Stage 1 - The Massholes!

It’s a clear day, perfect for flying! Look out the windows—

(They’re little round windows only a foot in diameter.)

—see the land below! As soon as you cross the border, everything below is craters and overgrowth. Some of the craters are stagnant ponds, others are pits of waterfalls, trickling and gushing to depths unknown. Whatever war men waged, the men lost. Mother Nature claimed it all.

At least that’s the case before you’ve flown past Buckburg. You start to see pits of melted plastic, a rainbow nightmare trying to flush itself down a clogged abyss. Another crater is filled with rusty train cars clinging to vines.

👩🏻‍🎤

The Mother

"No wonder my mom lost my daughter’s trail. Nature itself is too corrupted to speak. I can’t imagine why anyone would take my little girl here…"

The Mother hesitates, as if to listen…

"May… is that yo—??"

Her words are cut off as a bolt of lightning shoots through the left wing of the steamplane, setting it ablaze!

"The fuck?!" Like charcoal gray curtains, cloud cover swoops in from the west and from the east! "Losing altitude—V-TOL’s out—fuck!"

The Mother tries to control the plane, even as it speeds toward the Massholes! As you get close to the ground, you see a broken highway bridge—both halves up at an angle, daring drivers to jump the gap.

In your case, flying between or under without a collision is the dare.

@Eltesla,@Tickettbror,@Dmbrainiac,@Totes_McGee

Murasaki has been meditating in her seat, undisturbed by any turbulence the steamplane encountered. At least until the left wing was suddenly taken out. Her third eye snapping open, she leaps out of her seat.

"Please allow me to assist." She is suddenly at the Mother's side, taking the controls. "Though be warned. I know nothing about controlling one of these magical flying devices."

👩🏻‍🎤

The Mother

"Your effort is commendable but shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!"

•

SOMEWHERE NEAR LEMONSTER

You wake up in the plane. It’s not in one piece, but you are. You remember the wing clipping the bridge. (Or being clipped off by it.) There was fire. And spinning. A lot of spinning.

As you regain your bearings, you can see that the windows are wrapped in vines.

Open the emergency exit—or if you’re Gemini, just fly out a broken window—you see the entire plane is entangled in vines. The one wing is in its vertical position.

"Right," the Mother says to Murasaki. "You pulled on the stick and the V-TOL finally unjammed. That… probably slowed our descent and saved our lives."

And while that may be true, you are now on a busted plane that is dangling from an entanglement of vines. It’s only a ten foot drop to the water below, but the water is gross.The Mother grabs a vine and swings past the slimy green water. She lands on her good ankle and stumbles a bit. "Looks like we walk. Go ahead and grab a vine, and c’mon down!"

She’s trying to be encouraging…

@Eltesla,@Tickettbror,@Dmbrainiac,@Totes_McGee

"This is why I prefer water travel," Gong-Ju says groggily. She peers down at the murky water and makes a face. "But not that water. Ew."

Gingerly grabbing a vine, the mermaid attempts to swing...

"Eep!" she squeaks as her grip slips and she falls in the gross water anyway! A glow suffuses her--

--as her legs transform into a green mermaid tail. She propels herself through the water, but the green slime sticks to her in a most undignified manner. "Yuck!"

"I would've been wicked stoked to do tricks on that bridge." Gemini sighs, completely missing the problems of their situation.

She glides out of the plane to stand on top, hand shading her eyes despite her cap, and takes stock of their location. Her melancholy is quickly washed away, replaced with her usual goofy smile as she sees the wonders around. Before long she's gaining speed by using the plane as a ramp before hopping onto a vine for a grind.

"Not what I'm used to, but I'm not wiggin'."

"Forgive me, everyone. It seems 'planes' are not so easy to operate, especially when one of the wings is destroyed."

She's not eager to take a dip in the water, but she doesn't trust her fate to the vines either after seeing Gong-Ju slip. Murasaki leaps out of the emergency exit, and at the apex of her jump...

Use a Secret Move to move yourself past an obstacle in a way that’s humanly impossible, or enter Stealth Mode!

As long as you have 🌸, you can do this at no cost.

Secret Move #7152: Rising Upper

She launches herself diagonally upwards through the air with a flaming uppercut, using the maneuver just like a double jump! Comfortably clearing the nasty water, Murasaki lands next to the Mother.

"Mother. You seemed to notice something right before the lightning took us down. Did you sense your daughter?" She asks.

The Mother is very impressed by Murasaki’s move, Gemini’s trick and Gong-Ju’s transformation.

👩🏻‍🎤

The Mother

"I felt her," she says. "I can feel her now. Alive…" She looks up the slope of the crater. She’s facing north.


In the water, Gong-Ju sees a paper floating. Although it’s wet, and it would flake apart if she were to pick it up, it’s floating text-side-up with barely a wrinkle.

WANTED!
~DEAD OR KO’d~
[🧝🏻‍♀️]
THE MAIDEN

REWARD:$1.



As Gemini lands her jump (or flight?), she notices a chartreuse glow or two in a nearby bush.

Lacey also sees this from the plane. She knows a pair of ogling eyes when she sees ’em…

Lacey had been stuck in her Hammer Suit transformation, wondering how to change back into her sexy and less cumbersome form. Hadn't the plumber said something about damage causing him to lose the power-up...?

Apparently that's how it works, as the plane jostled Lacey enough to change her back; there's a "chyump chyump chyump" sound effect, and the suit disappears in a pixelated mist. She smooths out her dress and runs a hand through her hair.

"Now that's figured out. Maybe I can seduce some more plumbers and get some more power-ups. Didn't what's-his-face say he had a brother...?"

At the moment, though, avoiding the icky water is crucial. Lacey slips on some gloves, grabs a vine, and....

Success! She lands next to the others, grinning. In her opinion, she's less athletic than her co-Bombshells, so successfully pulling off a stunt like this fills her with satisfaction.

"Not bad, huh? Though I thought I saw something in those bushes as I swooped down. Did anyone else notice something weird? Well, weirder than usual...."

"Yeah, girl." Gemini kicks her board up into her hands, inspecting the decal and the wheels in case of damage. "Saw something with this wild glow, sorta yellowy? A wisp without the willow, wicked sick."

The willowless wisps duck into the bush!

The Mother looks in the direction of a rustling sound. But the only movement any of you see is that of collapsed vines—on different sides of the bush where the glow was spotted.

It could be anywhere, now.

👩🏻‍🎤

The Mother

"Any o’ you have a way to detect whoever or whatever’s sneaking around?"

@Eltesla,@Tickettbror,@Dmbrainiac,@Totes_McGee

Gong-ju pulls herself out of the water, her tail glowing before it transforms back into legs. As she wipes the filthy slime off of her body, she looks to the underbrush. "Allow me to try to get them to come out," she says before launching into a song. The words are foreign, the native language of her mermaid brethren, but the melody is warm and inviting, laced with mermaid magic...

😻

Emoticat

"BEAUTIFUL! BRAVA!" a cat-boy shouts as he pops up right behind The Mother—

👩🏻‍🎤

The Mother

—thus startling the aviatrix—

"YAAAAAAAAAA!!"

•

🙀

Emoticat

—whose reaction startles the cat-boy!

"NYAAAAAAAAAA!!"

•

👩🏻‍🎤

The Mother

"—GAAH! EMOTICAT?! WHAT THE FUCK?!"

The Mother makes an effort to calm herself.

😹

Emoticat

Emoticat seems to shift his emotion with no effort at all. He laughs from embarrassment. "Sorry, April. I saw your plane go down and all these ladies, and one o’ the local mutants put a hit on your kid. I was being careful-like."

He turns to face you, dear Bombshells.

"But I can see you’re all on The Mother’s side. And… I can help you."

He doesn’t say how. It’s as if he’s really really hoping one of you will ask.

😺

Emoticat

Emoticat grins eagerly in anticipation.

Of you asking.

He hopes…

Murasaki tenses up at first, but when it becomes apparent that the Mother knows this creature, she relaxes. "...Very well. I'll bite. How can you help us?" She doesn't seem to be expecting much out of Emoticat.

😸

Emoticat

"HAHAHA! I thought you’d never ask!"

Emoticat tosses a coin into the air…



🪙
✨
💫
✨
💫
🌟


When it lands, there’s a poof of red smoke. And when the smoke clears, you see…

[ +- ] 😺 ¥¡¡ Shop

Ye Olde Snippet Shoppe

[ +- ] 🧧 - Extra Joy

In a combat round, if your first action uses the 🕹️, you may take an additional action.

• both actions must be different
• if your actions are 🕹️DEF and ㊙️DEF, the first action is self-defense and the second action is defend-a-friend.

[ +- ] 🧧 - Button Mash

In a combat round, if your first action uses ㊙️ or ☢️, you may take an additional action that also uses ㊙️ or ☢️.

• both actions must be different
• if your actions are ㊙️ATK and ☢️ATK, the first action determines the attack type and if it lands, the second action is a combo-finish (or it triggers a combo-breaker against you on a 💢MISS.)

Emoticat grins widely from within his port-a-kiosk!

"Welcome, Dear Bombshells, to Ye Olde Snippet Shoppe! For the mere fee of a red envelope fulla yen, you can become a member! And, tonight only!" He looks up and notes the patch of blue in the otherwise overcast sky. "Make that today only, I’ll throw in a choice of Snippet for free!"

Whatever Murasaki expected, it wasn't this. She approaches the kiosk and pulls out the envelope. "Conveniently, we received red envelopes just a little while ago."

She hands her envelope to Emoticat and begins to contemplate her options. Luckily, she's not illiterate despite living in a cave until recently.

"Lucky cat, I have an envelope for you," Gong-Ju says, offering it to the cat.