Masks 2

Ken goes to Tharaea. "Hey, Thae," he quips. "Do you think you can do anything with this? Improve it? Scan it with your antennae?"

Theraea... grabbed that gun with telekinesis (not her hands) and scanned it. If her scanner was working again. If not she just... looked it over? "Um... I'm not completely sure if these are safe to touch as is, but I have a friend who might be able to do something with them later? I can't really improve it right now."

From what Theraea could tell, the gun glowed with strange otherworldly energy and was almost certainly not safe to touch.

Theraea pulled some containers out of her Moth Bag of Holding to store the guns in! That'd be safe enough for now.

"Um, okay, definitely shouldn't touch those. Maybe we can make them usable after this? Or at least figure out what they're about."

Ken uses his technopathy to communicate with the guns to see if they can be safer. Or maybe they'll be like, as fervent as the cultists.

Esen takes a deep breath and steps towards the undercity access.

"All right. Let's do this."

As soon as everyone else is ready, she's gonna go in, ready for a fight.

Sam pouted, reaching for Theraea's pouch.

"But... Gun... Fish gun... I can use it, I promise."

He sounded like a child being denied a steak knife at the dinner table.

"Alright, let's just-- keep sayin' it's normal, if we can, yeah? Try'n keep everyone calm... that bloke's mutterin' about a fish-gun, already gone crazy, I swear."

"Sorry, but it's too dangerous. I can bring it to you later if we can make it safe... and also if it's any better than a regular gun after that? We should, um, focus on getting ready for the Undercity right now."

Ken talked to the gun, but it did not answer. It was too low tech, sadly. Purely mechanical, with no electronics. Lots of weird magic, too, but none he could communicate with.

Theraea took the guns and put them in her containment unit. Sam whined.

***

The Demon looked to Finn.

"Trust me, it's better they know the danger than think everything is fine," she told Finn. "You can't prepare if you're having the wool pulled over your eyes. We have a better chance of getting through it if everybody knows what we're dealing with and conditions themselves accordingly."

With that, Nocturne finally stepped forward.

"Right, we need to keep moving. Coyote, we'll need your eyes up front," he told her.

And with that, the group proceeded down into the Slums. Reaching the bottom of the ramp and heading into the darkness, they found that the Undercity was flooded. The water near the entrance reached up to an average person's waist, and it was cool and salty. Everybody except Maria heard a soft singing emanating from deeper within the Undercity, and run-down tenements and store fronts extended off in front of them. Alleys branched off the main streets, often housing marketplaces of their own.

Proceeding onward with Maria presumably parting the water for them, the walls of the old city started to give way to bright and colorful walls of "coral" seemingly made of some kind of bone. The coral was covered in brightly coloured polyps, crawling with centipede-like worms and sea slugs, strange eyes blinking out at them from within. The water level also began to rise as they went deeper into the Undercity...

Those affected by psionics also occasionally saw the illusion of the unmarred city flicker, giving them glimpses of the city's true nature as seen by Maria.

Still a big ass alien, Zil thinks to herself. Or, rather, to her friend she carred with her in a pendant around her neck.
"Any idea what that gun was, Tim?"
A shot in the dark, but worth it.

Stepping through all the water isn't so bad. It's cool to watch it move so they can walk through, and Zil is careful to look around, listening intently.
"Anyone got any idea what that singing is?"

Theraea flew up above the rest of the party to keep an eye on things and look ahead. Maybe she can find the source of that singing that isn't actually there. She had a hand above her eyes and was squinting like she was looking at something bright, even though the Undercity was, you know, underground. That's what you get for having Dimensional Sight as a power here in Eldritch Town.

Esen shudders at the sights and sounds around her. She looks around nervously, her hookshot invisibly snaking through the air around her, unconsciously reacting to the movement in the coral.

"I hate this I hate this."

She presses her hands into her ears, trying to block out the singing.

"That singing is bad news, I can feel it."

Ken is trying not to puking from the hypnotic sealife wriggling and the singing.

He sends his drone out to scout!

Oof! All that crab-jostling and water-based multitasking really scrambled a lady's brain! Maria got herself in the GAME! Right, right...

Euck. This place never got any nicer, did it?

Maria kept them decently far away from the water, letting up an air spout once they got far enough to need one. Wasn't TOO huge a berth, wasn't sure how long they'd be down there, and how much 'muscle she could expend on it right now. Sword in hand, she continued along with everyone.

"I don't hear it, so whatever it is, we're meant to be curious."

Theraea and the drone took to the air above the group before the water got too high, finding that the entire district was flooded up to the ceiling once they got far enough. They were forced back to the ground, where Maria was keeping a bubble of air maintained. Lady Light, notably, was NOT taking to the air. Nor using any of her powers, really. Nocturne, Jim, and La Chat were on guard and ready for anything, while the Demon busied herself making light wisps to keep visibility high.

Tim responded to Zil with a negative. "I've never seen anything like this if I'm being honest."

And then the singing took a sour turn right before they all saw it: hundreds of fishmen darting towards them through the water, all carrying the same barnacle weapons and harpoons as they had been up above. They were coming from every direction. Some swam down from high up windows, some swam out from shops, some came up from the ceilings, and some came down the roads and alleys.

And they were all converging on the group.

"Shit! Incoming!"

Esen decides to fight the fishmen on the ceilings, shooting the hookshot out and stabbing them before they get close. If any are in a line, she'll slash across them.

"That's... a lot of them, okay, wow!"

Theraea powered up her Abyssal Amp, and stood ready to defend the group! She focused on the ones that got too close, trying to fling them out of the way or fling whatever objects she could lift into them. Her intent wasn't to kill, because her intent was pretty much never to kill, she was just focused on disabling them or otherwise keeping them away from the rest of the group.

WHAM, BAM, AIR POCKET WAS BIGGER NOW! Maria swung open the walls to give them more space to work with, and pulled out a shotgun, too just going for whatever got too close to be avoided.

"Stay close and keep moving, we can't fight everybody! Someone- the singing? Biggest lead we've got, let's MOVE!"

With that, she'd just do her best to defend the dang group, and follow whoever pointed the way. Unless someone had a better idea, that would also be pretty rad.

Curious, Cadence touched her visor to scan the sound waves of the singing to get a reading on them. Then she would try to replicate it, like do a full mimic of it, and try it on a fish person to see how they react. She was just casually doing this knowing the other people had her back while she was messing with this.

Sam looked to Theraea.

"HEY IF YOU GOT ANY NON-POSSESSY GUNS IN YER SACK, I'D LIKE TO BORROW ONE! THE WEIRDER THE BETTER!"

He shot at the wave of oncoming fish cultists until they overran the group, and then would switch to the only melee his powers sort-of effected: pistol whipping.

It looked ridiculous.

"WE NEED TO FIND A GOOD CHOKE POINT! KEEP THE BASTARDS FROM FLANKIN' US!"

Theraea looked back. "COVER ME, I THINK I HAVE SOMETHING!"

She dug around frantically in her bag, and pulled out... a musket. But like, a weirdly futuristic-looking musket, made out of fancy alloys and with glowy bits all over it. She tossed it to Sam. "IT USES SOME KIND OF MAGNETIC... STUFF TO FIRE REALLY HARD?? YOU CAN HOLD ONTO THAT FOR NOW!"

Sam acquired the GAUSS MUSKET!

"AAAAAAAHHHHHH"

Sam operated the musket with expert precision, probably covering allies in fish-cultist remains as he used the weapon at short distance!

"Aw SHITE, time tae see what these fuckers are about!"

Finn raises her hands toward the oncomers and fires off a long wave of ice from one hand, straight up Sith Lightning from the other. Neither would be terribly powerful, sure, and she still didn't really know what pokemon types they were dealing with, here, but this ought to at least cover a couple bases. She'll stick to the edges of the bubble as a result.

She does this all while running along behind Coyote. "Hey, if ye dinnae mind my askin', what do we do if we get tae the singin' and find ourselves enraptured by the Siren's song? Like, literally? Her name's Siren, for chrissakes, this is DEFINITELY some sort of lure! We predicted it, but it's definitely goin' tae be worse than expected, aye?!"

"You got an idea that doesn't include murdering everyone?! Then say it and let's go!"

BAM

"You've got a mind control helmet on! If you were going to get tranced, don't you think it'd be worse by the ancient horror from the depths that got everyone in the city- not the fucking superperson?! You already know it isn't real- and nobody's suddenly turned on us! And last I CHECKED, she didn't.... Ok I guess nothing has STOPPED her from gaining stupid magic powers in 30 years- STILL WAITING FOR AN ALTERNATIVE."