A man sits at her feet, his fingers drawing impossible-seeming sounds from the sitar-like instrument held in his lap. 

The ventilation tunnels above are mostly not very spacious. However, there is a certain route by which a sufficiently determined and stubborn  - and also sufficiently skinny - teenager, who is not claustrophobic, can wriggle most of the way down and then emerge into a nexus with a little more room. 

Anstat drops into the chamber as silently as possible, starts the chemlight, and slides his lovingly dissassembled-and-packaged electric violin down on its tether. Then pulls the collapsible rubber pipe that they bought for this out, and pushes it through into the next ventilation shaft until it's up the the red mark. 

He tugs the tether three times to send the 'start preparing' signal, then starts putting his violin together. 

Ronda, fronting Trashfire but not too hard, starts loading the ammunition to send down the pipe. 

Anstat assembles his instrument. Plugs in the miniature-but-powerful amplifier and speaker setup, and slides those, too, down the ventilation tunnel as far as they'll go. He only has enough battery for five minutes but it's enough. 

He sends the final signal, five very fast tugs. He places the bow. Hopes the instrument is in tune, there's no good way to check. 

He plays a note, that echoes on and on and on. 

Trashfire laughs, angry and wild, and flips the lever on their homemade apparatus to start the ammunition going. 

And in the space between two notes, a woman falls out of the air and lands with an undignified squawk. 

She scrambles up to a sitting posture, gaze darting around the cavern, looking for threats.

There's just a woman, singing her heart out about something that sounds very angst-driven, accompanied by a man playing a string instrument of some kind.

There's an audience, too, mostly arrayed in a semicircle and flopped on various soft things; she's landed right in the middle of them. 

And then, about three seconds after she lands, the ABSURDLY LOUD strain of a violin note echoes from, apparently, the ceiling - 

- from which, a second or two after that, an absurdly vast quantity of ladybugs start pouring out, as Anstat moves into the opening notes of 'Ladybug Ladybug Won't You Be Mine'. 

A month earlier, elsewhere: 

"Hey," Veth says, lounging back and looking at her tablet. "Did you know you can buy ladybugs in bulk? They ship them refrigerated by the pound." 

"...Oh no." 

"We have to do it." 

Trashfire is DELIGHTED!!!! 

Nobody of Thorn's likes bugs, so instead she ends up shifting to the her that's the best at screaming like a little girl. 

She shrieks, and crabscuttles backwards.

If they were hoping to startle Nightengale enough that she would stop singing, they do not, actually, succeed in this. She's pretty hard to distract. 

Rastax, on the other hand, swears loudly. There are ladybugs somehow inside his sitar, rattling around upsetly. 

Oh, don't worry, they have EVEN MORE LADYBUGS COMING! It turns out you can buy a really ridiculous quantity of refrigerated ladybugs for about the price of a used scooter, and this was a WAY BETTER purchase. 

There's a momentary struggle for front - 

- and Hannah comes up. 

She closes her mouth with an audible click of teeth. There are bugs on her ew ew ew. 

(At least they're just ladybugs. Look on the bright side.)

She follows the crowd's reaction as best she can, scrambling up onto her feet so she can move.

The crowd is...taking this remarkably calmly? Not quite like it's an everyday occurrence, it's definitely getting attention, but they're mostly not freaking out about it. 

The violin plays faster and angrier. 

...Fine. Fast and angry, she can work with. 

....Dance party? 

Dance party!!!! 

Okay, what the fuck??

idk just roll with it

She starts dancing, trying her best not to inhale a bug.

Nightengale is having fun. 

She reaches the end of the half-improvised song. Waits for the violin sounds to die down before yelling up at the ventilation duct; she's excellent at projecting. "Who's there? You're half decent!" 

Laughter. "A wizard never tells." 

"Well, then, Mister Wizard. I'm sure we'll meet again, someday in these depths, and I never forget a voice." 

"I look forward to it." 

Aaaaaaand now he has a very long boring wriggle back up the ventilation duct. Worth it, though. 

"You gonna pick up your little stage helpers, wizard?" 

....Oh dear. This part was not, per se, planned out. 

"They'll be gone by morning!" he promises, and starts putting away his stuff for the stupid trek back up. 

Nightengale reaches for a wall panel; various coloured globes on the walls light up, making the cave a lot brighter. 

"Concert's over, folks. See y'all tomorrow." She catches a glimpse of Thorn, stops. "...Oh, hey, you're new." 

"I'm Thorn and I'm very lost." 

"No water, no food, no place to sleep for the night," Lily checks off. "Sorry to throw this in your lap, but can you help me?"

"- Yes, we can help. How did you manage to get here? Place isn't easy to stumble into by accident." 

"I - it's a long story. But I think I came from another universe. I'm suspicious of that because I know I'm missing memories and also I am a semi-recreational hypnotist, so I might have done some damage to myself trying something too ambitious - but the fact is I appeared here like five minutes ago, the crowd can probably swear to that."

"She fell out of midair!" someone cheerfully offers.

Nightengale gives the ceiling a dubious look. "Air ducts aren't big enough for someone your size to come all the way down. Huh." 

"You're in the Underworld," the man with Nightengale informs her, his voice surprisingly gentle given that his appearance is not gentle at ALL. "Nearest city is Kast, but we're fifty levels down, so..." Shrug.

"None of that means anything to me. Except for the part where we're apparently pretty far underground. Are the caves habitable or am I going to have to make for the surface in a hurry?"

A chuckle. "Honey, we've lived down here for twenty years. And you'd be welcome to sleep with us tonight, unless you'd rather get back to Law pronto." 

Rastax rests a hand on Nightengale's shoulder. "Does 'Law' versus 'Chaos' mean anything to you?" he asks Thorn, softly. "If the rest doesn't, then I reckon maybe that wasn't such hot advice for you, was it." 

 "Not as something in real life, no. The underground is lawless?"

A laugh like chiming bells. "No laws, no masters, only that which we build by our own strength and will. Apart or together, but the strong win here by their strength, and together we lift greater burdens." By her tone, it's probably a quote from a song or poem.  

Rastax ruffles her hair, kisses the top of her head. "Yes, that. More specifically, no state enforcement down here." 

Hannah slips forwards. "Nice. I could get used to that."

" - but I have to put my basic needs first, before exploration. Is there work I can do down here? Kitchen work, cleaning...?"

"I have about a decade's experience as a counsellor and a hypnotist. Sometimes I combine the two and do hypnotherapy. And, ah, I do the recreational side of hypnosis as well. Would any of that be useful?"

A quicksilver grin. "Ooh, she'll fit right in." 

"Yes, yes, but she'd do all right on the Surface too. Not everyone is obligate-chaos, my songbird." 

He turns back to Thorn. "Stay in our camp tonight - food and protection on us, 'cause we like you. Let's plan on talking about tomorrow when it arrives, but - there are a lot of things you ought to know, if you're really not from these parts." 

"Also, just so you know, our camp is with Adder. As in, Adder the retired Surface Peacekeeper who runs the top fighting-arena in the entire Middle Reach. You'll be very safe. 'Long as you don't get on her bad side." 

"She's a sweetie, though. Wouldn't hurt a fly, 'less that fly'd come into the fighting-cage of its own will. Or had it coming, for doing worse to 'nother person." 

Hannah laughs. "I'll take your word for it. Show me the way?"

"Guess we're just leaving the ladybugs here for our mysterious wizard to collect?" Shrug. "This way." 

The pair of them start walking, arm in arm, down a tunnel leaving the cave and descending. The only light comes from little fairy-light type circlets that both of them are wearing, and toggle on when they walk out of range of the cave lighting. This doesn't seem to bother them; the floor is uneven but they clearly know it very well. 

Rastax does, after a bit, slow down. "Do you need a hand?" he asks Thorn. 

Hannah follows along gamely. She's not in the best of shape but she's a hiker. In sneakers at the moment, but...

"I think I can manage, but thank you."

After a few minutes of walking, they reach a larger, more smooth-walled corridor, much better lit by LED lights strung along the ceiling, the walls completely covered in artistic graffiti. 

Nightengale sings to herself, quietly. She has an amazing voice; she can make herself sound like half a dozen different people, alternating styles every phrase. 

... She'll never know if she doesn't ask. 

"Incidentally... are you plural?"

Nightengale stops singing. 

"- Not so much these days. I'm that old stereotype about artists, you know, I was seven different people when I was nineteen and then in my boring middle age I went for more integrated." 

"Heh. Not all the way. You still pull out Lienna when you need to go topside." 

"Yes, okay, for Law, but when's the last time I went up there? Last year?" 

"As for me, I've always been med– well, let's say undifferentiated, at least," Rastax says dryly. "I'm pretty firmly stuck at one person in here, but I never did manage well up on the Surface, did I." 

"Obligate-Chaos since you were a tot." She kisses him, before turning back to Thorn. "And you?" 

"There's a half-dozen of us here. You're talking to Hannah right now. Aside from me there's Thorn - the hypnotist - Lily - the one who keeps worrying about supplies - Audrey - she's little - and Kumi and Liath, who are... let's just say of a more personal nature. It's rarer where I come from, maybe 1% of the population. Thorn made herself shell personalities with hypnosis about a decade ago, and, well... we proved a bit of a handful."

"Fascinating! It's...hard to imagine a world where it's that rare, I have to say." 

"Not having a Surface and Underworld separated would simplify things, I reckon." 

"Or make them even more confusing! I don't - it's not just those, right, even the folks who never go deeper than the top few levels have to - switch facets, at least, even if they're more like masks than other people, and - how would you be able to talk about it, if there weren't words for - that...?" 

Fond smile. "She's a poet. Loves her words." 

"I compose some doggerel. I don't think I have anything about being plural specifically but I spoke to - the distance between me and ordinary people - quite a bit. Perhaps I can share later?"

"We'd be delighted, honey!" 

The corridor they're in angles, slopes downward; the bedrock around them shifts to a different colour and texture, more basalt-like than the previous layered sedimentary rock. There are support-struts visible in the corners of the ceiling and, at intervals, struts sort of crisscrossed down the walls, in a clearly thought-out pattern. 

Nightengale starts singing again, this time a wordless tune that seems to be imitating birdsong. 

Hannah listens intently with a smile on her face, and keeps an eye out for the camp.

They reach a nexus of corridors - all of which seem to slope in at different angles - and the entrance to a descending shaft, eight feet across or so, with a tight-wound spiral staircase hung inside it. It's dark, but proves to contain a string of lights around the stair-treads that can be flicked on for the descent. 

They go down. And down. 

It's really just about thirty feet, and then the staircase leads down into...a really big cavern, with a high arching ceiling, one that looks at least partly natural - though quite a lot of supporting struts have been added. There's a pump setup buzzing quietly in a corner, apparently draining groundwater from a pit sink into the floor, keeping the floor itself dry. 

It's very well-lit, almost as bright as day and a bit dazzling after the stairs, especially since the ceiling seems to be thoroughly decorated with disco-ball style glittery outcroppings. 

The floor is - not carpeted, exactly, but there's a sort of spongy-rubbery mat laid down across most of it, a little like the flooring in a gym or martial arts dojo. 

Some mostly-naked people are wrestling off to the side. 

Nightengale is beaming. "We're here!" 

"Dazzling."

"Can you show us around a little, meet some people? We'd like to get a better sense of how things work around here."

"Perfect - well, let's go introduce you to Adder, first..." 

In the direct that Nightengale gestures, a tall, muscular, very athletic-looking woman is sparring - against two other men, both larger than her, but she seems to be holding her own just fine. 

Nightengale tugs Thorn over, then stands outside the chalk-marked fighting area and watches until the match ends. 

Adder loses, but she makes them work for it!

After they finally get her pinned and conceding defeat, they let go and she hops back up, beaming. Sweaty, laughing hugs are exchanged. 

Adder turns. Lights up. She crosses to them and kisses Nightengale on the lips. 

"Missed you too. Adder, this is Thorn. Just met her up in the soundcave. She's...not from these parts. Not from this world, it seems." 

Adder's gaze sharpens. "Is that possible?" 

"There's something strange here, that's for sure. She fell out of midair. Appeared from nowhere." 

Liath (There's only one person in this body who appreciates combat sports this much) smiles confidently and offers her hand to shake. "Liath and five others, here, mostly Chaotic. We go by Thorn as a group. Pleased to see you fight, Adder; these two have sung me your praises."

"Aww. Do you fight too?" 

"No, not exactly." Pause. "I'm into hitting people, not so much the 'getting hit' part."

"Oh. I see. ...Well. You're interested in staying down here? You thinking a few nights while you get your feet under you, or longer?" 

"Depends on wether I can earn my keep, I think. I'm - it's probably most accurate to call me a hypnotherapist? All practical experience, no licence or anything. I was studying computer science but I'm honestly not that good at it."

"Hypno... Hmm. Those aren't two words I'm used to hearing together! Fascinating. And, sure, could well be of use here." 

"What's your world's computer science like? Dabbled a little in that myself." 

"It's pretty ubiquitous. Do you have the internet?"

"Define 'internet'? I'd say we've got several. One up on the Surface, and a few networks down here." 

"Worldwide network of computers? Goes everywhere? I guess it makes sense you'd have multiple."