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“Like this,” you say, dumping the gathered lines at your feet. Selecting one, you throw an end over your shoulder and go skipping away through the hose-strewn Plaza, towards the door you both came from. You step through, and find yourself standing on the purple platform with the Door.

The Trap.

The hose is still on your shoulder. You glance back, and see its canvas end vanishing into thin air where it crosses the pulsing red teleporter pad. You give it a yank, and a few seconds later receive a much weaker yank in reply.

Madotsuki's looking at the big red hydrant with her arms crossed, and a hand on her chin when you return through the teleporter. “Okay, I see what you're angling at, but – where are we going to get water?”

You squint at her, at the hydrant, and back at her.

“It's got to be off,” she says. “That hose you were working with earlier is hooked to it directly.”

“There's more supply lines,” you point out, moving into the Plaza. After a brief glance around, you pick an attack line at random and start following it, hand-over-hand, till it arrives at a supply trunk. One fruitless twist of a valve later, and you sigh. You begin tracking down attack lines that don't connect to supply, just appearing from under a rug or through the fence and vanishing somewhere else. None of them have any flow, their canvas sides slack and empty.

“Fuck,” you mutter.

“Told you,” Mado says. “Now what?”

“Like I said. Backtrack through this place and see where else this new maze goes.”

There's two exits remaining from Face Carpet Plaza. Which one do you take?

>Left
>Right

>>33656817
>>Right

>>33656817
>Left.

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>>33657126
>>33657173

>>33657260
Changing from right to left

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>>33657317

writing!

Whee! Time to dream again!

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After briefly consulting with Madotsuki, and receiving a shrug in reply, you decide to continue on through the left-most Plaza exit. You emerge onto another purple block floating through the void, and with another step to the next teleport pad-

find yourself in almost pitch-black darkness.

>theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SY94KemG0E

The sickly-sweet stench of rotting things hammers your senses, nearly driving you to your knees as it claws at your nose and worms down your throat, a vileness you can damn near taste. Your stomach roils and leaps, but you manage to swallow your bitter bile and take a shallow, halting breath through your mouth.

A sickly yellow light seeps through the area, the low hum and buzz of a sodium lamp filling the air. You find Madotsuki next to you, cupping the jaundiced glow in her hands.

“Now, this,” Mado says dryly, “is a *real* shithole.

You lurch upwards, hand against the wall – and immediately withdraw it, wiping it on your jeans in disgust. The brick walls are wet and slimy with algae – you hope it's algae, at least. The low ceiling arches above you, crossing a deep channel in the floor filled with a slimy green sludge slowly flowing away into the dark.

“Welcome to the Sewers,” Madotsuki says softly, her eyes cutting around warily.

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>>33658361

Mado waits for you to get settled, then sets off down the tunnel, cupping her light close to her breast. The walls and ceiling are seeping liquid with a slow, solemn dripping that echoes through the tunnel. A slight breeze of wet air stirs around you, drawing a stone-deep chill after it like an autumn wind. You keep close to Madotsuki's heels, glancing over your shoulder constantly.

At length you notice a thin aluminum conduit running along the wall, so blackened with mold you can scarcely discern it from the similarly-coated brickwork. Glancing across the tunnel, you espy an old maintenance lamp, its wire cage rusted to pieces and the old glass crazed from some long-ago impact. You keep looking for more landmarks, but find none – the lone lamp vanishing into the darkness behind you, and the moldy conduit making a U-turn to vanish into the bricks. You keep following Mado through the darkness, your sneakers slipping on the slick bricks, the draft cutting to your bones as you venture further into the darkness.

A soft, wet sound comes drifting with the wind to your ears, echoing and bouncing from the walls – like something behind you in the darkness slithering into the water.

>Back to the wall, axe out!
>Keep going, eyes open.
>MADO PICK UP THE PACE KTHX

>>33658415
>Back to the wall, axe out!

>>33658415
>>MADO PICK UP THE PACE KTHX
I think we've had our fill of hostile encounters.

>>33658415

>Back to the wall, axe out!

Could be nothing. Could be something. A little paranoia never hurt anyone,

>>33658415
>>Back to the wall, axe out!

>>33658415
>>Back to the wall, axe out!

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>>33658475
>>33658484
>>33658551
>>33658560
>>33658573

You reach out and clamp down on Madotsuki's shoulder, causing her to leap with fright as you pull her back.

“FZSK!?” she chokes, trying to twist out of your grasp as you press your back against the slimy wall, sneakers squeaking and squelching loudly on the mold-slick, wet bricks, your toes only inches away from the turgid flow below. Mado's voice goes careening down the long brick tunnel in both directions, her FZSK! echoing and rebounding upon itself.

“Something in the water,” you whisper, your axe at the ready.

Mado twists her shoulder out of your grasp, still cupping her light close to her. “There's lots of things in the water here,” she hisses. “None of them-”

“-ever hurt you,” you mutter. “I've heard that before.”

Mado glowers at you, her scowl plain in the jaundiced yellow light, but with both hands occupied she can't well draw her knife. Her eyes flick down the passageway before you, then back the way you came, and she sidles closer to you, pressing her side against yours.

“So what?” she growls just above a whisper.

You ready your weapon, placing your left hand highest on the shaft and your right hand on the bottom, reversing your usual grip. With your elbow pressing on Madotsuki's hip and the shaft extending between her and the water, you're ready to swing at anything coming from the right, down the tunnel from whence you came – and to keep Mado from being sucked into the water by anything that leaps out.

You press against the wall harder, your sneakers slipping and sliding precariously towards the turgid green sludge. Little eddies in the thick flow seem to come and go at random. You stare at them, not daring to blink, but there seems to be no pattern or point to them – if something stirs beneath the surface, you're not sure you'd notice.

Your eyes flick down the sewer tunnel again, but nothing shows itself.

>Watch the water.
>Watch down the passage.

>>33659041
>Watch both

>>33659041
>Watch the water.

Rolled 17

>>33659041
>>Watch the water.

>>33659041
>>Watch the water.

>>33659093
>>33659098
>>33659144

Called for water. Gimme an extra 10 minutes for dinner, writing it up.

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You focus on the water; not the hypnotic eddies and flows of the water, chaotic and unconfined, static for the eyes that'll lull you into complacency. No. You focus on the turgid flow itself... and wait. Your breathing slows to a steady rhythm, in time with your heartbeat. Thudding on, alone in darkness with dripping drops and chilly drafts, you settle into rhythm with yourself, your mind a dark pool of water waiting for the faintest ripple.

Which comes. A persistent eddy in the flow, an obstruction just beneath the fragile surface.

Beside you, Mado sighs, and says something, but the words flow past you like so much smoke. You watch the eddy carefully, ready to act.

>Strike
>Probe
>Wait

>>33659985
>>Strike

>>33659985

>Probe

Maybe it's an effect? A smelly, slimy effect?

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>>33659985
>>33660043
>>33660066

>Wait

>>33659985
>Wait

>>33660066
I wonder if Mado will show us the shithead effect

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>>33660105

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From the reeking slime comes a dark arch, semicircle of black in the gloom slowly breaching the surface. The turgid liquid seems to slide off like a substance solid, leaving no wetness to bedew its surface. It slides upwards painstakingly slow, almost like watching bamboo grow. The arch becomes a semicircle, then a circle, the mouth of a pipe bent ninety degrees to face you, closed by a speckled, rusted mesh grate. You stare it down, your breathing steady and axe still, poised for the moment of action.

It rises to eye level, a rusted, battered pipe sticking out of the water – then stops with suddenness, inanimate as the walls themselves.

where have the teletubbies gone?

The query ripples through your mind clarion clear, and a mad giggle surges in your breast, pressing at your gorge like the vomit did earlier, straining for cathartic, gut-wrenching release.

>laugh
>suppress

>>33660449
>suppress

Resist! Do not give in!

>>33660449
>suppress
Teletubbies are no laughing matter

>>33660449
>suppress
Nothing here is funny, except when we joke with Mado. Get so paranoid about why we might find something spontaneously hilarious that the fear overwhelms the laughter.

>>33660449

>suppress

Great. Next that fucking sun will show up.

woah I am behind. I need to catch up on this thing.
>Suppress
Also, Flow? [Spoiler].flow?[/spoiler]

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where have the teletubbies gone?

You stare into the darkness behind the rusting steel mesh covering the pipe's mouth, unable to deny the similarity

well where have they gone, motherfucker?

You can taste the temptation in your throat, the urge to simply keel over and puke it all out, let your heaving throat expel it from your everything

sick and tired of these motherfucking teletubbies in this motherfucking sewer

the giggles are clamping down, your smooth, regular breathing rhythm already quavering as the giggles begin to shake your diaphragm

googogaga likethe babyinthesun like the babyinthesuninthesun burning in thesun incandescent bright BURNING IN THE SUN WHY IS IT IN THE FUCKING SUN

grinding growling grinding rumbling through your skull as jaw muscles quaver with tension sweaty hands squeak on hickory shaft and no blink for staring down the pipe through the pipe into the pipe into the eye

black and glossy and staring, a dark red pupil turgid red pupil in the middle starting at you the mesh peeled away like an eyelid like a fucking eyelid it peeled back staring at you staring at it staring at you as you breathe and heart beat and breathe and heart beat and stare into it staring into you staring into it staring into you staring into heart beat and breathe into staring into it into you breathing beat heart beating into you into you into you into it beating into it you breathing into it breathing into it breathing breathing into it into it beating breathing into it into the turgid flow it slides when did it descend you didn't see it descending because straight into the dark red eye you were staring into it and into it and into it and into into into the turgid flow you fall

[ ] into memory
[ ] into arms
[ ] into vision

>>33660699

To be honest I've got no idea what .flow is about, aside from a fan-made fighting game (which is all I've managed to discern from looking at fan-art.) Someone asked if I might run a sequel quest involving .flow and the answer is very yes

>>33660861
>into vision

>>33660861
>[ ] into memory

But whose?

>>33660861
>[X] into memory
Best chance for useful information, I figure. Vision would probably be all metaphorical and confusing, and I'm not sure what arms would get us.

>>33660886

>[ ] into memory

Avoiding the temptation to tie things up.

>>33660886
.flow is a fangame, similar to Yume Nikki, but with a lot more focus on the creepy, and a lot more blood/gore.

>into memory

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Dark flow flying wide to fill the world and parting like a veil as you plummet through into shadow and darkness, following the bubbles down, down down into the dark, pulling towards that rectangle of transparent shade, handprints pressed firm against the glass.

toom

toom

seizing the doorhandle and drawing back your fist as bubbles boil and blister away from your arm, hot with strength you should've had, would've had, have, strength you have and with one mighty spasm of your soul it punches THROUGH

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the water, soaking your sneaker through to the sock -

“shi-i-iiit,” you stammer, jerking it back reflexively. The dim mold-covered brick seems to sway and swirl before your eyes as your head goes rolling down the walkway unsteadily.

“Easy, easy, easy,” someone's crooning, “stand up straight you heavy bastard-”

“Fzhugh youfff,” you whimper, your gorge leaping into your throat and choking off any more complaints as you pitch over and retch uselessly into the reeking channel. You cough miserably for a few seconds, evicting nothing, Mado's arm cinched around your waist to support you.

At length, it subsides, and you stagger upwards, breathing hard.

“The fuck was that?” Mado breathes, her pissweak pissyellow sodium light flickering weakly in one hand.

“... teletubbies,” you say seriously no no no no NO NO NO DON'T FUCKING biting off the snicker even as it quavers from your chest. “I... what...” you shake your head, still confused.

“I know what it is,” Mado hisses, tightening her grip and hoisting you a little more upright. “I mean what'd you just do?”

“.... uh.”

“You stared it down, but...” her voice cracks hoarsely. “How?”

You shake the dizziness from your skull, the memory unremarkable, but the feelings still intimate and immediate. “Ever go running, or lifting a weight and been so exhausted at the end that your brain shuts down, and all that's left is the rhythm of it? And...” you pinch the bridge of your nose, trying to... “focus. And the focus, on finishing, or... whatever you're doing.”

“Kinda,” Mado says. “What's that got to do-”

“That's what it felt like,” you mutter weakly. “Damned if I can tell you what happened.”

>>33661288
>pulling towards that rectangle of transparent shade, handprints pressed firm against the glass.

... a car window?

>>33661591
Y'know, the one from a few threads back.

>>33661591
Could be. Maybe we were in a car crash as a kid, got rescued by a firefighter, that's why we wanted to become the Iron Man?

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“Jesus,” Mado mutters, releasing your waist and shouldering you away as she stalks down the sewer. “What were you gonna do if it stayed there, attack it?”

“It crossed my mind,” you say lowly, wary of the echoes still bouncing around the tunnel.

“Idiot,” Mado hisses. “You're why nothing goes right down here. You. You... you DO things I just never... or wouldn't... I... Christ,” she finishes. “Why would you look at it? Just keep walking. Just keep walking why would you WANT to see that you lunatic...” Mado's voice drops off into morbid muttering, a drawn-out diatribe to herself as she leads you through the sewer tunnel once more. You step quicker, surer-footed, as if you'd indeed expelled something nasty with your retching and... whatever that was, just now.

The walls abruptly drop away on either side, and Mado's pissyellow light flares a little brighter to illuminate a wider rectangular area. There's a muted hissing and ticking emanating from all about, and in the shadows you espy what look like panel boxes and turbine housings lined up in the dark. Messes of rusting and rotted pipes snake over the walls and across the floor with no apparent direction, the remnants of red paint flaking off old-fashioned wheel valves. You pause to study the equipment, using your axe-head to gently scrape the mold off the dusty glass covering slack pressure gauges and rusted-shut switches as Mado moves ahead.

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>>33662237

From the darkness ahead you hear a gusty sigh. Looking towards it, you find Mado standing before a cave-in that's closed off the tunnel ahead. The scummy green fluid flowing through the channel is bubbling and churning as its sucked through fissures below the surface.

“Blocked,” Mado says, sounding glum. “This way.” She backtracks to lead you between two of the big, silent turbines, towards a concrete doorway. The light cradled in her hands reveals a short concrete tunnel which emerges into another long sewer tunnel, this one larger and wider. You've enough room to walk comfortably besides the water channel, and press against the much-less-moldy walls when something strange comes floating through the water. Like one of the needle-headed folk, only its top-half protruding from the water, its translucent flesh a light smokey gray.

“Sewer pirori,” Mado says quietly, walking past it without further notice.

From the unlit darkness ahead, two pinpricks of red light appear, and begin gliding towards you. As it emerges into the edges of Mado's lamplight you discern a vague dark blob with a slightly lighter patch of shade for a “face,” with two red, smoldering embers for eyes in the center-

“-DON'T!” Mado snaps. “Don't look at them, for chrissakes!”

You tear your eyes away from the odd creature and affix them to Mado's back once again, trusting in your guide. A few hundred feet further on, and she stops dead with a grunt. Before her, a heavy-duty wire-mesh fence stretches clear across the tunnel, blocking your passage.

Mado sighs. “There's only one way through this,” she says. “But I'll have to turn out the light for a moment.”

>Agree. You're curious to see how she gets through this.
>There's more than one way to breach a barrier!

>>33662263
>>Agree. You're curious to see how she gets through this.

Do everything Mado says at all times no exceptions

>>33662263
>Agree. You're curious to see how she gets through this.
Keep talking though, please. We'll want to know you're alright.

>>33662263
>Agree. You're curious to see how she gets through this.

>>33662263
>Agree. You're curious to see how she gets through this.

>>33662263
agree but remind her that the world isn't playing by the old rules anymore

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You heft your axe, eying the padlocked gate set into the mesh fence before you. With one swift, sharp blow you could probably part it with ease – or with steady, applied pressure from your crowbar, for that matter. You wind up for a powerful blow -

- and lower it again as your curiosity gets the better of you. You can't remember if Madotsuki told you how many “effects” there are, but you know you've only seen a fraction of them in action.

“How's that, now?”

Mado folds the light up, closing her hands over it and snuffing it with a quiet “poof!” sound. “It doesn't matter,” she says, her features barely visible in the gloom; some faint green luminance seeming to emanate from the water itself.

“Sure you don't want me to?” you ask, hoisting your axe meaningfully. “The old rules aren't always working, remember?”

“Last time you axed your way through a door it blew your stupid ass up, remember?” comes her sardonic retort. She reaches for her skirt pocket... and vanishes.

You blink, startled – and then you notice something tiny moving across the floor and slipping between the chain-link of the fence. You lean over, drawing closer for a better view... and swear you can see a small figure, like a fairy, scaling the chain-link like a ladder. Within a moment or two, there's a loud, conspicuous clickity-CLACK! and the loud metallic CLUNK of a padlock hitting the floor. The gate swings open a bit...

… and you reach out and pluck the tiny culprit off the gate, dangling them by the back of their shirt.

It's Madotsuki, and she's not even five inches tall.

>neat.png
>go ask Mado when she's ten inches tall, hah!
>cuuuuuuute~

>>33662765
>neat.png
We should let her do her thing.

>>33662765
>neat.png
Let's not embarrass her by squeeing over how cute mini-Mado is. Let's just acknowledge that it's a cool trick and move on.

>>33662765
>>neat.png

I want to say she's cute. I want to say she's cute so badly. I am thinking it. But I am not saying it.

>>33662765
>neat.png
It IS pretty neat.

>>33662765
neat trick... didn't think you could get smaller

>>33662765
>neat.png

>>33662765
Put her back on the grate. It's rude to pick people up without permission.

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The sight of Madotsuki – glum, hard-eyed, knife-wielding, mentally mighty Madotsuki – reduced to the exaggerated proportions of a teenage girl's cell-phone charm, complete with little kitchen knife, hits you just right. You feel a giddy, fidgety kind of smile trying to surface, and fight it back with the sure knowledge that Mado won't hesitate to bury that tiny knife to the hilt in your goddamn thumb if you do. You lean over and gently deposit her on the floor again, suppressing your reaction till you've stood up and the darkness can conceal your giddy, shit-eating grin.

“Neat trick,” you say when you trust your voice again. Mado seems to shoot up from the floor like a time-lapse sequence, back to normal again. She advances on you, bringing her furrowed brow only inches away from yours, glaring upwards into your eyes.

“Are you grinnin' at me?”

You return her steady gaze, fighting mightily to iron out the slight upward curve at the corners of your mouth. After a few moments, she grumps, and turns away from you, producing her “lamp” again. “Come on, jackass.”

You fall in behind her, studying your surroundings as she leads you through the gate. The walls are festooned with all manner of conduit and pipes, and the smell is far less pungent here, though the terrible, stone-cold draft still draws a chill through your bones as it slithers through the tunnels. The steady dripping of water-soaked brick is absent, as the walls here are proper poured concrete.

There is, however, a hiss.

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>>33663740

You stop, closing your eyes, letting your senses lead you towards that faint sound. Ahead, Mado's echoing footsteps pause as well. You step gently towards the sound, reaching out cautiously with your free hand, until you detect a cross-current eddy, distinct from the chill breeze on the back of your hand.

You open your eyes and find your hand not five inches away from a thin metal pipe running along the wall, with the smallest of breaches in it. Its covered in mildew, so you spit on your thumb and rub it vigorously.

From underneath the black moldy muck emerges faded yellow paint, and an even fainter stencil. You draw closer, peering at the faint lines, so hard to pick out against yellow paint in that damned sodium glow.

G A S

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>>33663810

“What is it?” Mado asks.

“... nothing,” you say. “We should keep moving.” She shrugs, and turns to lead on. A cold shiver runs down your spine, a mental image of you bringing your axe down upon the padlock an instant before the spark blows you to kingdom fucking come running and running and running through your mind. Instant ignition, that far from the source, the perfect air/fuel ratio providing for a perfect burn, hot enough to char flesh from your bones and just slow enough that you'd feel every fucking second of it.

Traps, you think.

Traps.

Ahead, Mado stops beside another concrete doorway. She extinguishes her light and reaches back to take your hand, leading you into the gloom by feel.

“Ahead is...” she sighs. “I call it Big Red, and it's not...” she sighs again, gustily. “This'll be easier if you just keep your eyes closed, okay?”

You sigh in turn and close your eyes obligingly, in no rush to argue. You've had enough of close inspections for one lifetime, much less one chapter in this increasingly mindfucked trip. You allow Mado to lead you through the darkness by the hand, your other keeping your axe raised and ready for any imminent wetwork. Hopeful, truth be told – you'd prefer more problems you can solve by hitting it with something sharp.

They've been few and far between, down here.

“... the fuck?” Mado breathes.

You open your eyes.

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>>33663862
o boi

>>33663862
Did something kill Big Red? How will we get to Windmill World now?

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>Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kfkUUkEGtc&feature=player_detailpage#t=117

You're standing in an open field, and above you the sky is aglow with the aurora borealis. Instead of the vast, fluttering greenish-blue ribbons you're used to, it's a multihued marvel of color, reds and oranges dancing like pools of oil-paint in the sky, stray brush-strokes and lines quavering around the edges, as if Picasso's up there trying to sketch a bull with neon light again. Silhouetted against this incredible sight are the long, skeletal blades of modern wind-turbines, the windmills climbing the sides of a hill into the dark night.

Mado leads you away from the concrete doorway and into the night, climbing up the hill with hurried pace. She stops short underneath one of them, her shoulders stiff and arms rigid. You draw up beside her to find a shadowy figure lying on the ground, a wide-brimmed hat lain over its face, and a snapped bamboo fishing pole lying next to it.

“All exits closed,” Mado says softly. “It looks like I owe you five bucks.”

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>>33664730

“What?” you ask.

Mado sighs. “Usually you have to go through Big Red to get here. Literally. And then he can take you to Dock World,” she says, nudging the slain creature with her foot, but not looking at it.

“Someone's made a new maze,” you say softly. “Closed up most of the usual exits and linked the others up with places they shouldn't go.”

“How?” Mado asks. “Its my own dream, and I can't do that. How the hell does that – that thing, whatever it is – do all of this?”

You lean against the base of the nearest windmill, tilting your head back to stare past the motionless blades at the eerily beautiful display in the sky. A slight breeze tickles over the grass, causing the gigantic structures to creak and groan loudly, sleeping giants stirring in the night. You slide down the cold metal pylon till your ass meets grass, taking a moment to rest after the terrors and strains of The Sewers.

“Has this place changed?” you ask Mado.

She shakes her head, hugging herself and looking around. “No. It's still...” she shrugs. “What its always been.”

You look around, the landscape for a mile around well-lit by the eerie lightshow in the sky. In the middle distance is a huge, imposing structure, three wings enclosing a gated courtyard, complete with a clocktower's spire interrupting the skyline. In the opposite direction is the dark, leafy mass of a forest, and well beyond that, a horizon line too sharp and flat to be natural.

And lying on the downslope of the hill itself, what looks like the wrecked hulk of some vehicle.

>Think
>Explore

>>33664772
>Think
Brainstorm time with Mado. Does she recognize any of those things?

>>33664772
>Think
>Ask her about the other effects

>>33664772
>>Think

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“Mado,” you ask quietly. “What's that hulk, over there?”

“An airplane,” she says. “Trashed. Nobody in it, nothing special.”

You look down the hill, gazing at the old hulk till the interplay of shifting neon skylights has played over it enough to distinguish the shape. It's small, barely wide enough for a man to sling himself into; and light is reflecting off the shiny exhaust cylinders of a piston engine that occupies the entire nose.

A warplane, an old one, the silhouette lean and efficient; an engine with a seat strapped to it.

The wind stirs again, and the windmills creak and groan. Above you hear a faint whistle, and looking up you pick out a small, neat round little hole in one of the massive windmill blades.

Almost like a bullet hole.

You shiver and wrap your arms around yourself, the tension in this place growing more palpable with each eager creaking exhalation of the towering giants around you. There's a wrongness in this place you can taste. The mansion in the distance, looking run-down and ruined even in the dark, from a distance. The bucolic country lane leading into the distance, weathered power poles leading away from the almost-quaint windmills. The warplane doesn't belong, nor the bullet holes. Nor the brass, which you're picking out one-by-one from the grass by their gleaming hulls, spent casings as long as your hand is tall. World collided here, violently as that plane collided with this hill. A meeting that wasn't supposed to be, and the very fabric of this place still vibrates from the impact.

Just like the maze.

“Son of a bitch,” you breathe. “He can't.”

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>>33665972

“Who can't what?” Mado asks.

“Who is Big Red?” you ask her suddenly. “What's he look like?”

Mado frowns. “More like what is he. He's just... a huge, red head. About three times taller than you or I. To get here I usually have to walk into his mouth and let him...” she shrugs. “Eat me. I didn't expect you to take that very well, but the door just led us straight here-”

“That's it,” you breathe. “Big Red doesn't fit. Not between The Sewers and here.”

“... what?” Mado asks.

“Think,” you say, tugging at the mental thread and feeling giddy as it begins to unspool. “All these places that shouldn't be connected, but are – are kind of normal.”

“You call the footprint path no-”

“Nor the teleport maze,” you cut her off, “but those are crossing grounds to begin with. They've affinity for this sort of thing.”

“... you lost me.”

“Think, Mado,” you say, letting your head fall back to look upwards. “If that... thing we fought in the Mall went through all this trouble to hack up a new maze, and close off other exits, why bother leaving any open at all? Why bother leaving a way out?”

“More chances to lure us into traps? Or dangerous places?”

“But we've seen through those so far,” you mutter. “And we're running out of time – we can both feel it. It wants to stop us, one way or another – so why leave us any path forward at all?”

“... because it has no choice,” Mado concludes.

“Exactly. It can only fuck around so much – and it can't short-circuit doorways between wildly different locations, unless they're already places existing solely as pathways.”

“Great,” Mado says with a sigh. “But how does that help us one damn bit?”

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>>33666001

“It means all these locations are linked thematically, not logically. They're all part of a new whole now, or he – it – never would've been able to link them at all.” You close your eyes, the tension of the air seeming to subsume within every fiber of your body as a persistent, deep hum of energy. Madotsuki might be the mindfuck marven, but this is an engineering problem – your kind of problem.

You have a fire to put out.

Your available flow is insufficient. You need more pressure.

For pressure you need pumps, and for pumps you need-

“-son of a bitch,” you breathe, jumping to your feet. You shiver as another gentle draft pulls against your skin, like the drafty, windy sewer tunnels, and your eyes go to the power lines marching into the darkness alongside that quaint country lane. “Mado. The pumps in the sewers. We could power them with these!”

Mado squints at you. “And?”

“And those would pressurize the hydrant!”

Mado looks skeptical. “I don't think it works like that-”

“I do!” you exclaim with certainty, the odd tension of colliding worlds tingling along your skin. "Maybe because I've made it so, because that's how I'd expect it to work - and I'm part of this dream, now. Especially since that thing's changed the rules, and mucked with things after I got in. My psyche got mixed in with all the other legos, and he can't pick them apart now."

Mado frowns. “Even if – how're you gonna move these?” She kicks the base of the nearest windmill.

“We need wind,” you say matter-of-factly. “More accurately, we need... a draft.”

“A draft?”

“Yes,” you say. “In the sewers.” You point at the concrete doorway that let you out into this world, set into the side of the hill. “Like a huge vacuum.”

“How the hell are you going to do that?”

“Its simple,” you say. “We're going to start a huge, huge, huge fucking fire.”

>>33666065
Oh, Stark. You're a man after my own heart.

>“Its simple,” you say. “We're going to start a huge, huge, huge fucking fire.”
this is not your job. this is the exact opposite of your job

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That's all for tonight! Gotta hit the sack before work tomorrow. We'll resume sometime next week, watch the twitter for exact timing (I'm working a lot of extra hours next week too, so its hard to plan ahead for quest night.) Twitter is https://twitter.com/YumeNikkiQuest, of course.

If there's any questions or whatnot, hit me now while I archive the thread!

>>33666106
His mentor seems to have been a smokejumper, though, so Stark understands controlled burns. Sometimes you have to set a fire to stop a worse one.

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>>33666137

Wait till you find out what they're going to use as fuel.

God, I wish I didn't need sleep.

>>33666171
The artwork of Gueterna?

Seriously though, thanks for running. See you next time.

>>33666171
Who says you do?