Vermillion Line Rescue

This article contains unmarked spoilers for Book 3.

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The Vermillion Line Rescue is an event on the Fourth Floor. With the train lines going down due to crashes, close to 1000 crawlers get stuck at station 101 with a massive mob heading their way. The Brynhild's Daughters and Royal Court of Princess Donut plan to work together to rescue the stranded crawlers.

Story

Situation and Plan

After returning from Planet Beautiful to the Royal Palace of Princess Donut, Carl and Donut find Hekla, Eva Sigrid and a 27 other members of Brynhild's Daughters in the space. Katia Grim had whitelisted all the Daughters into being able to come into the personal space.

Hekla says she wanted to come by and pick up Katia to have her rejoin the daughters, but also to request the assistance of the Royal Court of Princess Donut. There are around 1000 crawlers located at station 101 on the Vermillion Line that have been pinned down due to the trains stopping and a swarm of mobs. Carl first recommends the group travel to 102 and ride the monster rails to a Train yard, but quickly realizes that would be unfeasible. The crawlers also don't have time to hike the 150 kilometers from 101 to the nearest stairwell at 72, especially since they will be harassed by mobs the whole time.

Even as he feels manipulated by Hekla, Carl recognizes that the request is a masterful move by Hekla. He'd look like a coward if he didn't do it, and he wanted to rescue the crawlers. If Hekla wanted to kill Carl, she'd have to do it in a way that looks like an accident.

Hekla proposes they take a Vermillion Line train they procured down to 101 to pick up the crawlers. They stole a second engine, and if the second engine is used the train can go in reverse. They will come back to a stairwell station and hold it. The subway train is not designed to clear any monsters on the track, so Hekla wants to strap Katia to the front of the train to act as a cowcatcher.

Katia: You only don’t like the idea because you didn’t come up with it.

Carl: I don’t like it because you’re going to fucking die, Katia.

Carl agrees to the plan, as long as he and Donut could ride with Hekla and Eva in the engineer's car. Both parties take the Nightmare Express back to station 60.

Katia, Carl and one of the daughters who was formerly an architect work on the design of the cowcatcher. The design is based on a toggle bolt, where the main body of Katia would be inside the broken out windows of the train. The flaw in the design was that if it took on too much weight Katia might get ripped off the train, killing her and damaging the train.

To prevent this, the scoop had a series of spikes on it to impale mobs. Donut and Hekla would kill the mob and Katia would pull the mob into her inventory.

Trip to 101

Silfa, a healer from the Daughters, joins the group in the engineer's car as they pull away from station 60. Donut casts her Torch Spell to lighten the tunnel. When Katia hits a couple mobs, she gets experience. The liquid in her scoop starts to pile up, but she pulls it into her inventory. Hekla speeds the train up as they come up on station 72 where there is a large group of mobs.

Plowing into the mob of Blister Ghouls at station 72, the train gets showered in a deluge of blood and gore. Katia suddenly drops Unconscious and her health drops below 50%. Carl notes the tingle of electricity and realizes she's getting shocked by something connected to the third rail. Carl yells at Silfa to heal Katia, but she says she's not supposed to unless Katia's health drops to 25%. Hekla nods her approval to heal Katia and Silfa wakes her up.

They pass station 75 and start hitting larger mobs. These bend some of the spike Katia has, and she can only fix some of them. As they crush into the mess of mobs approaching 101, mob chunks come showering into the cab. The room fills waist deep in body parts, some of it still alive. The liquid reaches up to Carl's knees. Katia dips down to 10% health and Carl uses a Heal Scroll on her. Donut yells that Silfa ran into the apartment in the cab.

Carl can't understand why Katia's health is constantly dwindling, until Donut sends a message in chat that Hekla shot Katia with an invisible arrow. She only could see it due to her Prism Industries Capacitating and Focusing Goggles.The train slows as it pulls out of the mass of mobs. Eva is missing an arm, having had it cut off by Hekla who went into an Enraged state.

Katia pulls her mass back into the train car, falling Unconsious again. Carl pulls two Dirty Little Phased Bolts out of Katia.

Carl: Donut, be cool. This doesn’t have to turn into a fight. She was trying something, and whatever it was, it didn’t work. We don’t want to fight her.

“You tried to kill Katia you fucking bitch!” Donut cried. She blasted a full-strength Magic Missile right into Hekla’s face.^[1]

Fight with Hekla

Carl immediately casts his Wisp Armor Spell as two mages and Silfa burst into the compartment and fire magic spells at him. Hekla tells everyone to stop and sends the three new crawlers out of the cab.

Outside the cab the 1000 crawlers swarm onto the train. A group tries to hold off the horde of monsters to give everyone else time to escape.

Hekla tries to calm the situation down by admitting she made a mistake, and that they will talk about it after they get out of danger. Donut is shaking in fury and refuses to work with her. Katia wakes up. She's confused as Donut tells her that Hekla tried to kill her. Katia tries to defend her, saying it was an accident.

Eva interrupts Katia's dazed state, saying they weren't really trying to kill Katia but trying to get Carl angry. She continues to mock Katia, bringing up Fannar and the fact the government wasn't going to let her adopt.

“This is why I left you behind on the third floor. This is why you’re such a damn fuck up. This is why nobody likes you. Because you’re so damn confused all the fucking time. Now for once in your pitiful life do the right thing and get away from those two.” - Eva Sigrid^[2]

Katia initiates her Rush Skill, aiming at Eva. Instead, she misses Eva, hits Hekla, killing her and earning a gold Player Killer Skull. The first bounty of the Leaderboard is claimed. ^[2]

Aftermath

Donut immediately casts both her Second Chance Spell and Clockwork Triplicate on Hekla's corpse, picking Eva up and throwing her out the window. A group of Brynhild's Daughters bursts into the cab and Donut uses the Hekla's to push them out. Carl uses his Gangway Chock to block the door.

Katia shouts that she can't loot Hekla's corpse while she's a minion. Carl has an impulse to detach the train and run away, but realizes that he might be abandoning over 1000 crawlers if he does so. Just as the last crawlers get on the train, Carl sees some monsters with stage 3 DTs. The Hekla minion collapses. As Carl tries to pull the corpse into the cab, the corpse rips in half. He slams on the train controls, reversing the train back up the line.

As the train moves away from the station, Donut notices Silfa's blue dot in the compartment. Silfa tries to make a break for the door, but Donut catches her. Carl tries to calm the situation down by saying he just wants to talk.

Carl lays out Hekla's plan. Hekla had Silfa stop healing Katia, then hide in the apartment in the train car. Silfa corrects him, saying it was Eva who said to do it. Hekla wanted Katia to die, Carl to get angry and attack Silfa. Silfa says that Hekla would never let Carl hurt her, but Carl pulls out the Dirty Little Phased Bolt to show her. When Carl attacked Silfa, Hekla would kill Carl, and Donut would be alone. She would join the Daughters and bring Mordecai with her. Donut says she would never join Hekla if she killed him, and Carl points out that the mages were posted right outside the door and set to attack him. Hekla would have sacrificed them to get Donut.

With Hekla dead, Eva became the party leader of Brynhild's Daughters, and many of the Daughters leave the party. Katia loots the Enchanted Repeating Crossbow of the Scavenger Mother of Mothers from Hekla's corpse.

Li Jun comes to to the front train car to thank the Royal Court for rescuing them. He mentions his sister Li Na and Zhang are fine, and have met up with a group of 12 people. Carl adds him to his chat. Carl mentions that they are going to get off at stop 75, but to take the train up to station 36 to reinforce team Meadow Lark at station 36 for the Stairwell Fight on the Fourth Floor. Meanwhile the Royal Court is going to Bautista for the End of the Line Rescue. ^[3]

References