T - Xenon, Jenn, Kitty, Soli

[Kitty]

Nova was more then a little glad for Felaria's help, Ted was quite the mouthful after all and, admittedly, his club power wasn't exactly balls to the wall amazing. not like his sister's anyhow.... it was a little disconcerting when a ten year old could pick you up like you were nothing.

His tail waved in a pleasant manner as he continued to drag ted down the stairs, at lease his head wasn't slapping against the ground with every step they went down, right? However, that was part was forgotten when Felaria let go and he stumbled [10], but avoided falling face first and let go of Ted. Eh.... if the little kid was weird enough to play with corpses why not just let her?

Felaria?

And they started in on him again [5] and his body froze before his head started to move and his nose twitched.... he needed more stairs, better stairs, up stairs. His toes twitched a little with the urge just bolt off on his own. The stairs were calling.

Soph was already terrified, more bodies? But then that backwater bitch had to come on the scene again and try and grab her. She let off a high pitched scream of terror before lifting up her wrist to counter Felaria's 'attack'. She whole heartedly believed it was an attack anyhow... and tried to get her to hit the pretty little bracers on her wrist [18]. She was convinced that this woman was going to take her, skin her, eat her flesh and then use her pelt to make one of her precious wall hangings or something.


_____________

Diamond-studded Bracers: These gorgeous bracers are tough to tie on, but amazingly helpful in battle.
Not much that can cut through diamond, now is there? When any other Card or Rabbit strikes there bracers, meaning to attack the wearer, they will suddenly find themselves with two broken fingers and an inexplicably bleeding nose!
Now...why did that happen? Continuing to strike the bracers will result in further injuries, becoming steadily more grievous as they continue, though many back off from the confusion...or cotton on and simply avoid hitting the bracers. However, this spell is only effective if the wearer is being attacked. Hitting someone with the bracers and expecting the magical items to think that was an "attack" will result in an oddly hilarious outcome. PM the Admin should this occur.

[Nathalia]

Nova's teeth sank a bit too deeply into Ted's fatty flesh and a rather unpleasant tear opened up and began to bleed upsettingly as he finally hit the bottom of the stairs.
Fortunately, the Opossum was still unconscious due to smoke inhalation.
At least he can't feel it yet.
Might be best to leave him here so as not to hurt him further, though.
You can try to take him if you like.

The room they are now in is most certainly underground, judging by the coolness of the air and the slightly damp feel.
A not-too-well-made basement, maybe?
It stretches beyond where their light allows, but what they can make out, apart from their "departed" comrades, are two long tables, both covered in small pots of soil.
They appear to be empty.

[carcinoGeneticist]

Lucky thing the person down in the hole was a tiny thing. Karkat wasn't exactly a paragon of size and masculinity himself, and had Maeve been the size of an average Card, he would have had a bitch of a time helping her out of the hole. As it was, he felt an immediate pang of - of something. Who the fuck put a child into a hole?

He'd think on it later. "I'm Karkat, that's Felaria, the unconscious ass whose help we could desperately use is Ted, and the other assholes are unimportant twats who I can almost guarantee will make you miserable sometime in the next twenty minutes." He spoke quickly, wasting no time in moving towards the stairs with the rest of the group. "We need to get the fuck out of here before the dog-asshole's previous 'handiwork' lights this whole goddamn place up." Helping the mission to move Ted just didn't seem like the best option, so he would do the next best thing - give the muscle the room they needed.

Until their mission was brought to a crashing halt by the presence of more copses. A wave of nausea punched Karkat squarely in the gut and he sucked a deep breath through his nose, trying to keep his lunch down. Did he even have a lunch to keep down? Fuck. "Oh, what the... That's just..." He turned away as soon as he noticed that the girl was on the fucking corpses, a hand clapped over his mouth.

There was nothing to do but try to ignore the situation. He focused his attention on the flowerpots, lifting one and turning it slowly in his hands, giving it a sniff and lightly prodding at the soil contained within.

Anything but looking back at the dead people. Oh, man.

[Dark]

“Well met,” Maeve replied, meaning it. She tended to be a bit jumpy around Cards, but at the moment all she felt was overwhelming gratitude. The male who had aided her might be considered--from her brief exposure to him, at least--brash, but she found it oddly charming in the moment. Nerves, she told herself, and dismissed the thought.

She shook her head in response to Felaria’s question--statement?--and answered: “No, I’m afraid I do not.” She recalled the last time unexplainable phenomena had occurred to and around her with a faint shiver. It wasn’t quite the same, and yet… She wondered.

With little other choice, she followed the Cards down the stairs.

Maeve wrinkled her nose at the smell as they descended--she recognized that particular odor only too well, and it put her immediately on edge--and almost considered voicing a warning, but the chance was lost; they were already there. They had little choice but to continue.

She examined the corpses briefly, careful not to touch. (She wasn't sure what the feline thought it was doing, or if she even wanted to know). Dead for some time, which made it hard to determine, but--

“What killed them, do you think?” she asked, considering what she could see of the basement: empty, except for two tables covered with empty pots. Curious.

[Nathalia]

The flower pot Karkat picked up seems to tingle slightly...and the glues itself to the Goat mix's palm!
Stuck fast, he can actually feel through it! Maybe it's not such a good idea to try to break it off, but Hell! Who knows what it's doing to him right now?!?!

The copse Soph was resting on suddenly undulates!
The chest heaves upwards and a small mass of writhing root-like structures break through what's left of the skin, reaching up to wrap themselves around the Feline's paws!

[Dark]

((Okay, guys…I’m gonna go ahead and post to get the ball rolling again. <3))

There was very little warning before chaos erupted, and Maeve wished she could say she was surprised, but her experience was that if a situation could become worse in any way, it generally did. So perhaps she was a little startled--vines erupting from a decomposing corpse had not been something she would have exactly expected--but not particularly surprised.

She sprang into action--she didn’t have a great distance to go, since she had been examining the corpses previously--grabbing the child’s scruff and hauling her away even as the plants shot up to tangle around the feline’s front limbs. Maeve threw the girl child away non-too-gently as she whirled her body, using the momentum to bring her bladed tail into the mix.

Since the fateful night when she had first sharpened the bone, she had practiced relentlessly to improve her aim and control--she refused to be helpless--and she put that practice to the test now. The blade sliced through the vines surging towards the girl.

[carcinoGeneticist]

With his back turned to Maeve, the Goat-mix shrugged, attention still focused away from the corpses. It really wouldn't do to puke in front of the others and lose whatever credit he'd managed to earn from them - the more they respected him, the easier this would all be. They needed a leader, and he was fucking cut from the original fabric that leaders had been designed from. "Who knows. And really, who cares, unless whatever killed them comes for us? How they died doesn't help us get out of this nightmare."

He turned the pot in his hand idly once more, and chaos erupted behind him. There was no time for him to notice, of course. There was a tingle in his hand, and before he could even curse his own stupidity, the pot was anchored to his hand.

With a horrified screech, Karkat stumbled back from the other flower pots, gripping his wrist with his free hand and shaking the pot desperately, flailing with all the terrified force he could muster - directly into the wall [18]. "FUCK!"

[Nathalia]

Karkat's flailing smashed the flower pot against the wall in a gush of soil, pottery shards, and his own blood.
His hands appears to have...smashed...quite completely, the stump where hand and pot used to be is broken is a freakishly fragmented fashion, like bits of broken pottery instead of drizzling flesh, slowly dripping blood onto the floor.

Maeve fared far better.
Her bladed tail sliced through all of the vines, save one, with ease, their severed bits dropping to the floor, curling up, and ceasing to wriggle at once.
The one she had not cut pulled back, and then, with a horrible sound, pulled back into the chest cavity and vanished into the decaying flesh.

[carcinoGeneticist]

The curse was cut short by a genuine scream, not of terror but of pure pain. The pain exploded up his arm in a way that was not what he was supposed to be feeling in the slightest, considering the sound of exploding ceramic that had accompanied it. He sunk to the floor, sucking a few deep breaths through his open mouth to try and steady himself before looking at the damage. When he did, his head spun horribly [12 for staying conscious].

Oh.

Oh, man. "Oh god," he whimpered, struggling to comprehend what he was even seeing. "Oh man..."

This had to be a curse. There was just no other way to explain it. He picked his sickle up with his still-functioning hand, pulling himself to his feet and setting the horribly mangled appendage down on the table. He knew it would grow back, if he cut it using this. He knew it. That didn't make the act any easier, and he held up the sickle before hesitating. Blood dripped down onto the floor and Karkat's stomach heaved again. Was he really going to do this?

Fuck. Did he have a choice?

[Dark]

Satisfaction and endorphins pumped through Maeve’s frame as her bladed tail sliced easily through the vines--with the exception of one, which sucked back into the corpse with a horrendous sound--she landed neatly and surveyed her work. The vines she had severed had ceased moving, but there was still the remaining one to contend with. She considered its haven morbidly, before being momentarily distracted by one of her companions.

“What are you doing?” she hissed at the man--Karkat, memory supplied--hopping over to survey the injury. Maeve twitched; she wasn’t quite sure what had happened--though she had a vague notion, having just noticed the shattered pot--but the damage was extensive. It was probably best, considering their circumstances, to amputate...he was probably going to go into shock either way.

“At least let me make you some bandages first,” she snapped; he was bleeding enough already, as it was. She didn’t ask permission before she used her blade to cut several strips off the bottom of his shirt; it was partially in tatters, anyway.

“Do you need someone else to do it for you?” she asked, noticing his expression. It wouldn't do to get halfway through and pass out.