Victoria arrived back at the Adventurer's Guild before Abigail did, though she knew that Abigail didn't have a bike so it wasn't entirely surprising. She'd brought along her pickaxe just in case they did manage to get into the mines... She'd love to start collecting ore even if she wasn't sure how she was going to get it all back to Clint's. If she wanted to keep bringing all her produce to Pierre herself and the ore from the mine to Clint, she might have to upgrade to something better soon... She wondered if anyone around town had or knew where to buy an old used truck. While she was thinking about possibilities for the future, Abigail finally arrived, and Vicky walked over to greet her with a hug.
Abby smiled, but shrugged off the hug, just giving Vicky a fist bump instead. "Let's see what he thinks, shall we?" Abigail was wearing a vest with the arms cut off and a t-shirt under that, as well as some nice, sturdy jeans and boots... Vicky was almost surprised to see that she owned a pair of jeans and boots, but she supposed even Abby had to get out and do yard work from time to time.
Slightly disappointed at not getting her hug, Vicky nodded and turned to the door instead, starting to knock. Just like last time, it took a few rounds for anyone to actually open up the door, and when she did she was met by the same gruff "What do you want?" as last time... Though his expression changed when he realized there were two of them.
"Abigail." He said to her with a little nod of his head.
"Marlon." She smiled up at him. "We would like to get into the mines. For real this time."
He frowned and scratched at his chin with his hand, looking the two of them over, though his attention was mostly focused on Abigail this time. "Fine, I 'spose. I'd let you in on your own, Abby. You know that. I'm sure you can handle yourself in there." He hooked his thumb toward Vicky. "I'll let her in if you promise to keep her safe."
Abigail flushed slightly, then gave a nod. "Alright. I can do that."
Marlon nodded a few times, then gestured with a hand. "Come on in, I'm not sending you in there with your fists."
Abby looked to Vicky and gave a bright smile. She was finally getting to go into the mines! She hurried into the guild, Vicky following behind, the farmer shutting the door behind them.
"Now while there are monsters down there I'm sure you two can handle yourselves if you stick together." He turned and glanced back at Vicky somewhat pointedly, making her frown. "Here." He reached behind the countertop and pulled free a dusty-looking old sword to hand to Abigail. "It's seen better days but it'll serve. You manage to get down about ten levels and I'll give you something better."
Vicky could practically hear a choir coming from Abigail's direction as the sword was placed into her hands, the purple-haired woman staring at it like it was the best thing in the world. She couldn't help but smile as she watched her friend's face and expressions... It seemed like Abigail was finally getting to join the Adventurer's Guild after all. "What should we look out for?"
"Bats, slimes, the occasional bug." He raised his hand above the counter a bit, showing the size of something. "Real big bugs."
Abigail gripped the sword and held it close to herself. "Spiders!?"
"No, no spiders. Grubs and big flies."
Abigail visibly relaxed with a sigh... Vicky supposed she must be arachnophobic. "Okay, good."
"None of them are out to actually kill you. They want your equipment and whatever goodies you might be carrying. But they can still hurt you real good." He gestured to his eye with one hand. "Be careful. You're in there too long and we don't hear anything from you and we're gonna come looking, understand? Nobody dies in the mines on my watch."
Vicky and Abigail nodded, letting out a quiet little 'yes sir'.
He put his hand on his hip, then looked to Vicky. "I'm still not sure about letting you in." When she nodded, he turned his attention back to Abigail. "If you both make it back after the ten floors, which should take you most of the day, then I will make you both official members of the Adventurer's Guild." He glanced back toward Vicky. "Yes, even you."
Vicky was certain she could hear Abigail 'squee'ing quietly under her breath, the woman's hands gripping the hilt of her new sword tightly.
"Membership allows you to purchase equipment and sell loot back here at the guild. We're small but we're loyal. You do well and we'll reward you. Understand?" He gave them both an appraising look, then nodded once he was sure they'd heard him. He swept his arm out in front of himself. "Well? Get going."
Abigail ran out of the guild with uncharacteristic glee, and Vicky was sure that she'd already be down the mines and running slimes through before she could even get there. Marlon appeared at the door as Vicky started walking off, calling her back with a 'hey!'. He tossed her a key on a lanyard. "You'll need that to get in. Hit the big red button next to the elevator as you go down. It activates it on that floor, it's how we're going to track how far you've gotten."
Vicky wrapped the key around her wrist and gave him a thumbs up, which he returned with a smirk before closing the door and disappearing back into the guild. She made her way over to the entrance of the mines to find Abigail trying to force the door open. "Hey, let me." Vicky stuck the key in the lock and turned it with a heavy 'click', then Abigail was finally able to get the giant thing to actually open up and allow them inside.
The whole place was choked with dust... Vicky could hear weird noises coming from a collapsed section off to the right, and there was even an old mine cart track off to the left, though it looked like it hadn't been used in decades. There was an old elevator near the back of the room just like Marlon had said with a bunch of buttons next to it, though only the button for '0' was lit up at the moment. Vicky pressed it, and with a tired old 'ding!' the door creaked open.
"Well, that's not exactly confidence-inspiring..." Vicky pursed her lips as Abigail followed her into the elevator... It was actually much bigger than she expected it to be. There was a caged section off to one side that looked like something should be inside of it... Vicky brushed the dust off of a nearby label. "Ore chute. Oh, hey!" She gestured Abigail over, pointing at it. "Look, here's how we can get the ore up and out of the mines."
"Shouldn't there be a basket or something?" Abigail got her head up close to the cage so she could look down the chute but she pulled her head back with a shiver, suggesting it was probably just a drop straight down.
"Maybe it's on one of the lower floors?" Victoria gave a little shrug.
"How do we get down? Only the '0' floor is lit up here."
"Maybe there's a ladder somewhere. Let's keep looking." Vicky stepped out of the elevator, shuddering a bit at the ominous creaks and whines from the old equipment and metal... She wasn't entirely sure if she trusted that thing just yet.
"The buttons go all the way to 120, how big is this place?" Abigail whistled quietly, then joined Vicky back in the main room. It didn't take the two of them very long to find a ladder leading down into the dark, though Vicky could see some light coming from below. "Where does the power for this place come from?"
"The same place as the rest of the town."
Vicky blinked, then looked to Abigail. "And that is?"
"There's a hydroelectric dam further up the mountain range and river from here that provides power to the whole town. This place is probably wired to the main." Abigail joined Vicky at peering down the ladder, then gave a little shrug. She looked nervous, but also like she was trying to put on a brave front for her friend. "Well? I guess we go on... We won't make any progress otherwise, and I suppose it's time to finally put all that practice into... well, practice, right?" She gave Vicky an unsure smile then began to climb down.
Vicky followed soon after Abigail, climbing her way down into the dim light below. Even as she climbed she could hear odd squishy noises, though they seemed to be far away. When the two of them emerged, they were in a large room much like the one above, though there were boulders and rocks scattered around across the floor, whereas the one above had been clean. There were sandy patches as well, the light coming from some of those super-long-lasting lights you'd see in places like military bases that only had to be replaced once every fifty years or something. Vicky didn't know what they were called, she was just glad they still worked.
This first floor didn't seem to have anything particularly threatening on it, though she could hear the squishing sound a little louder down here. "Oh, Abby, look." Vicky wandered off toward one side of the room, prompting Abigail to jog up ahead to stay in front and keep a lookout for anything strange. There was another elevator down here and Vicky pressed the red button on the control panel. It clicked over with a hum and a buzz, the light above the metal plaque with a '1' on it ticking on. "I guess this is active now... and look." Vicky walked to the side, where a large metal hopper rested in the chute they'd seen before. "This must be the ore chute." There was even a green button next to it that Vicky assumed was 'up' and a red one that she assumed was 'down'.
"Should we put something in it and see if it works?", Abby suggested.
"That's actually not a bad idea." Vicky began looking around for something big enough to really test it with, but small enough she could get it in. "Here, this one." Vicky hefted her pickaxe and gave the rock a solid smack along a flat face, causing it to split into several smaller pieces. She quickly began ferrying the chunks of rock over to the chute and dumping them in, Abigail helping out. When they'd filled it with as much rock as they could fit, Vicky pressed the green button. The whole thing screeched to life with a noise that Vicky hadn't been expecting, and she stepped away so fast she almost tripped over some other rocks. There was a deep rumble from somewhere within the mines as the thing began to cart the rock upward, Vicky venturing forward enough to look up the chute to see where it was going. It ventured up, past the elevator on the first floor, and disappeared around a bend in its track. "Well... I guess we hope it works now."
Abigail nodded, then started off back into the floor they were on. "Do we look for a way down?"
"If we're going to get to the tenth floor before the day's over, probably. I haven't seen anything yet but that doesn't mean it's not here." Vicky followed along more or less behind her friend, trying to keep an eye out for anything interesting.
"Oh, look!" Abigail rushed over to a rock sitting at an odd angle and tugged it aside with a grunt, revealing a somewhat-crushed ladder downward. She pretty much immediately started heading down- the squishy sound was even louder down there than up here- and there didn't seem to be very much interesting about this floor anyway.
The squishing seemed to be coming from very close indeed when they emerged down the ladder and Vicky could even see something moving around off to their left. She gently tapped Abby's shoulder, the woman holding up the sword she'd been given defensively. "Look over there!", Vicky whispered as she gestured off in the direction she'd seen the thing. It was green and oddly shiny even in the dim light those military fixtures gave off down here.
"That must be a slime... I just realized, how do we kill a slime with a sword?"
Vicky gave a shrug and an 'iunno', giving Abigail's shoulder a cheeky little shrug. "Go protect me, my warrior princess!", she whispered with a giggle.
"Oh, shut up.", Abigail hissed back, but she quickly made her way over to the thing. It was almost cute when it turned and realized they were there, bouncing around with that weird squishy noise they'd heard the whole time. There was even a face on it, of sorts, that sort of squashed and stretched as the whole thing moved... Abigail even looked hesitant to hurt it, though that changed real quick when the thing surged forward and took a swipe at her with some kind of pseudopod. Even Vicky's heart skipped a few beats when the thing took a swing at Abby, though she was quick to smack it with the sword she'd been given... Though it took a couple more quick hits to actually get a reaction.
The thing just kind of... recoiled when she swung at it, the sword making wet splats against the surface of the thing. "Abby! Use the edge!" It looked like she'd been hitting it with the flat... At least she seemed to know which end the pointy bit was?
Abby grumbled something about 'harder than it looks' and stabbed the thing, that having the desired effect. It deflated all at once, some of the green goo it was made of spurting out over Abigail's shoes. "Oh... gross!"
"Did you kill it?" Vicky wandered over, looking over Abigail's shoulders. Where had once been a slime was now just a green-colored puddle that was no longer moving.
"I think I did?" She turned to Vicky, her expression quickly growing into a smile. "I squished a monster!" She jumped up and down and actually wrapped her arms around Vicky, thankfully making sure her sword wasn't jabbing her friend in the back.
Slightly surprised, Vicky smiled and hugged the purple-haired woman back all the same, grinning nice and wide. "Great! Now we just have to go down the next eight floors."
"Right. Shall we go then? I'm excited. Maybe I CAN actually do this." Abigail quickly wandered off to start searching for the next floor down.
"I'm sure you'll do fine!"
The next few floors passed in a blur, most of it boring searching for the exit to the next floor, interspersed with acts of random violence whenever a slime reared its head. That's all they'd spotted so far, though on the sixth floor down they finally ran into something that Vicky thought was copper or at least some other kind of metal. It gleamed in a rock stuck to/in the wall off to one side, a dull sort of... well, copper color. "Do you think this is anything we can use? It looks kinda like metal to me."
"That looks... weird." Abigail frowned a little bit as she moved over next to it. "Isn't copper like... green? Or blue?"
"I dunno. There's a lot of stuff in this Valley that doesn't make any sense. Let me take a whack at it." She quite literally took a whack at it, too, smacking the rocks with her pick. They broke away relatively easily in a few swings, sending chunks of the copper-looking stuff rattling across the floor. While she worked, Vicky looked at Abigail. "So why- huff- do they make you use a sword down here anyway? Wouldn't a gun be- argh- easier?"
"They're not allowed down here." Abigail was carting some of the stuff back and forth. Sure enough, it looked like metal, though even Vicky was suspicious about how much it just... looked like chunks of metal that could actually be used as-is with a little work. "Too much noise, too much of a chance of shrapnel, too easy to accidentally cause a cave in."
"I guess that makes sense." Vicky huffed as she'd mined out what she thought was all or at least most of what she'd been trying to get at, then started to help Abigail get everything back to where the chute was. Vicky pressed the red button, hoping it did what she thought and would bring the cart back down here where they needed it. It certainly started making a hell of a lot of noise, that was for sure.
Sure enough, after a couple of minutes of waiting and listening to the thing grind on, the chute finally arrived. Vicky and Abigail loaded as much stuff as they could into it since it'd reappeared empty, meaning it'd dumped out the rocks they'd put into it before... somewhere. She supposed she'd figure it out when they got back topside. Once the thing was full, the two of them took a minute to rest, then hit the green button and started to look for the way down while the cart was grinding its way back up the shaft.
They managed to progress another couple of floors, hitting the elevator button on each one, without much incident. They ran into their first bug on floor 9, though Abigail was starting to get the hang of that sword of hers and she was able to get rid of it in short order. It helped that it didn't seem to realize they were there at all, just buzzing back and forth. They even found a couple of interesting gems along the way that Vicky had stuck into her backpack. One was white-looking and spiky, and another was brown and diamond-shaped, giving off a weird... sort-of-magical energy that both of them had picked up on. She figured she'd give it to the wizard to look at, though she remembered seeing something just like it in the community center too.
One the slimes they'd killed had stayed more or less intact and had congealed in an odd way, and just since it was so strange Vicky had picked that up too, though she'd been questioning her sanity the whole time. They'd even managed to kill a bat along the way, and Abigail had pointed out she'd seen a poster a while back where the Wizard was asking for bat wings for something, so Vicky had picked that up too.
When they finally arrived down on floor ten, their goal of the day, a quick check of her phone revealed that it was well on toward evening, and Vicky was feeling decidedly worn out. She wasn't even surprised to see a red and gold chest sitting on the floor, though she didn't bother to go try to open it just yet. She just wanted to sit down and have a rest for a while.
Abigail seemed to be of the same mindset, setting her slime and bug-guts covered sword down next to her and plopping down alongside Vicky, letting her head fall back against the wall.
Vicky grinned slightly and glanced over at her friend. "Is it what you hoped for?"
Abigail laughed at that, brushing sweat and grime out of and off of her face, some of the hair slathered across her forehead back behind an ear, and turned to look at Vicky, holding out a fist. "It's been amazing. We have to do this again."
Vicky grinned from ear to ear and bumped her fist against Abby's. "Oh, you bet... Any excuse to spend time with you is fine with me." She paused after a few moments, then turned her attention back to Abigail. "You don't mind me... you know, hitting on you and stuff, do you? If it's awkward and all I can stop, I just figure since it's more or less out in the open between us..."
Abigail waved a hand and let her head fall back against the wall. "It's an ego boost, do whatever what you want."
"Sweet!" Vicky said with a little laugh, and with her breath returned she finally pushed herself up to her feet and wandered over to the chest. She nudged it open with a foot since she was too tired to actually bend over and open it the proper way, though she had to do so anyway since all that was inside was an old, age-yellowed piece of paper.
Abigail wandered over around the time that Vicky was picking it up, trying to see what it was. Vicky read it out once she was close enough to hear. "Congratulations on reaching floor 10. Bring this paper up to the guild to receive your license and a choice of new, rugged footwear to protect your feet. You'll need it."
"Well, that doesn't sound ominous at all." Abigail frowned a bit and leaned on her sword as she looked it over. "But it seems like we're the first ones to come down here in a while if the paper looks that old. Seems like if you tried to fold it it'd fall apart."
Vicky nodded, then carefully lowered it back down into the chest and shut the lid back over on top of it. "Let's head back up, yeah? We need to figure out where that stuff we sent up came out at and get you officially enrolled in the Adventurer's Guild." Vicky grinned and gave Abigail's arm a little punch, drawing a soft 'ow' from her friend.
"I'm excited. But also worried, a bit." Abigail frowned as she called the elevator down, leaving the two of them to stand as they waited for it to arrive.
"Worried? Why are you worried?" Vicky raised a brow, watching her.
"Well, I just don't know what my family's going to think. I don't know if mom really... understands, and you know what my dad thinks of all this." Abigail leaned on her sword again, almost like a cane. "I guess we'll see. I've finally gotten what I want." She grinned at Vicky. "I'm not stopping now. No fucking way."
Vicky grinned and reached out, giving Abby a fist bump again. "Excellent. I think we should make this a weekly thing. If not more often. Clint needs a lot of metal from me for things. And you get to live out your dream."
Abigail nodded. "Sounds like a plan to me!"
The elevator dinged as it finally arrived and the two of them climbed in to begin to trip back up topside.
