits, and soon the white walls are slick with sprays of green blood, leaving squelching puddles the monstrosities lumber and hop through. In the middle of this battle, the bone-rattling roar sounds out once again, louder and closer than ever before, causing both monster blood and gross red fluid to splash and vibrate from the sheer force of the sound, and the shattered remains of thrown and blown up sarcophagi to jump and rattle across the floor like dice. Unlike previously though, these largest, grey-coloured creatures do not suffer a strange bout of paralysis. They barely seem to notice it at all. Hemlock's attempts at a mental assault have equally little effect, as if they're in some kind of deep trance or haze. It'd explain why they also seem utterly oblivious to pain and injury, making them dangerous to fight without necessarily being difficult to win against. Ultimately, they have to go down. They don't have nearly the prowess necessary to give this group trouble, especially with Arthur and Note blending and splattering them respectively, or with Nova smashing them with heavy and sharp-angled ambient terrain. The huge gates are still stubbornly stuck as ever, and there seems to be no way forward without doing something with the wealth of cryptic hints and items the group has picked up, until a deep, rumbling, snarled, and forcefully strained voice sounds from somewhere beyond, vibrating through the floor in bass, bestial tones, more than anything else. "YOU ARE STRONG, AND I HAVE HEARD YOU. IF YOU HEAR MY VOICE AS WELL, ENTER. I WILL MEASURE YOUR STRENGTH, AND YOUR VOICE." Just like that, the giant gates grind open, raising into the ceiling as if by magic. All that about 'hearing' again, even from what is probably the area boss. It's bizarre.