[Nexus] Inside 53

[Rebonack]

[Abrajin's Library]

There are only two exits out of this room on opposite sides.

One marked 'magic' and the other marked 'litigation'.

Rebo is pretty sure that Rebo knows which door our heroes will run toward.

"You can't escape the legal power of the Magical Kingdom!" one of the lawyers shrieks as he opens up his brief case. A tidal wave of legal forms comes rushing behind our heroes threatening to overwhelm them before they can escape!

Oh noes!

Don't let them catch you in their cage of legalese!

[McBish]

[Market Street]

Very foxy then I guess. "Oh, I see. You at the very least look like Kitsune I have known in the past. There was an old temple here, to Inari goddess of foxes. You should check out her temple it is still beautiful even if not many people visit it anymore." Angie says heading back to the odd fruit cart.

The cart is manned by an odd creature. With only one leg coming out of it small beachball sized body. A huge taloned foot gives it support, and three arms (two from the sides one from the top of the head) balance it. It has a protuding nose like an anteater and only one eye. The fruits are almost as weird as the fruit monger. Coming in only bright vibrant colors and all sizes and shapes. There are spikey yellow balls, squishy blue cubes that feel like they are filled with jelly, purple rubbery disks. There are also odd sticks of fruit, corkscrew shaped and twirled together to combine two or three flavors.

[Deathkeeper]

Market Street

Maybe. I don't really know how I'd get along with any gods and such. I've never been big on religion.
...
Do you, uh, have any recommendations for these? he asks, looking at the odd fruit.

[McBish]

[Market Street]

"I can understand the sentiment, the divine can often bring troubles with them. Inari always seemed nice, her temple was always a peaceful place of healing and comfort." She looks over the fruits. "Well the twists are usually really good, they usually come from a melon of some sort. Though the purple ones have the texture of plums and the taste of peach marmalade. That yellow spikey fruit is really good, hard to peel but tasty. Oh and his assorted berries are always good." Small baskets of all sorts of berries, ranging from black to light pink, from the size of peas to golfballs. Each basket has a random mix of them.

[Deathkeeper]

Market Street

Mist thinks for a second.
"The berries sound cool. A big mix of things."
It's like skittles but in fruit form!

[Slii Arhem]

Hodgepodge Street - Fountain Way

Copi and Waldorf, on their way to somewhere interesting, walk past the fountains. Copi, deeming this place interesting enough to be the first destination, stops. "My... I haven't seen one of those since I went on a vacation to a museum, a couple years a realital slip and a lot of madness ago. I suppose it is the season for it." She smiles slightly. Good memories, it seems.

Abrajin's Library

"According to the theory of infinite alternate realities, everything is real somewhere!" Kirin shouts over her shoulder as the pair rushes toward parts unknown. If they're going to be ridiculous, she can, too!

Hodgepodge Street - Fountain Way

"It certainly is a unique use of architecture and waterworks. I wonder sometimes why the Nexus provides these types of areas. They as often spring from nowhere as have an actual cause, without any distinction between the two. It's odd to me, knowing that there is a place just outside where dreamstuff and solid stone are as real as each other when all my research hasn't proved the same elsewhere." Waldorf takes a moment to run his hand through one of the vertical streams, uncaring about dampened sleeves and torsos.

[McBish]

[Market Street]

"Oh and he has this fruit juice that is really good to, you have to try that." Angie says pointing at a box of berries and towards a cooler kept somewhere on the cart. She pulls out a few coins from her coin purse to pay. She drops the coins into the fruitmongers top hand while his other two hands give her the box of berries and bottle of juice. She turns to Mist and hands them to him. "There you go, and thank you again for being my anti-thief."

[Deathkeeper]

Market Street

Mist takes the packages.
"You're welcome. You should drop by the DFI sometime when I'm on shift. Which is most of the time truth be told. I'll give you a good recommendation."

[McBish]

[Market Street]

"I will have to do that some time. What kind of work do you do there?" Angie asks curiously. She hasn't ever been to the DFI.

[Deathkeeper]

Market Street

"A bit of everything. Fixing up rooms, delivering food to people, taking orders when the others aren't around."
Which is all the time since people stopped posting there.

[Rebonack]

[Hodgepodge Street - Fountain Way]

It is weird, isn't in?

Given the way the Nexus pulls in new people and places all the time one might expect it to be constantly growing. In the course of time will it consume all possible and impossible universes and combine them together in a chaotic mishmash?

Who knows!

Huh. Now there's an odd sight. Sitting there near the edge of the fountain eating a hot dog is an elf. Half elf maybe? With straight black skin and raven hair. Eating a hot dog. And for once dressed in something other than her creepy and vaguely bird like robes. A plushy pink panther head backpack is sitting on the soaking wet ground next to her.

It's Raven! Wearing a violently pink one piece swim suit! And she looks like she might actually be having fun!

What madness is this?

[Quinsar]

She sits down indeed, taking notes in her little noteybook.
It's daemonic or something, which means it smells like souls and paper.

She does have a library card, but it's for one back home, and she doubts that this library is on the Gray Wastes Library Network.

Solomon, who's player is a day late, follows happily after Liache, looking over her shoulder as she takes notes. His part in this dinosaur plot was the execution, not the research.

[Beans]

Solomon, who's player is a day late, follows happily after Liache, looking over her shoulder as she takes notes. His part in this dinosaur plot was the execution, not the research.

[Public Library]
Eventually she has a good deal of notes compiled, so she works on getting the books put back. I think we're ready to do this, Mr. Solomon. Those dinosaurs will be ours in no time.

[McBish]

[Market Street]

"Sounds like you keep busy there." She looks like she is about to say something else but a young man, probably around 16 by his looks, comes up from behind Angie and taps her on the shoulder.

"We got him, Jay is giving him the pitch now and she told me to let you know she had it under control. You think we are good for the day?

"Thanks Ken, yeah I think we are all wrapped up here. Oh by the way, Ken this is Mist. Mist this is Ken, Ken works with me."

"Pleasure."

[Deathkeeper]

Market Street

"Pleasure's mine." Mist extends a furry hand to shake.
"You mentioned that you have security, but what exactly do you folks do, anyway?"

[McBish]

[Market Street]

"I own a few buisness here in the nexus, a few apartment buildings, a clinic, a grocery/general store, and a few other projects in the works. Ken works with my main security team."

Ken accepts and shakes Mist's hand.

"Most of the time I stay out of the way of people who know what they are doing and stick to what I am good at healing." Angie says fishing out a buisness card to hand to Mist. It is a simple embossed card with her phone number on the back.

Angie
Healer Empath

[Deathkeeper]

Market Street

Ooh, business cards. Classy, he says, only a little joking.
What's your plan for new stuff? It sounds like you've got an impressive lineup already.

[Lost_Deep]

Hodgepodge Street - Fountain Way

"Maybe there is no difference. After all isn't it people-or other forces of will-that give things cause? Perhaps the nexus makes a great crystal, and people fight over it. Did it make something to fight over? Perhaps. But perhaps it simply grabbed a crystal and the willful beings in it saw fit to fight over it. If the things it makes have a purpose, then perhaps the Nexus itself has some kind of will, but that would raise just as many questions as it would explain. Infinity each."

"No matter what assumptions you make about the nature of the nexus, it's unlikely that they are true. It's similarly unlikely that it is false. This might be some kind of cosmic lost and found, a place things go so that they are never truly forgotten. It may be a nothing, an extraneous variable in the multiverse, so there is nothing to say how it should not act. It could be a reality TV show, or a work of fiction, engineered by beings beyond gods as gods are beyond us. Things which would drive eldritch things mad. Or sane, as the case might be, but that's a whole other ball game."

"Of course, it could be that by making these theories, are are now retroactively true. It could be that by making these theories, they become retroactively false. It could be, and I would not be surprised if this is so, that reality does not care what we think, nor what secrets we desire to find, nor what secrets we do find."

[Luka]

[The Mispelled Cemetary]

The force of the sweeping attack is enough to hew through the legs of the first two skeletens and knock the next one off balance. Unfortunately taking the legs off a average skeleten simply means it can't run around anymore. Instead it'll crawl. Aside from magic that abolishes their animating force or totally ruining most of their axial skeleton keeping undead down can be fiddly.

But these guys?

These are really lousy skeletens.

Even knocking that one over causes it to burst.

The victory is short lived, though. Mostly because two skeletens aim to punch into the crusader's spine with some picks while another three try to bash him with shovels. And the last three skeletens? Just claw at him. Rawr, clawing.

Fortunately, crawling means STOMPABLE, and the crusader aims to gives one of them a nice, Isaac Clarke-like stomp on the skull, and whether that hits or not, the tries to use that leg to turn himself and attack the 5 skeletons with his shield's edge, especially the pick-wielding ones, using the spinning momentum to give strength to his shield's attack and make it easier to drop them to the ground too.

Though if not all skeletons go down, shovels would mostly slam off the armor, but picks are slightly more dangerous and would even treaten with some denting.

[Earl of Purple]

Riftline --> Metropolis Square- Pretty Pastel Pony Pirates

"I have anger management issues. Piracy lets me vent." Is remarked before the Steampunk Gentleman leaves.

Then, when the pegasus filly sits down next to her, Cinnamon smiles, making her approach pretty. "Don't worry. We're hard to insult." Unless one makes disparaging comments about her mother. "It's good to see you, though. We only arrived in the city today, and you're the first pony we've seen besides each other." Cinnamon is being very friendly.

[Rebonack]

[The Mispelled Cemetary]

Okay.

Scene at present.

The crusader tripped some skeletens and then stomped on one. While he was doing this he was beset upon by the rest of the skeletens, which he did nothing to avoid. As a result jumping up and doing a spinning shield bash proves to be really hard on account of the crusader being groped by a whole bunch of gross corpses. He's got skeletens hanging all over him.

And since that shield bash is most certainly not going to be hitting the pick wielding skeletens they are still aiming to bash a bunch of new holes into his torso. These being the same pick-bashing attacks that were initiated several rounds ago and have yet to be resolved.

What do?

[Riftline ==> Metropolis Square]

"Really?" Tango replies, wrinkling her nose. "There are lots of ponies around! Like my friends."

She points at the group of rambunctious children nearby which includes several colts and fillies. The three humanoid Sisters are having quite the trial trying to keep them all under control.

"We're going back home after visiting some dumb museum on Steele Street. It was really lame."

[Earl of Purple]

Riftline --> Metropolis Square- Pretty Pastel Pirate Ponies & Fair Fillies

"What kind of museum?" Cap'n Volley Shot is very interested in museums- sometimes, they have really decent loot inside, and poor defences. Worse defences than banks, anyway, though the yields aren't always as lucrative. Cinnamon is rolling her eyes at Volley's tone.

Also, the Cap'n has unstrapped her leg and is flexing her stump.

[Rebonack]

[Riftline ==> Metropolis Square]

"Steele Street Museum of History," Tango replies as she pulls a ball out of her saddle bags and begins tossing it from one hoof to the other. "The mummies were kind of cool, I guess. But it was all really boring. I wanted to go to that new Fountain place with the pool. But Sister Tabitha said we had to do something educational."

The little orange filly makes a BLEH! face as though the word educational caused her to become physically nauseous.

She gives a little humph and crosses her forelegs on top of her ball.

"I don't see why I have to listen. I've already got my cutie mark and everything!"

So clearly she's a grown pony!

[Earl of Purple]

Riftline --> Metropolis Square- Pretty Pastel Pony Pirates & Fairly Friendly Filly

"Really? May I see?" Cinnamon is still smiling and is being really friendly.

[Rebonack]

[Riftline ==> Metropolis Square]

"Eh? Sure I guess," Tango replies, doing her best to seem very nonchalant about it. In reality she's absolutely thrilled about getting to show off her special talent to grownups.

Tango shoves her saddlebags aside so the cutie-mark on her hip is clearly visible. Two bolts of lightning wrapping around each other. One black and the other bright crimson. So bright that it easily stands out against her dull orange coat.

"I'm... hehe... Still not totally sure what it is supposed to mean though."

Usually ponies figure that out right away, don't they? The mark appears during some kind of life changing event in a moment of existential clarity!

[McBish]

Market Street

Ooh, business cards. Classy, he says, only a little joking.
What's your plan for new stuff? It sounds like you've got an impressive lineup already.

Angie had hundreds of those made up so she can give them out. "Well we are working on a few farms right now. We already have a couple of rooftop gardens but are looking to be able to provide more fresh food to the people living in the city. After that I am not sure, maybe a school or a library if funds don't dry up." Up until now Angie has been financing most of the projects herself and her large amounts of gold are quickly running out.

[Earl of Purple]

Riftline --> Metropolis Square- Pretty Pastel Pony Pirates & Fairly Friendly Fillies

Cinnamon will shrug off her own saddlebags so that Tango can see the three sticks of cinnamon making a triangle decorating her own flank, should she choose to look.

"Really? That's unusual. How did you get it?" Hopefully not in her sleep. That would be really annoying.

[Rebonack]

[Riftline ==> Metropolis Square]

Life can be really annoying sometimes.

"I don't know," Tango replies with a huff. "That's the problem! I... umm... sleeptrot sometimes. And one time I woke up in a tree across the street from that big statue of the wizard wearing the boot on his head. The leaves were all burned off, there was a pile of waffle irons on the ground, I was covered in silver reflective tape, and I had my cutie mark."

Huh.

Well.

That's pretty mysterious.

"No one has any idea what happened."

[Earl of Purple]

Riftline --> Metropolis Square- Pretty Pastel Pony Pirates & Fairly Friendly Fillies

"I can't say I know the statue. I only arrived in this city today; I haven't even got lodgings yet. Do you know if the statue is enchanted? Maybe you triggered an anti-theft spell and survived." Anti-theft spells are annoying, and why a unicorn specialising in breaking enchantments is a required part of any decent pirate crew. They're rarely allowed to fight, though.

[Rebonack]

[Riftline - Metropolis Square]

Tango wrinkles her nose at that suggestion.

"An anti-theft spell? Why would I trigger an anti-theft spell? I don't steal stuff! Stealing is wrong," she replies rather resolutely.

Sure she could have been doing pretty much anything while she was asleep, but no one has ever told her that she had been caught doing something that was mean or bad. Usually they just find her passed out inside of a cabinet or sleeping on top of one of the book shelves.

Sleeping walking is bad.

Flying in your sleep is even worse.