[Nexus] Inside 53

[The Bushranger]

[Riftline]

"She said it sounds a lot like home," Lydia says.
Meaning her home!
There's plenty of racism and eldritch sigils in Dunwall!
*nodnod*

[Lycan 01]

[Riftline]

Dawn frowns uncomfortably. "Didn't she also say that ponies weren't really welcome there?" The pegasus shifts her weight a bit, looking quite uncertain. "I think we should try Carousel Court first. We'll be more welcome there, and have a much easier time getting help. Even if we can't get the curse or whatever lifted there, they can point us in the right direction. Arkham... I dunno, I just have a bad feeling about going there. We can try it later, but right now, I think we're better off playing it safe," the pegasus observes.

Dawn looks at Geneva with concern, almost pleadingly. "Geneva, you really need to stop thinking about... whatever that equation thing is. It got put in your head by one of those squid-faced monster things. It's clearly a trap or something, so the more you think about it, the worse things may get. Seriously, you need to distract yourself or something."

[Rebonack]

[Riftline]

"But Twilight said..." Geneva mutters, trailing off again.

Twilight said...

Not the right point of reference. What does that mean? Of course she isn't able to properly visualize n-dimensional objects. But that doesn't mean she can't model them. So there's something. Something else that she's missing. Some important bit of information she's lacking. It's too bad those squid-faced people were such jerks otherwise she would have asked them about it.

It's like an itch in her mind and she can't stop thinking about it!

The hippogriff's right eye twitches slightly as a few stray hairs in her mane sproing out of place.

"But... but I have to know Dawn!" Geneva whines. "It's like a word on the tip of my tongue that I can't remember and it's going to keep bothering me until I figure it out! It's just an idea. Knowledge can't hurt anyone. Knowledge is a good thing!"

[The Bushranger]

[Riftline]

And, upon hearing Geneva's declaration...Lydia starts laughing.
Almost maniacally.

"You think so? Really? That is so cute. Tell that to nearly everyone who tried to explore Pandyssia. Or the hundreds who are driven stark, raving mad by trying to understand the Outsider's Runes - or even just by possessing them - for every one who carries his Mark."

[Lycan 01]

[Riftline]

Dawn frowns. "Knowledge is power, but sometimes, that power has a cost, and ignorance can be bliss. If it is a trap of some kind - and it is - then obviously it's targeting your curiosity to bait you into pursuing it. Don't. We need to get this stuff out of our heads as quickly as possible, before you go insane, or your brain sprouts tentacles, or your head explodes, or Celestia knows what," she grimaces. "Seriously, Geneva, be reasonable here. Put aside your curiosity for a moment, and listen to your logic!"

[Rebonack]

[Riftline]

Someone driven insane by... knowledge? How would that even work? The hippogriff regards Lydia skeptically. And more than a little crossly. The hippogriff puffs out her chest feathers a bit and sits up straight.

Which does a great job of displaying just how big she is.

"This has nothing to do with Maybe-Discord from your home world Lydia!" Geneva retorts. "This is way too structured to be anything like that. There's no way a being of chaos and disharmony could create anything with so much mathematical beauty. Besides. I can't help but notice that you've got his weird symbol thing on your hand and you don't seem any worse off for it."

When Dawn pipes up Geneva makes a clicking sound with her beak. "It's not just that one memory now, at least not for me. Now I've got plenty of my own memories of trying to figure it out. If it were removed then that would just leave me with a hole in my mind. I would have a bunch of puzzle pieces and no box cover as a reference."

She finally slumps a bit, turning her gaze back out the window.

"I tend to get a little... obsessive... when I have a problem I'm trying to figure out. I know that. This problem is just so unique that it's distracting me a whole bunch," Geneva turns back and offers the best reassuring smile she can muster. "I'm fine Dawn, honest."

The hippogriff shakes her head.

"It was an image of some kind of higher dimension. Something beyond the three dimensions we can normally interact with. I'm totally sure of that. Aren't you curious about what else might be out there? Even a little? It's just really exciting! It isn't like anything I've ever encountered before! And... umm... If I start acting really weird then you have my permission to clonk me over the head and get my memory scrubbed or whatever. But just spacing out doesn't count! That's normal."

[The Bushranger]

[Riftline]

"That's because I'm the anomaly," Lydia explains. "Most people who get into this stuff go stark raving mad. And whether or not it's related is irrelevant," she continues, "because knowledge is power. Power corrupts."

[ThirdEmperor]

Hodgepodge Street- Fountain Way

"I'm Sebastian." Taking the paper and tucking it under his arm, Sebastian reaches out again to give the minotaur's hand a friendly shake. "Ah, have you been here long? I've gathered that people simply tend to... show up one day."


Central Park- The Goblin Market

A stray gust of wind whips through the park, rattling the twisted skeleton of an old willow tree and making the last leaf clinging to it's gnarled branches twist and sway. The breeze comes by again and the last leaf of autumn finally gives up the post to which it's clung these long months, falling from the tree and gently spiraling to the soil below.

At the exact same moment, the clocktower strikes ten, a black cat howls and in the night sky above, an unremarkable little star among thousands of unremarkable little stars inches over just the tiniest fraction to fall into place.

The signs are right, and you know what that means.

The Goblin Market is here.


Brownies zip across the grass and leap between the trees in blurs of motion, hanging the branches with strings of colored lights, strands of tinsel, paper lanterns. Ogres pitch tents and stake them down against the wind, haul barrels of mead and roll in carts heaping with food. Amazing food. Wonderful food. Food that smells like heaven, like the morning dew and the sun rising over the mountains and a million other wonders that should rightly have no smell at all.

Other faeries arrive soon after, the merchants; Hobs, gobs, elves and imps and pixies. They bring their own tents and their own carts, their own wares to sell. And what strange wares indeed- There's no rhyme or reason to the goods that are soon being bought and sold and argued over. A swarm of fey haggle eagerly over an old polaroid photo, while a stall stacked high with masterfully crafted golden trinkets goes entirely ignored, the bored goblin proprietor picking his nose and playing with a battered GameMag Advance.


Four-Oh-Four Snail Avenue

All sorts of stuff gets picked up by the Nexus. Sometimes you get a person. Sometimes a rampaging monster. Sometimes a building, could be a house, a bank, or a long abandoned dungeon full of nasty things.

Mostly that last one.

But most of the time, these things only stay a little while. Ignore the horrible monstrousity and the Nexus will get bored soon enough, cast it off into some other corner of the cosmos. People tend to simply sink into a state of nothingness, taking up no time, not space, out of sight and mind. But sometimes things stick around. For whatever reason the Nexus keeps them for a while longer, lets them wait in forgotten anonymity.

Snail Avenue was one of those places. A fragment of a street just large enough to hold a single tenement building, old even when it found it's way here. And nobody noticed. Not a soul ventured inside or wondered what was there. The world went on without it. An apartment building was built to the right of it, then the Nexus decided that another would look good to the left. A few years later and it Snail Avenue was gone from sight, sealed in on all sides by development and the whim of the Nexus.

Until about four months back, when some enterprising soul living in one of the adjacent buildings began to wonder about the crumbling faux-marble facade and the rusting fire escape he saw every day through his bathroom window. It didn't match the building he'd always assumed was opposite his. So scaled his way over the rooftops to have a look, and then he called his friends to have a look too.

And that's how Snail Avenue again became a living place, inhabited, at least on the two highest floors. And even if the electricity might falter a few times a week, and the water is a little bit rusty and lukewarm, and you have to climb over a building to get to it... Well, the price is right.

[GrandDM]

[After The Interrogation]

"Teddy, you do realise that this will be working with a military group, right?" Red says, raising an eyebrow, before looking to Alysha with a nod. "A link might work, although I would be cautious. I've been told I'm messed up in the head." And there's that grin again! Before he looks to Nick, eyebrow raised.

((I think Nick left, actually.))

Um...I guess we could do that...if you guys think it'll be okay...

Alysha may use magic, but clearly, this is out of her expertise.

Teddy nods, then closes his eyes and raises his hands. A violet mist shimmers around his fingers. He begins to weave the mist into a long cord, muttering under his breath. When he's finished, he's holding a long, purple rope that shimmers slightly.

He places one end in the air before Red's forehead, where it hovers, and the other end in like manner by Alysha. He raises both hands, and says a final word that causes the ends of the rope to touch their corresponding foreheads and disappear.

"Link!"

Red and Alysha are now linked up. Red has primary control, so he can choose what to send across, but Alysha can leave the link at any time.

[Lycan 01]

[Riftline]

Dawn shudders at all this talk of madness, dark powers, and evil entities. "Lydia has a point," the pegasus quietly observes. "And personally, I think having a blank memory and being annoyed about it for the rest of your life is a lot better of an option than going insane, or turning into a psycho killer, or having your brain turn inside out..."

[Luka]

[The Mispelled Cemetary]

The Crusader shoves his was out of the skeletens and dusts one of the pick-axe wielders bringing him down to seven foes and zero horrific injuries to his person. The lower horrific injury score he can maintain the better, so keep up the good work!

Once their prey is no longer within reach the skeletens begin shambling after him. The Crusader could probably walk briskly to escape if he felt so inclined.

(sorry for the delay, been busy)

The crusader got into a fight to get those things down, is not like he would pull out without having done it yet to them, he just charged out to a more maneuverable spot and position.
He attempts to shield charge the nearest skeleton of the group, then does a preemtive dodge before punching the nearest skeleton's torax and spine.

[Zefir]

[Hodgepodge Street - Fountain Way]

Meanwhile! always refers to something else going on within the same location. That's just how Rebo rolls.

*ahem*

"By myself? Oh no, of course not. My wife does too," the earth pony replies. "She's just off having some quality time with her lady friends and so I get to herd the munchkins today. I heard about this spot and thought it would be fun to check out. Turns out it was!"

The two children are giggling like crazy as they dance about between the water jets.

"I'm Olive Press, by the way," he offers a hoof for shaking or bumping or whatever. "Nice to meet you miss...?"

[Hodgepodge Street - Fountain Way]

Mika takes the hoov for a shakes. Well that's the first thing that came into her mind.

"Mika. Just that and nothing more. I meant now you have to care for them alone. I already thought she isn't here today."

[Chaotic Bob]

[Riftline]

A few of the nearby train passengers have passed the group vaguely uncomfortable looks.
Can't these three go talk about their creepy stuff somewhere else?

Geneva:

Spoiler

Show

"-er happened.
Maybe you should at least go halfway with your friends, Geneva. Get to know the options so they can rest their fears, before you indulge your curiosity?"
The tail-end of a possibly-helpful argument is offered.

[Rebonack]

[Riftline]

Geneva bristles at Lydia's retort. "Oh so the professional thief is going to talk to me about corruption now? I already have power! I was gifted with absolutely phenomenal wing power," the hippogriff fluffs her wings and those nearby may feel their ears pop from the sudden change in air pressure. "And I used it for the good of everyone in my Stable. I hadn't ever hurt anyone until those monsters smashed their way into my home and murdered my friends and family! And hurting them back didn't make me feel better. It made me feel sick."

The hippogriff is starting to look honest to goodness angry.

"I'm not going to let some damned Stripe go digging around inside of my head. You might not be able to handle this Dawn, but I can. I have to figure it out. That's my decision and that's final."

*DING!*

"Now disembarking for Carousel Court. Next stop Deadwood Street," comes the voice over the intercom.

When the doors open Geneva leaps out and begins stalking away. A few more stray hairs in her mane spring free as the twitch in her left eye gets a little worse. The ponies who were waiting on at the station for the train quickly decide that it would be wise to give the grumpy looking hippogriff plenty of room. It doesn't help when she starts muttering to herself. "They don't understand, Twilight. They don't get it. I know what I'm doing, why can't they just trust me?"

[The Mispelled Cemetary]

Punching it? Why would he punch it?

Aw well.

Two more skeletons crumble away into dust, leaving only five. Those five seem to gain a sudden surge of energy and leap at the Crusader! Rawr!

Only one of them has a shovel at this point. A shovel that may very well be thwacking the knight upside the head.

Bonk!

[Hodgepodge Street - Fountain Way]

"Uuuh..." Olive replies, looking a little lost. "So, ah. Is there something I can help you with? Just saying hello?"

Poor guy really isn't sure where if anywhere to take the conversation from here.

Meanwhile!

"Mm? Nah. I was born here. Plenty of folks are," Rawhide the minotaur cownboy says. "Some folks get pulled in. Some folks travel here on purpose. And some folks get born here like people are born anywhere. You a newcomer?"

[Earl of Purple]

Riftline- To Poor Street

The old man will awkwardly sit in one of the chairs. His eyes are still working; he has a few hours left before he's reduced to blindness, if he's lucky.

[Rebonack]

[Riftline - Some Poor Location]

How dreadfully poverty stricken.

The crippled old man should be able to return to his home without being harassed.

Looks like no one is going to be awful to him today.

All in all that trip went pretty well!

Usually stuff having to do with eldritch abominations results in gibbering madness and face tentacles.

And the crippled man has been given neither!

[Earl of Purple]

Poor Street- Old Man's House

The old man is walking towards his hut slowly. He's not actually crippled; his legs work fine. It's just that, due to an unfortunate side effect of his Sorcery, the joints in his legs keep moving around.

When he arrives at his home, he'll enter. It's a cramped apartment in a dilapidated apartment building, with two rooms- a main room serving as lounge and kitchen, with a smaller bathroom. Since the apartment doesn't have running water, the bath has been filled with cushions, pillows, rags and blankets to serve as a bed.

He'll push the table and chairs in his main room to one side and hobble to a cupboard, taking out a packet of grass seed. He'll sprinkle the seeds in a circle in the centre of the main room and add whatever other wardings the summoning ritual suggests before he mutters something and blasts the seeds with magic. Grass grows up, braiding itself into an interlocking circle with no breaks. It also will attempt to magically bind anything inside the circle so it cannot leave, but unlike the other wardings, the grass will change the nature of the binding at random intervals. Hopefully, the grass will keep the star-spawn contained even if they adapt to the other wards.

[Chaotic Bob]

[Departing Riftline]

Grumpy hippogriffs: healthy company for all.
Grumpy and deeply irrational hippogriffs moreso.

Someone should probably put a proper foot down at some point.

Geneva:

Spoiler

Show

There is a growing familiarity here. A deeply uncomfortable familiarity.
"So it was a convergence.
Geneva, wait! I, uh, know how you feel. A little too well. Your friends aren't taking your opinion the same way as you are."
Tardy. Going to be tardy.
"Hush Spike, this is more important.
Your friends care about you Geneva, even if they don't agree. Don't be too hard on them, okay?"

[Shadowcaller]

[Hodgepodge Street - Fountain Way]

"Yeah, I understand that. And we should definitely wait until we're ready for them to be such a big part of our lives. I guess it'd be easier when they're older, but they'll definitely be time consuming when they're very young. But just remember that I'd be there for you too, helping every step of the way. So even though it would consume a lot of our time, you can lean on me when you want to do personal stuff." Valente says, reassuringly. He'd never expect Astrana to just drop everything to be a mother.

[Abandoned Factory]

"Then we just need to take a closer look," Wenomir says. "Those puppets will try to stop us, of course. So... let's get them out of the way."

[Abandoned Factory]

"Let's see what they are made of first, then I'd know what element to fight them with." And with that the sorceress attempts to find that out by carefully analyzing their structure.

[Hodgepodge Street - Fountain Way]

"I know Val, I just need to do a couple of things first and then we could try to have children. I get the feeling we'd be overwhelmed though considering everything. I have no doubt we will manage however." She says while taking his hand and squeezes it.

[Rebonack]

[Poverty Lane - Old Man's House]

Summoning creatures from the Far Realms tends to have some really odd side-effects on the area around them. Especially if the seal that the creature is pulled into fails. Weakening the boundary between spaces that were never meant to meet often has that kind of result.

With a rather repulsive sucking sound the confines of the circle are filled with a syrupy, slightly yellow fluid interspersed with tiny vaguely organism-like motes of light that busy themselves with jittering about inside the slime.

Plasma from the amoebic sea.

But perhaps more important is the larger creature that was drawn into the circle as well.

Half leopard seal, half arctic tern, half sea snake, half baboon. That's way too many halves but the universe is afraid of trying to properly enforce mathematics. The creature is clad in obsidian carapace etched with flowing turquoise sigils.

And she looks very.

Very.

Cross.

She slams into the edge of the barrier teeth first, baleful bluish white light blazing inside her and bleeding off through her too many eyes. The Far Chimera wheels back around, appearing to swim to an impossible distance before ramming the barrier again.

And again.

And again.

Each time she strikes crimson sparks fly from the circle and go skittering across the floor and singe long forgotten blasphemies in their wake.

The starspawn is both elegant and terrifying. And despite the man's blindness she still appears in stark relief of horrible reality as though all else around her is vague and phantasmal by contrast. Even were one to cover their face and avert their eyes the eldritch abomination's form would still burn inside their mind.

At last the creature settles and fixes the man with a withering glare that pierces flesh and bone and spirit. "Why have you brought me here?"

[The Bushranger]

[After the Interrogation]

And, well, suffice to say Alysha should get Digging Giant Robotas 101 downloaded into her mind!

Red seems adept at keeping anything else from transferring.

***

[Riftline]

Lydia watches the grumpy grumpy hippogriff stalk off.
Looks to Dawn.
Makes the universal twirling-finger-next-to-head "she be crazy" sign.
"Think I should knock her out now and apologise later?"

[Gullara]

[Hodgepodge Street - Fountain Way]

"I know Val, I just need to do a couple of things first and then we could try to have children. I get the feeling we'd be overwhelmed though considering everything. I have no doubt we will manage however." She says while taking his hand and squeezes it.

[Hodgepodge Street - Fountain Way]

Valente smiles and gives hr a little peck on the lips. It's hard to think they're actually kinda sorta making plans to have kids (at some point). But he enjoys the thought. Astrana actually wants to start a family with him in the not too distant future.

"So what sort of things do you want to do before settling down anyway?" He asks with genuine curiosity. "I know there's that ritual that we're going to your world for, but I don't think I've heard about these other plans."

[Lycan 01]

[Riftline - Carousel Court]

Dawn wordlessly watches as Geneva gets angry and stalks, wearing a rather perturbed frown. At Lydia's inquiry, Dawn sighs. "I'm tempted. But let's save that as a last resort. For now, let's just stick together and try to keep things civil..."

Dawn quickly trots after Geneva. Once alongside her, she tries to change the subject of discussion. "You know, I'm actually kinda curious about how Zebras are regarded here. Everything is so topsy-turvy in this place, with ponies being treated so nicely by some and so rudely by others. I wouldn't be surprised if the Zebras here were actually, y'know, nice or something," she muses. "I'm probably wrong, but eh, no harm in hoping, right?"

[Rebonack]

[Carousel Court]

Idealic.

That would be a pretty decent way of describing this particular district of Inside. Idealic. As soon as our heroes step off the train they find themselves under a bright sunny sky with the occasional pegasus shoving a cloud around on weather duty. Roads of simple hard packed dirt and gravel. The buildings are mostly quaint little stucco and wood affairs with honest to goodness thatched roofs.

Vulnerable to burninating, but quite nice to look at.

And ponies. Lots and lots of ponies. There are a few humanoids about and a smattering of other races, but by and large this looks like the largest concentration of ponies in the City. Ponies at stalls, ponies in their homes, ponies tending to gardens, ponies pulling carts, ponies repairing the road, ponies assembling new buildings, ponies ponies everywhere!

Very reminiscent of Geneva and Dawn's home before heavy industrialization took its toll.

Well. Except for that one building. There's a VERY out of place looking sky scraper towering above the rest of the quaint little district with a huge sign and logo plastered across it.

Roseluck Agrifirm.

Huh.

Wonder what that's about?

Anywho! Geneva is still muttering to herself.

"I know... My friends care about me. If they didn't they wouldn't be so worried. It's just frustrating..." the hippogriff says, though she perks up a little when Dawn joins her. "Sorry I was so snippy. And... yeah. I'm not sure if I'll ever feel okay about Zebras though. We were taught in school how awful they were. I'm sure most of it was just propaganda, but old habits die hard."

"Hello! Welcome to Carousel Court!" pipes up a soft pink earthie mare with a yellow mane. She's wearing a pair of wicker baskets filled with daffodils, tulips, and irises. "Would you care to buy some flowers?"

[Hawkflight]

Four-Oh-Four Snail Avenue

All sorts of stuff gets picked up by the Nexus. Sometimes you get a person. Sometimes a rampaging monster. Sometimes a building, could be a house, a bank, or a long abandoned dungeon full of nasty things.

Mostly that last one.

But most of the time, these things only stay a little while. Ignore the horrible monstrousity and the Nexus will get bored soon enough, cast it off into some other corner of the cosmos. People tend to simply sink into a state of nothingness, taking up no time, not space, out of sight and mind. But sometimes things stick around. For whatever reason the Nexus keeps them for a while longer, lets them wait in forgotten anonymity.

Snail Avenue was one of those places. A fragment of a street just large enough to hold a single tenement building, old even when it found it's way here. And nobody noticed. Not a soul ventured inside or wondered what was there. The world went on without it. An apartment building was built to the right of it, then the Nexus decided that another would look good to the left. A few years later and it Snail Avenue was gone from sight, sealed in on all sides by development and the whim of the Nexus.

Until about four months back, when some enterprising soul living in one of the adjacent buildings began to wonder about the crumbling faux-marble facade and the rusting fire escape he saw every day through his bathroom window. It didn't match the building he'd always assumed was opposite his. So scaled his way over the rooftops to have a look, and then he called his friends to have a look too.

And that's how Snail Avenue again became a living place, inhabited, at least on the two highest floors. And even if the electricity might falter a few times a week, and the water is a little bit rusty and lukewarm, and you have to climb over a building to get to it... Well, the price is right.

A small figure stood in front of the abandoned radio tower, looking up at it. It had unironically taken her quite some time to find it, but here she was. 404 Snail Avenue.

The figure, a little catgirl who appeared around the age of 6 or 7, was dressed in a blue dress with a few small ribbons, including one in her mid-long blond hair. She looked up at the tower in front of her, then at the flyer in her hand. It was the one place she had been able to find that had a room available, and since she was stuck in this strange new world, she figured she needed a place to stay. Gulping, she knocked on the door and stepped inside.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Post-Interrogation

Once the transfer is done, Alysha stands there silent for a moment, processing everything.

Wow...that's a lot of technical info...that I suddenly know really well...

[The Bushranger]

[Riftline - Carousel Court]

Lydia, for her part, lets Geneva and Dawn talk, peering up at the Roseluck Agrifirm building.

There might not be any skyscrapers in Dunwall, but she knows Evil, Inc. HQ when she sees it.

[Morcleon]

[Atriol]

Mia shakes her head a bit, looking very seriouse.

"There aren't any machines he can't reach. He uses a way people can't understand and so they can't block it."

[Atriol]

Akira glances away, pensive. "So he's likely a very major player in the deific ranks. It's not a very well known fact, but we have prototype devices designed specifically to negate divine powers. I wonder how well they would work against your god..."

[Lycan 01]

[Carousel Court]

Dawn doesn't hear most of what Geneva says.

She's too busy staring. Wide-eyed and slack-jawed, she just slowly looks around at the miniature equine utopia before her eyes. Markets, gardens, storefronts, weather patrols, happiness... safety...

She squeals in surprise when the other pony randomly offers her a flower, recoiling a bit. "Oh, sorry!" Dawn apologizes, blushing in embarrassment. She then looks at the basket of flowers the other pony is carrying. "Um... flowers? What... um... what for?" she timidly asks. "What do they do?"

Poor Dawn. She's from a world with no flowers, after all. No flowers that don't want to murder you, at least.

[Rebonack]

[Carousel Court]

Evil Incorporated? Roseluck Agrifirm hires out earth pony labor and pegasus weather teams to farms around the Nexus to help drastically improve production rates. As payment they take a percentage of the increased yield. They're basically the largest single provider of organic produce around.

Not everyone feels comfortable eating genetically engineered and chemically enhanced food grown by mad scientists after all.

Anywho!

The pink mare looks very confused. "What... do they do?"

She looks down at her baskets of flowers. "Well they look pretty. And they smell nice. And they taste pretty good if I do say so myself!" she sounds quite proud of her quality wares! But then all merchants sound proud of their wares pretty much regardless of quality.

It's good for business.

Geneva looks curious now. "You eat flowers?"