Duty Session 296: Obligatory Rat Cellar

After the incident with the mine collapse had been dealt with Shiruba had returned to her hiatus traversing of Yamato. But had started to make her way back to Shibuya as she had promised she would be there to help with the festival. That meant getting to a port, for a boat, which meant passing through Carmina Gadelica. In which doing so she caught one of the many occurances of the Rat Cellar active, and decided why the heck not. It would be getting back to basics, helping out Landers in need even if the problem wasn't very big. So she put out a call for help, and waited outside the shop while reassuing the shopkeeper the matter would be dealt with in hand soon enough.

Shield clamped to one arm, Ayame sighs as she makes her way to the store, nodding to Shiruba "Hey" She offers cheerfully "How's it going?" As she peeks past at the Lander fretting over Everything. Everything! Simply everything. "Ayame" She offers a gloved hand "If you want someone on point"

    "Did someone call for an exterminya-tor?" Mizuki steps into the room with a grin, raising one arm with wrist bent like a cat's paw and winking. "Don't you worry," she reads the NPC's name off inspect, "who better to handle rats than a giant cat?" She looks to the others and waves, tail twitching back and forth, "Hi girls! How're things?" She looks at Uta with particular concern, trying to tell if she's still lost in books.

Schneider is here at the shop where the Rat Cellar quest is, just trying to work out some of his defensive magic. He's a strange mixture of fighting and caster. Not a great fighter, but pretty dang tough, as evidenced by ... him attempting the quest in short breeches and what in the regular world might be called a muscle shirt. Schneider is lean and lanky and doesn't have huge muscles, or any muscles, really, to show off, so this may seem like a waste. Looks like he's going to try this in HARD MODE. So to speak.

Uta dashes in, at breakneck speed. Having had the dubious honour of breaking Gwen by destroying multiple of her creations by having slimes eat up all their durability, her Sylph fashionista friend has given up and stuck her in the kind of menu-crafted peasant's dress that's seen all over Yamato, worn by newbies and cheapstakes.

"Quick, I need a large bag of slime kibbles!", she demands, slamming her hands on the counter. "It is a matter of life or death!"

"...Death?", asks the merchant, raising an eyebrow. "...well, no. But... IT IS IMPORTANT!" The merchant twirls his mustache "...I'll tell you what. You rid me of rats along with those nice people, and I'll convert your Hunter's Guild fee into an equivalent supply of kibbles." "DEAL!", she exclaims, and darts for the others. "Hi!", she says, curt and to the point, as she flicks her menu open and materializes her staff.

The shopkeeper isn't the most 'complex' of Landers, but he still shows a bit of relief when several Adventurers arrive. "Oh, thank you! The entrance to the cellar is in the back of the shop. I'm sorry, no one has been down there recently when the rat problem started."

Truer words are rarely spoken. Shiruba leads the way to the back of the shop and down into the cellar, which turns out to be quite musty and moldy. She immeadiately grabs her nose with one hand, ears slicking back. "Gah, he wasn't kidding about the lack of use." Not having any more elaborate techniques for the situation, she just pushes her way through while trying to not breath too deeply.

    Uta is obsessed with slimes again rather than so obsessed with a book she tries to read it underwater! Mizuki hugs her joyfully and squeezes tight, "Uta! You're back to normal! On the ship, you weren't obsessed with slimes, it was weird...!" Eventually, she lets go and steps back, uncertain if Uta also particularly dislikes hugs or if that was only Jazz.

    When it's time to go down the stairs, she equips her ninja outfit. "Hmm. Alright, where are they..." She peers behind crates and cuts down vines, using a bit of fire breath to dry them out in spots for easier cutting.

"Uta! So good to see you. Behind me, please" Ayame says, planting the spriggan firmly in the middle of the party. She grins to the others, nodding and relaxing a little as she heads on in, looking about "Ah, careful with those molds" She points "They tend to puff out and can be bad for your breathing" She explains, taking a dust sheet and dropping it over some of the crates

"What? It's not an obsession, it's a profound interest!", protests Uta. "And the book was about people who wrote books about monsters. So, it counts!" She inhales deeply, and asks, "Saaaaaaaay, Mizuki, have I already told you about what I'm doing these days? About the Other Slimeologist?"

She dutifully stands behind Ayame, and makes sure to flap her wings as giant fan blades of sort, to keep air circulation going.

Schneider will head down into the cella, then back up the stairs, where he purchases a hankerchief, ties it across his face, and heads back down. This protected, he takes a look around. "Ah," he says, identifying the one alchemical substance he knows, "Behind this wall," he says, "Which I think must have been built to close off some other space....This substance, though, is found underground in natural caverns, you see..."

    When Ayame mentions the spore issue, Mizuki pulls her scarf up over her muzzle. "There's another slimologist?" She looks at Uta curiously, her ears turning this way and that as she tries to find the source of the chittering sounds, but trying to keep one ear on Uta.

With the advice from Ayame and Schneider the group is able to make it through the mold infested cellar with little difficulty, and into another passageway... that ends with a large door marked in runes.

"I think you're right, and we found where they closed it off. Not that it seems to have kept rats out." The wolfgirl steps closer, inspecting the runes around the door. "It looks like some manner of arcane lock..."

"A much older one" Ayame tells Mizuki "Uta's been looking for information" She sighs, drawing her wand out and moving to study the lock "Arcane locks. Delightful. Overthinking it, probably" She says with a small smile "If you say which they are, I can hit them up"

Schneider says a simple spell for opening doors here, and there is a sort of crack or click as of something that was prohibiting passage no longer doing so. "Wizard locks, pfah," he says dismissively. "Normally, fireballs work, but it's a bit close in here, and if that last storeroom was any indication, the whole place'd probably blow up in our faces."

"YES!", exclaims Uta at Mizuki. "Or, well, there was?", she adds, in a nod to Ayame. "I don't know for sure. But there definitely has been, so... anyway, point is-" She flicks her menu open, and materialized a yellowed page ripped off a larger manuscript -- it references unusual slime types, and the best way to handle them. "Look at this. LOOK AT THIS!", she says, pointing at it, her eyes almost bulging out. "Someone went off the path of Slimology before! Wrote a full manuscript about it!" She clenches one fist in determination, "And I won't have any rest until I have found it! I must discover who wrote it! Where it is! Find more pages! Find the whole thing!"

When they are faced with the runes, she de-materializes the page into her inventory, and taps her chin. Withotu saying a word, she closes her eyes, and intones a song. The gem on her staff glows in sync with the rhythm and intensity of the melody, and as it does so, specific runes light up as well. Someone will just have to press them as they illuminate. If nobody else does it, Uta will do it herself.

Ayame sighs and presses the runes for Uta. She is, apparently, the spriggan's thinking-brain set of hands while she's obsessed. She looks amused by it, nonetheless. And she smiles at Schneider's comment "Don't worry" She reassures "When we find something for you to blow up, I'll join you in slinging fire, how about that?"

Ayame is Helping

    Mizuki is happy to see Uta so passionately excited. "Oooh, that's really cool! Do you want me to give identifying it a try? You probably already had it identified, though..."

    Walking and talking brings them to the rune room. Mizuki's done this dungeon so many times... she recognizes the sequence and practically dances between the runes, activating them together with Uta's melody, humming in harmony to it!

"That's actually kind of neat, Uta," Shiruba comments over her shoulder, though her attention is mainly on the runes. "They need to be magically charged" Which people have already started doing, "and then a sequence..." Mizuki speeds right through that part. "... You've done this a few times haven't you?," she remarks with a laugh.

It felt good to be doing this with friends. She can't hide from bigger problems forever, but for now, she was just having a good time with smaller issues.

The door creaks open once the combination of runes is completed, and the Adventurers ears are greeted by more audible squeaking and snarling. Following it leads into another chamber that's just overflowing with rats of all manner of size and species. One rat isn't much of a problem, but wading through a room infested to the point they're swarming on top of each other trying to bite and claw party, that's going to be a bit more harrowing.

Schneider peers at Uta as she mentions a treatise about slimes. He, himself, had juuust finished a couple month dive in various libraries on an unrelated subject, but since he's also the curator of the Scale library, he says to Uta, "Perhaps I can help you search?" Then we proceed on to the place where all the rats are. "Well, -this- is a job for FIRE," he agrees with Ayame. And then ALL THE FIRE. Not just fireballs or flame shields, but sheets of fire and flames and rats burning into pixels. Steaming and smoking and dying, mainly. It's a glorious thing.

"Times like this, you all remind me this started as a game" Ayame laughs as Shiruba speedruns the runes, watching with an easy smile and a little shake of her head, lifting her shield to partially hide her face as she does. "And that sometimes the same things repeat"

To Schneider, Ayame nods, describing an arc with her wand and opening a portal. From which spews more fire. And more fire. She looks decidedly pleased at the outcome.

"I would love if you could help me!", Uta tells Mizuki. "Let's do this as soon as we are done with this duty, I don't want to ruin that page." To Schneider, "I would love if you could help me too! Same conditions, let's discuss this after the duty!" She takes a hand to her head. "I know I just won't have any peace until I'm done! I /need/ to find it!"

"RATS! All the rats! You know what this means?!" Uta gets the kind of glint in her eye other medical professionals might or might not get when they believe it's time to cast Fireball.

Which is a lot of the time.

She intones a catchy, bouncy tune (is that... j-pop?!), the staff, as usual, lights up appropriately- but this time something /else/ happens. Little colorful dots appear at each beat, and following the glissando of the melody, they enlarge into colorful polkadots of lights in different pastel colors.

The whole floor is littered with them; the last one completes just before Uta hits the last note of the verse, and then-

-the music cuts-

And after she chants a bubbly, "SE-WER CALL!", she reprises abruptly, and as she hit the accented note on the first beat of the chorus, slimes pop out simultaneously from all the circles! They bounce around with the tune, each of them chasing a different rat.

The whole thing set to a soundtrack by Uta Furore, who's now rocking away, swinging her staff as if it was a microphone on a stand during a concert.

    Mizuki nods briefly in response to Shiruba's question. "Ooh, I'd be happy to help you search too!" She adds to Uta. When Ayame brings up the old days of believing it was just a game, she slumps a bit. "Yeah..." The catgirl looks at her hands solemnly, turning them over, clenching and unclenching fists, and extending and retracting claws. "Well... we're gonna be here awhile, so we might as well enjoy it! I'd be happy to learn more about this ancient slimologist with you!"

    Then her ears perk up and she looks ahead. "Sounds like it's time for the racist rats... Get ready to clear a path through them..."

    But then they come into view of a horde of rats that are NOT fighting eachother, but all turn on the adventurers! "Oh no! They got over their racism! I mean, good for them but bad for us!" She stabs and claws and bites, breathing fire to try and keep the horde at bay so she doesn't have to fight too many at once... but hearing Uta's song, she starts kind of dancing too, attacking and dodging to the rhythm...

Shiruba had seen Uta with the slime mount... but this is the first time she's seen her use her newfound slimancy for a combat situation. "That's an interesting use of..." Shiruba stops. Looks to Uta with a bit of concern. "Don't normal slimes turn into what they eat?" Oh shoot.

When the slimes chase the rats into a corner Shiruba quickly fires a couple of arrows at the floor and walls near them. The elemental magic released from them form several Rock Cradle barriers, which lock together, both to keep the rats from fleeing the slimes, and any potentially Rat Slimes that result from escaping into the sewers. "You will have to come back and recollect those when we're done," she tells Uta.

The rest of the party seems to have the rat issue well in hand... mostly for the copious use of fire to just burn them out of the chamber, and life in general. No surprise from the Scales, but Ayame seems to be joining in the burnination just fine too. The way onward is open!

It eventually opens into another chamber, this one with a huge pile of scraps and fabric in. "Oh, man, it's a good thing Gwen isn't here, if she saw sewing materials treated like this..." But that's not the problem. The problem is the giant rat climbing over the pile and snarling at them, foaming at the mouth in a way that goes beyond rabid.

Schneider nods as Uta accepts his help. Leaving behind the rat cemetary, he follows along to the next chamber, some ways ahead, where a twisted rat changed by foul magic holds court over a collection of junk. "Let there be fire," he says with a smirk, and lo, there is fire. FIRE. So much fire, fire that debuffs the changed rat, burning down it's defenses more than its health, but that leaves it vulnerable, taking serious damage from each hit, far more than would normally be done.

All those rats who died in a fire?

Now there are GHOST FIRE RATS. Ayame twirls her wand and incants briefly, before dragging the ghostly things there to simply swarm the strange creature. Meanwhile, she chatters away
    "I keep meeting Gwen in interesting conditions. She seems interesting, but nothing like as pushy as people imply?"

"That is EXACTLY what I plan to do!", Uta replies to Shiruba. "Come back to check on the new samples." She flicks her menu open, materializes a notebook, and, while humming that tune that people have heard her hum a lot recently, she begins to scribble down a complete list of all the slimes she's recently produced. People who look over her shoulder, will notice that she's writing at a ridiculously fast rate, she's /nailing/ the position and trajectory of that whole room of slimes, marking down when and in what order they ate a rat, and even the specific change of each of them underwent, with notes about their morphology.

All from memory.

"Gwen isn't /pushy/ to be fair. She's very respectful," Uta replies over her scribbling. "She just... somehow finds way to get you to wear her creations, no matter whether you want or not. It's like facing a far more experienced opponent in judo -- one moment you look at 'em, and the next moment you find yourself on the floor, decked in haute couture, and suddenly wonder how that happened."

She closes her notebook. "Speaking of which..." She switches items with her staff, and begins her singing routine again. Bolts of magic are shot towards the rat, in an attempt to drain it of energy.

    Mizuki smiles at Uta's antics. "It's not so bad though! She made me a swimsuit that wasn't too--" She glances at Shiruba and Ayame, then back to Uta, "--skimpy, and I'm hoping I can get something cute for singing in. While I'm here I may as well take advantage of this beautiful voice, right?"

    She looks ahead as they approach the next chamber. "Do you think we'll see Armored Rat again? It's so cute!"

                                  GILLIGAN CUT                                  

    "AAAH IT'S NOT CUTE, IT'S NOT CUTE AT ALL!" She backs behind the others, "Someone tank it a sec!" she goes through the motions to 'bend' stone out of the floor and cover the party in armored plates that feel weightless. "There, that should make it easier!" she quips cheerfully before--

    She stares. "Are those... ghost fire rats? Are those the ghosts of the rats we just killed?! Geeze, what the f---" She stares, wide-eyed and gaping-mouthed. Something about this just feels so messed up...

Shiruba stops, draws a charge of wind magic in her bow, and as she focuses her eyes start to glow. She aims, and fires to blow a bunch of the fabric into the air. So it falls over the thrall rat, providing something even easier for Schneider to catch fire and blinding it from seeing the ghostfire rats from swarming on top of it to add to the conflageration. Followed by Uta hurtling magical bolts at it to farther whittle the health bar down. With all that fire and magic going on Mizuki is wise to toughen their defenses, though she was probably more worried about that magic-rabid look. It's probably best to not think too hard about the flaming ghost rats. What matters is the beatdown results in one more dead rat miniboss.

"What Uta said," Shiruba replies as the group moves on into the last stretch of passages. "She can just be very... convincing." She pauses. Her tail twitches. "Or find the one thing she can bribe you with." Tail twitchs again. If anyone knows from experience, it's Shiruba.

The twists and turns finally lead into one more room. A room that looks like it's been used for some manner of ritual... And sure enough, the very cultist looking rat-man does just that, activating circles to summon more rats. "At least it's not that damn merchant," Shiruba utters under her breath, providing a bit of callback to a discontinued boss even as she starts shooting rats with her crystal tipped arrows as quickly as they're summoned. "Someone shut down his summoning RATUAL!"

Schneider walks in, looks around, and instantly groks the situation. He summons a magical blessing on himself, and walks right up to the summoner, almost in his face as he begins to counterspell him. There's a crackle of lightning between them, and a few of the adds attack him, though his protection is solid, and he continues to chant, cracks appearing in the summoning circle. His chanting grows in intensity, though he looks over to Shiruba with a nod. He's on it!

"Should I be upset she hasn't tried?" Ayame asks Uta with a faint laugh. Teasing and distracting the distracted spriggan, before she looks to Mizuki "What's wrong with it?" She asks, apparently seriously, even as she begins to weave summoning circles around the existing summoning circles, sending things right back! "I mean, it's sensible and stops things being wasted"

Uta replies to Ayame,"It takes her some time to rev up at the beginning. Like, in my case, it was a few weeks. Just... give her time."

"Well, yeah, we're going to be around here for a loooooooong time," Uta concedes to Mizuki. "In my case, taking advantage of my voice is kind of a necessity. My whole casting system relies on it. Not that I complain, mind you. I like me a good song. I've been nicknamed exactly that since I was a kid. That said, I kind of admire your bravery. I don't think I'm ready to wear anything cute, yet."

Cut to after the cut.

"I hate cooldowns!", exclaims Uta, as her attempt to summon another roomful of slimes fails. "I need more slimes! MORE SLIMES!" She begins to pace around the room, frantic. "They cannot stay in the sewer! I need them all, all for me, to- study. To study! People throw away! I collect!" She looks around. "Wait, wrong room." She spins, and points her staff at the necromancer. "Your rat summoning days are over! Cease and desist!", she yells, and sings a rhythmic tune which causes the staff to blast a massive flash of light at the final boss.

    Once the Thrall Rat is down, Mizuki wonders, "Why was it collecting these fabrics...?" She sweatdrops at Ayame's question. "Ah... it just caught me off guard is all, it's kinda... creepy. But I played a necromancer in Guild Wars: Nightfall, so I get the usefulness. I just hadn't seen so many at once like that before... Setsuna usually just summons one at a time..." She hangs her head. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insinuate it was actually bad somehow..."

    She nods, smiling, at Uta's appreciation of songs.

    Mizuki blinks at Shiruba complaining that Gwen is... convincing. She looks skeptical. "Wait, why would you two have a problem with Gwen's clothes? You're--" And then she realizes what she was about to reveal and claps her hands over her mouth. "Nevermind!"

    She doesn't want people to think she's weird... ^-_-^;

    And then... it's the were-rat enchanter! Mizuki smiles and waves, "Oh hey buddy, good ta see you again! Can I get some Tasty Rat Meat?" When Uta goes all I AM THE LAW, Mizuki tries to calm her down, "Don't be like that! This guy's cool, he's figured out how to summon tasty rats for unlimited food!"

    She looks back to the enchanter. "Unfortunately, the shopkeeper above is starting to complain that there are too many rats, so could you maybe stop for a bit? You've already summoned plenty of rats today... Here, I'll help you cook the ones you've got." She breathes fire on the adds coming out of the portals.

"I don't have a problem with her clothes!", Shiruba calls back admist shooting rats. "I just don't feel like I need fancy clothes and show myself off all the time."

Trying to summon rats faster than they're killed, while people are specifically pulling his portals apart, or throwing things back into them, finally exhausts the rat-mancer to the point that he gets out one more rant before collapsing.

Shiruba picks up one of the chunks of meat dropped by the swarm of rat kills. "He's not wrong, rat meat is fine... but this is a terrible marketing strategy. Mostly because there isn't one. You can't just bring in a horde of rats and expect people to see the infestation as an alternate food source." She deposits it in her inventory. "Well, I guess it's back up the shop to let the guy know the job is done.... And Uta can get her kibble."

"It depends" Ayame explains to Mizuki "Sometimes I like to summon things like elementals - which, honestly, is what those were. Sometimes I take inspiration from the things I see. And sometimes I find ironic humor in reminding people we have the firiest of fire mages firing on all cylinders. Fire."

She looks to Schneider, then back, grinning.

"I've not eaten rat" She says "I'll have to try this, if it's meant to be super tasty" She picks up a hunk of charred flesh, examines it, then vanishes it into her menu

Schneider smirks at the discussion of clothes. His outlook is, the coolest clothes are whatever he's wearing right then. Though he's proven, to his satisfaction, the strength of his defensive spells in the face of a ratty problem. He looks to Ayame, singing his praises, and he grins inscouciantly. As for eating rat, he'll take a pass. He contributed some to some group or other, this'll likely go the same place.

    Mizuki patpats the exhausted wererat. "I was always musical too. But I didn't really listen to the radio until my teens, and then came Napster... as a kid I was always humming the background music from my favorite videogames. I used to know every Mega Man level's song by heart... always frustrated me that I could only do one instrument at a time with my voice."

    She stares into the distance and strokes her chin. "Sometimes I wonder what might've happened if I'd gone into music instead of IT..." She shakes her head, "It probably wouldn't have worked, most musicians don't get lucky enough to get famous..." and shrugs, "...and if I did, I wouldn't have had time for all this gaming! Even just rehearsing takes loads of time, and if you have to compose the song and lyrics too?"

    She scratches her head. "Still, maybe there's some alternate timeline where I'm a rock star..." And then she beams. "But hey, I can kinda try it out here, right? My IT skills are useless INSIDE a computer, but music's all the more in demand in a world where we don't all have portable MP3 players! And with this voice I can sing the g-- err..." Her ears blush. "Well, I can sing beautifully, that's what matters!"

    She'll carry the sleeping enchanter to the Thrall Rat's den and improvise a pillow and blanket from the cloth there so he can have a more comfortable sleep.

"One thing you have to give to Gwen, though," Uta mumbles, "her creations /are/ ridiculously comfortable."

"Same..." Uta replise to Mizuki. "...I always liked songs and stories, but I kind of never really pursued the singing part outside of, well, karaoke night." She sighs. "There's lots of things I could have pursued and didn't..." She turns to Mizuki. "But yes. We're stuck here, and we have at least eight years to kill- actually, I should starts aying 'about seven' soon. My goodness, has it been almost a year already?"

She shakes her head.

"Make sure you have someone with the cooking skill to prepare it for you, Ayame," Uta recommends. "It might explode otherwise. Anyway, I have to go and get my bag of kibbles now, I have to be to perform at the New World Carnival, so time is tight...", she announces, turning on one heel and heading back where she came from. "I am done with all the books I copied from the Eas Library, time to hit the Shibuya one..."

    "Ooh, we should do a duet sometime!" Mizuki suggests to Uta! After the spriggan reminds Ayame to cook the meat, Mizuki adds, "Yeah, you don't want to accidentally destroy it... but it's perfectly good raw, too!" She rezzes the meat they just got and bites it, feline teeth ripping a chunk off which she chews, blood running down the fur of her chin. "Mmm... ih good..."

Schneider winces as Mizuki chows down on the raw rat meat. He turns away. There's got to be something here that needs to be burned, right? He'll look for it very intently.

Shiruba squints sidelong at Mizuki chomping directly on the rat meat. "... I think I'll stick to having Hifumi or Gwen cook it first, thanks." She turns to wander out of the cellar/sewers. "Maybe I'll see some of you guys later at the carnival!"