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"I was using words, but I was not..." the clone fell silent, once again contemplating the way of words, and after a few more moments of frankly rather awkward silence he spoke up again, now actually speaking with proper inflection and emphasis instead of just in a monotone manner. "I had not been using words, just letting them out without any contemplation of what they were. I had not really acquired the words, in other words, I was just using them. But now I am acquiring the usage of words, and now the usage of emphasis -- I am better able to communicate my meaning through the usage of the words that leave my mouth." He nodded, satisfied with that explanation. "Now, I believe that I am sufficiently satisfied with the methods of speaking that I am in possession of, and we can exit this room. I am ready to do so, at least, please follow me if you are as well." And in that moment, bam, toothless old man with a stick. Immediately, the nameless clone utilized the breadth of his techniques. First, he shouted loudly: "Aauaauauuuh!!!" He was expressing his surprise, for the old man had in fact startled him and it had not been pleasant. Then, he immediately switched to speaking as calmly as a still pool. "Hello there, Scantankerous Tim, I... actually do not have a name, it would appear. But I confess that I find myself perplexed by this whole situation, and I believe that we," and here came a bit of emotion in his voice, "all are terribly confused by this whole ordeal of... suddenly existing and acquiring basic techniques. Would you mind providing us with some explanation?"

The clone who initiated the forced and confused wailing noise fell silent after a short "Blrwah," looking down at the floor for a long moment, before closing his eyes and lapsing into a deep, almost meditative contemplation. Finally, he looked up, and opened his eyes serenely. "I am confused," he stated. Then he closed his eyes once more, taking on a thoroughly reverential air. "I..." the clone declared, "have acquired words." This knowledge would take him far, he was sure. With this newly discovered ability, the clone turned calmly over to the clone loudly and violently thrashing all over the floor and let out a "hmwah," sound of quiet contemplation. "You are twitching around on the floor," the clone declared, in a monotone voice. The speech of another one of his clones then drew his attention. "I have been acquiring words," he stated in simply reply.

A bald man (just one of many, here) awoke with a start, jumpsuit ruffling as he abruptly sat up, squinting somewhat blankly at the wall near him. "What?" He looked around, squint still stuck on his face, and noticed the presence of many other people that all looked the same -- wait, did he look the same? "Huh??" He looked down and spotted the strange golden sphere in his chest, and poked at it with an expression of raw confusion. "What in the world is going on?" His face settled into an expression of utter, complete bafflement; really, how was he supposed to respond to, uh... what was... how was he supposed to respond to suddenly existing and all that came with it, he supposed? The presence of other people was reinforced by one of the other bald jumpsuited men rolling out of his cot with a rustle and a thump, falling... actually not face-first onto the ground, but on his arms. Scratching the side of his face with a still rather-bemused expression, the bald man stepped out of his cot (not falling out of it in the same way). "Uh, yeah, hey, what? Do, uh-- do you know, uh... what? Do you know what? I mean, in general, just... what everything. Do you-- what the hell is everything?" He frowned -- he couldn't quite get a grasp on what he wanted to say. He tried one more valiant time, putting his everything into trying to express and comprehend the depths of his bafflement. "Bllwaauueughhhhh."

Lizaveta's reaction was one of raw terror and confusion as Shin up and stabbed himself in the neck with an arrow, for some horrible train of reasoning that Lizaveta could not really comprehend, something about him not having value?? She wasn't really sure what to do, fear and shock playing across her mind so intensely that she found herself just sputtering. "SHI-- FIC-- W-- w-wuh-- WHY?! Why would you--" Death's laughter and little cackling, bragging rant made something snap in her once again, though, and she began to bare her teeth -- only to see Baldur begin to struggle against Death. It was in that moment that her mind was made up -- she dove for her Worm tome, and began to run towards Death, with the intent of reducing his head to pulp with dark magic. At this point, rage worthy of someone of Ria rather than Vini filled every aspect of her being, and: "YOU!"

Lizaveta wasn't about to make the same mistake twice, having seen what had happened thanks in large part due to her actions just a while earlier -- especially when the stakes were so high, now. So she slowly kneeled downwards, putting her tomes onto the ground, Thunder, then Wind, and then finally Worm. It seemed like Kane had some sort of plan... but not knowing what that was, she would just let him put that into play how he wanted to. For now, she just glared daggers into Death, staring intently... memorizing his face. If the worst did come to pass, as much as Lizaveta hoped that it wouldn't, and as much as she was standing back to make sure it didn't... well, revenge was an awfully palatable concept, these days. "..."

A lady with large metal tentacle things swooped in, decked the weird fat guy in the face, took his comic thing, and then began swinging away on the ceiling. Stretch thought that he could have pursued her -- he could get SUPER bouncy and fast with just a moment or two to stretch himself off of things, and he could DEFINITELY stretch his arms like her tentacles because he was Stretch Armstrong and that meant his arms stretched strong. However, there was something much more important to deal with -- the sound of screams alerted Stretch, and he turned his head, to see some of the people at this place being cut apart, and then turning to cut others apart in turn. "NO!" Without hesitation, he began hurtling into the direction of the cosplayers. As his legs stretched out to lengthen his strides so he could get there as fast as possible, the orb in his chest emitted bright blue mana (or, as Stretch would insist on calling it, magic juice) directly into his tube top, softening and elasticizing it. This allowed him, when he got to the scene of the horrific violence, to start expanding his torso and clothing to the sides -- and expanding and expanding and expanding, with Stretch's body stretching so dramatically that he essentially became a wide canvas of bright blue and flesh color, a thin dome stretched all the way along the gap between the deadites and the cosplayers. Somehow, despite the distortion of his lungs, he spoke. "I WON'T LET THE THINGS GET TO YOU, PEOPLE!!" Stretch uses Stretch Shield on the cosplayers, intercepting all attacks made at them until his next turn! He also sacrifices all of of his SYN, incidentally increasing his regeneration by 3 in the process!

Satomi decided to provide a little more detail to the newcomer. "Hmm -- it doesn't sound like this happening is something totally new and inexplicable to you, so I assume you must be part of another multidimensional group against those invading creatures... you seem to have come in in the middle of a little bit of exploration. This is not a full deployment against the Trespassers, but rather just exploring through a portal in the middle of something else... we have not really found all that much here, to tell the truth. We know that it is an old and decrepit prison, so decrepit that traversing it is actually difficult, and there are likely-undead monstrosities and probably also oni battling it out elsewhere here." The WHUMP against the rubble sounding out. "Ah, and speaking of... it sounds like it may be time to prepare for combat!" Satomi moved her hands to one of the ranged weapons hanging at her back, but abruptly decided otherwise, pulling out a large, spiky oval shield and her katana, which she currently wielded in one hand. "Now might be the time to play with this thing a little more..."

"Oh, well, that was fast." Jack commented, the blue-armored man's tone entirely casual despite the fact that he was still mostly bleeding everywhere. "Not a huge problem though, yeah? Can just light a bitch up, e-z." At this point. Jack reached down towards his hip, unclicking the strap on a blue, square, metal holster there. "You all sure seem to like pistols... how about I show you what a real pistol looks like!" And Jack pulled his own sidearm from his holster, revealing a rather interesting pistol... this thing was just more or less a brick, fat and large and square, with a grip and trigger attached at the bottom. Grinning widely, he said "Meet the NC4 Magshot." And leveling his pistol at the enemy with that wide grin still on his face, he pulled the trigger, visibly jerking his arm, letting out a loud noise -- not the typical noise of a gunshot, but rather the zipping, metallic sound of a railgun, a blue light flaring out as a large bullet sped towards his foe. At the same time, a thickly shimmering and blue shield popped up around him, wreathing him in bright light. Jack fires his Mag-Shot at Executioner twice, dealing 3d6+[DEX](6) high-velocity damage! Jack also activates his Nanoweave Mesh, absorbing the next attack he is hit by!

Leo A tweak: The first string does indeed resist the effects of the plane incredibly well -- better than any of the others, this one actually maintaining its stability until dispelled. The second string and third string both react in the exact same way: wildly, with the second one flickering and basically just generally tripping out, while the third one actually briefly turns into a somehow-tangible piece of code, that feels like a ribbon and consists entirely of text reading (quotation marks and characters beforehand included): VnE="Nothing happens". As for the fourth string, the results are quite interesting -- not only does the string stay normal and stay stable for some time, but it stabilizes any parts of strings in a small space around it... or, well, at least until the fourth string disappears entirely with an audible "pop". Kusuke and Ena: Randomness: 80 Randomness: 13, 88 There's some unsteadiness in the usage of his abilities on the ship, and Kusuke does find it noticeable, with a 5 second jump forwards becoming a 7-second one, but what he's experiencing now is absolutely nothing compared to what he'd been experiencing outside of the ship. As for Kusuke's tests on Didi himself... well, the effects were certainly more pronounced. Upon trying to teleport the man a brief bit forwards in time, he instead disappeared for a significant time, and only flickered back after a couple of rather awkward minutes. ”--what's your plan for Mozzarella, then?” He blinked, and looked around. ”...oh. Well... I suppose that would be that, then. You really did send me back.” He took a few moments, then, before he replied to Ena, folding his hands together and putting them under his chin as he lapsed into deep thought. He took in a deep breath, and then let out a long sigh. ”That was it... if I recall, then I'm... right. Right. Well, to answer your question, I feel much clearer here. My memory certainly works with better recall... see, out there, it doesn't... it doesn't really let you remember. I do sometimes, a little bit, but I forget a lot too. I can't really say for sure how much I remember in general, I'm afraid. Poor Gogo never gets to remember anything at all... except for me and, of course, except for Godot.”

Stretch immediately sprang into action -- and in fact, he rather literally sprang into action. Getting his rear leg caught in the door out of the changing room for a moment, Stretch halted... and then his foot dislodged, rapidly returning the shape of his body to a normally humanoid one as his legs caught up with the rest of them. And then he flew through the air as the momentum continued, the combatants being treated to the sight of a disturbing wavy man wearing a bright blue teapot on his head and an equally bright plastic-y tube top sailing into the combat, slamming into the floor, physically deforming against it, bouncing elastically off of it, and being cartwheeled through the air by that until he managed somehow to land on his feet, arm stretching out to catch the teapot that had fallen off of his largely-bald head. "My name is Stretch Armstrong!" he declared, "HI!" It was at this moment that he discovered the rather sorry, glass-filled condition of a red-and-blue guy, who he'd ended up landing somewhat near. "Oh shit!! You don't look really good, man! Don't worry though, I'll help you!!" Taking a single biiig step towards the rather sliced-up man, Stretch warned that: "My Diamond Magic Juice might make you a little bit me-y, but it'll only be temporary!" Also, he waved at the person also next to the sliced-up guy. "Hi to you too! I'm Stretch." Stretch uses Diamond Magic Juice on Spider-Man, healing him for 2d4+SYN damage and reducing his RES by 2 for 2 turns!

Navin opened his mouth, turned, and frankly gaped for a few moments at Venus' appearance... no matter how many times some of his stealthier compatriots at home snuck up on him, he never got used to it. At least he was often reassured that it was a rather international phenomenon to have a "hero of the night" or something like that pop in and out of absolutely nowhere, but, well, it still probably was not quite great to be caught off guard. However, what was perhaps a little more pressing was the man's suggestion, which Navin did not like one bit. Sure, he could not say that he knew the man or his capabilities well -- he had never spoken to him, and he had never had the attention to spare to his fighting among everyone's back in that horrific warzone (Navin shuddered, visibly if anyone could focus in in the low light)... but among the alarmingly many things that Navin had learned by experience... "I must apologize, but I am not sure that is a very good idea -- no matter where our foes are, if they are indeed here, splitting up allows for a couple of us to end up in trouble more than the four of us together would, especially because this will leave us with one of the pairs having nobody to heal our wounds and the other of the pairs only having one person combat-capable... or at least I assume, please make me aware if I am incorrect, Heidrun. If there are traps around, being split into pairs and lacking access to a healer could end rather disastrously."

"Agh!" Perlita, rather predictably, wasn't too happy about getting slammed by a semi-amorphous wall of water that actually really hurt, but after a couple of moments of gasping and pained spluttering, she was back on it -- and this time, she didn't just call her Persona out for a bit of near-useless offense, but rather to fulfill the role that she figured she was really needed for. Drawing in a deep breath, Perlita thrust a fist into the sky and shouted "Crawford! We're going to use a Media!" That fist came down in a jerking motion, and this time as many before it, her glitzy Persona showed up to wreathe everybody in pink, healing light... even the people in the half-track. Perlita uses Media on... actually everyone, herself, Lyra, Atton, and the half-track, healing all of these people for SYN(12) HP, and then healing herself for an additional SYN(12)HP!

LOTUS looked at Isobel and muttered a: "I think you can handle this one," before turning her attention to the new arrival, some sort of German ship turned human. This was very old history, once again -- she noted that this period of the 1900 to early 2000s seemed to be fairly common among the various beings coalescing into this team, whereas representation of history from 2050 to 2550 was quite rare. Still, though, that was just an aside, if perhaps it did play into their predicament -- being from such an old time period, LOTUS didn't doubt that a lack of certain preconceptions about the fabric of reality might doom this UB-65's comprehension of the situation. She was going to have to make it a priority to provide a proper debriefing once they left the mansion, and to the other normally-robot as well, though she figured that would be easier. ...so LOTUS was essentially just peering at UB-65 from over Isobel's shoulder, the one-foot fairy resting her head against her arms as she stared out with narrowed eyes. As for Isobel... "O-oh!" It wasn't like Isobel hadn't been doing any of the talking up until this point, but she hadn't expected to just have responsibility actively dumped onto her by LOTUS... especially after she'd evidently put herself under a bit of risk earlier by trying her usual sorts of tactics. Still, though, it sounded like maybe she really should be talking. "Well, ahah... trespassing shouldn't be so much a problem from here on out. We're getting a better hang of this place every hour, and now that we've got a bit of a good picture of this mansion, we should be better able to act accordingly, you know?" Let's see, Isobel wondered, what would LOTUS say about now? Quite likely he-- she, in current circumstances, hah, would give some sort of caution about risks and the Trespassers-related things they'd encountered... "If any other strange objects do show up, I do ask that you please be careful about touching them. The things we've run into so far, here and elsewhere, seem to have corrupted on contact. I know we've already said this some, but a clearer picture of things is arising, after all. I bet that these won't be the only two, either... there might be people going around on rampages, and I guess it's pretty possible that they show up here. So, uh, yeah, that's something you should look out for on your end."

LOTUS hopped onto IP's shoulder during the deal with Masako jumping in, and now proceeded to explain: "No, she isn't the leader at all, and don't listen to her when she acts like she is," LOTUS chimed in. "There's no commission, and no detective agency -- our group is of a more ad-hoc nature, and the leadership does match that. Masako here has actually only been around as of very recently, and is not really a credible source for the operations of the group. I would actually be amenable to discussing further details with you later, but for now I do have another responsibility to attend to, thusly it will in fact be later." and LOTUS hopped off of IP's shoulder, wildly fluttering her wings and only really managing to soften her impact on the ground to make it just embarrassing. Then, with a cleared throat, she walked over to Isobel and began to climb up the botanist's uniform, only for Isobel to to walk over to IP anyway to regain her things. For Isobel, the situation had been unexpectedly scary, and she remained mostly silent, looking down as she got her stuff back. That... she'd walked up so confident that she could easily solve the situation without anybody being hurt with just a little speaking nicely, but the moment the vampire's eyes showed that predatory instinct, she'd been lanced through with a bolt of fear. She'd already begun to reconsider her actions by the time Sakuya had pulled her aside, and could only nod dumbly. Had she almost got herself attacked? Had Masako's ridiculous actions actually saved her...? Maybe it was just another reminder that she was out of her league, just a random botanist in a sea of very dangerous individuals -- the kind of person who had to be protected. It was humbling, and it didn't help when LOTUS finally made it up her shoulder and began to speak. "Do you understand why I do the things that I do? You are scared, and the small vampire would appear to have been considering you as prey. I do not take a wary attitude just to be mean and nasty, I do it because it is inherently my responsibility to see to your safety, and if you fail to perform threat assessment, you are going to be blindsided by threats. I know what I am doing, I am not a defective or subpar device. Don't shush me before I can speak -- listen." "..."

Briefly, a little intrusive thought entered Lizaveta's mind -- an inexplicable thought that somewhere, someone was getting scammed by the merchant class. But she was on a battlefield, so she didn't have time to let these thoughts consume her... especially since the situation they were in was a bizarre one indeed, worth her focusing her thoughts on it. "Hmmm... if you win, then we should take a moment to decide what question to ask... after fighting the rest of these guys if they attack us, anyway. There are no doubt some very good questions we could ask to understand what's going on with these people... after all, half of scholarship is just knowing what questions to ask and when!"

After wincing and rubbing her shoulder a bit since nobody was up here to see her, Satomi looked the area over -- it seemed that she had multiple choices of destination to go down for now... but considering that she was currently quite separated from the other person in here, she figured that it wasn't the best idea to try to delve one of these hallways alone, especially because it sounded like there were very strange creatures fighting up here. Though she was Crab, Satomi was no Hida, that was certain. So she put herself to the task of getting her current partner up to this floor. Now, to be sure, her grappling device presented a rope that she could potentially use to get him up, trying to just yank him up seemed like a recipe to get her arm indeed thrown out, and then to get thrown to the ground several floors below. So instead Satomi took her wakizashi to the booted-open door, and carved out pieces of several of the more solid areas of wood, before interlocking them together into a small but hopefully solid ring that was intended to hold the grappling device tightly. Then she took stone or metal from the rubble and used it to drive this wooden ring into the wall, providing a fixed point she could place her end of the grappling device in -- and then, if she successfully created this, she shot the hook of her grappling gauntlet down to the floor Vitor was on, before placing the device itself in the fixed point, thereby creating a rope secured on two ends between the floors.

A truly horrific wound had sundered Jack's chest, musculature and bone clearly exposed by the deep, wide gash cloven past his breastplate and through his flesh. Blood ran out in terrifying rivulets, earlier spurts of blood having misted the whole front of his armor... but despite his horrific state, Jack himself really didn't seem all that bothered. "Nah, we're all good, honestly. Don't need to bother with this shit for now, we just gotta get going where we're going." Bleeding all over the ground still, Jack gestured down one of the tunnels. "We're trying to get your ass out of here, right? Well, I'd wager they have guys up at the surface, but probably not all that many since we JUST made their attack fuck off -- if we just bolt up there right now, we can probably get through only having to clear one or two people out, yeah? Easy money." Jack votes for the group to move up towards the surface for two minutes, with only one healing turn!

With the fight over and 6D indeed alive, Perlita just remained slightly crouched and panting for a few moments, hands on knees -- the Trick fight had been an exhausting ordeal, and she'd found that she really needed a few moments just to catch her breath and get a little bit of her precious stamina and spirit back. But she'd only managed a few minutes of rest before something new seemed to be going on that caught her attention and drew a long sigh: great, it looks like people were getting into another fight, and with some giant plaid dolphin, too (something that would have been far more disconcerting if not for the Shadows she was used to being quite strange too). Standing fully up with a groan, Perlita got moving towards the incoming fight: they would need her to heal, no doubt, since she was the most consistent here about that... and... she didn't want to be responsible for someone else getting hurt. In the absence of any wounds, yet, Perlita announced her presence with a somewhat breathless "Crawford!" and a simple bolt of light magic went hurtling at the dolphin -- a Kouha, since she was running frighteningly low and a Hama wouldn't be sustainable. Perlita hucks a Kouha at the Dolphin, for 1d6+SYN (12) damage.

Navin let out a breath as he finally opened the gate, missing Solomon's "hey what the fuck" glare entirely, but after a couple of moments he walked into the room and frowned -- it was awfully dark in here. "I... do not suppose any of you have lights, do you? I am afraid that I cannot really produce sustained light or flame, short of trying to set a piece of paper on fire by exploding it, and that would be very loud and not terribly reliable, either. But I do not like the idea of just tromping around this place in the total dark, either." Once he got a reply (and sighing if nobody in fact did have a light before squaring his shoulders) Navin turned to the left. "If I were a gambler --and I most certainly am not-- I would bet money that we are going to have to go into that maze of boxes. But, with that said, I think that I would prefer not to go into it first... while I would certainly prefer not to fight, if there is anybody here, that area would be a profoundly difficult area to conflict in, especially while we do not know much about this place. Thus, I would like for us to go this way and get a better understanding of all of this." Assuming the others agreed, he would lead them in that direction.

Isobel gave Rory something of a hooded-eyed look as she prepared to enter the situation: "I haven't said anything during your scrapping with LOTUS because I feel it makes sense to get furious with him, but I think it's best that you not try to talk to her -- you have a way of insulting people that's already causing more grief than we really want to deal with." Isobel turned and jabbed a finger at Empi. "This applies to you too, Empi. We do NOT need the smug peanut gallery here." With a sigh, Isobel then turned away from the two she was admonishing, and then walked towards the doorway. "Do you mind if I take your place, IP? I'm probably one of the two least threatening people here, all things considered. And, ah, take these too, will you?" Isobel handed IP her hatchet, apron, satchel, green bag, and her Mar-made wrist chainshot, which put her in a position of having just her jumpsuit on, making it fairly clear she wasn't concealing any weapons, and which did show that her build was not exactly one of a powerful fighter. LOTUS crossed her arms and climbed onto Isobel's shoulder, opening her mouth only to be interrupted by Isobel. "I do not advise remov--" "Ah-- you should probably stay quiet too, LOTUS, I can only imagine you'll aggravate Miss Scarlet as well." "I wouldn't be aggravating if people were l--" "But you are, just for this one moment please be quiet." This last reply just caused LOTUS to scoff and then kind of just sit there and simmer, seeing as she still hadn't mastered flying. With that accomplished, Isobel stepped into the room. "Hey, look, not only won't we hurt you, but I couldn't even if I wanted to -- I can't really fight at all, I'm honestly just a botanist and I definitely get scared of this stuff sometimes too. But we're here to help! These artifacts are pretty nasty, probably come from things that are really really nasty, and we're just helping to get rid of them before they can hurt people any more than they already have. Doesn't that sound fine?"

Things got pretty chaotic pretty quickly but despite the concussive blast of the explosives, the raucous clatter of debris and stone, the fall, the gunfire, and the explosion (hah) of enemy mercenaries or something onto the scene... well, Jack wasn't terribly fazed. After all, this wasn't really anything compared to a real battle at TI Alloys, hundreds of soldiers firing walls of bullets of each other, the constant and all-pervading cacophony of SAWs and TARs and NC1s and Watchmen and Phoenixes and Strikers and Vipers and HESH shells and Basilisks and Kobalts and Mjolnirs and rocket pods and Claws and Railjacks and RAMs, and the constant mowing down of soldier after soldier, waves of flesh and metal that came together and then blew apart before disintegrating into motes of light to return again, the ground torn apart by the ceaseless, thunderous barrages only to be knit back together again. Or, in other words, compared to the pitched battlefields he'd seen, four bints with some guns just blowing up a floor was kind of not all that wild. One of them shouted at him to 'Move out of the way, big guy!' and he just favored her with a casual "Nah, I'm actually gonna do the exact opposite of that." He'd been about to reach for his Magshot and show them what a real handgun looked like, when he noticed Scarlet beginning to swing a really big-ass gun (hey, he had railguns too) at the ceiling -- and very rapidly he changed course, his other hand grabbing a grenade from his hip by the pin, and flinging it out in a way that twisted that pin out, all in a smooth motion that came out at the exact instant before Scarlet pulled the trigger, ideally sending the grenade in riiight in time for the rubble to trap the dolls next to it. "Get fucked!" Jack throws a Frag Grenade at CZ75!

Stretch's reply to Doctor Strange was without any hesitation, an excited clap of his hands (which just then bounced off of each other) followed by a salute that then bounced off of his helmet. "Alright, Strange guy! You can count on me! I'll help everybody that needs helping!" He grinned and then, as Dr. Strange opened up the portal, Stretch performed what could be described as an "interesting maneuver": instead of walking through the portal that Dr. Strange had made, Stretch, well, stretched his torso through it, and then flowed through the portal as his elongated body slightly undulated, a motion that was uninterrupted as he continued to move through the now-crowded Macy's stall. An advantage of the sinuous motion of his stretched body was that he took up surprisingly little volume as he moved, his entire body a swaying line that slipped simultaneously through the portal and out the stall as Stretch exited into the mall. Stretch enters the battle!

Satomi softly clicked her tongue in disapproval as Vitor kind of just casually kicked the bars out of the cell -- but then she got to contemplating Vitor's question. "Well, it just so happens that I am uniquely suited to this whole scenario -- this may be boasting, but if there is to be anyone to find out what is structurally sufficient and what is not, it is going to be me, as I am an Engineer of the Kaiu family of the Crab Clan. I believe that my plan is to inspect the catwalk and see if there is a largely viable path up there, and if there is I can work to bridge the gaps to allow us up." Satomi paused, in abrupt consideration. "...although, I do have my grappling hook, which I may be able to use that grappling hook to trivialize getting up there altogether, frankly. Allow me to give it a try -- and watch how I use this, because the easiest and most reliable way of doing this has you use it as well." Satomi pulled from a gear-laden sash around her kimono a jointed, heavy, metal gauntlet-ish device that she fit over her arm and flexed speculatively. She showed Vitor the lever on the underside of the device. "If you don't end up being able to fit in the gauntlet, that is fine; you will just have to hold it in both hands and get the lever. If something else happens... I will figure it out." Satomi attempts to use the following item to hook into stone and get up to the fifth level:

Lizaveta grinned a little when War ran. "She was so cocky hurling those awful meteors, but she couldn't hold up for a moment once we actually showed up, could she? See, Shin? It's going to be okay." P14, Wind SwordPegA

"Oh, yes, I agree that this place is terribly suspicious. While I admit that sometimes empty and dilapidated warehouses really are just empty and dilapidated warehouses, I have on more than one occasion seen them actually be intricate supervillain lairs or criminal hideouts. But..." Even Navin was beginning to cotton onto the fact that his nonchalance about these things was terrifying Heidrun out of her wits. "If you feel that you are in danger, you can just allow Solomon and I to take care of the danger while you assist from the back --is that not right, Solomon-- and we should be quite able to do so. Solomon seems thoroughly familiar with how fights go in this world, and I have around a decade of experience with things that include criminal hideouts and supervillain lairs. We will have things under control." Navin sighed and looked at the building. "There is nothing for it but to go ahead and enter, though. We have got to get this done if we are going to help people here, after all, and help people we must do." Navin sighed and then rolled his sleeves up a little, moving towards the gate. "Back me up, would you, Solomon?" Walking forwards slowly (and giving the other two time to follow as they wished), Navin reached for the sliding gates and attempted to wrench one of them open with his hands.