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Melvin wasn't overly found of entering the tower. Sometihing about it clawed at familiarity and yet made his haunches rise with paranoia. He was entering a place he didn't know, a confined place, and with how places in Halloween moved, wasn't sure if or where he would end up upon exiting. Sometimes he wondered if it would also be a when.

The only good upside was that Rin was beside him, and he planned to keep her close as best he could manage in a environment that was against him at every possible turn. The main goal here was to do their job, stop more hunters from dying and becoming more mounds of tablets in the desert, and finally see if they could do something about the Sahara that did nothing but destroy more and more lives.

He walked in, looking at the ornante room and his first thought was that it was a place Rin probably approved off. It was clean, ornante, lavish in design and while he was not a mason, he knew the stones were expensive. Compared to the blackened outside of the tower, this place was pristine. It was also covered in plants surrounding rainbow pools that ripples colors against the walls and leaves around them.

"I wasn't expecting this." He moved over to the obvious door at the center, and looked at it, before frowning. He had to willingly drink water that other people were dipping their hands in? He didn't even share a bottle of water at home.

Cringing, he looked down at at the pools. "We have to drink from these." He said with a look that said he might be close to vomiting at the very idea.

He had no idea if this was just a trap for poison, but he noticed other people in the room and they did not seem to be dead. Then again, were they even real?

If the warning was true, he had to drink or else he would die. That was not a very good trade.

Moving over, he looked at a red pool. Red - but almost like cherry Koolaid. Red like his scarf. Red like Saliva. Luckily not BLOOD red. It was too thin to look like that. Actually all the pools reminded him of melted freeze pops.

He knelt down, cringing at the idea that there were no cups. Everyone had to dip their dirty hands in one communal pool and who knew how long this pool had been left standing gathering god knows what. Taking just a small bit of water, he drank.

His hair grew a bit shower, his features a little more worn, wrinkles dotted the corners of his eyes. He did not grew, but his body grew a bit more defined. Years of training. Studying. He felt strange, but not as much concerned about the water now.

He looked up to Rin and smiled. "It's not all that bad. I guess we could consider this a trade up in terms of conditions. Just a sip and we can move on. Be careful though." He warned her, his voice a little deeper.

Age: 23+ 5 = 28

[ enter ]

Don't drink and you will perish? What kind of bullshit was this? Jesus. The s**t he signed up for. At least he wasn't dressed up as a dinky mouse in a dinky outfit that he hoped America would stop mentioning some time this century.

At least he was alone, for the most part. He heard people shuffling around, but none of them knew him, and vice versa. Good. He'd hate to see the majority of Deus around, if he was honest.

At the first pool, Leslie dipped to cup his hands, taking a sip. Don't take candy from strangers, don't drink water from strange wells, don't accept the offers from weird old men in wheelchairs to join a league of supervillains. Whatever, he had poor judgement. What else was new--

God. What was that? Had that been an insect, scurrying around behind him? Leslie whirled around, grey eyes wide and teeth bared, terrified.

"Get away from me!" he hissed, whirling around only to see-- "oh, it's you, jesus that was horrifying!" His voice got a little bit louder, its register rising with the decibels. "Don't ******** sneak up on me like that!"

((Enter))

She had to get to the top of this tower, and she had to do it as quickly as possible. Medea, her leader, had already taken off, and Shaheen had been quick to follow, wasting no time in running through that opening and into whatever lay beyond. She was not aware of any of her brothers or sisters of War, or of any of the clans for that matter being with her when she went through, so it did not come as much of a surprise to her when she found herself in a room without Shikoba or Bee or Yves at her side.

A quick look around did show that she was not alone, however. Hunters, vermin in white coats. Soft, wriggling maggots the lot of them. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides at the sight, but she knew that she didn't have time. Not here, not now. She had a mission, and she needed to see it through.

Wings tucking in behind her, she raised the hood on her cloak to shield her insanity stricken face, hoping vaguely that she would be overlooked or ignored and that nothing would seek to distract her from getting through this. Striding towards the door in the center of the room, she read the words, then looked to the areas surrounding.

She didn't have time to debate. She jogged towards the nearest opening she could find, and entered, finding a pool of yellow water surrounded by ornate pillars and flowers. Quickly making her way to the edge, she fell to her knees, and reached down to cup the liquid in her hands.

It looked like urine. She hoped it didn't taste like it to.

Wrinkling her nose, she raised her hands to her lips and sipped at what she held, tipping her head back and lifting her hands higher, drinking it down, while with every swallow she felt something change inside of her, the whispers in her head increased, much like they had at times in the past, and her eyes began to take on a more intense, golden glow. If this had been all she'd had to deal with, it would have been fine.

But it wasn't. This was not quite the same as the insanity she had possessed for two years now. This was somehow worse, her thoughts seeming to jumble together the more she tried to fight it, and she stood abruptly to her feet, straightening, and turning slowly as if to see somebody standing right behind her, her heart racing in her chest.

"We do not like this..." She hissed, giving her head a shake as she took quick strides to exit the room.

Pools: 1/4

They were after the horsemen and somehow that was really ******** familiar, chasing Medea the way they always ended up doing. And once again they seemed like they'd been set as the ******** disposables. Well Rep had no intention of being disposable and, if he had any say in it, he didn't intend to let Harrison be disposable either.

He'd entered the tower because they didn't really have any choice and the only way to go was forward. Stepping cautiously into the room beyond, he noticed the words on the door and sighed. A ******** raiders of the lost ark style puzzle no doubt. Four. Four ******** pools.

"Didn't Dumbledore almost die doing this s**t?" he said absently as he made his way to one of the pools. Some others appeared to be drinking them already or he wouldn't ******** dare to try it. But as it was it seemed the only way forward. Cupping his hands in the purple liquid, he took a sip and licked his lips critically.

"Shhno really bad like, itsh got a certain flavour." he slurred, tottering over to Harrison. "Dullsh the shenses a wee bitty but no too bad eh?"

Pool of Sleep

Leslie's only reply to Maebe's insistence that his head was shrinking was a brief, horrified screech. He popped his head back out of his hoodie and began feeling at it. "It's not!" he accused, whirling to look at her, fingers knotting into the hem of his sweatshirt. "You're a liar and a b***h!"

He scuttled closer to the water to take a drink, only to find that, well.

What was that idiom about lies? That there was always a grain of truth in them?

Before her eyes, he shrank down three inches, becoming even more pitifully diminutive, and his head truly did shrink. He looked up at her with saucers for eyes, then down at his hands that were now far too small for his hoodie, instead of just being a little too small.

"Ohhh nooo," he said, staring at her, "what did you ******** DO TO ME?!"

[ rooms: fear, youth ]

It was the Horsemen. So why was this a ******** ******** S-Class... Did they have a hold of something, or somebody? Could they even control it?

"Rep? You there. I'm in a room with- some kinda water..." he cut the headset off. "********, you're right there."

He didn't think it was such a good idea, drinking and all, but Rep dove right in. Harrison wandered to one of the other pools, crouching over it and watching his reflection muddy the water.

Harrison dipped his hand in, and took a drink. When he pulled his hand away, his face was bristly. With a...mustache? His chin rough too, not too clean.

His hands were scarred, hell, there was a lot about him that was...

"What- what the hell."

Pool of Age

Struggling to ignore the voices in her head as they continued to babble on, she kept her glowing eyes lowered as she went straight from one area and into another, repeating in her head a mantra that reminded her that she needed to do this, she needed to drink from four. She was strong enough, stronger then anybody, and she could do this.

She had to.

She came to an abrupt stop at a pools edge, falling to her knees again and dipping hands this time into a pool of purple. The color was somewhat soothing, though she continued to glance left and right, paranoid that she was being followed, that she would soon find a hunters weapon at her neck if she didn't hurry.

Taking a drink, so rapidly that much of it dribbled down her chin and chest, Shaheen instantly felt...different. Not better, but..dulled. It reminded her a lot of how she felt after consuming too much wine, and when she stood, she swayed, her arms wrapping around herself as she shivered, her eyes half lidded as she turned, and tottered out of the room.

Pools: 2/4