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WHO: Moxxie and you!
WHERE: Undertown for the open prompt, then Jun's apartment complex and the warehouse for the closed prompts
WHEN: Throughout March
WHAT: Moxxie getting fish for the open prompt (then frying fish and trying to clear out a warehouse for the closed prompts)
WARNINGS: N/A

[The Rainbow Connection – Open]
Guess who has the time to keep following a rainbow until he gets to the end? This guy.

Sure, he has no idea why the rainbows are there or what's going on, but he can definitely see that they look a lot closer than most rainbows do, and he's heard the stories about leprechauns and the pot of gold, so he figures...why not? He could use the cash now that Crowley, the guy who was starting up a business that Moxxie was working at, no longer remembers that he is not, in fact, a possum.

He is keeping in mind this time that he can, in fact, ask for help, but he figures he might as well try for some gold to see if he can delay that, right?

Then, after a few hours of searching, he finally finds it. The end of the rainbow, which is in a sad, dirty little alley in Undertown. He runs up to it and, since the three foot tall pot was taller than the 2'5 imp, he reaches up and pulls himself up to see inside the giant pot of...fish? Disappointing, but Moxxie decides not to let it go to waste. After all, if nothing else it's at least free food, right? He reaches into the pot, trying to catch the fish within, but he ends up leaning in a bit too far and--

"Oh!"

Splash.

Soon he's treading water inside the pot. After a long, beleaguered sigh, he dives down, catching the fish more easily and tossing them over the edge, taking a breath each time before diving back down. Once the fish were all flopping on the pavement he begins to pull himself over the edge, climbing out of the cauldron when he spots someone near the mouth of the alley.

He's shivering, cold and dripping wet, and now he just really hopes they don't want his fish because he just did way too much to just have it taken away.

"There's no gold here. Only fish. Nothing you'd be interested in," he calls out, hoping that's enough to get them to lose interest.

He continues to try and climb out...only to slip and go crashing down to the ground.

"...ow."

[Fish Fry - Jun]
He has way more fish than he can eat, of course, but that doesn't stop him. By the time Moxxie gets home, his arms are tired and sore, and he's shivering because he's still in his soaking wet clothes, but he has plenty of fish. Of course, he also has no idea how he's going to eat this before it spoils, since at his size he really doesn't need a lot of food, but he can always share it with the cat to get rid of some of it.

On his way to his teapot, he spots Jun.

"Oh, hi! Just bringing home some fish."

Some weird golden salmon, nothing to worry about!

[Where All Your Dreams Come True - Luz]
Now that Crowley's gone, Moxxie is going to have to find a new way to make ends meet, and that's where this job comes into play. It seems fairly straightforward. Go into the warehouse, and clear out the various monsters he finds down there. He's got his guns, a ton of ammo, and his fire powers, so he feels pretty confident he can handle this.

After burning up a couple of raccoon skeletons with a few fireballs, though, something catches his eye. A tail, not unlike his own, disappearing around the corner. Moxxie races after it, peering around the edge when he sees...another imp. This one doesn't look exactly like he does, of course. This imp has small yellow horns and a pair of tiny wings that appear to be vestigial, but his skin is the same shade of red as Moxxie and they're about the same size, and while this may not be an imp from Moxxie's own world, it's still very clearly another imp.

Hearing footsteps behind him, Moxxie stops, turning to look behind him.

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"Yeah. So...uh...that's what you're here for, too. Huh."

He glances in the direction he saw the imp go.

"So, just to let you know, we might not want to clear everything we find down here out by fighting it."

"Yup. That's the plan!"

Distraction to ignore the depths of sadness she felt seemed like a great idea!

Luz saw only the flurry of movement and had her hand in her pocket when Moxxie made the suggestion.

"Did you have another way in mind? I don't have to go in glyphs blazing, as far as I know. Can we reason with them?"

"Well...the reanimated skeletons we can just destroy, but...I just saw an imp down that way, so...I'd say there's a decent shot."

Since he's an imp, too. Even if he can't, he's not planning on fighting them.

"Oh, definite yes on the animated skeletons. I already had to deal with those months ago, when we were doing the whole pirate adventure thing."

Boy, she just got used to saying things like that out loud.

"An imp? Like you? Are they...friendly, like you too?"

"Yeah, like me. I don't know if he's friendly or not since he was down that way and I don't even think he noticed me, but I'd really rather not fight him."

While this wasn't the first imp he'd encountered since he turned into one, it's still an incredibly unusual occurrence and he doesn't want to make an enemy of one of the few imps he's encountered, and he certainly doesn't want to hurt him. Not when he has a chance to learn about his heritage, especially since after eating some of that golden salmon earlier that week he learned he's had more than one life as an imp.

Walking around the corner and heading down a path lined with shelves and boxes, Moxxie calls out, "Hello?"

The other imp peeks out from behind a shelf, then, making a noise, points behind Moxxie before ducking back out of sight. Moxxie glances back before turning back to the imp.

"Oh, that's Luz. She's not going to do anything."

The imp then jumps up onto the shelf, moving between boxes. "Are you sure? She looks like the adventuring sort. Those types are trouble."

"Well, go over and find out then, Moxxie! I'll wait here. If you're in any trouble, just let me know, but otherwise, go see what's the Imp's deal!"

Luz was pretty sure that Moxxie had a lot of questions concerning his heritage and people like him, so better he go and find out if they were friendly first. That way they didn't have to go all crazy and get dusted up if they could avoid it!

Luz's hand idly found its way to the necklace around her throat, and she sighed, closing her eyes.

You'll be fine. She's not here and that's sad and you miss her, but you'll be fine. Focus!

Luz did hear the voice, so thankfully that was a distraction.

"Oh, she isn't...well, she is, but she isn't going to do anything to us imps. Now, I hope you're not too attached to those walking skeletons, on the other hand..."

The other imp spits. "I hate those bear skeletons! They're a pain! She can do what she wants with those!"

"Bear..." Oh crumbs. "Right. Yeah. Of course, the bear skeletons. To be honest, I'm going to be helping with that to try and get a cut of the money since I don't get paid anymore--"

"You get paid?"

"Well, not anymo--"

"I want to get paid!"

"Well, me too.."

"I'll tell the others about this!"

And before he could say anything more, the other imp darts off. Moxxie feels a bit guilty since he left out the bit about them having to leave, too, but he'd been hoping to convince them to come with him to...somewhere. He hadn't figured out that part of the plan yet.

As the imp races past one of the offices, suddenly a large bear skeleton comes clamoring out, taking a lazy swipe at the imp that it easily evades. Deciding that prey is too difficult to catch, the bear skeleton turns its attention to Moxxie, slowly lumbering towards him. Behind him, another bear skeleton follows.

"...oh crumbs."

Edited 2023-03-17 20:15 (UTC)

Oh boy. None of that looked promising. Luz listened in on the conversation, and definitely heard Moxxie not include the instruction of them having to leave in order for anything to work.

"Moxie, we better tell-"

And that was far as she got before spotting the bear skeleton. Welp. That was happening now.

Luz cast an ice glyph, and it froze the first bear in place. The next seemed eager to continue the fight, and now Luz was turning to Moxxie.

"Can you fend it off?"

Tell? Nope. He's not telling anyone anything. However, he doesn't even get to hear the rest of what Luz wanted to say before the bears showed up, and at that point his attention was fully on the bear skeletons. Can he fend off the other one?

"Sure!"

Moxxie summons up a basketball sized fireball, throwing it at the bear. It chars the bone and has the skeleton staggering back a few steps, but soon it recovered, coming for them again. Moxxie then pulls out his gun, firing off a few shots at the bear, but this seems to have even less of an effect. At least, until a bullet hits the skull just right, cracking off a piece. That seems to make the bear skeleton angry and it charges.

"Oh crumbs!" he says as he continues firing.

Truthfully Luz has forgotten herself. Right now she was devoting her energy to the beat skeletons, which were likely just as strong as bears with skin.

More or less.

Oh, but Moxxie had some moves! She wasn't expecting that, but she sure was happy it was wor-

Oops. It wasn't. Oh Titan.

Luz threw down her plant glyph, and then muttered a curse as the weakened plant vines just tripped up the charging bear. She'd been hoping for the plant to hold it down, but this month had weakened the earth element, which apparently held the same drawback from her glyphs.

Well, she managed to trip it at least. That should buy him more time while he unloads more bull--he's out of ammo.

"Oh crumbs, oh crumbs, oh crumbs..."

Pulling out more ammo, hands shaking, Moxxie reloads the gun. By the time he's done, the bear is back on his feet, coming for him again, so he fires off one...two...three more shots into the skull before finally blowing it apart and the skeleton collapses.

Moxxie lets out a sigh of relief. "Okay, I took care of it. Thanks for those plants."

It was enough, in Luz's eyes. She could go more lethal, but she was hoping to avoid that.

"Don't worry. You got this."

Luz could see his brain and body memory were having a hiccup and just needed a small nudge. Next thing you knew, he'd taken out the bear's skull.

"Good job!" Luz said, cringing slightly at the sound of the gun. "Sure. Just making sure you have cover!"

"All right. Let's see what else is here and...uh...try to figure out what I'm going to say to the imps."

Because he doesn't want to be the guy that shows up and says he's forcing them out of their home.

"Ok," Luz said, similarly not wanting to be the girl to throw sentient creatures out of where they were without giving them a viable option of where they could go afterward.

"I'll go on ahead and find out what else we need to fight off, you find the imps and see where their heads are right now."

"Got it," he says, before racing off in the direction he saw the imp go.

Welp. There he goes.

And unfortunately, this left Luz dealing with more skeletons: one bear skeleton had been bad enough, but it appeared there were several of them now, and they seemed pretty peeved about losing one of their brethern ("berathern?").

"Heh," Luz said, and jumped out of the way as came toward her, and she made sure to repeat a Moxxie and go for the heads this time, freezing one head that made it fall apart, while the others needed actual fire lobbed at their heads several times and then trapped them together so the fire eventually caught all of them together.

By the time Luz caught up with Moxxie, the top of her hair was singed and she had soot all over her clothes. She was, strangely, still smiling.

"Any luck?"

She SURE hoped Moxxie was having an easier time!

Moxxie passed some of the skeletons Luz fought as well on his way to find the other imps, but not wanting to waste all his ammo or anger the bears while he currently has no back up, he decides to do what the other imp did and simply dodge and race past any skeletons he sees.

By the time Luz catches up to him, he's certain he's found them. He hears a bunch of voices on the other side of a shelf, so when Luz walks up to him and asks if he's had any luck, he nods.

"I hear them. On the other side of the shelf. I'll go first."

Without even waiting for a response, Moxxie hurries around to see a whole group of imps deep in discussion. There is a wide variety of appearances among the imps, though all are about the same size as Moxxie and most are some shade of red. Still, there are all sorts of different horns, some had wings while others didn't, and some had large pointed ears while others didn't have ears at all. Still, like Moxxie, they all look like small devils with their pointed tails and horns.

He moves closer, when the imp he saw before turns to the one who appears to be the leader and says, "That's the one! I recognize the stripy horns!"

Luz nodded. Yup, that sure was the better idea. She didn't want them getting the wrong idea.

She held onto Eda's staff, listening quietly. She'd gotten a glimpse of what one had looked like (a BRIEF glimpse), so she thought it might be at least a good idea to see what they looked like. She took out her invisibility glyph, tapped it to herself and held her breath.

Only have a few minutes to do this.

The leader then moves closer to Moxxie. This imp is a bit taller than the other imps there, almost a half a foot taller than Moxxie himself with thick black horns.

"Zrox here says you used to get paid. Is that true?"

"Well...yes."

"We want to get paid."

Moxxie cringes inwardly, expecting them to ask about helping with the skeletons for a cut of the money. He won't be able to tell them that they have to leave, too. He knows that. Maybe...maybe he can hide it. Give them some of the money from him selling the peach and camp out here for a while to chase away anyone who tries to remove the imps. His thoughts are interrupted as the leader talks again.

"And honestly, we're offended that no one offered us any money. Not whoever was giving you money before, and not whoever wanted those skeletons dead."

Suddenly, Moxxie has an idea. He has no idea if his idea will actually bring things in the direction he wants them to go, but he'll give it a shot.

"You're absolutely right! You should be offended! I bet the guy offering money to clear out the skeletons never even tried to talk to you!"

"I didn't see any humans come in except that girl he said was fine!"

"Honestly, it makes me question whether he even deserves to have imps in any warehouse he's interested in!"

Edited 2023-03-24 22:03 (UTC)

Ooh, Moxxie was playing a pretty interesting game. She didn't expect this turn of events either, anymore than Moxxie had. No one HAD even bothered to talk to the imps and try to get them to leave. They just assumed that they needed to be weeded out like the skeletons, like they were just common foot soldiers.

Luz took a breath and was now visible, which she figured was probably for the best anyway.

"I'm-s-sorry to interrupt. So do you think you guys would be willing to help the human that wants to settle here if he paid you and worked with you?"

When Luz suddenly becomes visible, all the imps aside from Moxxie, the leader and the other imp that had already seen her jump back, some of them scrambling out of sight. The leader narrows his eyes, reaching for a knife at his hip, but Zrox speaks up.

"This is the girl I told you about. The one that this one," he points at Moxxie, "Says is okay."

The leader pauses, moving his hand away from the hilt of the knife but still watches Luz warily. Listening to what she has to say, he formulates a response.

"No. We won't. We are greatly offended that no one offered us money. We will be forming a union and we will be leaving on a journey to find people who will pay us for our services!"

What, exactly, those services were, exactly, is something Moxxie is dying to know, but he doesn't want to ask in case doing so would divert them from their current plan. Instead, he eggs them on.

"Yeah! You should be angry! Get out there and demand your money! ...also, can I get some contact information? I might be interested in joining, myself."

Edited 2023-03-27 19:40 (UTC)

Whoa, a knife?! That escalated quickly! They killed children?!

Luz, you came into this place and just squeezed a beat skeleton into submission. You're not exactly bringing in the peace vibes either.

Luckily, things calmed down when the one they'd seen earlier spoke up. Ok. Danger averted. For now.

"Right, that's totally fair! We were just told to get this location from the guy that's paying us. They didn't really go into details, just vaguely hinted at some monsters we had to fight off."

At Moxxie's proclamation though, Luz tugged at the Imp's shirt. "Whoa, take it easy, Moxxie!" Luz said as quietly as she could. "You don't even know what they do. That's probably something you'd want to know about any new job, right?"

Edited 2023-03-28 17:42 (UTC)

Another imp piped up. "Wait, they just told you to show up and kill monsters? They didn't even say not to kill us?!"

The other imps look disgruntled at that, and the head imp, who already looked angry about the whole situation, looks even more upset.

"When we write up our union contract, we definitely will have to include a clause about that sort of thing!"

At Moxxie's proclamation, though, Zrox and the leader glance at each other before Zrox explains, "Uh...we don't really have contact information? We just kind of will be going together. You can come with us if you want. Otherwise..."

Zrox kind of shrugs to indicate that he doesn't have another suggestion for Moxxie other than just becoming one of the swarm of imps. Which, honestly, that does sound inviting, but...with Luz's comment about how he might want to know what the job is first, he considers whether he should hold off on running away with a band of imps.

"Oh. Yeah. I guess," he answers quietly, before replying in a louder tone, "I actually have to be somewhere after this, but maybe I'll find you guys later."

Well. It's probably no surprise that this is the guy who would sell Zodiac a peach while being completely oblivious to the potential consequences.

"More implied. 'Get rid of them' doesn't HAVE to mean kill them. In the case of those skeletons though, I think you guys can forgive me forgive me for being violent. They were not exactly coming out to shake my hand."

Luz was very well aware of how strong regular bears were, she wasn't going to take a chance with skeletons of them either.

"Good plan! You want an airtight contract where no one can exploit you. Make sure you lay out your union goals too, in case you have to deal with some unforeseen plans. You'll probably want to make sure that your union president has a fair time frame until they're replaced too, so the newer generation get to share their ideas too."

Wait, was Moxxie considering this? Just be a part of a flock, doing whatever? Which he still didn't know yet??

"Right! Yeah, if you guys ever do want to get together later, you can do that, talk to each other about the things you see in Kaisou! If you ever do have a base of operations, I'm sure Moxxie would want to keep in contact."

Oh boy. Moxxie. Never tell Luz you did that, as she already didn't trust Zodiac as far as she could throw them.

"No one cares about the skeletons."

"Yeah, they're always trying to eat us. I don't know why. They don't even have stomachs.

"I just care that this person tried to have us 'gotten rid of'!""

Then yet another imp pipes up. "Can we put it in our contract that if anyone makes vague deals that may or may not end in us being killed by adventurers that we TP their house?"

"We can, yes!"

They look at Luz when she gives her input. "I guess. I mean, it'll kind of be up to him to find us or keep up or whatever, it sounds like we're leaving soon."

"We're leaving tonight!"

"Right, we're leaving tonight. So if he wants to follow us or track us down, that's up to him."

They're not worried about a new imp tagging along, but they're not going out of their way to make sure he can keep up if he's not going to stick around and go with them, either.

"It's fine. I'll figure it out, Luz. Want to finish up with the skeletons?"

Since it already sounds like the imp portion of this is taken care of.

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She still missed her sorry ;;(

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