Video + action | User ID error, unknown sender

[callada]

[The video begins pointed at what looks to be a stone slab of some sort with an unusual symbol carved into it.]

Anyone know what this is? Or where? The SmartSnail location isn't working down here.

[That's not entirely the fault of where he's at; it's intentional on his behalf. But the question still stands. Rosinante backs away from the symbol to reveal that it's on a large stone door, then slowly rotates around his current location to show it in the video feed. He seems to be in some sort of interior - a cave, or a collapsed ruin perhaps, given how the stone surfaces look worked but worn. It's lit dimly by bioluminescence that grows on the walls themselves, twinkling and pale blue-green, and in that illumination the edges of a statue at one end of the cave is visible - a warrior, holding a chalice raised to the sky while winged people encircle him. The passageways look to continue in at least two directions and a faint buzzing is heard. Interference in the video? Or insects? Who knows, as the video ends there.]

---

[While awaiting any replies, or guidance of any sort, he stays near the door and the statue for now. The buzzing hasn't stopped, even with the snail tucked away in his pocket. It's pretty down here, but he'd like to leave. Or maybe find someone else stuck down here so at least he has someone to talk to.]

Comments

[callada]

I sure hope so.

[But he smiles even though he doesn't sound so sure. Buggy's enthusiasm is infectious. He wants to feel that sort of enthusiasm. He picks up his wet clothes from where they were left, shivering slightly at the feel of the cold water, then heads down the passageway toward where they had left the statue and its door. It's not a long walk and soon they stand before it once again.]

Gonna need your help again since you can reach up there. Just stick a handful of dirt in, I guess, and squeeze the water out of these. I really hope that's all it takes.

[big_top_boss]

Yeah, got it. Feel special, 'cause I don't go to this kinda effort for just anyone!

[He grabs a handful of dirt up, and that he sprinkles it in with flair. Why? Because he's Buggy, that's why. And he doesn't miss a chance for a good show if he can help it, no matter how disinterested the audience might be. And then he wrings out water into it, and waits.

Please work, please work, don't let the cup need his expensive booze. Or worse, blood.]

[callada]

[The showy display makes him laugh a little, as he briefly forgets the pain of his rock-slashed back and watches the impromptu magic show. And there is, in fact, a reaction - a dim glow of the chalice itself, just barely visible in the ambient light, but it quickly dies.]

Shit. Did you see that? It almost did something. Kind of looked like it wasn't strong enough though.

[big_top_boss]

Yeah, that's something. Think we need more mud? [He's not sure how much more would do it, or if it's just responding to being filled with anything.]

[callada]

I dunno. I think we should try a drop of the alcohol and see how it responds.

[Since yes, it could be just a reaction to anything going in. At least it's worth a test.]

[big_top_boss]

Might as well! [Buggy pulls out his flask from a pocket of his coat, and then his hands make their way up to pour a little in. As minimal of a pour as he can manage, all things considered he'd rather just drink the stuff. But in the end, he'll take what he can get, because being stranded is way worse than being without booze.]

[callada]

[That is sure a fitting flask for someone with clown makeup and a flair for showmanship. Sure is a theme going on here, he's learning.

As the droplet of alcohol hits the surface of the mud, the chalice lights up again, then fades just as quickly as the first time. And then it repeats - a dim, slow illumination and then darkness again.]

Oh, hell.

[An option occurs to him that he hadn't thought of before.]

[big_top_boss]

[Buggy is committed to his flashy big top aesthetic if nothing else. It's go flashy or go home as far as he's concerned, and he doesn't think there's any point in a dull or simple life.

Buggy stares at the glow, this is something worth thinking about. Maybe it just needs a certain amount of liquid in it? Maybe it needs multiple types? Rosi's words drag his attention back to him though, and he turns to face his friend while he puts his flask back.] What? Beri for your thoughts? 'Cause we're not getting where we need to be, and I'm too flashy a man to die down here.

[callada]

Just a guess, but based on that, we might need more liquid. More volume, more different kinds, probably both of those things.

[Blood is going to end up being involved, and he unclips his knife from a belt loop with a frown.]

Wonder if I can climb this thing without breaking it. It looks sturdy, right?

[big_top_boss]

Shit. [He just doesn't like this in general. And while he's not going to stop Rosinante, he kind of wishes he was more useful here. If it was him and someone else, he'd be happy to let them climb up like an idiot and cut themselves for the cup. This is different, though. This is Rosinante. And while Buggy can bleed if injured and he'd be willing to take this on for his friend, he can't bleed while using his powers. Which would be the best way to actually get the blood up there if it was his own in tribute to the goddamn greedy mystery cup.

But it makes sense, more than one offering to the goblet to get a bigger response is probably how they'll get out. Earth, alcohol, and blood. Some of the most important substances in existence.] Maybe? I guess it's worth a shot, want me to get the rope up there for you?

cw: self-harm... for magic?

[callada]

Might help if you could.

[Thank whatever god there might be that he got stuck with someone who not only apparently likes him, but who has one very useful devil fruit. It almost makes him wonder if he's needed for something; if the universe doesn't want him to just die down here after the fluke that was his return from death the first time. But no, he's not that special. He played his role and Law is alive and the rest is just him fumbling through what to do with the extra time.

Once the rope is in place he chomps his sheathed knife between his teeth - it will be easier to reach there than if he clips it back onto his pants - and hauls himself precariously up the statue. But it stays solid despite its detailed construction, less delicate than it appears, perhaps, and once he's found solid footing the few feet up he needed to climb, he draws the knife from its sheath and holds an arm over the chalice. Palm seems too delicate, too easy to slice a tendon. Finger probably isn't enough. Just another scar to add to the mess is all it is. He does hesitate briefly, then draws the knife across the underside of his arm in a swift motion and lets the blood drip into the cup.

Immediately it lights up brighter than before, and before it can fade, a second drop falls and it re-lights. Fascinated, Rosinante stays put and waits, and soon the illumination grows bright and consistent. At this point, the symbols on the door begin to brighten until they glow a brilliant blue. The door begins to shake in its frame, and then to lift from the floor, and the buzzing grows immediately louder.

As Rosinante falls his way back down to the ground in a failed attempt at climbing down, the contents of the room beyond become visible. It looks to be some sort of ancient throne room, full of cobwebs and dust. A tattered strip of fabric runs from the opening to the old wooden throne, and the runner is lined with skeletons. Eight in total, four on each side, who seem to have died curled up with hands at their throats.

And as the door finally rises to its peak and lets in a little more light, the source of the buzzing becomes more obvious as well, for at the far end of the runner, congregated before the throne, is a dense cloud of glittering green-bodied flies.]

[big_top_boss]

[Buggy is actually stunned into silence at first, and that takes a lot of doing. He didn't know what to expect, he was honestly a little more concerned about Rosinante and the bleeding, doesn't the poor bastard have enough in the way of wounds? But they needed to get out, and this is one hell of a way to do it.] Shit...

[He peers into the room nervously, with an air of excitement. This does not seem safe but it also reeks of treasure. The kind of hidden goods that really make a person rich if they get their hands on them. But those flies and skeletons have him wondering if he really wants to go in at all.

He figures he's going to have to, if he wants out. You only live once, or you die in the ruins. And Buggy is way too flashy of a man to have his life end here.] H-hey, whaddaya make of it? That was a flashy show, but look at what's in there. Doesn't look good!

[callada]

[Does it not? He's still kind of upside-down from his fall. But he's intensely curious, and peers through the open door once he's sitting upright, before he really gets the chance to stand. And it is a hell of a sight he's given.]

So, that's where that sound was coming from. And those skeletons... What happened in here?

[He stands slowly, afraid that too sudden a movement will attract the attention of the flies. Clustered like that, they look incredibly unnatural. And as they both watch, they merge slowly together and fade into a new form - that of an old man, crowned and pale, wearing rags instead of robes and supported by a cane rather than brandishing a sword.

It does not make him feel any more at ease.]

[big_top_boss]

[Shit shit shit what the hell is going on here, Buggy literally slams his hands over his mouth to keep the startled noise that threatened to come out inside, this is messed up. What kind of weird power is this?

He's just gonna peer from behind Rosinante a little.

It's just an old man, why is he so freaked out?

The fact that his heart is racing says a lot, though. And instincts are trying to tell him that this is not a situation to be flippant about.]

[callada]

[The old man initially is facing the throne when he takes form but he looks over his shoulder, then slowly the rest of his body turns to follow suit while his head keeps its place and the dry old bones clack and rattle at the movement. He begins initially to hobble slowly toward the two, then opens his mouth with a gravelly hiss.

A swarm of flies begins to pour outward, though before they make it more than an inch past those glossy enameled teeth, Rosinante has raised a hand before him and fired a pistol round at the skull. No sense in trying for subtlety here, they're in the open and facing their enemy and he needs to act fast. The skull shatters as fragments fall to the ground, but it doesn't stop the flies, or the slow approach of the now headless creature.

Alarmed, eyes wide, Rosinante turns to look down at Buggy.] I sure hope you know how to fight!

[big_top_boss]

Shiiiiiit! Time to make a flashy attack! [Buggy pulls his knives, grasping them tight between his fingers, and launches his fists towards the corpse. He figures if he keeps rushing his blades back and forth, not giving the man much of a chance to get closer, it's for the best. Maybe he can slice him apart, and a lot of the flies with him.

He just does not want those flies anywhere near them.] It's a dead body! How do you kill a dead man, eeeh! [Buggy is terrified, he doesn't like this at all. He's too flashy to die here beneath the surface.]

[callada]

[Oh, that's not bad. So Buggy's the kind who can handle himself. Probably. Against an actual human combatant, more likely. How do they deal with a decayed old man?

Buggy's knives shred through mummified flesh like papery jerky. Pieces of the corpse, the rotted clothing, even some of the insects do fall to the ground, and the attempt is far more effective than Rosinante's follow-up shots, which do little more than punch holes in the corpse. The flies continue to buzz forward and Rosinante pulls off his coat and ripples it in the air almost like a matador, trying to shoo the flies away hard enough to disrupt their flight.]

I have no idea! Maybe fire? I can't reach my lighter right now.

[It's in his pocket, but dropping the coat seems like a bad idea as wherever the flies touch it, it crumbles to dust, leaving little gaps in the fabric and feathers. One strafes across his cheek with a hum and leaves a blackened streak in the flesh that causes him to cry out sharply in pain.

While the flies wreak havoc, the old man with his ruined skull and tattered flesh ambles toward the throne and sits. With a pound of his staff on the ground, the other fallen bodies begin to rise.]

[big_top_boss]

Shit shit shit shit SHIT! Rosi, hang in there! I'm about to make a flashy thing happen!

[Buggy tries to keep slicing at the insects with one blade-armed hand, as a measure of keeping them away from Rosinante if nothing else. But after seeing what they can do to skin, he's terrified. Only the bonds of friendship are keeping him here, he'd be on his way out alone somehow if he didn't give a damn about his friend, even if it's another version of that friend that doesn't really know him.

His first instinct would be to use an explosive, but in the end he doesn't know if this is the safest spot for it. Or how stable the ruins would be, there's nothing good about getting caught in the wreckage and dying in a different painful way.

He's so scared. But he's also Buggy the goddamn clown, the genius jester, captain Buggy, and a million other amazing titles of praise just for him because he's resourceful and amazing and he's sure as hell not gonna die today. And he pulls out a large jar of some sort of liquid from his coat with a free hand, he's got a lot of flashy circus tricks up his sleeve. ] Get back! I'm gonna light 'em up like it's a circus act! Haha! Captain Buggy impresses again! [His other hand pulls back from his slice and dice act, and he uses it to get out a torch lighter. All of these tricks are usually for the impressive, not for the survival, but today he's so glad that he's done the extra training. His mouth gets filled with the fuel, his hand holds up the torch lighter and sets it to the highest flame possible, and he blows fire at the flies.]

[callada]

[Captain Buggy sure does impress! The fire rips through the swarm, sending charred bits and pieces of exoskeleton to the floor, where many break into soot on impact.

But there's no time to relax yet. Rosinante raises his pistol again almost as reflex, but since the old man hadn't really been obviously harmed by his shot, maybe these won't either. Instead he barrels forward and stomps down onto the nearest skeleton once and then a second time, smashing its ribcage and clavicles, leaving it helpless to do more than twitch in broken pieces on the ground.]

I can feel cool air coming from the back of the room. There must be a way out, we just have to get to it!

[big_top_boss]

[Buggy is impressed now, watching Rosinante just stomp down onto a skeleton like it's nothing at all. And while he doesn't have Rosinante's size behind him for force, he's got his powers and he starts launching his fists into another skeleton, breaking it apart with violent hits.] Then all we gotta do is clear enough of a path for a flashy exit!

[callada]

I'll settle for any exit, flashy or not!

[The skeletons themselves don't seem armed, but they're quicker than they seem like they should be once they've fully reanimated. Their leader, the old, dead - king? He sure doesn't know - seems to direct their movements by pointing at Rosinante and Buggy, and the skeletons dart toward them and reach with bony arms to try and grab them and hold them down. They're not much of a match for Rosinante's bulk, however, and he has no real trouble dashing another to pieces with a swing of his arm, shattering a jaw with one punch and following up with the other hand to drive his fist right through the ribcage and spine.

He's clearing a path forward, moving toward the feel of cool air, but he glances back to check and make sure Buggy isn't stuck or captured, and a skeleton takes this as an opportunity to leap and wrap its withered limbs around him and pull him to the ground, sending a choking dust of bone particles and dead insects into the air.]

[big_top_boss]

Then let's take what we can get!

[Buggy is in his element. He doesn't have much of a chance in the bulk department, he's certainly nowhere near the size of Rosinante. But he's a powerhouse in his own right, a spinning twisting chaotic mess that can't be cut and separates to protect himself. And he starts grabbing at skeletons, and using them as weapons against their bony allies. And he's cackling madly the entire time.

And then Rosinante goes down, and Buggy goes into action. He grabs the head off of the corpse, and throws it back at another skeleton that's coming up close. And then all it takes is a couple of hands ripping into the rib cage to end the monster that took his new friend down.] Come on! Come on, Rosi! We gotta go! If we can get a little further out, I can buggy bomb their asses to a second afterlife! Haha! It's gonna be so flashy of an end for them! They'll die fabulously! Again!

[callada]

[With that welcome assistance he shoves off the others clawing at him, shatters another into pieces with a whip of his forearm right as it tries to grab at Buggy's hair, then keeps running forward. What's a "buggy bomb"? Who knows, but he's eager to find out, especially if it means all these assholes stay dead.

He sprints toward where the room narrows into a sort of cave at the back, following the scent of fresh air. It's a scree slope, where the cave formed too close to the surface, and part of it collapsed. There's a narrow beam of light and he throws himself at it, digging at the rocks with his hands and trying to widen the gap enough to get out.]

Almost there! Gonna go quiet for a bit so this doesn't make things worse.

[There's a chance that placing a Calm on himself will still the very edges of the rocks as well. They won't grind past each other quite so loudly - and the ripple of sound when he throws them behind won't trigger a collapse of some weaker point in the cave ceiling. Any little thing to get out of here without being crushed by boulders is a bonus. Seeing an opportunity as he turns to check on Buggy, he hefts one of the rocks at a few oncoming skeletons and enjoys the spectacle of them cracking and crumbling on impact, even if it's missing a satisfactory crunch as bones shatter.]

[big_top_boss]

Fine, fine. Just tell me when to bomb them all to dust. A flashy end for an unflashy foe, but I don't want to go for it until you think it's safe. The you back home would know, so I'm hoping the you here's just as capable.

[Buggy doesn't know what Rosinante really wants for him to do, so while Rosi works on the collapsed area widening he keeps the skeletons at bay. Buggy gives him a thumbs up in approval of the crushed skeletons, and goes back to slicing at ancient bones, trying not to think about how weird it is that there's no expected sounds when Rosinante interacts with anything.

Oh well, as long as he still gets to bomb the hell out of the corpses before they leave that's all he cares about.] Die! Die flashily! I really wanna blow them up, especially the old bastard!

[callada]

[That moment Buggy is waiting for comes now, with one last scoop of rock and soil. The path is narrow and he'll still have to haul himself through on his arms and stomach but he's not waiting around any longer than he has to.

He's also not going to just bail and let Buggy toss a bomb near this potentially unstable cavernous exit on his own, so he swaps the effects with a snap of his fingers and a muttered "Silent", and lets the barrier settle in between open air and the rocky ceiling. There will still be vibration from the blast itself, that's not something he's worked out if he can dampen or remove yet, but it's surprising how much effect the sound waves have as they ripple through air and stone.]

Do it now, and then get the hell out of here! I'll be right behind you.