Duty Session 292: Obligatory Rat Cellar

Ayame was chattering to the lander merchant, the door was open, as the Sylph waited in the door of the shop, leaning back with her arms folded "... and then I slung that slime around like it was a soccer ball" She grins, chattering happily as she taps her foot and peers down the street. "Turns out, shields are great for trapping things" As though the Lander merchant has much in the way of knowledge of such things.

For his part, the Cait Sith - who despite a feline appearance, has no real desire to go ratting himself, with his orange and blackish ears, and a definite case of the Moondays, listens with glazed eyes, lifting his hands to flag down other adventurers who might be passing, with a "Please, I have rats in my basement, and they're stealing my cheese!" offered. And then again. Every time one passes.

"Did I hear /slime/?"

Uta's head pops in from the door, as if on cue.

Bags under her eyes, and her gaze, despite it being pretty obvious she hasn't sleep in a long time, still manages to be intense.

The rest of the Spriggan follows in shortly: she's still decked in that white cheongsam with light blue floral embrodiery she's been modeling for the Chain Mail Bikini Plus One on the week following the Shadow Festival, except that now it's covered in slime goo, its hems are frayed, burned with acid (which has set in by now in other points), part of the straps of her heeled sandals have snapped (and it's a wonder how they all still hold together), and one of her pendant earrings is mysteriously missing.

If people inspect her, they'll notice a <<Filth>> status effect, and if they don't -- having a functional nose is enough to guess.

A sheathed cutlass on each hip, and a colorful bird on his shoulder, Nami enters the shop with a bit of a swagger and a smirk. Looking around for a moment he spots the merchant and heads over.

As the merchant begins speaking, he just waves his hand, "Skip. Accept Quest." then turns to remove his hat and bow with a flourish that leaves his feathered companion flapping angrily above his head for a moment.

"Hello again. Miss Ayame was it." He turns then to Uta and tilts his head to one side. "I don't think we've had the... pleasure..." The last word spoken with a touch of dubiousness. "Though if I were a betting man... and I am, come to think of it... but you /must/ be that Uta person I've heard much about."

"Hi, Uta" Ayame smiles, shifting her stance from leaning on things "Try a menu clean, maybe? Or I'll have Gwen drag you to the hot springs by your ears" She grins a little, teasing, slinging her shield onto her left arm and nodding to Nami "Hey there" She nods cheerfully "And you could at least let the man finish. It's not a very long speech"

The lander, meanwhile, is droning, spoken over by the trio "... was only given to me by my uncle, many years ago, but stored ... the paper is waxed by hand and .... " giving the lie to Ayame's statements.

Nevertheless, Ayame nods to the other two "We should be fine. And you, Miss Uta - you are DEFINITELY getting cleaned up. But if you come down here, at least you've a reason to be filthy, no?"

The staircase is scattered with flour, and the little pitter patter of feet can be seen in the dust, as the shielded Sylph defends, leading them down

"What a shit hole!" squacks the bird on Nami's shoulder as he and his Undine compatriot find their way into the cellars.

"Oh, and you've room to talk? Have you seen your cage lately?" And then the Undine lets loose a massive *WACHOO* of a sneeze, then looks around sheepishly, "Excuse me. T'is a bit dusty down here, isn't it?"

Lifting one hand, then twirling the other around it in a spiral, Nami chants a few words before gesturing wide in the room and loosing a gust of wind to blow the dust and cobwebs away.

"Am I?", wonders Uta, in response to Nami's question. "I must be, I must be," she mutters to herself. "And you are..." She scuttles over to the taller undine, looks up at his face, then dips her face down, to scan him from head to toe, then up, down again, a couple of times. "...not a slime." She spins on one leg, almost alling over, and ambles her way back to Ayame. "Menu wash still requires access to clean water and soap. Which I am out of." Uncharacteristically for her, she also ignores the Lander completely. "...Washing can wait, indeed. People got freaked out by something I did last time during the slime duty, not sure what, so I'm doing a run of rats while I wait for that party to be done, leave the place, and be replaced by another I can join."

A short pause. "Well, uh, yeah. Getting cleaned up right before a Rat Duty would be a bad idea."

Uta trudges on. She has whipped out a book, her attention completely engrossed by it. She completely /ignores/ the cobwebs, just accumulating them on top of herself as she hums an obsessive tune. Large insectoids try to jump at her, but every time, without even looking, she /slams/ them with her staff, and the impact makes them disappear in a crackle of lightning.

Ayame curses as the fluttering winds blow the webs and dust away - she lifts her shield, having been ready to push through them, but all that happened was that she got a faceful of webs and dust. Lovely. There might even be a small, confused spider sat on her hair like a stunned fascinator.

"Yeah, are there water slimes, Uta? Things we can just get you to cuddle that will just ... you know, clean you?" Ayame asks hopefully "Maybe ones we can throw soap into as well?" Always willing to help, with a bright little tone.

The passageway evens out, torches flaring to life to reveal little notches and plates and crevasses denoting ... possible traps!

Really, it's just a shock there aren't red squares on the floor showing where the triggers are. No, no. But half the stones are in a much cleaner shade of stone.

"Meet me on the other side, Marty!" Says Nami, before nudging his bird off his shoulder and taking a two step running start. Then, he's cartwheeling and flipping rapidly, but silently, across the stone floor, his black leather boots seeming tailored with a soft sole to muffle their connection to the stone.

Nami comes to his feet on the other side and Marty lands on his shoulder, then preens under his wing. "I've seen better," the little beast squacks, soliciting a sigh from the undine.

Uta's focus on her book is unwavering. She'd normally be all over a parrot, especially a talkative one, but today? She's most definitely not being herself. "Have you ever considered replacing your parrot with a slime?", Uta asks. "I could make one. All it takes is feeding one feather to a basic one, bam. Parrot slime."

"Soap slimes are slippery," Uta tells Ayame. "Accidentally made one when Gwen tossed me into a bathtub. Slimes tend to be acidic, but a cleansing slime might be something interesting to peruse once I am done classifying the local variant of slimes all over Yamato. Right now, must concentrate. Locate author. Locate Compendium," she mumbles

How she manages to zigzag through all those traps while never raising her eyes from those pages, it's a mystery. Yet, she does it.

Dust spirals up as Nami flips and shows off his acrobatic skills, whirling through the rooms and triggering a fusillade of spikes, scythes, whirling bits, and a glitter bomb. None of which lays a single sharpened speck of metal on him.

Uta, on the other hand, follows a few steps after Nami. Spikes zip up between her wings. Scythes zip past close enough to shave off webbing with the backdraft. And the floating glitter? Settles over the injured and burned parts of her cheongsam. It's called Fashion, sweetie.

Ayame rolls her eyes as she pants, having been moving along behind the two, trying to catch up to Uta - and swearing under her breath as the Spriggan sets off trap after trap in her face. Reaching the other side, she leans on the wall, continuing to cuss - which trails off as she sees ...

... chess. With rats. Sort of. Well, there's black, and there's white. Presumably, there's hot and there's cold, as well. The floor is a moving furry tiled carpet, little squares of white and black rats pushing and scurrying and forming complex, hypnotic patterns!

Upon entering the chamber with the rats of dark and light, Nami reaches up to his ear and begins speaking, "Yeah, Proteus? Hi, yeah. I've got eyes on the package, and it's worse than you'd feared."

The Undine then falls back and has a soft spoken conversation with someone on the other end of the chimlink.

In the meantime, as he wades right down the middle of the room full of rats, he chants, creating a shimmering orb of water around him. As the rats attempt to leap at and attack the Sailor, they're repelled by the shield hard enough to leave little but a cloud of pixels, precluded by a splattering sound as they hit the wall.

Unaware of all the inconvenience she's creating to Ayame, Uta barely glances sideway upon reaching this new area. "What? What is all the commotion? -- Oh. Uhm... let's see..." She makes a beeline for a specific square, and once there, she *punts* a rat. Then swerves off to a different one, *punts* again, zigzaging all over the board. "Queen to b4... Queen to b6... King to d8... knight to d7..."

Abrupt stop. Massive orb of water crosses street. Pedestrian proceeds again. "Queen to b8... rook to d8... aaaaaaaaaaaand mate!", she exclaims, with one last punt.

Black? White? It's hard for Nami to tell, as soon, the outside of the sphere is mostly a pinkish color. There are little screams of rats simply bounding full force at the bubble of water, their noses sticking in and their tails pushed out behind them - leaving them momentarily stiff, stunned, and then, with their heads sunken into water, vanishing into a spray of drowned pinkish pixels.

Uta punts a rat. It lands on top of another similarly colored rat, who both proceed to immediately savage one of the opposing color. And another. This one does the same. Is this even chess? Still, as she crosses the board, and makes her announcement, the fighting does seem to cease momentarily. Rats are piled on top of rats. King them!

Ayame merely follows the others - using feet, shield, and occasional yelps of shock to trample her way past the seething, furry hordes. It's surprising how effective a pushing tool a large, lightly curved slab of metal can be.

Past all this, though, the moving light sources the adventurers are - because how often are adventurers really in the dark, really? - flash up the slow mound of snarling fur, as the Rat Miniboss rears up, shedding the scurrying carpet of lesser rodents scurrying away.

Round one, fight!

Uta lifts her eyes.

Dire rat.

Intense stare. Intense stare back.

She shuts her book, without breaking eye contact. "One moment."

Her menu is swiped, her inventory selected. The book shimmers away, her staff appears in its place.

There battle of glares rages on, silent, until-

It is thunder, it is volcano. It is sonic boom, followed by the growl one would expect from a million tortured souls, writhing in a Lovecraftian non-euclideian nightmare, their torment compounded by their mouths and vocal cords having been replaced by monstrosities from the deep.

It is the sound of Uta's stomach grumbling. When did she eat the last time?

Once dominance has been established without doubt, and the dire rat is in a state of emotional inferiority, Uta dashes, and rushes at the creature to whack it with her staff, the tribal drumming rhythm of her humming providing the timing and intensity for her blows.

Big rat? Blade time! Who'd have though an Undine could move that fast?

Even as he takes his first step towards the rodent of unusual size and strength, Nami's twin cutlasses are in his hands as though by magic. *Snickersnack* *swish* *slice* *shwing* and he's dancing around the rat, attacking its flanks with such alacrity that ones ears might pop from the shift in air pressure if they were standing too close.

"BWAK! Slice and dice." And then the most disturbing cackle ever to issue forth from an avian fills the air from Nami's bloodthirsty parrot.

The rat stares back. It flicks notched, ragged ears.

Glossy black eyes widen as Uta switches book for staff, the long, scarred and ragged tail starting to switch behind it.

The mouth opens, showing yellow, massive incisors (and a tiny status bar - Filth!) and a silent snarl. It takes a breath - and is beaten back by the titanic rumbling of the azothic screams of Uta's empty belly. Then it charges, in a flash of movement. Both rat and uta dash at one another, and pass! There is a moment's pause; before the rat looks back, confused. With a very visible boop to its nose from the slash-dash in passing. And then it begins to wail as Uta begins pounding it to provide percussion for her thoughts.

Fur begins to fly! The slashes and swipes of Nami's twin cutlesses, momentarily, spell out 'Stupid' and 'Parrot' in kanji - a complete coincidence, caused by the writhing rodent trying to avoid the damage.

Honestly, when Ayame moves in it's only to put the thing out of her misery with a heavy shield to the head. Truly, when all you have a shield, the world is something to be parried.

The tunnel behind the now-pixelating-and-evaporating dire rat is narrow, smelling of metal and tin and fire. Following the streams of fleeing rodents, our accidental adventurers come across the Collector, the Kobold King, the - hissing and spitting little figure, perched with a helm over its snout! Trying to retreat back into a pile of armor and weapons, grabbing and throwing! Who throws a helmet, honestly?

"Wacha think, McFly?" Nami questions of the parrot who responds with, "Shake, rattle, & roll!" the bird responds. The Undine tilts his head for a moment as though considering, then nods. "Good call!"

Then the Undine is moving forward again, twin-blades flashing, but this time as he steps the very ground shakes and trembles. Apparently he's only soft footed when he wants to be!

"You again," Uta exclaims. She sighs. "Sorry, I have dealt with you enough times. Too busy this time." She looks between Ayame and Nami. "You two take care of him, okay? I have to try and draw up a seven generation deep family tree in my head based on the information on this book. Can't take distractions."

Flick menu open, swap staff for book again.

Back to humming, back to just walking around leisurely, veering abruptly around the room, zigzaging, dodging when needed.

The pile of armor and weapons quakes! It shifts and moves and collapses in on itself, tipping open what looks like a drain and carrying the Kobold off as Nami charges it with thundering steps. The only thing heard is a snarled "I'll get you next time, Parrot! Next tiiiime!"

Apparently the parrot was the true hero. Who knew?

Meanwhile, Ayame looks slightly exasperated, shaking her head and breathing heavily "Well" She manages, slinging her shield on her back. And a nod to Nami "I think we're done. If you get her by one elbow, I'll get her by the other, and we'll find some relatively clean water to throw her in?"

Seemingly inspired, Nami moves to Uta's side, "Hey, I just spoke to your friend Proteus. She said she's..." he looks around, "She's got a lead for your research! Uh, super slime... um... stuff. She wants you to meet her at Castle Eas as soon as possible!" He's -very convincing- then he shakes his head towards Ayame and leans in close to whisper some stuff in her ear.

As she is lifted from the ground, Uta keeps the walking motion going, even if her legs get no traction whatsoever.

Uta perks up. "A lead? Where? How? Proteus knows stuff. Let's go there. Right now,"

Without bothering to pick up her reward, or taking the time to thank and take leave to people, she darts for the exit.