#i said it'd be delayed but NOPE AWS SUPPORT IS APPARENTLY COMPETENT

[itsbenedict]

From the beginning | Previously | Coin standings | 5/18 | 2/7

Nice.

Thanks to the kindness of strangers, the butterflies deliver to the two of you some useful freebies from the Coin shop:

The MER-MYSTIC provides 7 orders of BEAT USER. The two of you divide them such that equally sated as possible- around 8/8. After filling up, neither of you seem too mentally impaired by the hunger, but you know it's only a matter of time before that changes. You still need to FULLY ROBE LILY FILL YOUR BELLY somewhere, though you've got a little wiggle room before it becomes necessary.

They also purchase PRINCE TONY, which... sure, it anagrams to ENCRYPTION, but that seems to be the actual name of the product- a little wind-up doll that acts a smoke bomb by temporarily encrypting everything around it on a timer. Looks like it can be used four times before its bar is depleted.

To that end, A DEMOCRAT purchases you A COUCH FÉVER a CAFÉ VOUCHER, which appears to be for the STACK OVÉRFLOW- a prestigious juice bar that advertises a recent relocation to a place called "the Siren's Arraignment". You're not sure where that is, but you can keep your eye out for it- the voucher is good for 20 hunger's worth of drinks and meals.

You also receive the OLD TROOP SLEEVE DEVELOPER TOOLS, a lightweight gauntlet that sometimes provides the wearer with a +1 HAK bonus. Huh? Or, no, it's... got a hidden needle that allows you to extract a data sample from something and peek at its properties under the hood, allowing you to find weaknesses in bugs and structures.

The BILATERAL SIZINGS SIGNAL STABILIZER is a consumable item that allows you to stabilize an anomaly and automatically DEFEAT THEIR UNTURN one time. A label on the back informs you that it can even be used on memories!

You don't have much time to consider what to do with all this- the monster is hot on your heels! According to the NO FEWER FARMERS FREEFORM ANSWER response, the play seems to be to loop around this thing through the fairy forest and get to the steampunk spires, so you hotfoot it out of there after chowing down on your rations.

Passing through the fairy forest, Walter notices it's changed somewhat since he was last there. The clouds from the cloudscape hills seem to have descended upon it, enshrouding it in fog. It's difficult to navigate, but luckily Adea knows the park's layout like the back of her hand, even in this fanciful and distorted form. She leads you through and up the stairs to the city heights, now a labyrinth of steampunk spires.

You survey the area, to see if there's anything useful here. As usual, it's a little hard to tell if any of this is of use:

There's a patch of soil with a sign declaring that beneath it is every mistake you've ever made, and offering a shovel for you to UNEARTH REGRETS. Is this really a good idea...?

The PURPOSEFUL YACHT is still here, if you want to set sail and scavenge the area for more spare parts to patch yourself up- you're pretty low on health, but there could be consequences.

The GAMED HOUSE-YARD still hasn't replaced its turf with real grass. Seems like they've been getting away with dodging HOA regs for a while.

The high-quality rips whose GRAND DAD THEME: FRISK is easy enough to figure out... still seem to be playing from who knows where.

The FILIAL TWINS have followed you once again, eager to dig up some more files for you to peruse for information and potentially decrypt to earn Coin.

There's a NETTLE SPECIMEN that seems to have grown somehow amidst the whirling machinery. It's got stinging barbs on its leaves, and might be painful to touch.

Continued