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After giving the low-down to Khanda, they set off for the culprit's hive! They were really going to do it-- bust this guy and bust him good! His hive and lawnring were what Thalia expected, but that still didn't stop it from being absolutely grody. You'd think a blueblood would have more class.

Khanda, of course, wanted to get straight to business, but wasn't given any sort of answer. Hrmm. Calling his name, Thalia turned to Khanda in an instant. Looks like she was calling the shots this time around! He nodded his head at her words: a sound course of action.

Searching around his side of the hive, his investigations were cut short. It seemed that Khanda found an entrance! What great news! She was the best little detective. Thalia would wipe a tear from his eye just because of how proud he was of her.

Meeting up to her quickly, Thalia could hear voices coming from down below! "We've gotta make our move, Khanda!!" Thalia shouted with Bravado +5. Grabbing onto Khanda's hand, he dramatically jumped down into the boss' lair.

This was not exactly what Thalia had in mind for the epic final act. No, not at all. There was a lot of screaming and shouting from more children. They looked to be Khanda's age and oh. Ooooh. They had been affected by the strange elixir no doubt. All of their ire was directed toward an overweight blueblood-- the culprit!

Large glasses, purrbeast slippers, bobble hat..? Question marks, so many question marks. This was supposed to be the 'bad guy'. The final villain. The guy looked like a basement-dwelling nerd, not a Big Bad.

All the children looked like they were about to murderkill him, and Thalia could not blame them per se. A horde of angry wigglers sealing the fate of an evil-doer sounded pretty awesome, though. One of those come-uppance moments at the very end of a film. Those types of scenes didn't really involve someone Thalia's age just standing around. He could pull out his dagger and threaten the guy, sure. But Thalia needed a much clearer read on the situation before everything goes willy-nilly.

LaRoce, more by luck than detection, finally came across the rundown hovel in which his quarry resided while wandering randomly around Four Fronds. Not that he could have missed it; those other trolls were sure raising a ruckus! A crowd of curious neighbors had started to gather, but he bullied his way to the basement door with the help of his oversized lusus.

"So so don't touch anything! It's worth twice as much as you are!" LaRoce heard, and he laughed to himself. Maybe he didn't have much of a chance at the bad guy, but if what he said was true, LaRoce would still walk out of here with an excellent haul.

"You'd better stay up here," LaRoce whispered to his lusus, who grunted in alarm. "Hey, I don't think you could get out of that basement even if you fit in the door! Don't worry, there's lots of trolls down there. What could possibly happen? I'll just slip down there, gra-...uh, see what's going on, and come right back up!" The boar finally nodded and lay down near the door, and LaRoce quietly hurried down the steps.

Having been searching through Four Fronds for quite some time, Pyruet and her two comrades approached the hive that, like a few others they'd seen, matched the scant few clues they'd gathered. The differences being that this hive had a few nosy neighbors investigating, and kids entering it.

Red-blooded kids.

In the middle of Four Fronds.

"Looks like we found our man." Pyruet grumbled. "And we're not exactly the first to." She marched through the small crowd, elbowing a path open for her allies, and quickly found the trapdoor; thanks in no small part to the voices echoing out of it. Without even checking to see if Alifax and Amicae were behind her, she set off down the stairs, drawing one of her derringers as she descended, listening to the shaky voice of the blueblood trying to defend himself. The bounty had said to bring him in alive, but a bullet to the shin would probably make him a lot more compliant if he tried to fight back.

"Scientist?" she barked out as she stepped off the final step and onto the basement floor. "Irrelevant. You're a wanted man, and that's much more important at the moment. You can either come willingly, or I--" She glanced around at the other trolls filling the basement, nearly a dozen of them. They really had been late to the party. "...Or we can make you."

Her threats may have been more...threatening, had her voice not been de-aged with the rest of her, if her growl was still intimidating instead of adorable. Also if she was certain that the group would work together to take down a criminal instead of resorting to in-fighting over who got the reward, which she absolutely wasn't.

The little sea dweller felt quite offended when he offered to give them more elixir. She didn't want more of the stuff! Well, O.K., maybe if it didn't have the de-aging affect. The stuff was quite tasty after all. No, no, she came here to get this guy to return her to normal, not keep her this way!

Her eyes fell on the strange device he waved around, wondering what on alternia it could be for. She failed to notice the click or the glowing eyes, however, as her attention was grabbed by more trolls making their way down into the basement. Some less graceful than others. Despite the commotion that one redblood at made coming down and spying another redblood she recognized Khanda's attention was drawn to a determined looking greenblood. Oh she sounded like she meant business and she had such cute hair! Khanda liked her! She edged her way closer to her. A fight was sure to break out at any moment and she wanted to be close to good fighters, this greenblood certainly looked the part with her gun and hard expression.

The newly arriving crowd was enough to send Zeffer into a growling fit, and he bristled, whirling around to look at the other 'kids' who'd been filtering in. He bared his teeth, and didn't do anything to step aside as the greenblood shoved her way through. She certainly looked familiar, though...but that didn't matter, Zeffer couldn't have given two shits at this point. They'd worked too hard to get here for that.

"We're taking him in. We found him first." he snarled loudly, announcing it to anyone within earshot. He wasn't about to let a bunch of late-to-the-party numbskulls take the bounty off their hands, and he was getting pretty frantic. They'd have to find those ******** security tapes if they wanted to have their claim on the beetles. He threatened the greenblood with his stun batons, but his teammate's voice brought him back to the task at hand.

When he turned around again, it was just in time to see the glowing red lights that had just activated, and his fanged grimace turned into one of confusion. What the ******** were those things? "s**t..." he mumbled, and wondered what sort of trick the blueblood had up his sleeve. Not too surprising, if he could create the elixir that had done this, who knew what other kind of stuff he could make? Zeffer took up a fighting stand next to his friends, readying himself for whatever was coming.

Alifax was silent even as they happened upon the hive - Pyruet's comment was more than enough, he found, and she was intimidating besides, even as a child. And he was not so annoyed that he was not first - although the loss of the beetle reward was admittedly pretty disappointing for him. He did want to get back to normal. Somehow.

He followed her through the crowd and up to the trapdoor, hesitantly hefting his meteors as he did so. They'd gotten a lot easier to handle now that he was...becoming used to his situation, he supposed. With any luck he wouldn't have to be so accustomed to it for long, but...as it was, he stepped down the stairs behind his greenblooded comrade, glancing back and giving Amicae a shaky smile.

Of course Pyruet was already trying to take over the room full of kids (and a single teenager?) even before she'd fully situated herself in the room. But that was natural; she was highblo - oh, wait, no. There were seadwellers. He stared at them in dismay before focusing on the...blueblood at hand. He was pretty intimidating, as well - just as large as the clues that Pyruet found had intimated, and, well. Blue. Blue was an intimidating color.

Alifax only stepped to the side a little as he arrived at the basement floor - Pyruet was talking enough, and he was more concerned with assessing their situation (and also making sure Amicae and...anyone else about to arrive could get through without shoving him out of the way). The red glow caught his attention right away - it was a little reminiscent of tiny flames. His most faithful companion.

Until now, of course. Finally, he spoke up. "Um...Miss...Miss Pyruet?" He took one of the meteors and gestured at the lights.

"Wanted?! W w why you, you all owe your glorious transformations to me! How could you even think of wanting to harm me?? With your adorably precious fists, even! You should be thanking me for this, instead of growing old and ugly, you c c can stay young and cute forever! Well I won't come willingly, I I I'll show you exactly what you get for taking on a level 99 Games Master like myself! C c come to me, my precious waifus!"

The red dots that had been slowly circling the dark corners of the room suddenly froze as he pressed another button, and leaping out of the shadows, two robots landed on either side of the indignant and furious self proclaimed Games Master. Wiggling his free hand dramatically, he grasped the joystick and hunched over, a look of furious concentration settling on his face.





The two robot trolls crouched into dramatic poses, and opened their mouths. The noise that came out was certainly not organic, and set to the right vibrations to cause bright lights to flash in front of your eyes and your stomach to feel uncomfortable. A loud wailing howl, almost feline sounding, echoed throughout the basement, shaking dust from the ceiling.

If you rolled a 1, you feel the room spinning around you, your stomach does backflips, and it feels like the floor is trying to replace the ceiling. You're so thrown off balance by the sonic attack that you are unable to concentrate enough to attack the two robots in front of you. Do no damage with your main attack and take 4 dmg.

If you rolled a 2, your head is feeling like it just got dunked underwater. There's an unpleasant ringing in your ears, the world is swimming gently around you, and it's kind of a challenge to focus. You can still move around though, albeit shakily. Take a -1 penalty to accuracy for your half-hour attacks until the next round and take 3 dmg.

If you rolled a 3, your vision goes blurry for a few seconds and you feel a pang of a headache coming on. Your body tremors from top to bottom, and you feel momentarily exhausted. Pulling yourself together, you don't seem to have any lasting after effects, but you're still pretty rattled. Take 2 dmg.

If you rolled a 4, your stomach does a flip once or twice and you break out in cold sweats as the sound washes over you. There doesn't seem to be any lasting harm, but you definitely aren't feeling as peppy as you were a second ago. Take 1 dmg.

If you rolled a 5, you can feel your teeth vibrating together and you wince as you hear something shatter in the distance, but the sonic attack doesn't really seem to affect you in any noticeable way. Huh!

If you rolled a 6, the strange harmonics don't really bother you. In fact, you can feel yourself relaxing and becoming more energetic, and you can practically see your vision becoming sharper. You honestly can't say why everyone else seems to be staggering about and looking ill. Take a +1 bonus to all accuracy and damage for your current attack and your half-hour attacks until the next round.



**PLSNOTE: de-aging is a purely cosmetic transformation. your troll still has the same hp, weapon attack, and skills that they would have as a teenager**