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>>33453851
Is this a new quest?
Or have there been other threads before this?

>>33453915
A quick search of the foolz archive says this is probably the seventh thread.

>>33453851
[x] Go in the closet

>>33453959
Oh.
Hm.

>>33453851
Alright, time to dream again!

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It's time.

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Mado helps you shove the heavy iron cover aside, the water draining through the opening rapidly, tugging at your soaked sneakers. You feel a fine mist blowing upon your face and lean away from the opening, wary.

"Come on," Mado says. She jumps into the opening, catching the rim with her hands and kicking her legs to swing out of sight as she plummets into it.

You peer down through the opening... and see nothing but purpleish light. You take a deep breath, and hop into the hole. The thrill of vertigo fires up your spine as you plummet through the manhole -

- and quadruples as you suddenly slow down and begin flying UPWARD. You jackknife at the waist, desperate to avoid smashing your skull into the ground, and grunt as the manhole's rim catches you in the back and the upper thighs. Your axe and crowbar clatter loudly as they land on either side of you.

Mado's standing next to you, silently watching your predicament.

>Help me out, would you? I'm stuck.
>... that was deliberate, wasn't it?

>... that was deliberate, wasn't it?

you a tricky bitch, madotsuki

a tricky bitch

>>33454150
>Help me out, would you? I'm stuck.

What happened to everyone else?

>>33454150
>>... that was deliberate, wasn't it?
This is dream world hazing, isn't it?

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"... that was deliberate," you mutter, glaring dirks and daggers at Madotsuki.

"What?" she says, looking at you with bored disinterest.

"Thanks for mentioning the reverse gravity," you grump. Instead of beginning extraction, you just cross your arms and grump at her, your rump still stuck in the manhole.

Mado tries to look serious, but a little upward curve at the corners of her mouth gives her away. "First time I went through it I flew straight through the hole, and fell back again. Like a yo-yo."

"Sorry to disappoint," you grumble, levering your ass out of the portal and retrieving your tools. You survey the new place; and for a moment all you can see is purplish light fading into the distance. The ambiance seems to dim the longer you look, and quite suddenly you can make out...

"... holy shit," you breathe.

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>>33454516
>theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMwiamPJF8A

Through a sea of dark purple ambiance drift a world of purple rectangles. Small ones the size of your head go flitting past only arms reach away. You look at your feet and find the edges of your own cube, larger than a big truck. Leaning out just a bit, you peer down to find blocks of all shapes and sizes flying about with sedate surety, guided unerringly by some unknown force. In the middle distance are cubes the size of houses, and far, far below, where the darkest purples finally fade to black, you can barely make out the edges of titanic shapes, their edges fuzzed by miles of distance.

"Whuh," you say, looking around.

"Neat, isn't it?" Madotsuki says.

"It is at that," you marvel.

"Don't get too excited," she tells you. "Its going to get old really damn quick."

>>33454889
Hey I know this place! Acheron! (Too much Planescape.)

>>33454889

Mado points at a corner of your little chunk of terra firma, where a small, red pad is pulsing with a faint rubescent glow. She grabs your wrist and drags you towards it, reaching out with one foot -

- and abruptly the cube's in front of you again, as if you'd turned 360 degrees in an instant, but -

"Whu," you manage, confused, for your purple cube is now longer, thinner, and contains two more red pads.

"Wait, we-"

Mado spins you around by your wrist and points behind you. You see nothing but more cubes, drifting through the gloom.

"What?"

"*That* one," she stresses, jabbing her finger again. You squint, looking further afield, and on a square that must be two hundred yards distant you discern a tiny red dot... that seems to be glowing.

"... a teleporter?"

"Yeah." With her hand still clamped to your wrist, she drags you down the cube towards another red pad. "Come on. I know the way by heart.

"Hey, wa-" you try, but her foot's already hit the pad. You stumble after her and yelp as a yawning void snaps into existence before you. Your sphincter clamps down as you lean back, your entire body trying to muscle-spasm backwards, until Mado gives your wrist a jerk and topples you safely on your ass. You sit there, breathing heavily for a few minutes.

"Slow down, dammit," you manage.

What's Stark wearing? I just realized I don't have a clear image of it.

I need to know to properly picture Mado dragging him around everywhere. Hnng.

>>33455177

She reaches for your hand and helps you up, leaning back on her heels as she hoist you to your feet. "Just follow me. It's not a door, don't try to walk through it. Just... stop moving, when my foot hits it."

"Uh huh," you say, staring around at the surreal universe you've entered. Mado drags you unerringly towards another pad, and away you go.

Blocks appear and vanish under your feet every four or five seconds as Mado bounces between teleport pads with assured experience. The vast, dim world with its sedate herds of blocks is so uniform that you can't tell if you've gone miles, or inches. You simply race from pad to pad as Mado leads, the background shifting abruptly with each transition, just enough to let you know you've moved, not nearly enough to provide any sense of location or orientation. You begin to feel ill, a queasiness rising in your belly as you get the feeling that you're stationary, and the cubes are appearing and vanishing under *you.*

You wrench your wrist out of Mado's grip halfway across another cube, tripping and falling to your knees. She keeps going, vanishing abruptly before you. She flashes into existence upon a cube to your right, almost close enough to touch, and pops out again. Somewhere incredibly distant you catch a flash of pink cloth from the corner of your eye before it vanishes again. Your cube drifts through space past a block bigger than an iceberg, blotting out half the sky above and below - or does it drift past YOU?

You close your eyes against the sickness rising in your mind, but that only makes the sense of vertigo worse as your body and brain report two very different velocities. You lay down upon the cube, pressing your cheek against the slick, warm surface, and groan faintly.

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>>33455399

At the moment, just jeans, sneakers, and a short-sleeved button-down shirt, navy blue in color.

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>>33455438

You count to sixty five times, then sit up, take a look around, and promptly close your eyes again. You take a deep breath, and notice the air smells like... nothing. You swing your hand through the air violently, and can barely feel the wind. Opening your jaw, your ears pop. Low pressure. You're not having trouble breathing... but that doesn't mean much down here, does it? Even the cube under your hand feels odd, like its sliding away from your skin even as you lean on it. You can't really *feel* it, as such.

You shudder involuntarily. Its almost like sensory "We've got a proble-"

"-SHIT!" you snap, jumping a good six inches off the "ground" as Mado's voice booms from right behind you. You crab-scrabble about to face her, where she's standing next to a teleport pad. "God dammit, are those things silent, too?"

"I guess. Never had someone there to listen. Anyways, we've got a problem." She reaches for your wrist.

"Wait-" you object, but she simply sticks her foot out and taps the teleport pad.

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>>33455613

With your eyes closed you stumble after Mado, trying not to trip as she changes directions three or four times, sharply and abruptly. Without sight its truly impossible to realize when you've been warped through time and space; you could be stumbling around in a fucking field, for all you can tell. You find that mental image easier to grasp and hang onto it for dear life and sanity, and it works.

"Okay," Mado says with a sigh. "We're here."

You open your eyes.

"Wow," you say darkly, looking around at the cube-scape. "I can see why its so special."

Mado stands on tip-toe to smack the side of your head. "I know this maze by heart. That teleport pad, right there-" she points - "should lead us to that one, right there." She points again at a cube only twenty-odd feet distant, its pads glowing and pulsing cheerfully. "By way of... that one."

You peer over the cube-edge into the void again, frowning. No winking red lights greet you. Something seems wrong, though, on a level you can't describe - and before you can figure it out, Mado points to it. You squint at it, and the difference hits you at once.

"Its busted," you mutter. The jagged, shattered edges fairly jump out from the uniform, orderly cubesea.

"Yeah," she says. "We're stuck."

>If we jumped off this thing, where would we land?
>We could just jump across the gap...

>>33455831
>>We could just jump across the gap...

>>33455831
>We could just jump across the gap...
Could we parachute off of it?

>>33455831
>>If we jumped off this thing, where would we land?

Well? Gravity is pretty weird around here.

>>33455831
>We could just jump across the gap...
I guess Mado's going to object to jumping. "Too risky" or something.
She's not stupid, she's probably already thought about it.
Seconding the parachute. I just hope there's a way to guarantee it'll open.

>>33455831
>>If we jumped off this thing, where would we land?
I want more details first. Does she know how the gravity here works if you're not on one of the cubes? We should know that before we jump.

>>33455831

>We could just jump across the gap...

Hm. How to give the parachute some lift? Is there anything we have that could produce an updraft?

>>33456039
Mado can manipulate the weather, but I don't think she can do wind. Just rain, snow and lightning.

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You grunt, stroking your chin as you study the destination cube, only twenty-odd feet distant. It's only slightly higher than your cube, too...

"Hey, Mado. Think we could just jump across?"

She looks at you like you've gone insane. "JUMP!?"

You shrug. "Sure. It's not *that* far."

"Maybe for you and your ape-strength-"

"-hey-"

"-but there's no way I'd make it. And I have no idea what happens to me if I fall down there - aside from a very good chance of waking up. And I can't risk that."

You nod sagely. "So, what do you want to do?"

"Backtrack. Up to the Mall again. We can find something to bridge the gap."

You nod absently, and then freeze. Hefting the axe, you curse under your breath as you stare over Mado's shoulder. "Shit."

She spins towards the threat, knife fluttering as she whips it out front and low in a ready position - and that's when you catch her by the struff of the neck and the waistband of her skirt. Before your axe has finished clattering on the ground you've yanked her back off her feet and flung her two-handed through the air towards the other cube. She remembers to scream about a half-second before impact, the blow making her cry warble oddly. She fairly springs upwards onto hands and knees, hands half-curled as she tries to clutch it securely.

"You - fucking - bastard," she snarls between gasps, rising like a snake from a basket. With her back towards you, you can only see her balled fists and the slight tremor in her pigtails as some unspecified but likely unhealthy mix of emotions comes to full boil. She pivots towards you with the ponders intent of a battleship turret. "Don't you ever. Ever. EVER. TOUAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

"-AAAAAAAAAHHHH" you bellow in your best Tarzan The Monkey Man impression as you fly through the air towards her cube, your axe cocked behind your head just like a barbarian berserker minus the blue paint. Through the air you fly, fury and courage - and slam right into the side of the fucking cube.

>>33456410
Wait. Mado can fly. She has a magic broom. Why didn't she just use that?

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>>33456410

Your asshole climbs up your lower intestine as it leaps for safety, every muscle in your face scrunching towards your mouth as you try to save yourself via applied friction. Your arms burn as the hickory axeshaft creaks under their incredible grip, hanging on for dear life to the weapon who's spike-end is buried to the hilt in the cube. The soles of your feet begin to burn from your awkward attempt to dig your sneaker's toes into the cube's side, like eagle talons.

"Well," Mado says from directly above you. "Looks like you got just what you deserve."

You take a deep breath, your fear dissipating. You glance up at Mado, who's crouching at the edge with her hands steepled before her mouth, a furious blaze in her eyes.

"Give me one good reason I should help you up," she says, glaring down at you.

"Mado!" you squeak, squinching your eyes shut as you hang onto the axe shaft for dear life. "I'm sorry I'm sorry just-"

"Repeat after me," she says, venom in her voice. "I will never, ever, EVER touch Mado unless she touches me first."

"I will neverever touch holy fuck help me-"

"SAY IT!"

"MADO TOUCHES FIRST MADO TOUCHES FIRST-"

"Close enough," she snarls, and jabs her hand at you.

You reach up, clasp it tight, and yank her over the edge.

>>33456605
Yeah, definitely no way you've been abused. You're doing a real bad job of hiding it, Mado.

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>>33456605

The girl emits a truly satisfying shriek of pure, thrilling terror as she catapults over the edge, her hands flying out before her in rapid shoving motions, trying to repel gravity through sheer force of will as she slides over the cube's side -

- and stops, glued to the side as she kicks and spasms like a beached fish. She lies there for a second, her breast heaving as she recovers - and then she fights up on to hands and knees.

".... yuh... you...."

"Technically," you say with prim officiousness, "you touched *me* first, that time."

"YEARF!" Mado roars, scrabbling across the floor as she launches into the attack. You curl up around your axe handle as helpless squeals of laughter force their way out of your tightening throat, little dots of light dancing before your eyes as you run out of oxygen. Mado's beating on your back and sides and face with all the strength she can muster, but even her sharp little fists can't penetrate the sweet, numbing effect of hypoxia.

At last, your aching, burning lungs give up and you sprawl out on your back, almost unconscious. Mado's kneeling next to you, breathing heavily as she recovers from her rapid assault.

"... owed... you ... that..." you gasp weakly, wiping tears from your eyes.

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>>33456756

Mado recovers first, standing at the edge - or rather, the corner - of the cube, leaning over to peer at the glowing red teleport pads atop it. "Huh." She takes a long, exaggerated step forward into open space, and pitches forward as she falls - only to land on the "top" of the cube as her personal gravity re-orients. You opt to slide your legs over the edge, one hand on your embedded axe, letting yourself slip over slowly until you feel gravity re-orient itself.

"Wuss," Mado sniffs at you.

"Whatever you say," you reply. "Miss AAAAAAAH~" You hop away as she directs a stomp at your toes.

"I don't like *heights,* okay?" she says with a final glare for punctuation. "Come ON." She stands on tiptoe, reaches out and grabs your ear, forcing you to hunch over. "Git!" You allow yourself to be herded to another teleport pad. The drifting cubescape shifts abruptly. Mado drags you to another one, touches it, and everything vanishes.

Everything. Cubes and all. There's only you, Mado, the pain in your ear, and a fathomless dark everything. Only the sound of Madotsuki's shocked wheeze penetrates the silence.

>Survey
>Probe
>BATTLE STATIONS

>>33456996
>BATTLE STATIONS
Mado wasn't expecting this, apparently. That means it's another part of the broken dream logic. Bad things usually accompany that. Stay on our guard.

>>33456996

>>Survey

Huh. Okay. Now what happened?

>>33456996
>>BATTLE STATIONS
First freak to show itself will receive a faceful of axe.

>>33456996
>BATTLE STATIONS
This is foreign territory. Stay alert.

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You shove Mado behind you roughly, separating your axe and crowbar in one motion, wielding one in each hand. As you shift your stance a little wider, something bright appears in the darkness beneath your foot. You twist your foot aside, and see a bright white footprint shining under your shoe - a barefoot footprint. Mado fidgets behind you, and as soon as she does a trail of bare footprints, smaller than yours, begin surfacing before you, little ripples of distorted light rolling away from them as they float to the surface. The trail leads off into the dark void before you.

"... Mado," you whisper. "Where the fuck are we?"

"The Footprint Path," she mutters.

"Thanks a lot for that, that's really fucking helpful," you snap, your breathing coming a little too quickly. "You pick all the wrong descriptors. How about the Monsters That Eat Faces Path, or the Conspicuous Absence of Anything I Should Be Really Afraid Of Path? Can we do that? Please?"

"We're not supposed to be here," she says, her voice atremble. "Everything's wrong. Everything."

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>>33457588
>theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS40cWIkXm0

You take one cautious step forward, and feel the surface beneath your feet squish a little bit before offering resistance. It feels slippery under your sole, like you're treading on glass floating on water. Little ripples move away from your foot, a large white footprint appearing beneath it.

You sidestep to the right. Your foot sinks into the floor - and keeps sinking. You yank it back hastily, but the surface releases as slowly as it accepted, sucking at your foot with incredible pressure. You have to bend your leg and damn near squat on your anchored foot before the ground gives up your limb.

"I've already marked the whole thing," Mado says behind you, very quiet. "Just... follow mine."

"Okay," you say, your own tone muted. Situating yourself on the trail of dainty footprints, you take a cautious step, then another. With every footfall you've got to fight the overwhelming sensation that your foot's sliding out from under you, visual evidence be damned. As you advance, fresh prints surface in the distance, floating to the top. Peeking over your shoulder, you see prints vanishing behind you.

It feels odd to be advancing, with Mado behind you. You've spent so much time following - or even being dragged along by her that you'd gotten used to it; used to your guide and her assured knowledge of this terrifying world. Its not a good feeling to have her behind you, meek and quiet, letting you lead the way into horrors unknown.

You smell it first; a horrid, putrid scent like rotting fish. You slow down, listening intently, but only your hammering heart and Madotsuki's quick, frightened breaths can be heard. You keep going, counting paces as marked by the glowing white footprints, eyes flicking left-right-left as you scan for something moving in the dark its moving in the fucking dark

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>>33457898 (You)
>do not click spoiler

In the almost nonexistent light of the white footprints you espy a vague shape; bulbous on bottom and narrower on top. The reflected light only suggests features, half-imagined lines of denser darkness, like the illusory full-circle glimpsed by looking at a half-moon. You suck in a deep breath through your mouth, to avoid the smell, and you *taste* something nasty and wretched, the sour bite of tainted copper; old blood gone to clot.

And you hold it. Mado's own breathing freezes, like a mouse caught out by a thrown light switch.

In the quiet, you can hear the shape breathing, a bass rumble on the edge of hearing. It seems to come in pulses; odd rhythms, quick and slow, slow and quick, unnatural and studied.

A soft, slick sound slithers to your ear; like skin on wet glass. You think something moves.

A moan emerges from the darkness ahead, so sudden and sharp in the silence that you gasp involuntarily. The slickening sliding stepping stuff accelerates, a dark suggestion of mass rocking about in the dark. You wind up with your axe, crouching a bit and widening your stance.

A horrid, gutteral howl rips from the darkness. You can see its reflection in the glassy spongy ground surface now, doubling the impression of movement. As it draws closer to the light you discern a swollen, almost perfectly round belly, and a narrow top above. With a sudden *shthum shtump shtump* of footsteps it accelerates its waddle; and emerges into barest visibility.

>click spoiler

>>33458196
Oh god, it's this thing. Fuck. Okay, running time, now. Run fast, run far.

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>>33458196

In the meager monochrome light the thing stands revealed in two-tone; a naked figure with a grotesque, swollen belly - and no head. Black blood pours and drips from the stump of the neck, the shattered, splintered end of the spinal cord winking bright white. In the center of its chest, a huge, swollen bump peels open with a wet, organic sound, a huge, mad eye gleaming in the twilight. Then the -

- splitting down the center, that swollen, pregnant belly, the jagged, ripped mouth of the wound lengthening and sharpening into teeth as you watch it spread open, wider, wider, revealing the dark, squishy, spongy interior, hollowing and widening into a proper mouth -

It ROARS, sound battering you as the reek of afterbirth five days rotting in a dumpster assails you, the reek of drying blood so sickly sweet and the rancid bite of gangrenous meat, all in one impossible, awful, guttural wave of invasive horror.

It falls backwards, landing on its rump, legs tucking up beside it. It rocks to and fro, the gaping, wide mouth chuffing and chewing and moaning as the huge, unblinking eye watches you, its pupil barley visible in the meager illumination.

>PISS OFF, PUNK
>NOPE.PNG.GIF.AVI.MP4

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>>33458417
>NOPE.PNG.GIF.AVI.MP4

>>33458196
>>33458417
>NOPE.PNG.GIF.AVI.MP4.TIFF.WEBM.CBZ

Oh, yeah, those things. Don't remember it walking around in the game. Is Stark's trauma adding to its power somehow? This is gonna suck.

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>>33458417
>Es-Cap-Ay

>>33458417
>PISS OFF, PUNK
It's not one of our traumas, that means we can kill it. And I will repeat that to myself as a mantra no matter how badly the fight with it goes. This thing needs to die. It just does.

How did we even get here, anyway? I know the teleport maze was screwed up, but why did we even go to the maze? Mado said O-Man had the Flute. He was in the Mall with us.

>PISS OFF, PUNK

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As you stare at the abomination that stinks of afterbirth and ruptured guts, you hear more footsteps in the darkness behind you.

A strange sort of detached calm settles upon you.

You know exactly what to do.

In some animated TV shows, you vaguely recall, they seem to think that "rescuing" someone consists of grabbing their hand and running away with them, as if they couldn't do that themselves. You take a decidedly more proactive approach to rescuing. You spin like a top and hook your arm into Madotsuki's hips, slinging her off her feet with one arm, flinging her over your shoulder, and running for your fucking life.

The darkness explodes with horrific moans and howls and bellows, forcing you to suck air through your mouth to avoid the stench but you can taste it, taste the rotten old sick slick squicky blood trickling down your tongue and into your throat, the air is MOIST with it, like a fine rain of corruption and death and oh christ oh god oh FUCK you take the footprints five paces at a time, the leading edge of your path drawing ever closer as you outrun your markers. You're scarcely ten feet behind them when the surfacing footprints suddenly veer left, forcing you to dash sideways. Standing nearly inside the fork of the path is another horrific creature, gigantic bloodshot eyes rolling about as a tube in its head pulses and pulses and pulses, sucking up god-knows-what into its head. You go bolting down the new path at top speed, as fast as you can -

- over the purple cube, through flying block world

- and your foot catches on something and you go down hard, smashing your forehead into something shaggy and soft and nice-smelling, like carpet.

>HERDGBAERAHDER ITS ON MY LEEEEEEEEEG
>Mado! Are you okay?
>OW FUCK JESUS CHRIST MY NOSE

>>33458857
>Mado! Are you okay?
Because despite Stark's somewhat cavalier nature with throwing her at things, protecting Mado has consistently been his first priority.

>>33458551

It was easy to miss because I'm the bads, but Mado never lost the Flute. O-Man wasn't really O-Man, it was... something else. And it baited you and Mado into coming close to it, so it could try and waste you.

At the end of that thread, you and Mado were chilling next to the escalator that leads to the Mall basement, which in turn leads to the Teleport maze. That, in turn, should lead to a Dark Forest path, and a jellyfish... but it would appear the teleport maze has been *completely fucked up* somehow.

>>33458857
>Mado! Are you okay?

>>33458898
Ah. How did Mado forget she had the Flute? Weird. I guess I'll just chalk it up to the influence of whatever was luring us. And I guess using music to draw us in fits the Driver describing our opponent in terms of old song lyrics. It almost makes me wonder if our villain actually IS Seccom Masada-sensei like he is in the manga. The Driver did say he had "the seeming of a demon that is dreaming", and Seccom Masada's most recognizable trait is his bizarre eyes.

>>33458898
Oh man, I just noticed that I apparently missed the end of last thread somehow. I'm checking the archives and there are like fifty posts I don't remember. Sorry, then. That confusion is on me, not you.

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You immediately roll off Mado's legs, kicking at whatever goddamn thing you managed to trip over. "Ugh," you moan, clutching at your face. "Muhdo. Yuhf okay?"

"Y-yeah," she says weakly. "How the hell did we...?"

"Eh?" You sit up, still clutching your aching face, and take a look around. You're in a dimly lit area fenced in with a cheerful bubblegum-colored fence made of long, pokey cones. You can't see the "ceiling," or the sky, whichever it is here, but the floor beneath you consists of teak boards stained very dark and polished to a mirror shine. You're half-sitting on a thick, comfortable, shaggy rug that appears to be a stylized face of some sort, vaguely resembling (you think,) a bear. The entire enclosure is full of these, they're all brightly colored, and they actually look... nice.

And of course, snaking all about the place, over and under the rugs, vanishing between the fencecones and generally tangling the whole area, including your foot, are the fire hoses.

>>33459375
We must have stumbled into one of the Hell Teleporters. And then into another one when we were in Hell? That or the maze isn't the only place with messed-up teleporters.

>>33459375
Oh joy, the bleed over is getting worse.

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>>33459375

Strewn all about the place are thick, strong fire hoses. Huge feeder lines run to complex multi-hose splitters, nexuses of thinner attack lines that seem to swarm and wind everywhere. Here and there a loose connection leaks a bit, but overall they seem dry, and some are even sagging a bit.

You stagger upwards and look at the hoses. Following the lug-ends of the connectors, you're able to trace one halfway across the wide plaza, until you espy the source - a big, bright red fire hydrant smack-dab in the center of the plaza, its base buried in the handsome teak floor.

And nearby, you espy a scattering of feathers.

Madotsuki joins you and you pick your way over and through the tangled lines. Neither of you say anything, but Mado's knife is out, so you keep your own weapon handy, splitting your attention between your feet and your surroundings. As you draw nearer the hydrant, you smell the stench of burnt hair and charred flesh. Your hair stands on end and your heartbeat quickens - this is a smell you know.

And one you don't fucking like at all.

The hose tangle thins out as you near the hydrant, the swarming hand-lines yielding to huge supply hoses. From behind one of the (apparently decorative) fence-cones that dot the plaza's interior, you spot a wide, shallow puddle.

You don't think its water, because water doesn't clot.

Side-stepping carefully, you circle the cone - and find what's left of a Toriningen. Its beak has been shattered by some hideously powerful blow, its face actually crumpled in a bit, chips of the hard materiel scattered about. What hasn't been smashed was burned, in some places the broken edges of hollow bones glinting white through the scorched flesh. You can smell the ash and char layered over the cooked meat.

Mado steps closer to you and loops her arm around yours tightly, a slight shiver moving from her to you.

"Marty," she whispers. "I always called him Marty. He never gave me any trouble..."

>>33459852
Shit. I don't quite know what to make of this, but it isn't good. The dreamscape was being corrupted and made angry. Now the dream itself is being damaged actively.

Is this our fault or is there something outright malevolent at work?

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>>33459852

Madotsuki leads you out of the plaza, heading for the exit in the fence. When you walk through, neither of you are surprised to find yourselves atop another purple cube drifting aimlessly through space. The sterility of the block world is a welcome change now, from the twisted places you've just been.

You and Mado step through a teleporter, then another, still arm-in-arm, silent and scared. On the last block you are presented with a revealingly ordinary looking door. Mado fairly lunges at it, eager -

"NO!" you shout, catching her by the collar and hauling her back. "No!"

"What!?" she cries.

You glare at the door, your hair standing on end. You've gotten wind of something you don't like. "Hold your breath," you instruct her. "And listen."

In the unnatural, sterile silence of the block void, the faint rattling and bumping of the door against its bolt is clearly audible.

You caution Mado to stay put, then creep forward, hovering your hand over the jamb. A faint stirring of air is present, little puffs of air being drawn in and blown out. You reach for the knob, and very, very lightly tap it. It's hot to the touch.

You back away slowly, shaking your head.

"It's a trap."

Mado regards you with despair. "But its our only way out!"

You stand there a moment, thinking. "... someone's fucking with us," you conclude. "Trying to stop us. First, break the maze. Second, mess with the teleporters, send them places they shouldn't go. Bet you five bucks that when we check those other areas, all the usual exits you know have been blocked, somehow. And third, when we go running from whatever icknasty places we were sidetracked to... we blunder right into this." You gesture at the doorway.

"... so what do we do?" Mado asks, her face drawn and small shoulders slumped. She suddenly looks too small for her loose sweater, and the exhaustion and fear is plain on her face. "I... I don't know what to do."

>>33460122
Given what the Driver said, probably both. There's an actively malevolent presence in here with us, and it's drawing from our psyche to enhance its attempts at causing destruction to Mado's. Stark himself seems to be mostly immune to it, with only the trapped car door managing to hurt him. And even that could be explained by the fact that Stark reacted on instinct rather than his training. Losing touch with one's personal dream logic seems to reduce the power of your effects.Given that Stark's apparently still a probationary firefighter, and wouldn't have the experience he needs yet for it to be second nature, he's still dependent on knowing how he SHOULD react, rather than simply reacting.

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>>33460236

"Lets head back," you tell her. "Search some more. There were paths we haven't explored, yet."

"What if they lead to worse places? More traps? There's some very very worse places down here," Mado says, clearly shaken. "With worse... things."

You heft your axe. "Then I fuck them up."

"But what if-"

"Then you catch me," you say, looking back at the door. "You tried to catch me when I went through that last door. I didn't listen to you. My turn this time, I suppose." You rest your axe against the ground and tap your hand on the handle-end, studying the plain wooden portal. "This is still your dream. You know everything in it better than anyone, me or... that thing, that's screwing with us. You know what's there to be used."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that I think our little friend screwed up when he screwed with your head," you say, giving her a grin. "Lets backtrack and see what we find."

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>>33460377

THAT'S A WRAP FOR TONIGHT! I've got to get to bed, another fucking early shift tomorrow. I'm not sure when I'll be able to run again; my work schedule for next week is a pain in the fucking ass (big fucking surprise there,) so watch /tg/ for a quick info post as soon as I can find out. Sorry, folks, I hate not being able to schedule properly.

>>33460458
That's fine. This is a good quest, a sporadic update schedule isn't so annoying as to ruin my enjoyment of it. See you next time, faggot.

>>33460458
this would be easier if you would get a twitter for updates on threads