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Avalon was searching for another way out, but luck did not seem to be on her side tonight, there only appeared to be one entrance--and exit. If they wanted to get out, they were going to have to go right back up. Which might have been an inconvenient and poorly planned floor layout. What if there was an emergency and everyone had to get out quick?

It took every last senshi, knight and cat, but their efforts combined not only diminished the Negaverse’s hoard--it entirely depleted it. Tomlin had been able to fit just ten starseeds into his subspace pocket before the attempt stopped working and started rejecting any extra seeds he attempted to place inside. Both Myrrha’s bag and Sabine’s lunch pail were filled to the brim, nearly overflowing. Goretti and Adria had sufficiently weighed themselves down with starseeds. The combined efforts of Perdita, Oberon, and Oort allowed them to carry a decent amount of starseeds. Cordoba and Etamin was able to fill as many pockets as they could find hidden on their uniforms.

Alsafi had a sizable collection of her own, and Kastra and Harmonia should have been proud of their collection.Halley, had managed to fill both her socks and her shoes to the brim, while Cetus found that storing starseeds in your shirt was a very clever effort.

Despite Iduna’s size, her skirt could hold many starseeds, and Cadmus’ valiant effort yielded him quite a load.Aptera’s use of the bedsheets to carry starseeds gave her an immense advantage, however the weight of them made it difficult to carry. Thankfully, a nearby senshi offered to help her. Gorner deserved praise for managing to carry so many starseeds without aid from her uniform.


While it seemed a lot of others were busily grabbing as many starseeds as they could hold, Spacewatch had managed at least a handful before she went off hunting for monsters or traps.

While she may not have found any of those, she might have been the first to notice a strange scent in the air. Between all those lingering chemical smells was the faint, and undeniable trace of smoke.

Every starseed was important, but in the entire room there had been six that glistened just a little brighter in the presence of their saviors. Spacewatch, Tomlin, Oort, Alsafi, and Mlinzi all found themselves in possession of one of these starseeds, though in the bustle of everything, they might not have even noticed. In his collection, Etamin had found one—though this one even seemed just a bit different than the others. It seemed more lustrous than the others, and glowed, but in the chaos of everything around them, there wasn't really any time to examine just what they'd found.

They just needed to keep those starseeds—all starseeds—safe.

Getting them had been only part of the challenge--now they had to get out with them.


And that wasn’t their only problem.

The scent of smoke was growing stronger now, though it was taking its time to waft into the room downstairs. In the hallway it was far clearer that, while the majority of the group had been down collecting starseeds, a fire had broken out. It was not clear if it was intentional or accidental, but it was quickly sweeping through the building. The hallway itself seemed mostly unharmed, except for a few flames licking at the walls and the haze of smoke clinging to the ceiling, but flames were eating through the bedrooms and supply closets--quickly.

And they weren’t the only ones to have noticed.

Behind the locked door, their Negaverse prisoners seemed keenly aware. Some screamed in shock or fear, and some frantically exclaimed, “FIRE!”

The door holding the officers trembled as they threw themselves against it, desperately trying to break it down.

“My communication crystal is jammed!” one woman screamed out frantically. “No one’s going to come and rescue us! I can’t teleport, I can’t teleport!”


A man, angry or stressed, shot back, “It’s that damned crystal! I wanted it uninstalled months ago!”

Another woman snapped, “Well then what good is the sign-in sheet if you can teleport in whenever you want? There’s protocol and it needs to be met! Don’t blame the system because you couldn’t do your job!”


A cacophony of angry voices raged behind the door; some were crying already, pleading. Some were yelling amongst each other, and some were trying to brandish their weapons, and some were just shoving at it. The weapons must have been too dangerous, but the door occasionally buckled under their combined weight.

But it wasn’t enough; the fire was spreading quickly.

And yet, a strange crystal glistened knowingly just above the sign in sheet.

Avalon

Smoke. She was relatively unencumbered, and she would be pretty happy to bolt and leave everyone behind, but--hey, there was shouting--about a crystal? Everyone else had a load of starseeds, so if anyone was gonna get there first...

She loped past the group still grabbing starseeds, and took the stairs two at a time. Crystal, crystal... how had she missed that the first time around? Well, like, who cared anyway, she had what she wanted, or she would. If it was stopping the Negaverse from teleporting, then she wanted it. Not to, like, break? She figured the Negaverse had death coming anyway.

When the crystal proved set into the wall and impossible to pry loose, Avalon left the building.

Bye, losers!

Loaded down with crystals, they brushed against his skin and were uncomfortable, the senshi of kappa made his way back the way they'd come. Up the stairs, which never seemed to end, he wondered for a moment where he'd left his geta. They had been uncomfortable, and harmful to their stealth, in this mission and so he'd removed them early on. he'd been carrying them but at some point, somewhere, he'd set them down and had just left them.

Deciding to separate from the group he was with, in order to find them, it was the smell of smoke which grabbed his attention first followed by the sounds of voices. Desperate and in need of some saving.

He wasn't on the same side as them, as they were officers of the Negaverse, but could he very well allow people to die by fire? It was a horrible death in his mind, dying from the smoke and choking and slowly suffocating or to die by the fire itself. Neither was nice in his opinion and letting them simply die, when he could help, was dishonorable. He knew some wouldn't like what he was about to do but it had to be done - it was right. This was a hospital of sorts and many, now it seemed everyone here, couldn't escape on their own.

Headed for the door that was locked, and would sign their death certificates if it wasn't opened, Cetus went to force it open if he could. "If you can help me get you out of here do so. I don't intend for anyone to die here by fire." He called out hoping to be heard through the door and over their own voices. "If we can't break the door tell me what to do so you can all get out of here." Because no one should die like this - trapped and scared.

Myrrha, Senshi of Scents

The sight of her bag stuffed to the brim with starseeds made Myrrha pray that she was doing the right thing in transporting them out of this space. If what the knight was saying were true then these souls could be saved. She was definitely looking at another viewing of the Primer again. With as much gentleness as she could afford Myrrha settled the bag full of starseeds over her shoulder like she was carrying a purse. The senshi of scents inhaled deeply and that was when she registered the acrid scent of smoke in the air.

Oh, this was not good at all. All gentleness aside now Myrrha acted like anyone would if confronted by the threat of flames: she ran. Dashing towards the stairs Myrrha began the arduous ascent. She was loaded down it seemed by the baggage she carried but there was no way that she would leave a single soul behind to this place.

Occasionally taking the steps two at a time seemed to help the senshi cut down the length of time to ascend the staircase but by the time she reached the top her breath was all but gone. Myrrha realized that to stop and regroup would seriously delay her further and she pushed herself onwards ... towards what she recalled was the exit of the building. Her goal was to get herself out of the building and back through the portal to her home. Time surely was running out.

Halley had figured out how to carry her shoes and socks full of starseeds and paused when she realized there was smoke and where there was smoke, there was surely fire. "Oh balls." She muttered as she ran up the stairs barefooted, the best thing about this was she felt like she was faster without wearing shoes.

She paused when she noticed Cetus trying to open the door. She stopped and listened, "Hey! They are saying the crystal was up there!" She pointed up at the front, where they'd come from. How did they miss that?

She smiled at Kastra as the senshi of superstition waltzed her way through the hallway trying to dodge any flames that might attempt to lick at her bare feet. "Ya'know this being a hospital . . . I hope they don't have anything explosive. . . " She mused. . . . Didn't hospitals always have like those oxygen tanks? "If we hurry and see if we can break this crystal they're talking about, maybe we can come back and tell them it's okay to teleport!? since they seem to be talking about that?"

Maybe they weren't that dumb after all, maybe this was the reason they didn't want to fight in the first place? Halley was all colors of confused.

Chibi Oort -- With Tomlin and in the general vicinity of Oberon, Perdita and Chara

The shinies were apparently called starseeds. Souls.. Lives...

Which meant to Oort that it was even more important that they tried to get every last one of them - to save them and if any of them were sparkling a little brighter then it wasn't something that he would have noticed.

And whilst he wasn't quite sure on how to do the saving part just yet, it was something that he figured that he could worry about after they were all back on the other side of the creepy portal - back at where Caedus was.

Oort had been so focused in doing his part to try and collect as much of the shinies as possible that he hadn't noticed anything else, but at the shouts he started to realise that yes he did smell smoke and that was bad - really bad.

Which meant that they needed to get out of here and with the shinies.

But...

He hesitated and then looked at Tomlin, Oberon, Perdita and Chara as he said "What are we going to do about the locked up people? We can't just leave them here - not with a fire."

Because whilst saving the starseeds was important - so was making sure that the locked up bad guys didn't get hurt. "If it helps then I can use my magic on one of you" because whilst it had made him fast enough to get past the bad guys, p'raps this time round it would do the making stronger thing.

Tomlin, Guardian Cat

He wasn’t much help, but ten was better than the one he could have inadvisably carried in his mouth if the subspace pocket hadn’t worked. Tomlin gathered them carefully with soft paws, secreting them away. One, he noted, shone like it knew it was rescued. And he hoped.

All too quickly, the unseen pocket-space was full, and he couldn’t cram in anything more. He dropped the last starseed that wouldn’t fit into Oort’s stash instead, and looked around the empty room, nose wrinkling. Something was wrong (besides the inherent wrongness of the pile of souls they were dismantling). Smelled like smoke. It smelled like a whole lot of smoke. And his new friends had already used all their smoke-mask material as starseed-carriers. Others were already leaving, and his sharp ears picked up the shouting. But this nega-place was full of crystals!

He nodded at Oort’s concerns, taking up station at the chibi’s ankles again, tail lashing. He’d bring up the rear, he decided. He was already low to the ground, below the smoke-line - he could afford to stay a little longer.

“We’ll get everyone out. Do we know where the keys ended up?” he asked. That would be the quickest option, if the ‘crystal’ thing wasn’t a go, and speed was going to need to be a priority. Not just for getting their team out, either – even when the doors were unlocked, the enemy would still need to see to their bedridden members. And hopefully they'd be busy with that, and not try to attack.

Castor Page Aptera

In accordance with the detailed screams about a crystal preventing escape, it was with relief that Aptera witnessed it had been shattered so attempts at teleportation could noticeably succeed on the parts of those who can that she noted in her mind were at odds with the rescue mission she had taken part in trespassing to accomplish.

Then placing her full focus on her own survival and with the help of the senshi who offered to help her share the load of the weight of the starseeds being carried with bed linens, she hurried to the exit so as to return to the portal and get back home while being mindful to keep a secure hold of the starseeds she was aiding in rescuing.