@Stella:  "As long as... it's not me again." The girl, still a bit sticky, grins admiringly and rubs the back of her head, and the three of you clamber out of the ring as the crows starts to dissipate.  "Funny, I wanted to be the champ, but once I saw the only way that could happen, I didn't want it..." She thinks aloud, now in much better humor.  The cat-eyed girl throws a latch to the door to the back hall and exit for participants, and then they start off to the parking lot with you, asking the whole time about your first professional experience...<br/><br/>@Onyx:  With an eerie grinding noise the old mining lift starts and begins to descend the taut cable further down into the orange mist.  It grows warm... hot... unbearable almost - not blistering, but could miners have worked in this heat?  The professor made a complaint, but looked quickly to Baron, expecting a kitchen joke.  Maybe he was setting him up for it - he had been known to throw them out that way.  Once while out at lunch with Onyx, he lied about coming up short of cash while you were in a similar position, just so he could hear the words "let's charge it" slip from the rhinotaur's mouth.<br/><br/>The cavern, far walls obscured by orange mist, until it was naught but a boundless space with a fading cable in either direction and no walls, ceiling, or floor, clanged eerily as it went on, and descended, the clanging noises echoing from forever away, the heat stifling.  The professor shuffled through his bag and withdrew some small respirators - primitive charcoal filtered ones that would nevertheless protect from caustic mine gases, and offered you each some water from a cold skin.  Finally, the orange mist brightened, clearing... the light all around you was a neon orange horizon, and the air, still toasty, cooled just a bit and became dry in an instant, until the light dissipated and you found yourselves exiting the side of a massive mountain, the cable hooked to the rock above in a hole just large enough for it to exit.  A mile below, forests, petrified, stood a silent sentinel while the cart clanged along, swaying slightly in the wind.  The view was magnificent, and encompassed deserts, deltas, redwood and rock, and still the cable descended off into the distance somewhere... somewhere to reach the end in this strange land.<br/><br/>Was the mining town BUILT on a cliff's edge?  The professor thinks aloud.<br/><br/>@Santi: The scalding shower nonetheless feels a blessing, a fiery wet cleansing that seems to pierce deep until the nerves are so fiery that as red as your skin is, unblistering still, all you feel is that burning sensation without the pain.  The sort of burning sensation that comes when you stick your hand in ice water for too long, or in hot water alike.  If everyone could regenerate, this would be a past time; as it was, this was a bit more common in hot springs, few of whom could withstand the truly hot ones... then, after a little while comes a knock.  "Santi?  Santi, are you okay?  I can feel the heat coming from under the bathroom door..." On the other side he wriggles his bare toes, toasty from the steam bursting forth not just above but below - that was a hot shower, and he could tell.  "Santi, really, are you okay?  I need you to answer me." He swallows and stands before the door, listening for you...