Duty Session 451: The Phantom Colosseum

    Considering there is a war going on, a rebel alliance to run, light artes to study, and Breg Epona to fortify, one might suspect that Wake's plate is just way too full to be off on side quests. And that's accurate. But this quest is not on the side for her. It's dead center.

    And so she's here, at the 'dock' on some good-forsaken atoll in the middle of nowhere. "In and out and then deal with the rest," she mutters. "I have to get a second one. I simply have to."

And it is no surprise that Kauchemar is not far behind wherever the Baroness may be. She doesn't look at all surprised that her friend is focusing on aquiring another of that particularly precious item. "Hopefully this doesn't turn into a wild chase." Idly she taps the end of her staff against the deck. "Maybe we should get someone to document the trip... so it's waterlogged."

    Hifumi has heard tale of some strange cooking ingredients being around the coloseum and so he is happy to come along. If he doens't find anyhthing well there's always future trips to gather supplies. The war is ticking along, his freeze dried foods and cup noodle are helping out. He's no warrior he leaves that to his Lady Knight.

Goldenblade is here, backing up Wake. She's got her own things to do, if not so much or so important as Wake, but helping out her friend is important, too. And clearing this up will put us in a better position to deal with the Palace Landers. So, she's here to help get this cleared up, and help her friend get the thing she wants.

    Hifumi also, as is his usual hands out Tasty Rat Bento's to everyone in the party. No reason not to have them buffed and fed.

Yeah, there's a war going on, and all that. Chikako likes it, it gives her more chances to thwump things. But there was a distinct lack of palace landers needing thumping at the moment. So when Wake put out the call for a tiddly little raid party for the Coliseum, she had no issues with responding. "Sounds like fun," she answered. "Need somebody to thump stuff, do you? Count me in."

Erufu knows there is a war on, yet? Supplies are needed, so hunts like this could be a useful way to get things to turn upon the Palace Landers. It was also a good chance to train. So here the elf was. She will never admit to being a Pooka after all. To the point a powerful enity thought she had /broken/. So she's here singing a little bit as the group forms up with Wake. "Hifumi never expected you to be on one of these? Whose running your restruant?"

    Baroness Wake is barely done with her customary curtsey of greeting and introducing herself and they are on their way. "You know, Hifumi, these get better every time I have them.."

    It's about that time that their young adventurer guide says, "What.. lovely music..." And he's already wandering off towards it source, which happens to be sirens (of course!).

    Naniko hears the music, looking around for the sirens drawing the boat. She thrusts out her hand, moisture from the sea air coalescing above her upraised palm in an icicle knife. She grabs the blade from the air and tosses it, watching it sploosh into the water just behind one of her targets. She scowls.

    Hifumi smiles at Erufu "I have staff, I do have to go out hunting for new ingreedients or I won't be able to find any thing to make another buffing meal. Tasty Rat Bento didn't invent itself." He says with a grin. "My Lady Knight is fighting so I need to find new meals to take her to keep her safe and empowered." he nods his head. He chuckles "It does say Tasty right in the inspect." he winks and then drifts off apparently just listening to the music.

Kauchemar has rat bento in one hand. The other hand is holding her staff, which she angles in front of Wake to keep her from moving too far. "No, that's just the Sirens, right on cue," she remarks with the tone of someone that entirely expected this. But that is entirely why she is here, the Were Fang Bard raising her own voice to begin singing a counteractive song to block out the hypnotic melody.

Erufu does not like the music, no she knows something up and soon she's got her bow in hand. She'll draw take aim and open fire on the singers. Their song is wrong and she darn well knows it.

Erufu says to Hifumi. "If you ever needed game hunted for something do not hestate to ask, Hifumi. Oh and I see good that it's going well for you!"

The sound of Sirens going on, Goldenblade will man the rails and fight off the attackers, smacking them hard, fighting off the sirens and slashing with both swords. Stab left, stab right, repeat.

Chikako pauses, blinking, and looks out at the source of the quite nice music. "Oh," she says, dully, after a minute's contemplation of it. "Wait, why did we want to go away from the music again?" Someone explains it to her, and she thinks again, then nods. "Right," she says.

Then she looks around, contemplates the distance between the boat and the island, and hmms. "Nah, not worth getting involved," she mutters, and walks over to the helm.

Her solution is simple: They have to get the boat away from the Sirens' Island. So why not just... do something about the guy steering it?

Said adventurer proves quite thumpable, as the Oni-girl proceeds to demonstrate. She takes the wheel, steering the ship - somewhat clumsily - away from the island, while others deal with the sirens.

Maybe she just wanted an excuse to thump the helmsman for something?

    For her part, Wake listens to the music, listens to Kauchemar counter it, and sighs. She physically restrains the silly man before he does himself real harm.

    "It's hardly that amazing. They're out of tune." Watching them start to fall as they are abused by the party, she adds, "And out of time."

    Thankfully the party is soon at the colloseum. Unfortunately, they must take a path through town. And the locals are unfriendly. With little warning, Sahuagin attack from all sides!

    Naniko takes in a deep breath. She claps her hands together in front of her face and parts them, holding the essence of wind magic invisibly between her splayed fingertips. She breathes through, creating a vortex of swirling air, like a horizontal tornado on a small scale. If there's one thing fish people don't like it's being dried out by high winds. Yup. That's totally what happened, alright. It isn't that Naniko's breath tossed one screaming into the water beyond at all. That had nothing to do with it.

The party enters the town. Shanguin leap out. One charges with it's trident... only for Kauchemar to defty sidestep with all the aire of someone that saw that coming, and trip the fishy foe with her staff to send it crashing through the window of one of the ruined houses. "Good place for an ambush, but they were way too obvious about it coming," she notes to no one in particular in the group.

Soon the whole affair with the sirens is over and then come the fishmen. Murlocs err Sahuagin are attacking, she attemps to evade but is getting dog piled by fishment. Caught in melee the elf is going to need some help here. At least these things are not goblins right?

Goldenblade smiles as the sahaugin attack. She does not pause. She gues straight into the attack, slashing with both blades, swirling around slashing hard, chopping down enemies left, right, and center, as she cuts through the attackers with ferocious fury. This is going to leave a mark.

First it was fish-girls. Then it was fish-men. Chikako is at least in range to properly thump these!

So she does, laying about with her tetsubo with wild abandon, grinning far too widely as she smashes, bashes, and crashes her way through the sahuagin horde.

She is, if anything, somewhat -too- enthusiastic about it, letting the pleasure of THUMPing draw her away from the rest of the party. Fighting is /What Oni Do/, and having so many thumpable /targets/ about has her quite entranced.

In fact, by the time the rest of the party is ready to move on... hey. Where'd she go? Oh. That's her, over there, chasing the Sahuagin back to their lair. Somebody better go get her before she gets in over her head.

    Hifumi has had his Tasty Rat Bento and so he's also rocking the strength buff that comes with it. As the Sahuagin attack he starts in with his staff and calls out "Dandy Lion! Tiger Lilly!" the two plant felines appear, shorter than his knee but they both begin mauling calves and finishing off foes that Hifumi knocks to the ground with his staff.

    Once you've punched one Sahuagin, you've punched them all. At least that's Wake's thought. As she punches a Sahuagin a few times in its ugly face. It's enough with the rest of the group to break through and on into the colloseum proper.

    Imagine a place where everything looks the same. And none of it really looks like you want it to. And it's a mess. That's this place! But after much wandering around, the party does reach what they are looking for. And then, just as they get used to breathing under the water, they face a sudden, very unfriendly current that threatens to drown them!

    Thankfully, Naniko cannot drown. The water begins to freeze against her skin, providing buoyancy as it covers her fleshy bits with harder, icy bits. She may bump against things, but gills and that extra...can ice be called padding?...make it easy to take. She proceeds through the water like an Undine should, with ease. Psh. Water was hardly an obstacle to one with proper biology (and magic) for it!

"Oh, this dance again." Kauchemar shrugs, and dives right into the water with little issue. She'll just use her own control of the element to ride out the currents and get to the end of the passage.

Goldenblade glubglub, rushed along with the current, and bouncing off the rocks as the current carries her along. She swims as hard as she can, and when she's caught in an eddy, she swims harder, making decent headway and relying on the others to support the group while the flow carries us along, finally dumped out at the end, wet and panting.

    Hifumi is swimming along, at least he doesn't have to hold his breath and there's none of that stupid 'under water music' playing. And then the tide changes... or someone flushed. "Nori!" he calls out and a small green pudgy toddler made of kelp and seaweed appears "Little help?" he says and the small creature looks thoughful then holds up a hand in a 'I've got an idea' gesture, and suddenly a cavitation appears infront of Hifumi, the sudden rush of pressure sucking him against the flow, then again and again the little seaweed homnunculi cavitates the water with what to Hifumi are probably deafening 'booms' as he gets sucked into cavitation after cavitation.

Erufu is saved by the action of her friends and some use of her long knives. Once the fishmen are handled there's a new trial soon before the party. She's soon free and with the next thing she knows they are going for a swim the good news is she's pretty strong as a swimmer and is not lost. She'll make it out with the rest of the party.

Chikako swims casually along through the tunnels, pausing here and there to eye something that catches her attention. She's really pretty casual about the whole 'being underwater' thing, almost as if she's run into something like it before. Maybe she has?

Eventually of course the trap is sprung and the group has to swim for it or die!

Chikako swims for it!

It's successful! She was never a champion swimmer, but she's got strength and endurance, and she makes it to clear air with the rest of the group just in time!

    The Baroness, for her part, survives this challenge. Probably because someone saved her along the way. She'll just accept defeat with grace and take comfort in the fact that they made it through. If, admittedly, she's rather the worse for wear.

    Regardless, it's out of the swirling water and right into the fire for them, as the group moves out of a corridor right into a colosseum battle arena. The gate behind closes, the crowd.. well, makes some manner of excited noise, and soon the sahuagin challenges come pouring in from the other side!

    Naniko narrows her gaze. "I'm tired of you," she says. She stares them down as icicles come showering down from the heavens, piercing many of them. Even if it's not enough to destroy them, it's enough to send many of them fleeing.

Erufu has found her way into the arena, there is only one way that this fight could be worse. It could be goblins rather than fishmen, so she thanks the goddesses for small mercies and will make ready to fight. Her bow is soon drawn and she's letting the arrows fly, if any get too close they taste her dagger...

Goldenblade helps drag Wake ashore, she's a strong swimmer, and she's not going to leave an ally behind. "You're okay now," she says, clapping her on the shoudler to get the senses going again, because that's what she learned in those mandatory first aid classes back in real life. But then there's more monsters to fight. "Well, okay, if that's what you want?"

After some time of her slashing and chopping, it turns out that this is not what the monsters wanted after all. But if that were the case, why did they attack? This game confuses her sometimes. Why do you start a fight, and not accept that you might wind up getting your ass handed to you. That's what it means to fight someone. Kids today. Sigh.

Kauchemar takes a moment to shake off some water once they're out of the flooded passage. Then starts ticking off with her fingers. "3. 2. 1." And the gates slam shut. "They usually aren't happy to get their little playtime interrupted." Sure enough the gladiator sanguin are all too eager to turn on the party of Adventurers that have stumbled into the arena.

Kauchemar strides into meeting the charge without hesitation... but then blocks the first attempt to strike her with her staff, her eyes glowing with unearthly essense as she's actually spying a few seconds into the future, repeatedly. To the point where she doesn't have to physical look to stick one hand out to her side and shadow blast another gladiator away from charging past her towards the party. Then grab her original attacker and dosey do around so a harpoon throw stabs them in the back instead of herself.

It just goes to show how hard it can be to catch an Oracle by surprise.

Oooooh. So THIS is where all the fishmen went! Chikako GRINS. "Time to cut loose!"

The girl in the loose kimono sets aside her humanity, swelling from a slightly petite teen into the massive, amazonian true form of Chikako Douji, the Oni. She GRINS, too wide for human, showing off her fanged maw. "TIME TO PLAY!" she roars, and hurls herself into battle.

She is having entirely too much fun, it would seem. Once again, someone will have to drag her away....

    Hifumi sighs when he sees the horde of fish people, he calls on Nori once more and the two start fighting with slashes of water and cavitation 'bombs' the pair holding their own with a fair ability even if Hifumi does not count himself as a fighter he does manage to make a fair hash of the enemy... or would that be gumbo?

    As a matter of practice, since the rest of the group is positively cleaning up on the enemy, Wake decides to practice her healing. It's a pretty simple thing to work on. She's done a lot of it lately, actually. Sadly she's also been working a lot lately on making pretty light shows and she's apparently got them jumbled a bit in her head at the moment. Well, at least Kauchemar will look quite fabulous, surrounded by flashing lights of the whole spectrum. It's like a rave!

    As much as the added glow improves the spectacle of it all, the real show stopper enters the arena from the other side. It's big, it's ugly, it's an octopus person! If it weren't trying to kill them, it might actually look pretty silly with the tentacles, spindly arms, and the head that's been replaced by a lump of gills and eyeballs.

    Octopi are jiggly. They've got no bones, so they're the most jiggly. All muscle, but flexible, pliant stuff. Naniko narrows her gaze and thrusts her hands out to the sides. She swings them around and slaps them together in front of her, sending out a wave of ripples that cascades into the mutated monstrosity. Not just driven into it, but overdriven into it. Veins burst and its eyes become bloodshot as the ripples course through the end boss.

"Don't let up, the show isn't quite done yet." As the final boss storms into the arena Kauchemar unleashes a surge of negative energy.... but the octo-man is so pumped up on whatever mollusks have akin to adrenaline that he's not even phased by the debilitating discharge. "... Well that's not good..." Followed by getting whalloped by one of the gladiator's tentacles and sent tumbling across the floor. A groan follows and an "I'm okay!" dizzily.

    Hifumi looks at this thing and draws his chefs knife to go along side his staff. "Nori...it's time to make the Takoyaki!" As he moves and attacks he never gets close to the creature instead it seems Nori is mimicing his movements only with great knives of ice to slice and dice at the tentacled monstrosity.

Chikako Douji bashes one more sahuagin, then the doors slam open and she whirls to see what's what!

She looks up... and up... and - no, no, she's tall enough she doesn't have to look up. At least now, in her true form, she is. "Mmm, takoyaki," she muses. "Sounds tasty, Bento-man. Reminds me of my high-school days." She grins and hefts her tetsubo. And then it's into the fray she goes.

Goldenblade looks up at the giant octopus thing, and steels her features. This is going to take a bit of work. So far, it's been pretty light duty, nothing like carrying stacks of bricks up a skyscraper, but this thing is huge, and she's pretty sure her blades are going to be very busy. But there's a thing she can do to give us an edge. She vanishes.

As the fight gets started without her, she's waiting, preparing, and letting the buildup counter grow. When it's full, she will drop out of stealth and BAM, she strikes it from behind and takes off a substantial chunk of HP. But it's not as much as she might like. She will fight on after that initial strike, slashing tentacles and body parts, fighting furiously.

    While victory is sweet, as soon as Wake sees the octopus creature she sighs. It's not what she's after, see. So when she hits it, she hits harder than is necessary. And doesn't stop striking it again and again and again until her last kick goes right though a cloud of pixels.

    "Damned RNG!" she mutters in annoyance. "The princess is in another castle." Sure, it's not a precisely ideal metaphor, but still. She gives the others a quick look and sheepishly asks, "I.. don't suppose you'd care to play again really quick?"

Kauchemar shakes her head a little as Wake doesn't get the prize she was working for. "There's one thing both dice and fate share ... being fickle." But at least people got something.

Goldenblade looks over to Wake, but she misses the reference. Her kids were too old, and the grandkids never had a console to play at grandma and grandpa's house. "We're looking for a princess?" But she looks around and does not see one, so she /must/ be somewhere else. "Gah, again? Well, I guess I can go again..."

And - perhaps too soon for the Oni's taste - the takoyakiman dissolves into a shower of pixels, and it's time for the crowd of sahuagin to face the power of the almighty oni!

Oh, it's time to run away? Well dang. That's dumb. She'd rather stay and fight. But everyone else is making their way out, and while the prospect of smashing an entire city's worth of sahuagin appeals... she'd hate to not have someone to see her do it.

    Wake laughs softly and shakes her head at Goldenblade, "Not looking for a princess, really, but a gift fit for one. Perhaps I'll have better luck next time? Thanks for the run, everyone! I won't be chancing that without a full party with plenty of people who are handy under water."

    She looks over her arms and notes, "That certainly is not my speciality. I'm lucky to have survived. Still, this is where the thing is that I want, and witherless roses are very hard to come by."

Erufu looks out as the last boss makes itself known she looks up at it and sizes her foe up. It's not long before she's letting the arrows fly and using what she knows about this world. She'll just lay down a storm of arrows at big boss while dodging as best she can.

"I don't know about all of you but I'm hungry."

Chikako Douji's stomach grumbles in response to Erufu. "You're not alone there, sister."