Using the escape treasure wasn’t like doing the same with a splinter, except in the most superficial of ways. It was neither the intense experience of opening a breach, nor the vastly lesser but still strenuous effort of teleporting between points.
It was more like… lighting a candle, if he had to liken it to anything. There was a brief moment when holding the wick to the flame, waiting for it to catch, where a vaguely anticipatory sort of feeling took hold. Where you waited to see if it would catch before you burned yourself. The smallest, pettiest amount of danger possible – but still danger.
Space Ripper attached itself to the enchantment as it activated, an incongruous red string winding through pale fabric, stitching bits together that would otherwise lay flat. As Lu watched the enchantment turn in on itself in his mind’s eye, he felt a curious detachment from his surroundings; the lumpy walls of the bubble seemed almost painted onto his eyes, unreal when compared to the heavy thing in his head. Need an empty space, preferably enclosed. Underground? No, too big a chance of getting spotted; the tunnels will be where most of the people are. Better to come out in one of the surface buildings.
With the lightest exertion of will, the wick caught aflame. Then, with a pop of displaced air, he was gone.
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The shield was entirely down, and Bahkon was suffering. Not as much as he assumed he normally would – Junk Dog was protecting them just by being there, the energy his body put off taking up space so the Sun’s rot wasn’t as concentrated – but he was still feeling it. It was almost like he was melting, dripping away bit by bit as his head filled up with haze. C’mon, get it together. Everyone else is getting ready to roll out, and where are you? Hiding in a dark corner. Do you think it’ll go away?
His tongue lolled out, the heat and rancid energy too much even with his internal beratement. Just… ten minutes. Then I’ll go out.
It stung, that he wasn’t able to handle the heat. Almost passing out from the Sun, that was fine, reasonable, even. But just the heat? He had been working up to joining the Holy Smoke ever since the Pit opened up, but now he didn’t know anymore. How am I meant to consume actual fire, if just this is too much?
But his thoughts were cut off as a strange feeling went up his spine, a presence. His head snapped up. “Eh? Someone there?”
The little brick room wasn’t lit at all, but he could still see the edges of crates and bins from the light coming in through the edges of the door – there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room. But I felt..? He shook his head violently. “Just yer brain melting, man,” he said to himself. “Should get going. Isn’t helping you, just sitting here…”
He staggered to the door, stumbled against a box of whatever, and clasped the knob that led outside. But… it really feels like something is here. It wasn’t just procrastination on his part, he was sure – there was a different kind of energy, something that he couldn’t place, filtering in. He sniffed.
“…Anybody here? Seriously, don’t spook me. I’m strung up, I’ll blast you.” He said it to the empty room- to the seemingly empty room; the presence was still there, almost touching his spine. “I’m not messing-“
Something hit him in the neck, and he squawked, energy running down his fingers.
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If there was any travel time, Lu failed to notice it. One moment he was in the bubble, nearly blinding light filtering down through the sludge, then the next he was in pitch darkness. Each piece of his armour jittered erratically from some sort of feedback, and Tai Sho’s own armour – bundled under his arm - attempted to jump from his grip like a startled animal while the walking-stick rattled in his hand. A series of small impacts and scraping noises sounded out as he contacted objects around him, banging against them before he could wrestle the momentum in his limbs down. Not the stealthiest entrance, but at least I managed to hit inside one of the buildings. And not intersecting anything; that had been his greatest fear.
But, bumps or not, he had arrived. Excellent. The Pit should be directly outside this building, I’ll just stack up a few camouflage techniques, and-
A brief, sparking sensation interrupted him, a visceral not-smell like hot sand and light rain. He whirled around, spotting the outline of something moving against the scant light before the damaged arrays in his helmet finally compensated for the darkness. The room lit up through his mottled faceplate, revealing a man reaching towards his neck, sharp and jagged nails centimetres from his throat.
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Light Globe! A bright sphere appeared around the man’s head, his eyes immediately snapping shut as his mouth opened in a snarl. Before he could scream, Lu dropped everything and punched him in the teeth.
During his training – and a bit before, but mostly during – he had taken some time to convert a number of spells into techniques. Nothing above second realm, since he reasoned that the time necessary to interpret the complex fluctuations was better used advancing his existing spells and spacial techniques, but he had a good base of elemental attacks and illusions to work with even with his qi depleted. He used another one of those illusions now, blanketing Soften Footsteps around the man like… well, like a blanket.
His jaw worked, but no sound came out, and Lu hit him again, his oversized gauntlet smashing into the man’s chest. A memory of Ging’s voice penetrated the fog of panic around Lu’s brain; ‘You aren’t a natural fighter, Lu. Your technique is bad, and you’re never going to win a fistfight with someone who knows what they’re doing.’ Even in flashback form, it stung his pride just a little. But the memory continued; ‘So don’t give them a chance to know what they’re doing. If you can’t back off and hit them with spells, then you need to keep attacking relentlessly. Don’t let them move or think or cast, just keep hitting them.’
The advice was sound, even if Lu disliked how bluntly it was stated. He struck the man again in the face, then swiped his knee, and took him to the ground. Nails bit into his vambraces, digging shallow channels in the material, before a Fireball cast under his chin took the man’s head off in an eerily silent explosion.
Sticky ash plastering his upper half, Lu took a shaky breath. That was… That might have been an overreaction. He had been startled by the sudden danger to a vital area, but in hindsight the sharp-nailed man had probably been not much of a threat. He did scrape my arms up a bit, but killing him was probably not… the best response.
…No, I’m being naïve. We’ve tied ourselves to Clan Horrible Swamp; Junk Dog was never going to be an ally. These are enemy combatants – and besides, I’ve killed before. This isn’t any different from those metal men.
Somehow, the rationale wasn’t quieting his unease. The man- the body had a grey shirt on, and thick denim pants. Worker’s clothes, not what a soldier would wear. Shake it off. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t do it again; find Bull, and get out.
Spending only a brief moment staring at the corpse, he quickly tucked it away in a bin half-full of small paper boxes. Okay, moving on. He cast a few illusions over himself, then stepped up to the door and took another, less shaky breath. I’m not invisible, but I should be nearly impossible to notice as long as I don’t do anything suspicious. I’m silent, I’m scentless, and I can teleport – I should be fine. He could also let Tai Sho out of his closed space, but that would be an emergency option; Lu didn’t trust the man, even though he had been helpful thus far.
He vented his accumulation of waste ki – more for peace of mind than anything – then used Space Ripper to go right through the back wall.
The moment he hit open air, he was assaulted by another overpowering not-smell. The Sun again, mixed together with something else, something less putrid but… Bigger, in some undefinable way. But his Comprehension wasn’t the only sense vying for his attention.
Outside the little warehouse, the world was a riot of colours; the sky was brighter than he had ever seen it, the clouds alive and swirling like a bright pink-purple whirlpool, streaks of electric blue and red painted across the horizon in waves. The ground, too, was streaked with different colours, patches of sand melting into each other without ever actually mixing. Oh, my. What’s happened while I’ve been underground? It was less than a day! Everything seemed to have transformed. Did the Sun do this, somehow?
More importantly, there were actually quite a lot of people milling around. And not just men; there were sharpies, what must be hundreds of them, their eyes squinting in the glare, impossibly sharp teeth flashing in open maws.
And a way’s away, perched on top of a dune, a giant figure with perfect ivory skin. Lu shuddered. Good thing the Pit’s in the other direction; I’m not going to test my illusions against Junk Dog.
Slowly, moving from shadow to shadow along tents and buildings, Lu advanced towards the gaping hole in the earth. It was nerve-wracking; none of the men seemed to give his barely-visible silhouette a second look, but whenever he got near a sharpie it would perk up a little, tilting its head and scenting the air. Of all the ridiculous- can they smell my techniques? They didn’t react to my invisibility spell like this! Whether it was because he was using a proper technique cast from his stomach, or because his Comprehension was broadcasting his location in some way, or something else he wasn’t thinking of, it seemed that they could sense him even when he wasn’t actively casting. The arrays and enchantments in my armour, maybe? I have no idea.
It made traversing the tent city around the Pit slow and tedious, but eventually he reached the edge of the chasm. It yawned, the bottom still black despite the increased daylight. No reason to risk the ramp when I can just jump and Space Ripper my way to solid ground. But before that… Where should I look for Bull first? The Junk Pit was the size of a capital city, and much more time-consuming to traverse.
I suppose I’ll just start at the Bunker and go down. He’s probably either there or at the very bottom; I can’t imagine him being kept in the farms, or among the training areas for the Brotherhoods. And if they have prison cells they’re likely at the bottom, where most of the infrastructure is.
Actually, the processing floor where they, ah, processed sharpies would probably have cages. But obviously he would search every floor at least a little when he got to it – excepting the nurseries, which were huge and only available from certain elevators. I’ll leave those for last. Might have to let Tai Sho out to help me search, if it gets to that point…
With that unsavoury thought, Lu stepped off the edge into open air.