"So this is the Science Center you told me about," said Christina, eyes wide with glee at seeing all the technology. She was right at home here, but we had work to do.
"Yeah," I said, glancing at Mindy, who hung her head in shame. "Let's go find Piper Melville and get this done right away."
We found her easily enough. "Always glad to be of help!" said Mindy, grinning.
"Where are the rest of you? You didn't come alone, did you?"
"Uh, it's just us," said Christina.
Her face fell. She had been expecting an army. "I suppose we can make do with a party of three."
"What's the situation?" I asked.
"The Steam Trowellers have gone berserk!" said Piper. "They're the mechanical workers we brought with us to help with the digging and heavy labor. Now something has gotten into their cogitators and they're attacking members of the expedition! They must be stopped!"
I sighed. If they were ANYTHING like the Gearheads back in Marleybone, I wasn't surprised this had happened. "We'll handle it. And don't worry about the small numbers, Piper..."
"It's not QUANTITY we deal with, but QUALITY." (Woot! Critical hit on the first battle of the day! This has GOT to be a good omen! It's Zafaria or bust, baby!)
I nodded. Those robots were needed to help with the heavy labor - destroying them meant delays as they had to be repaired. "Do you think they malfunctioned naturally?"
"I doubt it," said Piper. "Now that the immediate threat they possess is over with, it's time to get to the bottom of what caused the malfunction. I found some irregularities in the cogitators of the Steam Trowellers, but I'll need to gather more evidence before I can be sure. Can you defeat some Steam Winchers and recover their cogitators? Oh, and recover the cogitators from the Trowellers you defeated earlier. If they've got the same irregularity, then that's the source! Science in action!"
I sighed. I was so tired.
It didn't help that the Winchers gave me and Mindy nightmares about Tu Talos, and they were MYTH-elemental. Luckily, Christina covered our hides and Ra'd them to death. (And they used Earthquake first round, meaning I had to yolo it with Humongo. UGH!)
The other cogitators were easy enough to get, the defeated Trowellers were still lying about and Christina removed them carefully.
"No, thanks," said Christina, smiling. "Tempting as it may be to spend the rest of my life with tinkering, I think I would be betraying my DNA to give up the ways of Balance. Besides, these bozos need me - they couldn't put a dent in those Winchers without my help!" She giggled and I knew she was teasing, although Mindy was visibly hurt by that remark. I guess the other Sailor Wizards didn't tread on her eggshells. *sigh*
"Now that I have identified the glitch in the cogitators, we can form an effective defense," said Piper. "We have a galvanic field that usually protects us from attack but the Steam Trowellers busted it in the crisis. Could you go find some Leyden Jars for us and use them to power the Galvanic posts?"
"Leyden jars? Where are those?" asked Mindy.
Christina was about to speak but I beat her to the punch. "Grace told me that one of her first tasks she did for her professor was to help build a Leyden Jar for the librarian. It's a device that stores electric energy. We can use them to electrify the posts and power them up."
"Geez, having a Storm Wizard as a bestie sure has it perks!" said Christina, smiling.
I giggled, then sighed. I hope Grace is doing okay, though I have my doubts...
Getting the jars was easy and Christina did her voodoo again, powering up the galvanic posts until they sparked wildly. This would be adequate defense against all things organic and mechanical.
"Call me the Handy Sorcerer," laughed Christina, nudging my ribs. I giggled.
"If you're willing to stay on and help, I'm sure Engineer Montgomery would be grateful," said Piper.
I gasped. "I owe him one, big time!" I looked at Mindy, who covered her face in shame. "Of course we'll be willing to help, we owe him one."
"Jolly good!" said Piper. "You'll find him in the Arboretum, just tell him I sent ya."
"You know the way?" asked Christina.
"Me and Mindy do," I said. "C'mon Min, time to atone for your actions."
"You do something reckless ONCE and they NEVER let you live it down!" whined Mindy. "AUGH!"
"Hello again, Engineer Montgomery," I said. (He actually mistakes you for the renegades and threatens you but I didn't put that in as Montgomery probably recognized Sierra and Mindy.)
"Well, if it ain't be the two spell-slingers who wanted a Quicksilver Shield!" said Montgomery, polishing his monocle. "Did my work work out for ya?"
"You betcha!" I said, flashing my Medusa spell card. "So, we owe you and when Piper told us you needed help, we came running with backup. This is Christina."
"Nice to meet a fellow enthusiast in the sciences," said Christina, smirking. "How can we help?"
"The constructs have run amok!" said Montgomery, eager to explain. "Sometin's turned them bonkers and they keep attackin' the expedition!"
"That's horrible," I said.
"I'll need yer help lockin' things down 'round here, it you're willin' ta help. Can ye buy us some time? If ye can thrash a handful of Hydro-Mechs and Steam Valets, that'd do us nicely."
"Gladly!" I said. "As I saw, we owe you big time! Come on, Min. Let's go."
"Argh," said Mindy.
(The Hydro-Mechs will spam Tower Shield. Amber Rainbow had the easiest time with these guys... NOT! Someone forgot to tell the Water-Matons and Steam Valets that Shielding was so yesteryear and they STILL spam Death Shield, so it'll be almost impossible to solo against these guys... and yuo're going to have to defeat a ton of Water-Matons soon. Luckily, Death Shield can't deflect non-Death attacks so one zerg rush from the girls was able to deal with these jerks, though we still took a lot of damage from their attacks.)
"Anything we can do to help," said Christina. "So now what?"
"One of the first order o' business is to get the power runnin'!" he said. "That'll help us immensely. Can you go and assemble my tool-kit from where it's been scattered? Them renegade Water-Matons spread 'em near and far!"
"Sure thing!" said Christina. "And I'll even get the generator back up to power with them, if you don't mind?"
"Thanks, I could use you as an assistant!" said Montgomery, smiling. "That would save us time!"
Christina was on it like white on rice(wait, that doesn't make sense - there's brown rice too!) and soon the generator was up and running.
We helped out and activated the galvanic posts here as well, providing the camp with protection.
We also met a girl with my friend's first name, Grace Conrad, who asked us to be on the lookout for some schematics. THAT was another story. (Sidequest! I'll try to clear those out after I complete Celestia. For now, I want to get through the rest of this world ASAP.)
"It was nothing," said Christina, blushing modestly.
"So what now?" I asked.
"Those pesky Water-Matons are coming from somewhere, to be sure!" he said. "If we can find out where, ye can stop 'em at the source!"
"You mean, they AREN'T your creations?" asked Mindy.
"Ach! Like we could create something like THAT!" said Montgomery. "They're right simple constructs, without much in the way o' free thought. They follow their instructions to the letter. Can you go get the cogitator circuit from one o' em? It should lead ye back to where it came from!"
"I have a feeling we'll be here a while," I sighed.
(The drop rate here is 20%, so don't expect to get the circuit right away. Like the Steam Valets, these guys spam Death Shield. They also have Lifeclops, Life Banshee and Earth Colossus to make your life a living nightmare.)
We found the circuit and it led us to a building in the Crystal Reactor room. Montgomery said it was the Conversatory and it had been sealed for ages.
"To the best of me knowledge," he said. "That door is powered by three energy sources related to the Astral Magic: Stars, Sun and Moon. The best place to get that kind of energy is the fish fountain here in the Arboretum. You can harness it by collecting three power cores from the Water-Matons."
 |
| Mindy: "No! I'm going to H***!!!" (Yeah, that Mark of the Beast joke is getting old, but wow, bad omen much?) |
(The drop rate this time is 10%, so you'll be here for a while. Luckily, I was able to find a group of Water-Matons in the Crystal Reactor room that were accompanied by Aqua-Bots, which are Fire and thus don't have Tower Shield. Had to deal with a zillion Firezillas, though.)
We placed the cores in the fish fountain's alcoves and a key appeared over it. I took it.
"Let me look at that a sec," said Christina. I gave the key to her and she examined it. "Hmmm... I think we need to show this to Montgomery."
"Crud," I said. "Then the door is sealed forever."
"The thing can be fixed," said Christina. "Right, Montgomery?"
He nodded. "The best bet for fixin' that key is to use some proper Marleybonian tools and parts to make sure it goes right. Can ye go back to the Research Station and fetch some gearworks from the construct assembler? Those'll do nicely, thanks!"
"Easy peasy," said Christina. "Leave it to me!"
"Back," she said moments later. "Just used the teleporter to get to the station, grabbed the stuff and we're good for go!"
I smiled. Chris may be weird but she's a genius!
"These'll do nicely," said Montgomery. "Give me a moment and I'll get this little widget sorted out!" He ducked into his tent and I heard noises coming from it. He came a moment later. He worked fast.
"Now ye can breach the Conversatory," he said, handing me the key. "Be careful, until we find out what's inside, we're still wee babes in the woods."
"We'll be careful," said Mindy. "Leave it to Sai--"
"US," I said, dragging her off.
We broke into the Conservatory and found books but we were spotted by rogue-bots. "Kill them!" said the Water-Maton. I rushed into battle. It was MY turn to sacrifice myself for the team.
"Get the books!" I shouted. "Then bounce! We can't afford to get into needless fights!"
Christina snatched up the books, grabbed Mindy and ported away while I fought hard... but two Puking Frogs of Calveras County took out the Water-Maton and I managed to escape in the chaos.
(This isn't a boss fight, just annoying robot enemies. Two Steam Trowellers will join in if you come in with more than two people. The old Ranma Saotome Method of Martial Arts works great in this case - you only need to examine the books to advance, you don't need to defeat the enemies. However, Sierra's damage boost is so high two Humongos with a bit of boost were all that were needed to take out two enemies.)
"I've been reading the books while you were fighting," said Christina. "They're instructions to how to get into the Crystal Reactor. We can explore that place now."
Montgomery pointed out that the rogue-bots were all coming from the Crystal Reactor, so that was where we had to go.
Of course, the two power generators that locked the door tight were powered by cores from, you guessed it, the rogue-bots. We had to wipe out a few more of them. *SIGH* :(
We unlocked the gate control room - my bad, the books told us how to open the door to the lever which opened the gate - and had to take out a few bots but we got that done. Time to enter the reactor and be done with this.
"Okay, you big piece of metal manure!" I snarled. "You've given me a headache, forcing me to destroy all of your stupid minions! TIME TO BE PUNISHED!!!!"
(Muglump, the leader of the bots, isn't too difficult. He only has 4640 HP and no gimmicks. However, he always has enough pips to cast Fire Dragon off the bat, so be wary of that. Mindy got wiped because for some reason the bots ganged her with Icezilla and Firezilla. We had to bring in Talos for this fight. :( WARNING: Once one of the players entered the battle EVERYONE will be pulled in at once and Sierra got chosen to be first, which really sucks because she has less health.)
Christina finished off the leader with Judgement and I took out the last guy with the Pigs. I decided to retool the deck so the Pigs would be my majority of attacks - they did good damage for less pips than Medusa and from the looks of it, her stun will be negated by bosses and she's only good for bosses as she only hits one target unlike Frog or Quake. (Sometimes I wish I had been ice or fire instead, which have more area attack spells.)
"A portal piece!" said Christina. "Let's get this to Montgomery."
First off, I took notes of the Phoenix Zodiac sign for that journalist.
"I don't know, I don't care," I said. "We have the portal piece, we're going to see if we can fix the Solarium portal. I think there was only one piece missing."
"Well, pass along my good wishes to Miss Benchley, will ya?" said Montgomery. "And keep a tight leash on that lass." He pointed to Mindy.
"The Sailor Wizards are never gonna let me live this down if they hear about this!" moaned Mindy.
"Serves you right rushing in like a fool," I snorted. "Let's go."
Mindy grabbed the piece and installed it into the portal, which flared to life. "Done and dusted! We can get in now!" She ran inside...
ZAP!
"WAAAAAH!" screamed Mindy, nursing her burns. "What happened?"
"That's not supposed to happen," said Christina, rubbing her chin. "The portal isn't working even though we fixed it. I have a feeling something's tampering with it."
"Maybe Edith knows," I muttered. It's just one thing after another, isn't it?
"Yes, but we can't enter the portal, it hurts us if we try to enter," I said. "Any clues?"
"The portal should be working," muttered Edith. "You did get all the portal pieces, did you?"
We nodded.
"I'm at a loss then," she said. "But I have good news! Sir Thurston Plunkett has been found and is alive! He's hiding in the Crustacean Empire. Maybe you can ask him for advice on how to fix the portal so it works."
Sounded like a plan.
"Hold on," said Christina, suddenly holding her head. "Yes?"
"Okay Al, I'll swing by your pad." She sighed. "Old Al needs to talk to me. BRB."
I hugged her. "You go ahead. Me and Min will check out the Crustacean Empire and find out if we can fix the portal." I wondered what Alhazred wanted. Well, he was Chris's professor. (Yep, Christina is now Level 68, so she's getting the Chimera spell quest but I won't complete it until we finish Celestia, to be fair.)
[To be continued...]
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