2018-04-14: What Makes a Hero!! Special Training Course
- Log: What Makes a Hero!! Special Training Course
- Cast: Carina Wynne, Xantia
- Where: Vane - Residential District
- Date: Saturday, April 14, 2018
- Summary: When asked for hero training, Carina prepares an obstacle course for Xantia. Turns out this wasn't what she really needed.
======================<* Vane - Residential District *>======================= According to the histories, the Magic City of Vane once floated above the surface of Lunar, providing magicians with a vantage point like none other to study the mysteries of their art and world. Those days are gone. The Vane of today is a battered, ramshackle ruin, with all but a few houses crumbled into rubble and disrepair. The outskirts of the city would be a looter's paradise if there was anything left to loot; most residents are either scraping out a bare existence with the Magic Guild or simply taking advantage of free real estate to squat in the less-toppled buildings. BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_Vntv83fb8
<Pose Tracker> Carina Wynne has posed.
So Xantia wants to be a hero!
Carina was asked to provide hero training for her new sidekick, and she was all too happy to oblige. Since the two of them are spending a lot of time in and around Vane lately, Carina set up a training area in a vacant lot of the fallen city. She picked up some things lying around unused in the CaraKin and used them to set up...
"MYSTERY HERO X'S ULTIMATE TRAINING COOOOOURSE!" Carina announces, arms wide open, having transformed into her Locus costume for mentoring purposes.
It's important to look the part. And hopefully Xantia came dressed for the occasion too! It's likely Carina supplied her with a few more hero accessories to round out her costume with. In Carina's mind, once Xantia's training is complete the armorer will make her something similar to Locus' armor, but first she has to see how she moves and fights.
This is the main purpose of Mystery Hero X's Ultimate Training Course. It starts off straightforward enough, with barbed wire to crawl under, a rickety balance beam over a mud hole, followed by a set of Tarzan ropes.
Things get a bit more esoteric when she needs to climb a structure and get into a little pod with a steering wheel, set to slide down and towards a wall-- at this point Xantia is expected to dramatically dive out before she or the wall gets crushed. Then, a Rube Goldberg mechanism causes a baby doll ("Let's call him Baby Moses," Carina says, "don't forget Baby Moses!") to fall straight towards a cardboard alligator.
Xantia must catch it, then find herself face-to-face with a set of three sand bags with monsters drawn on it. For some reason, she finds herself in a model city in this scenario, and it's not entirely clear why she appears to have assumed kaiju size.
And once the bad guys are taken care of, she must run the course backwards before everything explodes!! Carina will provide a countdown. The course is not ACTUALLY rigged to explode, but there's a nonzero possibility that Shalune helped Carina with a little of it, so you never know.
"Any questions before we start?" Locus asks, fists on her hips, ponytail flying in the wind like a banner of JUSTICE.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
When Xantia asked her question, she obviously had no idea what to expect. After all, like Carina herself pointed out, it's not like there are any schools for this sort of thing. Thus, it follows that only a hero can teach you to become a hero. It all made perfect sense!
It no longer makes any sense when she looks over the training course. She listens patiently to the long-winded explanation, but you can just see her going cross-eyed. Oh, she has many questions, but the biggest one would be simply 'why', to everything, in general. It's not obvious at all how any of this would help her become a hero. If anything, it makes it feel like she understands less about being a hero than before!
But she doesn't actually ask about that, willing to assume that, as a hero, Metal Digger Locus must know what she's talking about. However... "Um, I do have one question..." With the camera panning over to MYSTERY HERO X, naturally wearing her domino mask, the question is probably obvious from the rest she's wearing. "How is this going to help?"
'This' being an improvised set of body armor with huge shoulderpads and a pair of matching, equally oversized gauntlets. All of which looking comically cheap as they were not exactly constructed from materials suitable for functional armor. That's not the point here, after all. The point is... ...well, if Xantia knew that, she wouldn't be asking that question, now would she.
Regardless of whether or not she understands any better from the answer, Xantia is nonetheless prepared to run this obstacle course. It's nothing different from the usual, she does things she doesn't understand all the time, trusting that she'll find out the important things along the way. So she'll handle this the same way she always does, which means... "So I just have to get to the other side and back, right?" That's easy enough. A lot easier if she improvises a little. Too late to stop her now, she's already gone.
She leaps over the barbed wire. She pulls the balance beam up, and shoves one end into the mud hole, using it to vault over the whole thing. At least she uses the ropes to actually swing, though she skips one with every jump.
Climbing up the structure was normal enough, but she gets on top of the pod, sliding down the ramp that way, and punches straight through the wall. The pod proceeds onward, crashing right into the alligator, with Xantia launching up to grab 'Baby Moses', and land directly on top one of the kaiju-puppets, spraying sand all over the area, with more sand joining it as the other two sand bags are destroyed in a way that isn't even visible anymore (she kicked one and punched the other, taking out most of the 'buildings' in the process).
Baby Moses becomes visible first, thrown high up into the air, followed by Xantia speeding out of the sand cloud and launching one of her air-displacing punches to knock over the structure she climbed before. She then speedily crosses the rest the same way she did before in reverse, i.e. completely wrong, before ending up back at the starting point, just in time to catch the falling baby doll. Which she then spikes like a football touchdown, for some reason?!
"There! How's that?" Xantia obviously thought doing it that way made a lot more sense, and looks quite proud of herself. Not even a little daunted by the remnants of her makeshift gauntlets falling apart when she puts her hands on her hips. See, she knew those wouldn't help.
Even if an actual bomb didn't go off, the course sure looks like one did, now...
<Pose Tracker> Carina Wynne has posed.
It's a simple enough question, one that should have a straightforward answer, but it has Locus taken aback for one second. "Huuuh..." She scratches her helmeted head. How to explain?
"Well! A hero's gotta be ready for all kindsa situations. Sometimes you're running on a beam, sometimes you're savin' a baby, and sometimes you're fightin' the bad guys attacking the city. And sometimes you're doin' all at once! So you gotta be prepared for that. And exercise your body, too!"
It occurs to Carina that she would never in a million years run even part of this course outside of her Locus suit. But luckily Xantia seems capable of mighty feats, so she should be fine... right?
And fine she is. Carina isn't actually that upset over her finding non-obvious solutions to the course, even if it sort of means she didn't listen to the directions. Doing things your own way is important! She staggers back in surprise, however, when the balance beam comes up.
Riding the pod is radical, Carina can't deny that. Crashing through the wall is... um, well, good for Xantia if she can manage it. True carnage ensues, and Locus lurches forward, extending a hand, as if wanting to help those poor kaijus out. Jeez!
She grasps her head, however, when Baby Moses starts getting tossed around in ways that are mega-unsafe. "H-Hey, now!" She was supposed to provide a countdown, but she's forgotten all about it now! Her ponytail droops.
And Xantia makes it to the finish line.
...
"Congratulations!!" Locus springs back to her full height, with a small explosion of multicolored fireworks behind her. "You made it through the Mystery Hero X Training Course for the first, and, ah, probably final time."
"You made it in, huuuuh," Locus counts on her fingers, "record time! There's just some stuff to work on, like for instance, you need to know babies are a lot more fragile than you think at first glance, and also it's important for a hero not to destroy the city harder than the villains are. Or else you're doin' their job for them!"
One of the few structures still precariously standing crashes into the dustcloud, with a massive thud.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Heeey, Xantia listened to the directions just fine! She's not following the directions, that's different. If you see an easier way, that means it's pointless to do it any other way, right? What this means is that it should always be abundantly clear to Xantia what the reasons behind things are, or she'll just make her own assumptions. And then things break, because that's what she does.
Even Locus's added explanation did not manage that this time, clearly. But hey, she made it, and everything seems fine from where she's standing! Beaming at the congratulations, she yet has to point out, "I could've been faster, if it wasn't for this thing!" She starts to pull the 'armor' off over her head, but it breaks in two midway, leaving her holding the two halves awkwardly for a moment. Then she shrugs, and tosses them aside. Not like a bit more of a mess is going to stand out here. "...anyway, yeah, I don't know why I need armor. I don't like it, it's easier to move without it!"
The constructive criticism on her performance... nope, there's that confused expression again, Xantia tilting her head in clear failure to understand. "But it was just a doll. And that wasn't a real city." Yeah... she really, really missed the point of the whole exercise. There's another factor involved with that too.
"I think I can do things like this pretty well already... is that really all there is to Hero Training? I thought it was more, like..." She brings a hand to her chin and taps it a few times. She has a hard time putting into words what she was expecting. She shakes her head. "I don't know, just stuff not anybody can do." Anybody could do what she just did, right?? "I guess I just don't understand what makes a hero a hero, exactly."
<Pose Tracker> Carina Wynne has posed.
"Hmmm, guess you can always ditch the armor if it's more annoying than it's helpful." Locus scratches her head, assuming at least a baseline level of invincibility on Xantia's part. "I mean, if you can dodge attacks rather than tank 'em... Kinda wish I knew how to put magic 'n the domino mask, though, at least." She grumbles and looks to the ground, arms crossed. "Lousy Lunar smith weirdoes."
"Y-Yeah, I guess." She tilts her head. "Guess I should've told you you're supposed to imagine that those were real monsters 'n' a real baby 'n' a real city." That takes a lot of imagination! "Well, it's all moot, I s'pose. It'll take a bit to put the course back together. Though, hmmm..."
She seems to have an idea, but puts the idea aside when Xantia voices her opinion on being able to do these things already. She lets out a little sigh. Xantia's really hitting all the hard questions today! Carina isn't used to having to think about things so much.
"C'mon, let's sit down," she proposes, before leaping over to the collapsed pod-slide structure and sitting on the remains. She stays still for a few moments, arms crossed, before providing an answer.
"Bein' a hero... Well, first it helps if you're super-strong, or can do things other people can't. I mean, I dunno if you've noticed, but most people can't actually leap a dozen feet in the air or throw mega-punches. I think... what makes you a hero is figurin' out how you can do what you can do in a way that'll make people happy and have nicer lives, I s'pose."
"Like, I dunno..." she gestures to the trashed lot around them, "it just hit me, this town is pretty bad-off, right? We could do somethin' nice for them. I'm pretty good at workin' with metal and such, and you can lift huge things and prop them up 'n' such. If we repair this training course and change things a little, we could turn it into a playground for the kids who live around here. I think that'd be nice, dontcha think?"
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
The true depths of Xantia's lack of understanding comes to light at moments like this, when she only now realizes, "Oh... the armor is for protection? I just thought it was for... you know, looking like a hero, and the whole secret identity thing." Using armor for protection, who'd ever think of that? Clearly not Xantia, used as she is to coming out of most things not too badly hurt, or at least not to the point that she can't heal from it easily enough.
At least she understands enough to feel a little bad about misunderstanding the point of the exercise. "O-oh... sorry, I didn't know. But that was a little small for a city, and a little... not alive for a baby." Pointing out the obvious there, but if things aren't like what they're supposed to be, would that really work as training?
Xantia has never done any training for anything in her life, if it wasn't obvious by now. That she can remember, anyway. Just doing what feels right tends to work well enough for her. Which explains the tough question: what she worded as 'training' might have meant something else altogether, something more... theoretical.
Following along readily enough, Xantia collects the overturned 'racing pod' from the 'corpse' of the 'alligator', brushes it off a little, then places it upside down before sitting on it. It's not very stable. She doesn't seem to mind. Listening to the explanation, she nods a few times.
"That's what I mean. I know a hero is supposed to have special powers, protect people, fight bad guys, things like that. But that's already true for me, and a lot of other Drifters besides. But they're not all heroes. So I don't understand how you're supposed to... reach the next level?" It's phrased questioningly because she's not entirely sure whether the phrase is correct.
Locus's following suggestion seems to help make things a bit more clear in her head, as that causes Xantia's expression to brighten. "I see! I'd never have thought of that! I mean... I'm only really good at fighting, and breaking things." If that wasn't obvious yet. "I don't really know how to build things... but carry heavy things, yeah! I could do that!"
<Pose Tracker> Carina Wynne has posed.
"Haha, well, that's important too, but the most important thing is you gotta be able to fight 'n' move around right," Locus says, with a raised finger. This is Carina the armor saleswoman speaking. "So really, whatever you're comfortable in that also looks cool!"
"It's okay. Everyone destroys a model city sometime or another," Locus waves a hand, nodding knowingly. Has this... Has this happened before?
She pumps a fist when Xantia seems to like the suggestion. "Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about! So we could do that. But first it's probably fine to take a breather and talk." She leans back, arms behind her head in that laid-back anime pose, unheeding of the fact that she hasn't really even... done anything, and that Xantia barely even seems winded.
"I think... wantin' to build 'n' protect things is more important for a hero than smashin' them," she continues. "The thing is, smashing stuff is usually the easiest thing you can do to... well, stuff. Makin' a cool thing or making sure nobody smashes it is way harder, 'n' that's why being a hero is hard."
Hey, she's on a roll, isn't she? So she goes on! "I think a lot of Drifters are heroes, myself, but they probably won't wanna admit it. Can't say I fault them. The world can be hard sometimes, and it makes you wanna be selfish. But a hero ain't supposed to be selfish. So that's why we have those masks." She gestures, a little wildly. "When you put it on, it tells people 'hey, I'm a SUPERhero, so I ain't gonna be selfish today, I'm here to help people and do a good thing'. Y'know?"
Hopefully this makes sense to Xantia. To tell the truth, Carina is making it all up as she goes along, but it feels right in her gut, which is a start.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Well Xantia happens to feel very comfortable in what she's wearing right now, so that works out! And shirts with an X on them are very cool! Probably! An authority on cool, she is not, it took long enough for her to realize that could even mean anything unrelated to temperature.
Honestly she's just glad that nothing she did so far seems to have been super terrible. It would've been the worst to be told by a hero that she isn't hero material. But instead, it seems like Locus thinks people might be heroes even if they themselves don't think so? This is sounding more complicated all the time. Xantia thus listens with due attentiveness, mulling the whole thing over in her head.
"Masks... not doing the easy thing... so, you're saying that in the end, it's more of an attitude thing?" Carina making sense and Xantia making sense of it. This is turning out to be a very strange day. "Sounds like being a hero is both simpler and more complicated than I thought." Maybe we're already done making too much sense.
This seems to have gotten Xantia to think quietly at the very least, which is an accomplishment - sitting still for very long is not generally her forte. When her next question comes, it's probably not the most expected one.
"Do you have a dramatic story?" At least she provides more context, after exactly long enough time passes to be confused about where her brain went this time. "You said that most heroes have them. Do you have a dramatic story that made you want to become a hero?" See, she's learning what's important.
<Pose Tracker> Carina Wynne has posed.
"Yep!" Locus says with a thumbs-up, when Xantia figures heroism is really an attitude thing. "And sometimes people disagree on who's a hero and who's not. So that's why this can be a kind of hard question!"
Xantia goes into a completely different direction than the one expected. Locus tilts backwards just a little too much, needing to windmill her arms so as not to fall into the muddy water. But then here comes an explanation!
"Oh! Right, right, right. I'mmmmm not sure if you could say I do? I mean, nobody important to me died... far as I know." She taps her chin, thinking. "But I mean, the whole reason I'm doin' this is, well... Don't tell anybody, this is secret identity stuff, but I got my belt from my sister, right?"
She leans over forward, conspiratorially. If her giant bug eyes could squint, they would, but she merely does it behind the mask instead. "And she's, like... she has her act together? When we were kids we'd get taken hostage a lot," she says this very casually, as if everyone gets taken hostage at least once, "and after a while she started doing those cool stunts to get us out of trouble, and I'd just be like, 'aw jeez, sis, are you sure'? But in the end the day'd be saved, you know?"
She lets out a little sigh. "But I got a weird letter from her, makin' it sound like she might be in trouble, or tryin' to hide, or just goin' on a big trip-- might be to Lunar, though I haven't seen her --and I'm just, like, worried? And I wanna find her and make sure she's okay. And most of the time when I'm not sure about somethin' I'm like, what kinda cool thing would little sis be doing right now?"
She stops, remaining silent for a few seconds before deciding she's answered the question well. "What about you?"
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Oof, that's a bit discouraging. "Oh no." Xantia sighs and hangs her head. "If everybody has a different opinion about heroes, it's going to be really hard to convince everybody." There's no point unless everybody agrees you're a hero, right? She's pretty sure that's how jobs work, you get real good at doing what that job does until everybody calls you what a person who does that job is called.
Not that she'll stay discouraged for long. It's just not in Xantia's character to give up just because something's difficult. That's the only way she can manage to deal with her whole situation.
Besides, she is soon distracted by ~secrets~. That certainly gets her attention, engaging by leaning forward as well, despite being able to hear just fine from where she was. Of course to her, it really does all sound like it could plausibly be an entirely normal situation to get taken hostage a lot. Except for the fact that, "Why just your sister, couldn't you have helped her?" She blinks, then gasps, suddenly coming to a massive realization, a big reveal that she never would have predicted. "You don't mean... could it be that you don't have any powers without your armor?"
Nobody ever said this was a massive realization for anybody but Xantia. Forgive the girl with natural superpowers for feeling it's more normal to assume people with superpowers don't need to be wearing anything in particular to have those superpowers.
She lowers her head hearing about the worries regarding Carina's sister. She can relate to that at least a little bit, in that if she knew of any family she had, she knows she'd do just about anything to see them again. As it is...
Questioned in return, Xantia raises her head, briefly surprised at being asked. "Well, like I said, I have amnesia, so... I couldn't tell you if I had any family or anything like that." She pauses, furrowing her brow when she realizes that that might not be true. "Actually... I do remember my father. A little bit. I think. Not really any details, just that... I'm sure that there's something he wanted me to do. Something really important."
She's silent a moment, before she chuckles and shakes her head. "I don't think remembering that much really makes any difference, I'm still doing what I would have done anyway. Travelling around hoping to find out anything about who I am, or anybody who can tell me. I've been doing that since as far back as my memory goes." She looks very briefly forlorn, adding, "It's been... a long time."
Only to abruptly shift gears, asking an entirely different sort of complicated question. "What's it like, being... a sister?" Though perhaps it's understandable that someone with no real memory of family would wonder about things like that.
<Pose Tracker> Carina Wynne has posed.
"Well, at least the mask and hero pose stuff helps convince people," Locus says, trying to reassure Xantia. "Reminds me: we should practice poses later. Real important!"
"Well, I was young 'n' scared and she was plain braver than I was..." Carina admits, before Xantia comes to... a conclusion!!
There is a moment's silence.
"...That's right. This is my secret weakness! Don't tell anybody, okay?" She just rolls with it. It's not much of a secret, but it certainly is a weakness.
"Oh, right." Carina feels a little bad for asking now, since Xantia did tell her, but she mentions a tidbit she hadn't before. "...Huh. Well, dads often have big expectations, far as I've seen." She nods along, silently, when Xantia gets more forlorn.
Then comes annother unexpected question. Locus straigtens up. "What? Huuuuh..." She shakes her head. "Well, it's different dependin' on who you ask. Some people can't get along with their siblings. I can't really imagine it? For me, havin' a sister was like livin' with my best friend. Even when life got a little crappy, we tried our best to have each other's backs, and we could always have someone to complain to besides. And sometimes we'd tell each other these jokes nobody else'd understand!"
She's grinning behind her mask, but figures it might be best not to gush about it so much to someone who is, well, for all intents and purposes family-less. She calms down a bit.
"But when you work with people on something, I think it's a bit like bein' siblings after a while. It sounds like you've been travelling with some good folk. And being a hero and sidekick's a little bit like being sisters, too, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Practice poses, yes, definitely, that gets a firm nod from Xantia. From what little concrete facts she knows on the topic, she's aware of the concept of 'heroic poses'. If people use that as a common adjective, poses must be a pretty important to being a hero!
As is keeping the secret identity stuff secret, which she has... not been great at. Even so, she readily promises regarding this secret weakness she accidentally discovered, "Oh! Of course, I absolutely won't tell anybody, ever!" Honestly it's a good thing that she realized this. Imagine the possible complications if Xantia operated under the assumption that it was okay to not hold back her strength so much with Carina, and she felt like giving a hug...
Given that she remembered her father and not any sisters there might be, perhaps it would have been more natural for Xantia to ask what it's like to have parents. She didn't even ask what it's like to have a sister, rather what it's like to be one. There's a reason for this. "Huh..." is her only comment during the brief pause, looking like she's deep in thought, mulling things over.
She looks more than a little surprised when the second part of the equation is added, that people you work with can get to be like siblings, too. "Really? I thought..." Her eyes avert a moment. "...Actually I'm not sure what I thought. But, if it could be that... that doesn't make it easier to figure out if I'm actually someone's sister or not."
This was the main reason she asked, as she proceeds to explain. "Somebody once suggested that it looks like I could be a long-lost sister to Fei. ...someone else with amnesia," is the only description poor Fei is going to get here. "I was hoping there was some easy way to figure that out, but... it's never that easy, is it?" She sounds resigned, nothing about her situation being easy to figure out is something she wishes she didn't have to feel so used to.
Not one to stay downcast for very long, she smiles almost directly after. "But, if it's like you say... if we're a little bit like sisters, maybe I can figure things out better from there!" Even Xantia's not entirely sure what her expectations are here, but she finds something positive to hold onto in it nonetheless. Par for the course, really.
<Pose Tracker> Carina Wynne has posed.
Carina certainly didn't catch the true purpose of Xantia's question. "Huh?? --Ooooooh." She nods a few times.
"Well, in that case... I guess if you wanted to know if you're his long-lost sister, you've gotta ask yourself, like, do you feel like you totally get what he's all about even without asking? Do you know how he likes his pizza? Do you know about his weird hygiene habits? And do you sometimes say the same thing at the same time without meaning to? I mean, that's my sister experience at least."
She scratches the back of her helmet. "So yeah, guess it's not easy. Sorry 'bout that."
Xantia then bring up something that seems like a long shot, at best, but hey, why not? "Yeah, you're right!!" Locus says, getting fired up.
She hops down from her sitting position and puts a fist in her palm. "In fact, I think break time's over! What do you say we put this thing back together and make it the best playground this town's ever seen?! We'll call it 'Crimson Knight Locus and Mystery Hero X's Hero Training Course (For Kids)'!!"
Yes, she goes by 'Crimson Knight' now. Keep up, Locus fans!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia can't help but laugh a little when Carina goes into the details about what makes a sister. These are not exactly the sorts of things she's going to know about with her amnesia! But she gets the idea. It's true that by now there are a number of things she could easily predict from Fei. But moreso than that, she's getting an idea of how things were for Carina and her sister. That must have been nice. And she does see at least one similarity, when she is apologized to. "Is saying sorry a lot part of it too? Fei apologizes a lot for no reason too, I don't get it." Whether that's on Xantia for not understanding why people should apologize to her or on other people for apologizing more than necessary, that's up for debate.
But if there's one thing Xantia does understand, it's enthusiasm over long shots. She nearly tips over trying to get up quickly, forgetting that her impromptu seat was a wobbly one, but catches herself in time. "Alright!" Readily agreeing, she mimics the palm-smack, a motion that she's no stranger to herself. "That sounds great, let's do it!" Only to backpedal on that juuuust a little. "...if you can tell me what to do exactly, because I have no idea!" Not sounding any less enthused, at least.
Xantia isn't going to be coming up with concrete ideas for this, not having much of an idea about what a playground should be like - or indeed what it's like to be a kid, even if she can certainly act like at times - but she can definitely help with the heavy lifting, and follow instructions to the best of her ability. She's just glad to help, as always, in any way she can.
=====================<* Dream Chasers BBS - (IC) Rumors *>====================== Message: 8/17 (12w 6d) Posted Author Hero Playground in Vane Apr 14 2018 Carina Wynne -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A vacant lot in Vane is now home to a children's playground that an unexpertly-painted banner proudly announces as 'CRIMSON KNIGHT LOCUS AND MYSTERY HERO X'S HERO TRAINING COURSE (FOR KIDS)'. The whole thing is made up of what appears to be stuff that was lying around the CaraKin and building materials cannibalized from nearby unsalvageably crushed houses. It takes the form of an obstacle course, though individual parts can be played around in just fine, because the only rule of this playground is that THERE ARE NO RULES. The first leg consists of a crawling section under some wires (which used to be /barbed/ though most of the barbs have been removed), then a rickety balance beam over muddy water, followed by a set of Tarzan ropes. The rest gets a bit more esoteric. What follows is a climbing structure, with a wheeled pod one cansit into to go down a slide. Crumbled remains of a wall make it seem as if the pod was originally meant to crash at the end, for some ungodly reason-- Well, the wall's gone now. Instead, now a rope stops the pod from rolling too far away, and also allows it to be reeled back up. Finally, a cardboard alligator greets heroes-in-training into a model city infested by kaiju-faced sandbags. The architecture is more reminiscent of November City's than anything found on Lunar, but that's probably the least of anyone's worries. Another unsolved mystery includes why the children are apparently now giant in this bizarre roleplay scenario. The whole thing looks rickety and kind of unsafe for children if we're being perfectly honest. But as far as vigilante acts of urban renewal go, this one's pretty okay, and nobody has started charging for entry or trolling for a building permit... YET. (OOC: Feel free to use this place as a scene backdrop! Carina or Xantia can be contacted for further details, but really... what you see is what you get.) ================================================================================