Revel

Revel is a cheerful and friendly dragoness who loves festivities! She is also highly devoted to the Stormcatcher, and in a way reminiscent of the story of the first desert succulents, she portrays an aspect of him as the deity who works hard and plays hard.

She is part of the clan's Energy Storage research group. She is good friends with the Clausius brothers.

She works very quickly. If you see her seemingly slacking off, it's only because she finished her work fast and probably even some extra tasks while she was at it. She likes hands-on and practical work the best.

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“Passion! Are you okay?” Revel pokes at her little friend who lay on the floor.

Passionfruit’s face remains in a shameful scowl; he feels like he was either foolishly unprepared, or worse, a coward.

“Could be better. But! We keep moving on, don’t we… Haha.”

The job isn’t done. He takes a deep breath and opens his bag—it’s time to prepare those samples and field notes.

He wonders how long it’s been since they entered the premise anyway. A few hours? A whole night shift? This bizarre complex has warped his sense of time so much that he can’t wager a guess.

Revel pokes him on the snout. “The plant watcher is on the side, by the way. You might want to take it for examination…”

“Gotcha, thanks.” Passionfruit takes an empty sample container. He approaches the fallen plant watcher, which seems to have shrank quite a deal ever since it was defeated—although it maintains a bulkier and more brutal appearance than a regular garden watcher. He scoops it into the container and puts a label indicating “Plant Watcher.”

While Passionfruit does his work, Revel activates her transceiver device to check on the other two. “Revel to Striker. You okay? Over.”

There is no response.

“Probably still in the fight. Let’s try again in a few minutes—and if there’s nothing, we go looking for them.” Work says while looking over the controls and try to listen to something in the distance.

The Clausius brothers hear a sound of leaping— a large creature moving across the metallic floor— but it seems to come from above. That couldn’t be Striker and Desertrose, who should still be downstairs, fighting the remaining creatures. The two heads look at each other warily, then look at their companions.

“We hear something, but not from the other two’s direction. Don’t open it until it’s quiet.” Work cautions them.

When it’s quiet, Passionfruit hesitantly unlocks the door and takes a feeble pace outside. He looks up, down, left, right. He turns in a circle and looks behind himself. There’s nothing behind him, and perhaps that is a relief.

With that, he returns to his botanical work. Come to think of it, his notes ever since he arrived have been a bit messy. He moves to the next page and rewrites his observations:

Location: Route 25 Decommissioned Power Plant

• Olive green sand creepers which appear typical to the general locale were observed in large numbers at the hallway of the office building.
  
• More of the sand creepers were present in the adjacent magic refinery building. The extent is noted to be too excessive to be plausibly justified by natural conditions.
  
• Sand creeper samples were obtained from the first two floors, although similar samples were seen to dominate the floors going downwards.
  
• A notable overgrowth was spotted at the door of the control room. Upon harvesting the bottom layer of sand creepers, which had a slightly darker color, the researcher observed a feeling of weakness. Fired balls of light and lightning magic were observed to be absorbed into the vine. The magic was rendered useless and seemingly transported into the control room, presumably to feed the creatures described in the following points:
  
• Large, mutated variants of the common garden watcher were discovered in the control room. These are henceforth referred to as “plant watchers.” These ranged from five to ten times the size of a regular specimen and displayed aggression towards the research team.
  
• Their leaves are sharp and bladelike; the roots and stems like whips.
  
• They are attracted by magical potions.
  
• After defeat, the plant watchers reduced to the size of roughly two times that of a common garden watcher.”
  

Passionfruit looks around the control room. Other than the plant watcher and the few remnants of sand creepers, there is not much else to note. There are some patches of star moss by one side of the control panel; visually, they seem similar. He tries to make a little ball of light again, which ends up absorbed into the star moss patch, although no longer to the extent observed with the heavy swaths of sand creepers earlier. He notes this down and takes another sample.

While Passion works on the plants, Heat suddenly exclaims— “Aw yeah!” The system is rebooted. The engineers look over the panel.

“The turbine, the generator…. the energy-producing machinery aren’t detected. It seems that they require physical repair—some cables may need some replacing.” Revel leans in closer to the controls. Reactivating the computers after clearing the room of those plant monsters was pain-free in itself, but she knew that if they had to fix all those other machines, they’d get squashed by all those mutant plant creatures. The plant watchers were already a challenge, and one could only expect worse in depths of this forbidden place.

“What a sorry state that is. Any luck perhaps on the CCTVs?” Work looks at the screens, but at that point Heat is already on it. The brothers deliver yet another jolt of lightning magic into the device.

The CCTV provides a view of the main entrance, then the hallway from where they took the map. One by one, images of different areas of the plant emerge—but they all seem empty.

Revel figures that Striker and Desertrose should have enough time to defeat the remaining enemies. She contacts them via transceiver device again…

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At some point, Striker hears Revel over the transceiver, but he doesn’t reply. He has his eyes on the last foes. Slash after slash, and trample after trample, the two fighter dragons manage to vanquish the remaining monsters. Upon Desertrose’s last swipe, the platform on which she stands collapses. Her eyes widen with fear, but Striker quickly catches her and flies back up to the top.

“Thank you, Striker. You’re always quick to act.” Desertrose smiles. Though wary from the fight she’s glad that she and her friend made it through.

“Thank you, too. They would’ve overrun us without you.” He has a bunch of leaf-induced scratches from the encounter, but it’s nothing that Desertrose couldn’t treat. When she shifts slightly to reach a medicinal herb in her pouch, a familiar face emerges from the corner— a tough, lightning blue Sandsurge with protruding fishbones on his body. This is Explode, a clan member employed in the so-called underground division! He leaps towards Desertrose and Striker.

“There you are!”

Following him are a conniving yellow-and-black Sandsurge with haunting red eyes, and a gutsy cyan Spiral with scales like a starry sky. These two are Dr. Allegro— an affiliate with the threatening nom de guerre of The Grand Poisoner, and Ceres— the clan’s top warrior and intern trainer, who is known to frequent the Mire.

“You beat all those things? They had us sent here just some hours after you left off, because we got new word that the creatures here were CRAZY!” Ceres flies around the Guardian and Snapper, almost theatrically.

“I was told that a touch of contagion would be useful in this overgrown labyrinth… hm.” Dr. Allegro looks around. “We found another point of origin of those creatures by the waste facility. Minor inconvenience at most. It is now barricaded.”

“It’s nice to know we got backup.” Striker mutters. He sees the two veteran fighters and feels humbled in their presence—he wishes he was like them. “Thank you. Do you bear more news?”

“The Underground Division has found quite some unsavory news in its archives.” Explode shifts in his place and winces. “But I suppose there’s a silver lining.”

Striker hears the transceiver again.

“Revel to Striker. You okay? Over.”

He responds.

“Striker to Revel. Safe with backup. Heading there. Over.”

Revel is at awe from behind the line. Did he just say backup? Finally!

“Revel to Striker. Copy. Over and out.”