The trip to the bubble managed to be considerably more stressful than the one the team had partaken in last night to the Brachydios fight. There were swarms of keese again, which were proving themselves to be the Land of Adventure’s local flavor of Goddamned Bats, but the number of other foes also deciding to take pot shots at the party made Bowser regret not riding in the Brother Grimm with the others.

”GRAHHHHHHHH! GET OF THE ROAD!” Bowser roared as he swerved wildly to avoid a rhino beetle as it attempted to take the Bowser Mobile to pieces. After passing the oversized bug he turned his head and spat a fireball at it’s exposed rear in revenge, inadvertently clearing the road for the Brother Grimm he was riding ahead of to avoid the dust storm the titanic machine kicked up.

Above Kamek and his red clones (three out of four of them now) fired spells and fireballs down at the attackers while darting to and fro to avoid retaliation. The fourth remained green and, after stabbing the scarecrow into the roof of the Brother Grimm to bobble about in the wind and scare the nonexistent crow foes, was swooping around casting its defense buffs to keep the massive monster truck from suffering too bad of a beating.

Finally Jr’s clown car flew too and fro, plowing into the ranged attackers, it’s boxing glove armed robo-arms pummeling bullet kin and mactera with a flurry of blows wherever they tried to take shots at the Brother Grimm.

Both Kamek and Jr grabbed spirits when they could, stashing them in glass bottles taken from Bowser during the lulls between fights, and between them they acquired a nice stash of spirits before they reached the jump. Unlike peach they had zero hesitation in heading across, the Bowser Mobile actively jumping the gap rather than simply ramping it while jr and Kamek simply flew across the pit without incident. As a result Bowser missed himself getting volunteered for car transportation duty and had to rapidly roll his car out of the way of the massive monster truck’s landing zone to avoid being crushed by its thunderous landing.

The titanic impact of the monster truck as it landed seemed to draw the ire of the spheres defenders, who bubbled up into being right before the Squad’s very eyes. Anticipating a fight, Bowser jumped out of his car as his two flying family members formed up on either side of him, prepared to face whatever menacing power the region was going to throw at them next.

”OH HEY. IT’S THE SUB-SPACE ARMY,” Bowser shouted when the purple particle based foes materialized an revealed themselves to be a familiar former friends/foes, before calling out to peach and fox ” REMEMBER THESE GUYS? GUESS TATTOO GOT DEMOTED TO JUST BEING A WORLD BOSS OR SOMETHING”

“Tabuu” Kamek corrected him

”WHATEVER- WOAH!” Bowser exclaimed as Torra leaped to block a cannon shot from one of the Primids, ”ALRIGHT KOOPA TROOP, LET’S SHOW THEM WHO’S BOSS. JR, LET’S GIVE EM A GOOMBA SWARM!”

”On it Papa. Goomba squad! Bullet bill formation!” Jr yelled, stepping up onto the rim of his clown car with one foot and pointing commandingly towards the enemy as he shouted, calling a horde of goombas to spawn around him and counter charged the advancing sub-space army.

The koopas didn’t leave them to simply charge alone, as this would surely fail, and so instead each koopa gave “aid” to the stunty mushroomoid soldiers. Bowser spat out small jets of flame, lighting a fire under the Goomba’s butts and launching them skywards like angry little rockets, only for them to come crashing down on the heads of the enemies. Jr hurled globs of green Brachydios slime onto Goombas as they passed him, turning them into improvised bob-oms that careened into the enemy's ranks and blew holes in the enemy's formation. Finally Kamek and his clones gave far more traditional aid, casting size increasing and defense increasing buffs on the goombas that gave them a fighting chance against the subspace army in one vs one fights. Regular goombas might be weenies but size them up a bit and make them tougher and they were walking maws with pairs of massive fangs that could do a surprising amount of damage.

The Sub-Space armies predominantly melee focused troops prevented them from simply gunning down the whole wave of goombas and so instead the two ground armies clashed together in a cacophonous melee, Primids hacking at the mushroom troops, Borboras blowing them away, Bytan meeting in them armless combat while the bulky Tickens barging through their ranks.

”Hammer Bros! Get in there!”

”Koopa Troopas! Chain Chomp formation! Reinforce the flanks!”

“Dry bones! It is time to rise! drag these fools to their demise!”

The Troops leaders called out, sending in the koopas to the fray, the turtle trouble makers charging in, fists and claws flailing while hammers and bones went flying, and turning the fight into a pitched battle with a front line and everything, at least in the area ahead of Bowser.

While the melee began to rage the commanders moved to provide support to their troops. Kamek and his red clones lobbed fireballs over the heads of the troops into the enemy ranks and fired their triple shape spells at Feyesh and Armights coming in to attack from above while Bowser let out vast gouts of flame to do the same. Jr meanwhile chugged a bottle of water and grabbed his paintbrush before waving it too and fro, hurling rainbow ink at the subspace army, splattering them with the dot damage dealing goo and causing the translucent dumbo octopus looking Swoopin Stus to spawn in their ranks, further spreading the ink across the canyon floor.

Donnie didn’t usually need much sleep. But he hadn’t slept for 24 hours now. He managed to stay awake long enough for the conversation with Tora, but now that he was actually walking to the Great Ton Pu Inn with the intent to actually sleep, the exhaustion had finally hit his body like a ton of bricks. He could barely stand up.

But, if he was going to go to sleep, he could at least stand to do an “evening” routine. He had cleaned himself in the Argent Tower, but he hadn’t brushed his teeth since leaving Peach’s Castle!

Medieval though it seemed, Azeroth was a deceptively-advanced world once you got past the plate armor, stone castles, and thatched orc huts.. Proper hygiene and sanitation was critical. As such, Donnie made damn sure his teeth no longer smelled like the Undercity’s sewage rivers (seriously, he knew the Forsaken were undead and all, but would it kill them to make the place sanitary enough that it couldn’t qualify as a hazardous waste zone to anyone who wasn’t literally rotting? It’s not like they used the sewers they called home!). He visited the local bath for good measure, even though he knew it was unnecessary, and in general did everything he needed for his normal evening routine, even though it was in the morning.

Gods, I’m going to have portal lag for a while, aren’t I? the relatively young grandmaster thought to himself as he finally crawled into bed. Going to bed in the morning and it’s barely been three days since I joined this whole crusade. If I keep staying up all night and getting teleported across the world like that, who knows what my sleep cycle’s going to look like by next week?

After about fifteen minutes, he drifted off to sleep, only to wake up with a shout. The clock was noon.

He looked at his hands, trembling in not just fear, but a slight tinge of anger. That dream...the plague. Stormwind’s fall. The appearance of N’Zoth, it all felt so vivid. But he knew better. Galeem was trying to play tricks on him somehow. Invading his mind to try and make him give in, trying to make him like Din. N’Zoth had made that obvious enough. N’Zoth was too chaotic, too corruptive.

Galeem would allow villains to prosper, but they were always...smaller. The Qliphoth was dangerous, but its roots did not yet leave Redgracoon City. He liked to see things fenced off in their own little areas, unable to wreak havoc. MegaDragonBowser wouldn’t leave World 1-1, but N’Zoth wouldn’t play like that. No, N’Zoth, even in the absence of the other Old Gods, would try to create a subterranean version of the Black Empire, and would make the oceans impassable. All life under the sea would be twisted into insanity-inducing monstrosities, all sailors who visited would either become his cultists, die, or go stark raving mad. Eventually, his armies would move onto land, surrounding the World of Light from all angles and moving inwards until the surface became the same kind of hell as the depths.

The Old Gods were proud, clever, insidious, and were willing to wait millennia while they plotted, corrupted, and gathered strength. It was how they remained a threat even after being locked miles below Azeroth’s surface by the Titans. N’Zoth would never accept the control of a being so orderly as Galeem. Eventually, he would move against the great big ball in the sky, and would not stop until he was brought back under control (at which point the world would already be damaged beyond repair), or Galeem was killed.

And that was assuming that N’Zoth didn’t just play the long game and whisper things that should not be known into Galeem’s ear from his place in the sea for centuries upon eons, waiting until he could drive the deity insane and turn him into his pawn. Just like how the Old Gods as a whole turned the leader of the Black Dragonflight and Aspect of Earth, Neltharion, into the all-destroying psychotic killing machine known as Deathwing.

Galeem would not stand for this. N’Zoth was likely dead. No, to call N’Zoth “dead” would be an insult to everyone who had ever died. N’Zoth was so far beyond dead that he never existed outside of Donovan’s memories, and never would exist, except perhaps as a boogeyman for parents in this world to scare their children with should they misbehave.

And that brought the grandmaster to the reality of the situation: The mission was still four hours out. He needed to go back to sleep. He turned over onto his side, and slowly drifted into unconsciousness once again.

Donnie woke up at 3:30 on the dot. This left him more than enough time to get ready for the mission, and once again he was out in Lumbridge, and after he looked over hs Nopon friend’s handiwork and thanked Tora for the upgrades to the Dwarven Flying Machine, piling into the giant monster truck as he prepared for a bumpy ride.

Donnie was many things, underneath his punching-obsessed exterior, but he was not a patient man. A Huojin monk by his very nature, he valued quick and decisive action over inner philosophical debates, yet the act of waiting for a mission to start rattled his nerves every time. He knew, going into every big dungeon and raid, that there was a significant chance that he wasn’t coming back. That the mission would fail spectacularly, and the world outside the target’s walls would be ruined as a result.

He just wished that the mission would come, hit him, and be over already. Whether he was to die or succeed, why couldn’t fate just let it be so and save him the agonizing, nerve-wracking waiting? He was gripping the edge of the truck bed so hard that his knuckles were white. He watched as the land gradually started to turn more barren, twisted and infested with monsters the further they traveled, until, eventually, he saw it.

That all-consuming blackish-purple void. It reminded him of so many things from his own world, but it wasn’t anything he directly recognized. It was a blight on the landscape, something that simply should not be there. Donnie started to break out in a cold sweat. What the hell was inside of that thing?

The truck jumped the gap, then, while Donnie was distracted with his thoughts. When it landed, he was thrown twenty feet clear of the impact, traveling in a parabolic arc, but he managed to mitigate most of the impact by tucking and rolling. He sprung to his feet, seeing the forces emerging from the bubble ahead. Strange, bulbous soldiers in uniform formed from strange globs of purple energy. Weird monsters that resembled giant armored heads that flew into battle wielding twin swords. And of course, the eyeball-fish. Eyeball-fish. This place was only going to get weirder, wasn’t it?

He was interrupted by an energy beam impacting close to his position. He was already on the move as he caught sight of who had fired it: A Beam Primid, from its cover behind a nearby boulder. By the time the Primid was ready to fire the next shot, Donnie was already parkouring his way up the rock. Its desperate shot went wide as Donnie slammed into its fragile body like a ton of bricks, smashing what passed for its ribs with a devastating palm strike and taking it out in one hit. It flew backwards about ten feet, rolled twice, and lay still, before dissolving back into that strange purple goop it was born from.

“Well, that was easy--OH SHIT!” Donnie yelled as five laser blasts narrowly missed him, a whole host of Beam Primids firing upon him where that one came from. He took cover behind the boulder he’d slain the first one at, only for a Sword Primid to come charging at him to try and flush him out.

The Sword Primid was a mighty-inspired little beast, but what it had in valor it seriously lacked in every other department. Donnie easily grabbed its sword arm before he could make contact, forcing its noodle-like arm beyond normal rotation and breaking it, forcing it to drop the beam sword. He then grabbed the beam sword while tossing the Primid over the boulder. While the Beam Primids were distracted by their marshmallow-like comrade hurtling towards them, he dashed around the boulder and was soon upon the host of Beam Primids, making short work of them with the Fists of the Heavens, leaving the corpses to dissolve into more of that shadow-stuff.

He sincerely hoped that the purple globs didn’t function like Shadow or Void from his world. He’d had enough of that insanity for a lifetime.

He then heard a sinister laugh above him and the telltale sound of a sword swing. He rolled out of the way as an Armight came down from the sky, leaving a deep gash in the ground where he once stood. It swung at him without tiring, aiming for his neck, arms, legs, anywhere it could land a hit. It fought like a fish possessed.

Donnie jumped backwards, attempting to avoid the sword swings, though a few of them managed to get through and hit his armor. The Armight was strong enough that they still stung through blunt force trauma alone. Having enough of this, he spotted a hole in the Armight’s guard and smashed it straight in the face with a straight that could shatter bone. The Armight reared back, stunned, before he grabbed its arms, yet more limp noodle-like things, and spun the Armight around, culminating in a slam straight into a nearby boulder, causing its bones to give way and its helmet to crack. Donnie then raised up his boot 180 degrees, ending its life by smashing his heel into its skull with a chi-enhanced kick. It, too, dissolved back into those shadowy globs.

That fight had taken a lot out of him. And that had just been one enemy! He was never going to be able to deal with all of these guys with his fists alone--”BREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE--”

And then Donnie had to cover his ears as a trumpet-headed man started to roar at him with the full force of, well, a giant trumpet. The man wasn’t too far away, Donnie could easily get over there and attack--if only he could get through the damn wind this trumpet-headed bastard was pouring out from his mouth!

The Primids nearby saw his weakness and capitalized on it, charging all at once, tackling him to the ground, and attacking him relentlessly. For the first time in a long while, Donnie was being beaten into the ground by a bunch of minions. He really shouldn’t have underestimated them: If he took his hands off his ears to fight back, he’d feel immense pain and probably go deaf at this rate, but if he covered his ears, the Primids would go back to whaling on him. What was he going to do?

Then, the Borboras stopped, for some reason. As Donnie now could get the Primids off of him with impunity, shattering spines and snapping necks, he got to his feet, his ears ringing and his body bloodied and bruised from a hundred punches and kicks, he saw Vivi, having just cast a paralysis spell of some kind on the Borboras.

“Thanks, Vivi!” Donnie said, as the Black Mage finished casting another spell: Thunder. The Borboras’ paralysis ended, but instead it fell to the ground, spasming and convulsing as its metal head did an excellent job conducting the electricity that Vivi’s spell put out.

While that happened, Donnie cast Vivify on himself a few times as he got himself back up to 100%.

“Thanks, again,” the monk said, taking a moment to catch his breath as the enemies around them began to dissolve, “I owe you one.”

“No you don’t,” Vivi replied. “If it weren’t for you, I’d still be a Spirit. I’m just doing my best to contribute, like everyone else.”

“Well…” Donnie looked at him slyly. “Want to keep contributing?”

“Sure?”

---

“WHY DOES THIS THING NOT HAVE A SEAT BELT?!”

“BECAUSE TORA FORGOT TO PUT ONE IN!”

“THAT SEEMS LIKE A SERIOUS DESIGN FLAW!”

“WELL, IT’S BETTER THAN IT WAS WHEN IT CAME OFF THE IRONFORGE ASSEMBLY LINE AT LEAST!”

“WHAT DO DWARVES SMOKE WHERE YOU’RE FROM!?”

“THEY DON’T! THEY JUST GET REALLY, REALLY DRUNK!”

That was Vivi and Donnie yelling over the din of the Dwarven Flying Machine’s engines as the pair unleashed hell on the Subspace soldiers below. The Boom Biters, true to form, exploded gloriously, taking dozens of enemies back where they came from with every blast. Vivi, with nowhere else to sit, sat on Donnie’s lap (the Black Mage was only three feet tall, so it wasn’t as bizarre an idea as one might think in the absence of another seat), casting Stop on enemies below to send their careful formations and ambushes into disarray, and Thunder on any enemies that got too close for comfort.

“DID I REALLY HAVE TO SIT ON YOUR LAP THOUGH?”

“HEY, WHATEVER WORKS, WORKS! I’LL ASK TORA TO ADD ANOTHER SEAT WHEN WE GET OUT OF THIS, ALRIGHT?”

It was a good solid amount of hours that passed by before everyone gathered out in front of the guild hall again in order to head out on the infamous G rank hunt. Not knowing what to expect, everyone had to prepare for anything, and that’s exactly what the Courier intended to do. He had Gaige-Tron flit about gathering materials to feed his construction line of chem crafting and came up with a pretty good amount of helpful items, both for himself and for the allies in his posse. Jak and Daxter had to blow off some steam after the trials and chills of the Dead Zone, and while they fully intended to return and take down that Qliphoth tree, it was nice to be somewhere else getting some much needed rest. As for Cuphead, “preparation” wasn’t really a term he was all that familiar with. Instead the little cup dodged and rolled about town in a hurry, looking over all kinds of things and getting into some (light) mischief. Still, he was ready and willing to help with a big ol’ grin.

While everyone gathered around, the Courier stepped in with his new supplies on hand. First he spotted Blazermate and gave her a bottle of buffout. ”This here is called buffout. It’s a super steroid that’ll give a massive boost to strength, endurance, an’ let’em take more hits.” He then spotted Linkle and handed her a glass bottle of something green and glowing. It wouldn’t be entirely out of the question for someone to think it was radioactive. ”Howdy lil’ lady. Here’s yer uh… Green ‘potion.’ If’n this on’ make ya go wild, nothin’ will I reckon.”

Cuphead slid up reeeeeeal close to the Courier. ”Whacha got for me, cowboy? Huh?”

The Courier bit his lip, still visibly uncomfortable with the little cartoon. ”Y’all didn’t make a request so I got nothin’ fer ya. Now let go a’my duster if’n ya please.”

Nearby Jak was coming into the fold himself, Daxter riding atop his shoulder. All these people gathered for a single hunt? Oh, this was gonna be good. ”Count me in. I can head back to the Dead Zone once this is wrapped up.”

The Courier conversed with those around him, Jak kept to himself unless spoken to first, and Cuphead darted around saying hello and trying to get to know everyone. After all, if they were going to be friends, they’d need to get to know one another, right? Gaige-Tron was causing quite the ruckus demanding more personal space because “anarchy needs to breathe,” so there was that. After a few minutes the Courier called out his pokemon and began to feed them, as well as his chocobo mount, Drumstick. Then as the last of them gathered around, Princess Peach took charge. She was good at that, and only seemed to have become more assertive since bonding with that reaper guy.

Apparently the trip would be a long one, over some nasty rough terrain. They were warned that anybody trying to ride an animal wouldn’t be able to keep up, which caused the Courier to wince. He really did not care for riding in cars and other machines. Maybe that was weird for a skilled robot and computer engineer like himself, but it was the truth. He was comfortable with his own two feet, or with a living animal breathing beneath him. But if it was the situation, it was the situation. He couldn’t change that. At least the princess had some people working overtime to reconfigure that mammoth of a truck for extra space. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to be leaving Drumstick behind! She would have her own seat in the back and if anybody had a problem with it, he’d have Gaige-Tron slap’em upside the head.

Jak opted to travel on his own using the jet board. After all, it had a second speed function that would allow it to keep up with the fastest vehicles, it would hover over most troublesome terrain, and was far more maneuverable. The way he said it made it seem like he was giving the others more elbow room, but the truth was more in line with his loner nature: he just didn’t want to be around that many people. Besides, the wind rushing against his skin was the best feeling in the world! And he wouldn’t be completely alone, he’d have Dax the whole way.

Cuphead, he was just excited to be coming along. Soon as the truck took off he was out of his seat looking around like a little bouncing ball of energy, checking out every nook and cranny. He was open to conversation the whole way, but didn’t engage anyone first. The sights all around the landscape were just too cool to ignore and he wanted to drink (pun intended) it all in.

The journey was definitely long, longer than anything they’d experienced in the Land of Adventure thus far, and had a couple snags. As they neared their enemy’s territory, more and more monsters came out of the woodworks. The Courier chuckled as some flocked of one eyed bats came close but couldn’t keep up, and openly dismissed the bullet-people he had already dispatched on his wiggler-quest. They weren’t worth the time. Jak had to suppress the urge to clear them all out. Fighting was a thrill, one of the darker thrills, but he couldn’t afford to feed into it right now, not when they had places to be. If these creatures couldn’t even hit the giant monster truck, they had no hope of hitting him on the jet board.

When finally their destination came into sight, the description given by the guildmarm was quite apt: it looked like a big sphere of discolored space. Unfortunately it was on the other side of a large cliff, one that couldn’t be crossed back so easily. Peach kicked the Grim into overdrive and jumped that canyon! ”YEEEEHAW! OH SHIT WAIT NO!” the Courier cried out, realizing he wasn’t secure. Before he could go flying out, Gaige-Tron latched onto his arm and kept him grounded.

Cuphead fell over, holding on for dear life and laughing with sheer joy the whole way. Only once they came to a complete stop did he realize something was wrong. ”Aw shucks,” he said, standing back up and patting himself off. ”I chipped!” He pointed to a small crack on the side of his head where a little flake of porcelain had come off, then shrugged. ”Looks like I’ve been shaken, not stirred! Hahahaha! Oh well. Hey Blazermate, you can fix this in a jiffy, can’t ya?”

Back on the other side of the ravine, Jak was speeding up toward the jump. He and Daxter had their goggles down, protecting their eyes from wind shearing and stray dust particles. ”Uh, Jak? You’re not thinking of doing what I think you’re thinking about, right? Jak? JAK? JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”

”WOOHOO!” Jak took the jump as fast as the jetboard could carry him and started pulling out all kinds of tricks. He spun around and backward for several rotations, kickflipped the board over his head and back under, spun the board around while he flipped over it, and finally landed back on the jet board as it in turn landed on the Brother Grimm’s bed railing, where he grinded along until reaching the truck’s cab and hopped off on top of the vehicle. The jetboard reattached to Jak’s back, while Daxter desperately clutched his friend’s leg like a parasite, shaking violently.

”Is it over?” Daxter asked weakly.

”Yeah,” Jak answered.

The ottsel opened his eyes and carefully, slowly detached himself from Jak’s leg… Then promptly lost his balance and fell flat on his face. ”NEVER do that again!” he moaned, face planted on the roof of the Grimm.

Meanwhile Bowser was talking to Peach and Fox about how they should recognize what was going on, and how this area was ruled by someone named Tattoo (wait, no, Tabuu). Of course, he was cut off as a canon was fired into the group, and Tora jumped in the way to intercept it like the good fluffy tank he was. ”Well, time t’go ta work, hombres.” The Courier hopped on top of Drumstick and spurred the bird on.

“Yeah! Gun fight, woo!” shouted Gaige-Tron, rolling on after him.

”Golly, what a bunch of weirdos,” Cuphead commented on the nature of their enemies, the irony of his own weirdness completely lost on him. He took off running, finger outstretched and firing dozens if not hundreds of peashots in his charge.

”Looks like we’ll be needing a little more air support,” Jak said.

”Oh no. Please don’t tell me we’re about to go back uUUUUUUP!” Light Jak took to the sky, Daxter moving onto Jak’s back between the shoulders, right between the ethereal wings of light. Jak handed his buddy the morph gun and Daxter grinned. ”Now this is more like it! You drive-” He cocked the weapon into vulcan fury mode. ”I shoot.”

The Koopa Troop unleashed a literal army into the enemies while BJ disrupted the enemy lines further with his graffiti. Donnie took to the air with his dwarven flying machine, accompanied by a striker he had recently obtained. The Courier charged into the fray with his shotgun in hand, flanking the subspace enemies engaged with the koopa army. Drumstick ran alongside their flank as he took shots at them from the side. Gaige-Tron stayed close, not attacking but acting as a robot shield for any stray fire. Some energy beams and sound blasts went his way but the customized securitron hopped in the way and activated its eradishield to take the hit, which gave the Courie an opportunity to punish his attackers with prejudice. ”Ain’t nobody gonna harm a feather on my Drumstick!” he shouted.

Light Jak circled round up in the air as Daxter fired the vulcan fury with far greater skill than his tiny body would suggest, being able to handle the recoil just as well as, perhaps even better than, Jak. Of course if there was one thing the ottsel was good at, it was taking a hit. And another hit. And another hit. He got injured a lot, so the kick on this thing, pfft. Whatever, the point was that these flying enemies would be a big pain against Kamek’s clones and the dwarven flying machine, so Daxter kept those fliers off their tail… Until the vulcan fury ran out of ammo, that is.

Fumbling, Daxter changed settings to the latest yellow eco setting, the penetrating spear, and accidentally misfired the gun! A high velocity yellow spear shot out, spinning, and skewered three feyesh through the eyes. ”That’ll work!”

Meanwhile, Cuphead was… Wait, where was Cuphead?! Oh, there he was! The little guy had hitched a ride on Donnie’s flying machine! He was gripping onto it from the bottom with one hand, the funny little stowaway, and rapidly firing off shots in every which direction. Despite his odd behavior and impulsive nature, it seemed the little cup was actually well versed in the importance of teamwork as he was taking out enemies that came near the rest of the fighters from angles they weren’t paying attention to. It was one such stray shot that alerted the Courier to their situation, and the mailman formulated a strategy.

The Courier came to a stop along the edge of the canyon path. ”Time t’ hunker down, Gaige-Tron! C’mon out, Bastion! Lakelurk! You too, Ivories an’ Bugfoot!” Every one of the Courier’s minions, his pokemon and his strikers, appeared. Implicitly understanding the plan, Bastion morphed into sentry gun mode atop the cliff edge and, with this vantage point began to mow down enemies bottlenecked below. Gaige-Tron and Bugfoot held their ground as the last line of defense around Bastion, while Ivories rolled out in quick skirmishes to trample over enemies then return. The lakelurk was on anti-air duty, firing out sonic blasts at any feyesh and armights that dared get too close.

The Brother Grimm was a beast of a vehicle, even after Bowser basically blew it to smithereens with Blazermate's help back in the wastelands. Apparently while in the land of adventure, the monster vehicle got repaired, although it didn't look quite as good as it originally did. Blazermate had no qualms with riding in this thing unlike Sectonia, and gladly sat by Tora. Sectonia took a bit of convincing to get her to ride in the car, and even when she finally got into the vehicle, her disdain could be clearly seen on her face. The only thing that kept her from outright denying the ride was the sheer distance to their travel destination.

"I take it this will be used to get us around this vast world." Sectonia said, the dislike for the Brother Grimm clear in her voice as she took her seat. Her lower half made sitting in seats designed for things with legs very akward, which really didn't help her mood at all. "Probably, until we find something better." Blazermate said. "You guys did a good job fixing this up after Bowser blew it up." She continued, complimenting all the mechanics on board. As the truck roared to life, Sectonia covered one of her ears in annoyance.

She then noticed that Bowser and his squad weren't onboard this monster of a vehicle, but were in their own? Bowser drove a car that was fairly large as well, although not nearly the size of the Brother Grimm. Sectonia did note it looked better than the Brother Grimm, but still looked somewhat comical with its front and back being styalized the way they were. Although none of that compared to the sheer travesty against fasion that was the thing Bowser's son was riding in. While it looked the most comfortable out of everything for someone of Sectonia's shape, the clown motif just made it look childish. Noting the irony of the child of the childish bowser riding in such a childish car made Sectonia chuckle a little. Still, she did mull over the idea of trying the Bowser Mobile, but being next to that loud buffoon really didn't make up for the slight increase in comfort in her eyes.

"None of you have anything beautiful to travel this world. I'll have to fix that later." Sectonia said. She would've done something about that if she had access to the magic that allowed her to remake things, but she still didn't have much of her magic power. Blazermate meanwhile was having fun chatting and catching up with everyone who was in the Land of Adventure as they traveled. Cuphead was the most energetic of the group and Blazermate got to chat a lot with the odd cup boy. While it took her a bit to actually understand what he was saying at first, chatting with him and everyone else was nice.

----

At first, Traveling in the Brother Grimm was bearable for Sectonia, the scenery of the land being somewhat relaxing and mysterious. This all eneded abruptly and her tolerance turned to disdain when they reached the wasteland due to the constant bumps of the road and the occasional swerve that happened as they dodged the occasional thing that tried to run them off the road. "Maybe I should've chosen to ride with the buffoon..." Sectonia grumbled, watching as Bowser had a much smoother ride, although his road rage didn't help his case much even if it did clear the way for the truck. Blazermate was also not enjoying the ride, but not to the degree of dislike Sectonia was having. "Huh, guess this wasn't as fixed as I thought? Or was it always this bumpy?" Blazermate said, her suffering arm gripping her seat a bit too tightly and leaving dents.

After a bit of some super bumpy travel, the truck stopped at a ravine. Peach called out to the people in the back that she was going to jump it, which was Sectonia's que to leave the vehicle and just fly over the ravine, especially since their goal was in sight. It was clear on her face she was done with this 'joyride'. Blazermate was a bit curious to see how this would go, as she could jump out and fly if she needed to, so she stayed to enjoy the jump of the Grimm. Unlike a few others in the truck, Blazermate's firm grip kept her from flying out as the truck made its jump. The landing however wasn't very fun at all, and some of the people in the truck got hurt from being flung about, most notably Cuphead. Blazermate, after recovering from the landing, healed him up at his request. Sectonia looked at the rough landing and was thankful she had the foresight to avoid something so crude.

------

With the arrival of the Brother Grimm, the defenders of the area came out of hiding to attack the group. Bowser called out to a few of their compatriots, saying something about having seen them before before him and his minions started to attack. Sectonia could see why he called himself king at this point, even if he was still a big buffoon with the amount of minions under his command. Most looked pretty weak however, Sectonia confident her army was far stronger than his at this stage if she was back in Floralia. Still, she had to give it to the koopa king, at least his title wasn't all bluster like that big penguin.

Blazermate got to work herself as everyone else summoned their strikers and engaged in battle. Seeing as Bowser, Kamek, and Jr. were hiding behind their troops, Blazermate decided to support them by summoning Dell, who got to work on making his sentry and dispenser. Seeing as they weren't getting hurt being back here, Blazermate made her way towards the big brawl, biting a few of the Dry Bones that Kamek had summoned along the way, causing them to sprout spikes and other strange mutations that made them far less cartoonish and much more ghoulish and stronger.

Sectonia meanwhile was unleashing her frustration and anger about the whole ride here on the poor subspace army. She could at least blink, which made her very happy as she used her swords to cut the flying and non flying creatures of the subspace army, often teleporting before striking them in one big graceful motion. The odd weaponry that some of the primids had did catch the queen off guard sometimes though. One being the Sword primids, who while didn't have the best of reaction times, their swords just passed right through hers and often if she didn't catch them off guard, Sectonia would end up trading blows with the things.

Blazermate soon made it to the little party that Courier had made, being near the frontlines where the people being injured were located. Due to the fact that Sectonia didn't stay in one space for long, Blazermate could only intermiddedly heal her when she came into range. This made it so Blazermate had to keep her beam on the Courier as she aided in a bit of the fighting herself. Unlike Sectonia who was more in the back of the enemy lines, laughing haughily as she struck the strange beings down, Blazermate occupied the flank like the coruier did. She tried to keep to one on one fights as best as she could, her suffering arm biting attacks she blocked. While she didn't focus at biting foes at the start, upon defeating a primid that her arm had bitten, Blazermate noticed it rose as a zombie, and with a few barks from her arm, the zombie followed her commands and shambled to attack its previous bretheren.

"OK, that is cool!" Blazermate said, noticing what her arm could do. Getting an idea, she decided to sort of copy what Sectonia was doing, although not to the point of what the bee queen was doing and playing far more defensively. Thanks to her scan, Blazermate could see enemies who were greatly weakened from damage, and if they were near her, she'd go out to finish them off with a bite to rise a new zombie. If she felt she could stand to be in the area, either by it being guarded by the Courier's kill squad or Blazermate assisting Sectonia in a kill, Blazermate would mutate the zombie further before sending it at its brethen. Still even with all of this, Blazermate didn't dive very far at all into the subspace army and kept herself within the protection range of the courier and Bowser.

Sectonia, being annoyed at some of these exotic weapons that dare strike her held by these odd creatures, out of habit, pulled out one of her staffs, teleported above some primids and decided to smite those below. To her surprise, she could actually use her divine lightning, the dark lightning striking down below and damaging tight groups of Primids, the floating fish things, and whatever got hit by her lightning. Laughing out of joy, she rained lightning down on the ground forces of the Subspace army. While Light Jak, the plane carrying Donnie and Cuphead, and some attacks from her grounded allies kept most of the air forcse away from her, a few with long range weapons such as Ray Guns got a few hits on the bee queen, annoying her. Eventually after a few hits she was forced to retreat, blinking rapidly as she approached the frontlines again, slashing a Primid in half with a double back slash with her swords before rejoining The Courier and Blazermate. She wasn't hurt too badly, but enough to start looking for some healing.

This was one of the few moments Sectonia wasn't teleporting around the battlefield, allowing Blazermate to get some actual healing on her, although she didn't stop with the lightning, sweeping weaker arcs of it in front of her.

---

"No. You heard the princess, you can't come." Linkle said.

Her Chochobo looked at Linkle with big, red, soulful eyes and tried to stand up again. Linkle put her hands on the things feathery back and gently pushed it back down against the outside of the gate. "Kweeh," it went, dejectedly.

"What am I going to do, put you in the back of the kart?" Linkle asked. The chochobo forced itself back up, letting out another excited "Kweh!" and pointing with its beak over her shoulder. Linkle turned around to see the Courier doing just that and frowned. Linkle might have been giddy like a kid when the man had come through on getting her the potion she'd asked for, doubly so when he just threw in the bottle it had come with as a bonus, but she couldn't help but dislike him just a little for undermining her like this and beating her to the idea. She turned back to the chochobo, that now looked at her so hopefully. She crossed her arms. "Well now there's definitely no room." She said, in the same tone her grandmother would use to signal that this particular discussion was over. The chochobo looked unconvinced, and Linkle signed and decided to take a different track. "Between the other chochobo, the big bug lady, and the robot you could get jostled over the side and go under the tires. Why do you think you're Epona II? That thing ate the first one."

Whether it understood the words or something in the girls fearful tone commanded its attention the Chochobo heeded her and sat down against the gate of its own accord, though not without giving her a betrayed look. "Just hang out and we'll be back in no time. Here." Linkle reached into her bag and pulled out one of the plants she'd gotten from Mina, the kind she said chochobo loved. She held out the Gystal Green as a peace offering and after a moment of determined pouting the bird reached out and snatched it from her hand. As Epona II gobbled it down Linkle laid a couple more in front of it. "You'll get some more when we get back, if you be good. Maybe I'll even give you on of those weird peppers."

Epona II finally "Kweehed" in a sort of affirmative way. Linkle nodded to herself, then turned to the gate and whistled loudly. It wasn't but a moment before her three cucoos came running out of the gate to her side. "Let's go girls." She said, headed for the big truck with them in toe.

---

Linkle spent the first part of the journey enjoying herself. The warm sun, the cool breeze, the smell of grass blowing in the wind. It was different riding across this beautiful land while it was still full light. It let you see a lot more things, including the very big monkey monster they had avoided yesterday and the lake with the big colorful tower in the middle. Linkle waved furiously as they passed it, standing and holding onto the handrail to lean over the edge, but had no clue if the owners of that place had even seen her. That was where the familiar sights ended, and the incredibly unfamiliar ones began. Trees filled with what she instantly recognized as those monsters that she'd helped Fi put a stop too, mystery towers, giants buildings that screamed Dungeon at the top of their lungs. There was some kind of giant tree thing big enough to be seen from a great distance. All these things they just rolled past, leaving in the dust behind them. It made her feel a little sad. There were so many things to do and see here she could spend he entire life exploring and still probably never see it all. She could stay here forever.


"Like a pillow." The thought came sneaking into her head. "Like the whole world was some big soft pillow."

She felt her grip tighten on her bag. That did remind her though. She looked up. "Din?" She said over the engine noise and wind. Getting up and make her way unsteadily across the truck bed to plop down next to the girl. In her lateness she'd nearly forgotten. She reached into the sack and pulled out the feather ornament she'd bought from Malo Mart, holding it up between them careful so the wind didn't blow it away. "Pretty, right? I saw this hair thing in the shop and just had to get it for you. Check it out." She held it down next to where Din had her wings flattened against her arms. "It's the same color and everything. I'll bet with this and that mask of yours you'd look like some kind of graceful, beautiful eagle."

---

"KEEEEESE!" Linkle shouted, right before a bomb arrow obliterated a huge swarm of the annoying bat monsters. As though responding to Linkle's new suspicion of it the land had stopped awing her with promises of adventure and started throwing monsters at them. Linkle looked at her crossbow, impressed. The range and speed of the bomb arrow had increased significantly from the simple act of maintenance. Not for the first time she wondered what these babies could do if she could find someone that really knew how they worked.

As more monsters came closer Linkle took more potshot to test get used to the new range and power, targeting any of the ones Junior and the pack (Flock? Cabal? What did you call a group of old turtle wizards? A Retirement?) of Grandpas manged to miss on their quest to gather spirits. No matter how much the performance of the crossbows had been improved they couldn't well hold up against someone that could just fly up to the enemy. She invited anyone else in the bed who wanted to make a contest of getting the monsters before the koopas did, though even she knew to duck down for cover when she saw the little gold boys holding guns. The sound of bullets pinging off the side abruptly stopped as Junior slammed into them, much to her relief.

The finally rolled to a stop in front of a big canyon that sat between them and the orb of darkness in the distance. Bowser, though, had gone right over just like that jump when they were riding through the desert. As the Princess began to reverse away from the edge Linkle grabbed on to one of the handrails, grinning like a madwoman. The Princess sped forward, sending them hurtling off the edge and into the air. Linkle wasn't the only one screaming as they flew. She wasn't even the only one screaming for joy. They landed with a sudden jolt that jerked Linkle forward off her seat and into the bed, laughing.

It wasn't long before battle was joined, though. As she pulled herself off the ground and climbed up onto the roof of the Brother Grimm for a better look she could hear Bowser talking about Tatoo, the world boss, and see the various monsters emerging from the pits of darkness that had sprung up all over the canyon. The Koopas responded in kind, calling forth their own minions and letting battle be joined proper. She couldn't help but note three white figures among the horde of Gooba that charged the first wave, and a quick look around the kart bed confirmed her suspicions. The cucoo's must have been bounced out from the landing and joined up with the first friendly horde of creatures they'd seen. That was all right. The girls could have their fun.

Linkle was about to jump in after them, but a noise gave her pause. A loud horn noise drew her attention to the creatures that had horns for faces and the almost visible sound they were using as an attack. She could see them blowing whole groups of goombas and dry bones away with that noise. She mentally kicked herself for not buying a pair of earplugs when she'd had the chance. If she ran into the middle of all those monsters and got paralyzed someone would have to come in and save her. With Jak and Donnie already swooping around to handle the airborne enemies those horn guys seemed to have the best chance of breaking the bottleneck that the bug lady and the Courier were currently taking advantage of.

Linkle jumped off the Brother Grimm, advancing to behind the front line with the Koopas and pulling out her bow instead of her crossbows. Flipping open her pouch she withdrew one of her arrows, nocked it, and fired. The arrow buried itself right in the chest of one of the horn guys, and another joined it to finish the monster off. She turned her attention to another one, killing it with another pair of arrows just as it was abut to let loose on a squad of big spikey dry bones. She reached for another arrow as she saw a third one.

Out.

She patted around the inside of her pouch, but found only pokeballs. She hadn't restocked on any arrows either! Well, you couldn't blame her for that! It wasn't like she was used to worrying about ammunition. She was about to put away the bow and risk engaging the horns up close when she had an idea. Her hair suddenly flashed blue and she outstretched her hand. Ice began to grow in her palm, elongating and sharpening until it had the rough shape of an arrow. Linkle held it up proudly. It wasn't the sort of ice arrow she was accustom to, but it should do the job. She nocked it and fired at the nearest horn guy. It fell short, falling right into a Primids head. She made the next one thinner, but that one went wide and shattered on the ground. Another, this one striking true but breaking against the monster without doing any damage. She made around fifteen arrows before she started to get a feel for the right weight and shape, but once she was in the groove of it she was putting as many arrows as she could cleanly in the Borboras.

Geralt nodded as he took the small weapon from Tora, not really understanding much beyond asking somebody like him to charge it or leaving it out in the sunlight to charge up. He wasn't even entirely sure what that meant, but he figured it had something to do with how it fired. He'd figure it out in due time.

Peach's quick little speech was almost heartwarming. To him, it felt almost patronizing. 'Oh yes, thank you for risking your life to fix everybody's problems yet again, Mister Witcher. Here's a handful of orens and a pat on the back!' Sometimes, he didn't even get the orens! Still, that was his problem, not Peach's. She seemed genuinely sincere with her praises of the group, and Geralt would just have to deal with his own little self-esteem issue.

As they all got ready to go, Geralt brought his Chocobo over to Linkle and her pouting Chocobo, who the young girl had fed some vegetables to help cheer it up. "Alright, Roach, you keep this...bird...company, alright? I'll be back later."

Oh no, he was still talking to Roach. It seemed no matter the form Roach took, Geralt was doomed to conversations with it. At least Dandelion wasn't here to give him shit about it.

Climbing aboard the Brother Grimm, Geralt frowned. He...wasn't a fan of this thing. It was bumpy, unpleasant, and loud. Still, it was fast, and it could fit plenty of people, so they hardly had a choice in their mode of transportation. As they crossed the Land of Adventure, they passed all sorts of fantastical places that he'd never set foot in, and one or two that he had. That Temple looked like the perfect place for a monster or two to hide out in. Maybe a vampire, or a mad sorcerer using it as his lair.

The massive tree, however, caught his attention. He couldn't imagine a tree like that growing naturally. Still, his medallion wasn't humming, and they couldn't afford to waste time checking every interesting place out, so onward they carried. Soon enough, they spotted the massive black sphere that marked their target. And shortly after that, they came under attack.

Keese, scorpions, giant beetles, and other strange monsters appeared and started attacking the assorted heroes. Geralt was careful not to recklessly attack them, but he did fire a few shots from his new weapon at the keese, satisfied as a single blast of energy destroyed the bat monsters. He nodded at the weapon's effectiveness, clearly impressed. When one or two got too close, he even unleashed a shot of Igni, incinerating the little beasties. Such instances were few and far between, however, as Kamek and the Boss's Kid handled the brunt of the aerial foes.

Eventually, they came upon a gap and were forced to cross it the only way they knew how: a big friggin jump. Because of course this ride had to get even bumpier. As the Brother Grimm launched itself over the canyon, Geralt held on to one of the handrails for dear life. Even then, he was lifted into the air a bit and slammed hard onto his seat, grunting at the discomfort. "Please never do that again..." He complained.

Still, they were across. The group was only just regaining its bearings when the path forward began to bubble, monsters appearing before their eyes. "Here we go," Geralt muttered, pulling his silver sword from its sheath and casting Quen on himself. "Guess I'll handle the little guys."

And handle the little guys he did. The Witcher charged into the horde of Primids, limbs flying as he swung his sword to and fro, dodging all sorts of attacks from the Primids. Here and there, a glancing blow would stop upon his quen shield, but Geralt paid it little heed. He shot of blasts of igni, frying the creatures where they stood, and occasionally pulled his new gun when he wasn't close enough for his sword to reach. He found that it took a good few shots to take even these things down, but that he could fire a lot more quickly than he could with his crossbow. That made up for it, in his mind, because a good few shots staggered the beasties too, allowing him to make quick work of them.

He even noticed that little cup...thing...shooting at one or two of the enemies that dared to try and flank him. Nodding at the support, Geralt took a slightly more aggressive fighting style, careful not to allow himself to get too into it. A bad hit could still leave him seriously injured, of course.

As the Subspace Army collectively surged forward, attacking from all angles, Bowser manifested a counterattack by deploying his whole forces, and his fellow koopa followed suit. In a flash a wave of fodder appeared to meet the marauding creatures head on, and the two sided clashed violently. With nothing but their weight and their spirit behind their charges, the Goombas got it worst, going down after a couple punches or kicks even from the lowliest Primids and taking it in the shorts from everything else. Bytans rebounded off their heads and koopa shells like dodgeballs, with an accompanying noise, while Feyesh and Armights moved ahead unchallenged. The heroes engaged the enemy the next moment, but so too did the Borboras, releasing troublesome streams of air from the backlines to keep the heroes off-balance. The others leaped into action, but the Nopon and his blade could only focus on what lay ahead.

With his low height and center of gravity, Tora had little to fear from the Borboras, but he was in the thick of it. He beat down an unarmed primid before grabbing a Bytan that hurled itself his way. He held it up for Poppi, who leaped forward to exewcute a rocket-fueled flash kick that sent the thing hurtling toward the canyon. At that point three Primids attacked at the same time, one with its fists, one with a bat, and the last with an axe. Whenever he went to strike one with the Mech Arms, it would move backward and let the other two come at him. The axe in particular hurt, drawing blood when its wielder drove its edge into Tora's body. After taking a second chop Tora threw wide the Mech Arms' missile silos in frustration, bombarding the whole area with a rain of fire. While it blew away the Primids, a Ticken trundled fearlessly over the scorched earth, towering over Tora with an even more ponderous body shape. It reached a certain distance, stopped, and then threw itself bodily at the Nopon. “Meh!?” Straining, Tora managed to block it without getting smacked by the backs of his own weapons or falling over, but the creature's weight still made him slide backward. He pushed it off and started punching, only for it to shrug off the blows. They left small webs of cracks in its surface, but nothing that would stop it rearing back to deliver a headbutt.

Poppi circled around to the right side, then boosted straight at the Ticken. Krack! A weighty superman punch to the head sent it off balance, tipped onto one side. All it took then was one kick at its upper body to knock it over. As it toppled Tora tensed to jump up and finish it off, but he spotted a Primid as it tackled Poppi, grappling her to the ground. Two more broke off from where one of Kamek's fireballs scattered their formation, but before they could join the party Poppi activated her boosters to slide along the ground. She cut a furrow across the battlefield, her outstretched arms tripping Primids like bowling pins. Tora nodded, assured she'd be fine and back with him in just a moment, then hopped up to bring both Mech Arms down on the Ticken's abdomen in an overhead slam. The armor gave way, shattering into a heap as a yellow bird, tweeting furiously, spiraled up into the air. Tora watched it go for a brief moment, surprised, before a Bytan clobbered him in the noggin. He turned and saw it come to a stop, then distort. After a brief moment another Bytan popped out of its eye, launching straight for him. Tora threw a strong punch that sent it off toward Brother Grimm, where Euden -standing with his back to one of the great tires with piles of flaming ash around him- was more than happy to carve it in half mid-flight.

Another couple Primids ran Tora's way, but before they could slash a familiar explosion went off a couple meters away and knocked them down. Recognizing his handiwork, Tora looked up to see the flying machine he'd fixed up earlier, raining down Boom Biters on the battlefield. He nodded in appreciation, waving. Poppi appeared behind him and waved at the flying machine's occupants herself, but stopped to slam her heel on a Primid's head when it grabbed at her ankle. Up above, a school of Feyesh converged on the flying machine. Vivi's Thunder sent one reeling, though the creature's own affinity for lightning prevented it from being a one-hit K.O., and Cuphead took down another with a sustained barrage. The other two, however, emptied blasts of electricity into the primitive machine, racking up some damage on its systems, before the Black Mage bid them Stop long enough for Daxter -momentarily preoccupied by an aggressive Armight- to riddle them with holes.

Thanks in no small part to the well-defended death machine setup by 6's cohort, the ranks of the enemy had started to thin. Heavy fire from Bastion, Daxter, Sectonia's magic, and the Dwarven Flying Machine cut down many a foe before they could reach the line of close-quarters fighters where Tora and Poppi, Geralt, Euden, Peach, Bowser, and Blazermate held strong in a rough semicircle around the monster truck. It wasn't long before the Koopa Troop's strikers timed out and faded away, increasing the burden on the heroes, but the medabot's macabre efforts kept a few mutated, bony undead around to fill the gaps. With Linkle targeting and picking off the Borboras that worked to keep the heroes from getting too comfortable, the skirmish had turned heavily in the heroes' favor. But it was not to last.

Something rose from the ground smack dab in the middle of the Courier's fortified position, lofting above his Strikers and Pokemon, and robot, minus the Donphan. Just over a second after it arrived, it unleashed a horrible scream that contorted the air itself. Waves of weaponized sound bombarded the encampment like a storm of blades, causing heavy damage. At the same time, reinforcements poured from the entrance to the canyon path. A squad of five Nagagog hustled out, all of them blue and not much larger than Tora, but sturdy and strong. From behind them exploded a flurry of Trowlons, creatures that looked and moved like synthetic carpets.

Seeing a chance to do some damage, Peach pulled out a grenade and hurled it at the bottleneck left open by the attack on 6's bunker. Tora fired off a few missiles at the same time. The Trowlons scattered as the explosives went off among the Nagagogs. Stone and dust flew in the blast, but from the smoke emerged larger, yellow-colored Nagagogs that split up. One each went for and Blazermate, Junior, and Euden, while two took on Bowser. The Trowlons snaked out and flew low to the ground. One came in fast toward Tora, but instead of rearing up to attack him, it slipped itself beneath his feet. “Meh, meh!” He almost fell forward, but managed to catch himself with his wings. The moment he regained his balance, however, he realized he was rising. The Trowlon was carrying him upward. “Meh?! Where flattypon taking Tora?!” Trying to keep steady, he watched as the ground receded below him, quickly realizing his predicament. “Oh!” Without a second thought he jumped off and plummeted toward the ground.

Poppi, already in the sky, flew up to meet him, but the Nopon had already begun a fusillade of missiles toward the remaining enemies. The recoil slowed his descent enough for him to comfortable land on top of the Nagagog squaring up against Euden, which had gotten even bigger and turned red after taking some of his fiery slashes. Poppi poured ether into him as he beat on the creature's head, giving Euden the chance he needed to jump up and impale the Nagagog in its chest.

A moment later, however, a Trowlon scooped Euden up and started to ascend. “Whoa!” he exclaimed, falling onto his rear. This time Poppi was ready, and she zipped forward to grab the tricky beast's head and hold it down. Euden stood, using his attacker as a platform, and neatly sliced the thing in half. He leaped from its dissolving halves and landed in the ashes of the dying Nagagog, using them as a cushion. The other Trowlons, however, went for Geralt, Peach, and Bowser, attempting to get beneath them while they were distracted fighting other enemies and lift them up so high that a fall would be fatal.

Meanwhile, amid a squad of reinforcement Primids with red uniforms, something new rumbled out from the canyon path—a Greap. It rolled forward, massive scythes carving the air, in search of a target. Meanwhile, the airborne heroes found themselves under fire by augmented clouds, Spaaks, firing orbs and bolts of lightning from a distance.

Cadet couldn't really say that he'd been out past this side of Lumbridge before. The view was pretty nice though, at least for the first bit. Once the little living bullets started taking potshots at their ride, it was decidedly less nice. Still, most of the critters they drove past were of little threat to the Grimm and it's passengers. Luckily the others in their entourage didn't seem to have any major problems with them either. Some in their party took shots of their own at passing keese, and Cadet egged them on, wanting for one of his bowguns. He swatted at the few bat-like creatures that got through Linkle's onslaught, but they quickly poofed into either dust or low level spirits, and the Brother Grimm raced on, leaving the remnants behind. Kamek did say something about being really precise with trying to take pieces off of enemies, otherwise they'd just turn into spirits, and honestly that was still the thing Cadet found he had the hardest time wrapping his brain around. Thoughts for another time though, as the truck was quickly approaching a wide canyon, their destination on the other side.

The hunter peeked around the truck's cab from his spot in the bed. Quite a gap that was, he could tell even from here. Cadet wasn't exactly familiar with the inner workings of the monster truck, but if Euden said they could jump it then he believed him - and when Peach put them in reverse only to put pedal to metal a moment later, Cadet whooped out his approval, "Right on, Princess!"

It was a hard landing, much worse than the crash from the other night, but Cadet kept a firm hold on the edges of the monster truck and pulled himself back into the bed just as he was nearly flung from it. There was barely time to take a breath before enemies began appearing from the void, bubbling up from dark goo-ish puddles. Being that the red headed man was still brimming with energy from earlier, he wasted no time hopping out of the vehicle and brandishing his sword and shield. He overheard some vague words from Bowser and company about recognizing the many weird looking foes, and Cadet took that as good news - if some of their squad had dealt with these types of things before, it shouldn't be too difficult, right? So of course, Cadet headed right on into battle.

"Okay! Let's - !?" The hunter's enthusiasm was cut short from an unexpected blast of wind. For such skinny guys, the Borboras certainly had impressive lung capacity. The trumpet-headed enemy managed to catch Ace Cadet totally off guard with it's wind blast, sending the red head tumbling backwards... and backwards, backwards still, until the Borboras was handily taken out by others in their group. Cadet was pushed nearly to the cliff's edge before the Borboras was defeated, but as soon as it's wind stopped the hunter got to his feat and dusted himself off.

"Okaaaay, gonna try that again," he grumbled to himself before jogging back into the fray. The group had expanded in a big way - it seemed anyone that was capable of summoning allies had done so. It closed the gap between numbers, making it harder for the "subspace" things to gang up on anyone person, which was great news for those like Cadet that didn't have a horde of minions in their pocket. The hunter did his part, slashing at Feyesh overhead when they swooped in low to attack. A poorly timed jab gave one of the fish an opening to zap the Cadet, it was painful and stunned him for a moment, but it's power was far less than what he was usually zapped with if he was being honest. The flying creatures' tentacles came cleanly off with a swing of his blade, and after being left defenseless they were easy enough pickings... but still they kept coming, and not just the Feyesh - all of the enemies were intent on attacking, sort of mindlessly even. It would have been a bit unnerving if there weren't so many of them to fight through.

Ace Cadet managed to push up back towards the bulk of the group, bashing and stabbing any of the little Primids that happened to get past the others. With just his melee weapon on hand, it was slow going, but he made just in time to lay eyes on the bulbous thing with two wicked looking scythes attached to it rolling towards them - though it was doubtful he would have missed it anyway, seeing as it was quite a bit larger than most anything else on the battlefield.

"Whoa, heads up!" he called to the group at large. Two thoughts quickly passed through the Cadet's head: the first, can I take that thing? and the second almost immediately after, yeah I can probably take that thing. The Greap looked like it was made of solid steel, it would be tough, but even if the Cadet was unable to beat it alone he could at least distract it so it didn't catch anyone with their hands already full. As soon as the red head broke off towards it, the scythe wielding creature set it's eyes on him and rolled forward to meet him, it's weapons held high overhead... then swiftly brought down, aiming to slice the Cadet in one fell chop. The weight of it's blades and the momentum of it's swing brought the scythes down hard, and the Cadet's shield was the only thing between him and the sharp end of it's arms. It's strike was heavy, putting the young man into the dirt and knocking the wind out of him, but his shield held strong. The Cadet was pinned, unable to throw the weighty scythe off of him until the Greap rolled backwards and raised it, preparing for another blow. The hunter's torso would likely be a mess of dark bruises after that first attack, a second would probably crack a few ribs and then some - so as soon as he got the chance, Cadet threw himself out of the path of the Greap's blades, rolling around the side of it as the point of the scythe came down in the spot he'd just been lying in.

The quick action had the hunter wincing for just a moment before he forced the pain out of his mind and raked his eyes over the large enemy for any sign of a weak spot. It's head was a safe bet, but it would be tough getting up there even with his slinger - it's body was smooth, it wouldn't be easy to latch onto. Then, maybe it's arms? Or whatever it had that passed for arms, the things connecting the scythes to it's round body were thin enough that perhaps they could be broken. Worth a shot! Cadet thought to himself, bring his sword down onto the connectors as the Greap attempted to pull its' weapons out of the earth they'd gotten stuck in.

While their attacks were ferocious, this was an army everyone was fighting. Thanks to all the strikers, the tide of Subspace enemies were held back for a time. At least, until they poofed away. Thankfully the dry bones that Blazermate bit and the zombies she had managed to raise from the primids she had bitten still stayed around, as did Dell's buildings he managed to make before poofing away. Seeing as Bowser Jr. was in the area, he could keep the gun filled up with his Necro Smasher and the nearby dispenser, giving them some support if anything got near and the young koopa kept it topped up.

What made things much worse for everyone, was after much of the strikers poofed away, the Subspace army got stronger, although much fewer, units to reinforce them popping up from out of the ground. One of which was a large looking yellow man that charged Blazermate as she was busy healing up the hurt Sectonia. Seeing her master in danger, a few of the nearby zombie primids shambled their way back to Blazermate's position as Blazermate blocked the swing of the Nagagag, the force of the creature's charge sending her flying back and damaging her suffering arm a bit.

Sectonia, noticing her healing had been stopped, turned to attack the newcomer, only to be stopped as she saw it being restrained by Blazermate's zombies, the malformed undead attacking it for their master. Blazermate herself got up and, while mildly injured, used that opportunity to fly around the big yellow humanoid like an annoying, deadly fly. Thanks to her zombies restraining the creature, Blazermate could dart in and out, biting it with her suffering arm until it eventually keeled over from all the poison and zombie bites. When it was taking a knee, Blazermate flew away to take cover and heal up her damaged parts.

Seeing her medic could take care of herself, Sectonia took to the skies again to deal with the new cloud enemies that looked like a mechanical version of Crakko, but not nearly as elegant. She laughed as they shot Lightning at her direction, Sectonia pulling out her staff and using it to absorb the lightning and channeling it downwards at the stuff below her. She didn't have the range on this attack to strike the cloud things themselves, but she could target some of the newcomers. She especially focused the large thing with its two scythes with her redirected lightning, seeing as the smaller primids didn't look nearly as threatening.

So… now what? Hat Kid had hopped from her barstool, stood to attention and saluted Peach along with Linkle and the Cadet, playing along as she liked to do. Though, she wasn’t one hundred percent clear on what they were all doing. The Princess had a point; there were too many things being discussed at once, and she was hardly paying attention to begin with until it was loudly demanded. No sooner than everyone could focus enough to lay out their tasks more clearly did they begin dispersing to tend to them, which still didn’t leave the child much of her own to do. Mention of teleporting back to the castle, however, stood out to her, for she was due for a return trip.

She patiently idled in wait for the Magikoopa’s return, performing tossing/balancing tricks with her umbrella until he arrived. She didn't wait for anything he had to say after "done" to break her self-pacified composure in a sudden rush for the teleporter. When she reappeared on the other side, she made straight for her waterbound ship, wherein she deposited all but one of her Time Pieces, restoring more of the ship's power and… wow. She knew she had left the place a mess, but having the lights on really put it in perspective for her. She had a lot of work to do here… aaannd a whole lot of nothing else to do with the still young day. Yeah, this seemed like a (near) perfect opportunity to tidy up, since she had the rest of the day until close to dusk to do it.

A short cleaning montage later, everything on the floor (that shouldn’t have been) had been picked up and put away or discarded, the furniture and relic displays rearranged and put back in their proper places, and everything was good as new. Well… good as normal anyway; back to the way she had it before. The engine room still needed repairs she couldn’t afford right now, unopened envelopes were left to pile up and circulate in a whirlwind in the mail room, a PBJ tower taller than her was clumsily stacked on a plate in the kitchen (meaning she purposely either picked it up and reassembled the previous one, or built a new one from scratch with salvaged ingredients). So… yeah, not exactly pristine, but it at least home away from looked and felt more like itself now. The hardest part was periodically rerouting the limited power supply to each room individually to access and tend to them one at a time. Her chores were an otherwise smooth and oddly therapeutic affair. It always felt good to get something accomplished, no matter how basic the task, instead of leaving them to pile up; to focus on something in the moment rather than leaving it to dwell on later.

Her productive time killing exercise concluded, she checked the time and realized she had been at it for… less than an hour?! Man, she was fast! Too fast for her own good. She still had a few hours left before departure, and not nearly enough activity to fill the remaining hours with. She could have gone shopping to restock her overly expensive milk or browse for something else useful, but she had to go and do the honorable thing by splitting the monetary reward from two quests ago. Now she had no money. That’s what she gets for doing the right thing. Well, this was sure to be a boring intermission, but she couldn’t sit and think about it for much longer. Who knew when the wizard would move the teleporter again. Maybe… she could just have the satisfaction of planting a proverbial flag at their rendezvous area and call "first!"

---

Kid rushed through the teleporter back to Lumbridge well ahead of Kamek and made her way to where she last remembered Brother Grimm being parked… only to not find it there. This prompted a quick, hat assisted search for the titanic, already hard to miss vehicle, which she would find at the stackyard ready to depart… along with half a dozen adventurers in waiting. So much for beating everyone there…

Among the gathered was the anthropomorphic vulpine from the meeting, sitting arms crossed with his feet up in the front passenger's seat, patiently waiting to set off. While Fox could competently operate just about any vehicle if given a minute to learn it, he was content to leave the driving to someone else this time. Besides, it was a converted personnel carrier, and he was generally more accustomed to light one-man craft.

The child, having left her scooter in the truck bed, seated herself upon it and calmly watched the sunset for the duration of the intermission. A serene view was a simple pleasure she could never get tired of, and assuming whatever darkness (ironically light-borne) they were due face, it would surely do her nerves (and anyone else’s) some good to set their eyes and minds on anything of beauty the world had to offer; to remind themselves what they were fighting for.

---

What little daylight was left crept through the crack in the curtains at a gentler, more horizontal angle, warmer now in color as the day neared its end. Kazooie woke to it first, having somehow slept through the sound of Brother Grimm’s engine, and leaned in slightly out of her bag space to draw them open. After realizing the time, and that they were about to be late for a mission they missed the meeting for, she attempted to wake her partner, who remained sound asleep snoring away. She tried first with words, then nudging pecks, but Banjo dismissively waved off her prodding and rolled over to face away from the light.

Annoyed by her partner's reluctance, she tugged on the sheets and blanket to relieve the lazy ursine of them, but overextended in her attempt, causing her to fall frantically cawing and flapping to the floor as she failed to stabilize herself. She pulled the sheets with her on the way down, yanking them off of and out from under Banjo hard enough to turn him onto his other side. Alerted, he tried and failed to catch the covers and stop himself from rolling over off of the bed, landing on his backpack (and Kazooie) in such a way that the straps ended up contrivedly slung around his shoulders. He leaned up groaning in protest as to how Kazooie knew about the quest without attending the meeting for it, despite realizing himself that it was what he was being woken up for. She exercised cheater’s brevity in her response, telling him that they could “just read back through it later.” To that, and in general, he conceded and made his way to the stockyard in half a hurry (on his own feet instead of Kazooie’s faster pair).

They arrived just ahead of Peach’s address, behind most of the party that had been trickling in. “Sorry we’re late.” They weren’t. “We, erm… had a lot of stuff to take care of.” Kazooie simply shook her head disappointedly at Banjo’s shamefully obvious fib.

---

Expectedly, the first half of their drive was marked by a period of uninterrupted peace for the intrepid troupe spent taking in the scenic landscape, seemingly untouched anything else. The abundance of plain greenery and pockets of mountain ranges had the bear and bird offhandedly wondering if they wouldn’t stumble into (part of) their home on their way to… wherever it was they were going to conquer and banish some nameless, faceless, nebulous evil that waited for them at what was supposedly one of the edges of the world. Signs for it started to show the farther they went as the lush and verdant gave way to lands most twisted, malicious, and unnatural. It wasn’t until this point that any of the heroes (or villains) had to raise their guard, for no sooner or later than crossing this threshold for environmental transition did its inhabitant monster-kind begin to descend upon them.

Fox and Hat Kid lent what they could to the repulsing efforts with disparately sized laser fire from both of them, with Kid moving about the bed’s perimeter to cover each side as needed, and Fox leaning out to hang from the monster truck’s passenger side doorway for a better angle to pick off any of the smaller enemies that assailed them from the right. Banjo and Kazooie were sadly unable to lend their assistance in providing suppressive fire, but they were bone dry on ammo with which to do so. The most they could do in the moment was keep their eyes up, heads down, balance steady, and grip tight to keep themselves aboard amidst the chaos and turbulence.

When the vehicle came to a halt, all three stopped what they were doing for a second and directed their attention forward at the ravine ahead of them. Euden assured them they would be unable to make it back across short of flying, which left the duo in particular less to worry about. Fox and Kid resumed fire on a few stranglers that were catching up as the prince and Peach deliberated for a word on a potential return method before she put Grimm back in gear. On her word, she stomped the gas pedal to the floor, and everyone else prepared in their own ways to make the jump.

Hat Kid mounted her scooter, which had been riding idle in the back with them the entire time, believing it would better her odds with the impending landing on the other side. Fox, rather than cabbing up for safety, continued to hang from the vehicle’s side in anticipation to bail off after they went airborne. The duo simply did as they were already doing, only tighter, and with considerably greater difficulty.

All four tires left the ground at top speed as the truck soared over the canyon. The sudden backlift on the jump catapulted the child from the truck bed overhead to figure out her own landing wherever she may, but would be able to manage it unharmed thanks to having her own set of tires on a familiar vehicle under her. The duo were tossed from the truck with the bounce of impact, sending Banjo flailing overhead to run two clumsy steps across the roof before going aerial again. Kazooie started flapping to ease them both down, bringing Banjo to a rolling stop that left him momentarily prone. Fox did much of the same, but on purpose, more gracefully, and with fewer steps. He simply lept from the truck just before it hit the ground and landed firmly in front of it after it stopped. He had fallen harder from greater heights before, so it posed no issue for him.

Before the adventurers, between them and the great umbral sphere that marked their destination, masses of dark matter coalesced to form hollow, dead-eyed facsimiles of living things; enemies familiar to less than a handful of the present party: the Subspace Army. In acknowledgement of this, Bowser dictated the obvious to Peach and Fox (conveniently failing to recall the part he played in those past events), but Fox did not verbally return the Koopa King’s address. He kept whatever thoughts he had to himself as he calmly drew his sidearm and held it at his side in preparation for the coming engagement. They couldn’t stop him and his allies before, and that wouldn’t change today. At his silent command, his eyepiece unfolded, whereupon activating, and he went straight to work.

Fox dove clear of the incoming cannon fire, deftly, lightly hitting the ground on his toes seamlessly into a dead sprint for the enemy line whilst rapidly firing on them. He drove the flat of a flying heel into the chest of the nearest Primid before spinning to follow it with the other foot to its chin, surfing the downed shadowling for a few feet deeper into the thick of its kind. With an applied, forceful aerial, the Primid beneath his feet was thrown forward headways at more of its own, and Fox was beset on an impacted pair before their backs could hit the ground, carrying them and himself upward with an ascending flurry of spinning kicks that he followed with a drill drop onto the survivor of them. The next closest foe to him was lifted from its feet with a rising tornado kicked and caught by the chest with a turning mule kick directed into a toss with a front flip to carry it over Fox’s head. Still airborne, he then caught the hapless minion above him with both hands while turning around, throwing it to ground onto another and riddling them with a spray of blaster fire.

Banjo and Kazooie were busy fending off an encirclement of Primids little by little as they encroached on the pair, employing a series of punches, kicks, wing slices, and other less conventional attacks as ceaseless as the enemy onslaught to meet it in kind. A trio of Feyesh swarmed them with tentacles lashing out, the first two of which Banjo narrowly ducked back, but the third he caught a hold of, much to his own detriment. The electrified tendrils sent a surge through him that caused the pained throes of his voice to rattle and his muscles to spasm, preventing him from releasing his regretted grasp. He was lucky to have Kazooie (as always) to lend her beak to the creature’s eye to force it away. Having learned his lesson, Banjo changed his approach to put Kazooie up for damage duty, starting by bounding at the repelled Feyesh with a Rata-Rap. With a second jump, he faced his back to the next one for Kazooie to hit it with the same attack, and with a third jump, he whipped her out of his pack to repeatedly jab at the last one as he fell.

Suddenly, he found himself having to dodge backwards (re-sheathing Kazooie as he did) to avoid being dropped on by a Ticken from out of nowhere. Another like it came charging in from behind its brethren in a bull rush at the duo, knocking the ursine back some ways with force to surprise. He landed skidding on his bare feet, digging them further in as he braced to grapple the armored avian-like on the latter end of its charge. At which point he picked up on it just enough to gain advantageous leverage as he forced it back in a run, intent on ramming the two Ticken into one another. When they collided, the duo drove into them even further with a Beak Barge and a follow through right hook to bust through the frontmost set of armor, forcing a defenceless round yellow bird to vacate its metal husk. This caught the pair off-guard for a second, which was just enough of an opening to cost them a hit of stray grenade fire from a distant Primid. Luckily, they were able to shield themselves behind the other Ticken to mitigate some of the blast damage, but it was still enough for the concussive force to knock them off.

While dispatching an Armight with a leaping step off its downswung blades into a signature backflip kick, Fox saw to the grenadier problem second it made the mistake of firing on him while he was exposed in midair--or at all, for that matter. With a single swift motion, he unclipped and drew forth a hexagonal device from his belt and threw it out in front of him, where it held suspended as it produced a translucent shield of cyan energy to redirect the hostile artillery back toward its source, dealing slight collateral as a bonus. He deactivated and slung the reflector back onto his belt just as quickly as he used it and dropped back down to ground level to re-engage the enemy. Relentless in his assault, his carelessness started to show a little when he got caught in a crowd of Primids passing him to and fro for a moment with their undisciplined strikes, but it was nothing he couldn’t correct just as quickly with a few broken arms, dislocated knees, quick, stunning jabs, chained kicks, and rapid bursts of laser fire for good measure.

He charged bodily into yet another Primid, grabbing it by the shoulder, shoving the muzzle of his blaster into its gut, and shooting repeatedly into--and shortly, through--it as he ran carrying it forward toward a Scope Primid for use as a human shield. The puppet’s thrown carcass slammed into a Sword Primid, knocking it down and clearing the way for Fox to tackle the Scope wielder to the ground with the flat of his flying knee. Stubbornly, the shooter held onto his weapon only to be jerked halfway back to its feet by the vulpine who used the shadowlings own weapon against its kin. He managed to shoot down one or two runners and fliers before being assailed by another sword wielder, prompting him to reflexively block its sword arm with the shaft of the borrowed Super Scope. In the same move, he turned around in such a manner that he was able to manipulatively leverage its arm with the gun’s grips to bring its blade down into the knelt gunner’s clavicle whilst also thrusting the ‘hot’ end of the firearm into the swordsman’s torso. He then released the shot he had charged during the maneuver as he let the weapon go, leaving it at the mercy of recoil to send it rocketing into the head of its already fallen (now overkilled) wielder. As well as respectively knocking and blasting away the gunner and swordsman, the diverting impacts loosed the embedded Beam Sword for Fox to grab twirling from the air and turn around to bisect another charging swordsman with in one heavy swing.

An errant lot of Borboras danced onto the battlefield, positioning themselves at various points to project disrupting howls of repelling wind, possibly intent on blowing the combatants from the cliff. The gusts threw Fox from his feet toward Brother Grimm, where a failed attempt to grab a hold of the door resulted in him having to stab into its side with the blade he just picked up, dragging a hideous gash partway across the truck’s body like a ripped sail. Banjo being heavier meant that he fared better, but was still being made to move despite his on-foot resistance. Kazooie couldn’t hazard emerging from her backpack to try aiding him, lest she be blown loose from it. This forced him to compensate by driving the angelic lance into the ground behind him at an angle to brake himself against. Though his reverse movement ceased, he could move no closer until the horn-headed Sub-borne relented.

Enter Hat Kid, flying in on her scooter to bounce off of one Borboras’ head and hooking another by its ‘snout’ with the handle of her umbrella, resultantly dragging its head around in a circle as she swung and redirecting its still blowing horn at the surrounding horde. This included, of course, other Borbora, creating somewhat of a small chain reaction of disruptive, randomly directed tunnel winds that chaotically ragdolled a modest number of hapless minions that were caught in the miniature maelstrom. When she completed a full lap around the wind thrower's head, sounding off with a sickening crack of its vertebrae, she leapt from her vehicle to let it crash tire- or undercarriage-first on top of whatever unfortunate mooks happened to be in its flight path while she started swiping, homing, diving, and even kicking into any light enemies that were in the air with her. Even minus her stunt, there were already flying foes a plenty for her to keep herself suspended.

Free of the forceful gails that pushed him back, Banjo withdrew the lance from the earth and started charging forward back into the thick of the action, jousting through a gaggle of multiplied Bytans, two Primids and a Ticken (bird and all) before hurling the spear-like implement skyward in an arc to pierce a Feyesh and come down tip-first onto the back of a Trowlon. The serpentine being, pinned beneath a pillar of it skewered comrades that prevented it from ascending as it was supposed to, desperately writhed in a vain struggle to free itself in the two seconds it had to do so before Banjo weightily brought his foot down onto what best resembled the creature’s head. He then fell back on Kazooie for a Spring Jump, boosting him high enough to catch an unsuspecting Armight into a bombing suplex straight down onto what was otherwise the smart end of the lance, ramming the pommel through its helmeted crown and collecting all of the spirits from the grounded polearm in one fell swoop.

After the weapon landed (before Banjo dropped an Armight on it), Kid executed three horizontal, centrifugal swings from its hilt to rebuild and keep her momentum going. She shot from the improvised lache bar feet forward fast enough to take a Primid off its feet, followed by a snap hat switch to a light Burn Knuckle. The lesser minion ended up ran through on an Armight’s sword and subsequently used as a footstool for the child to hurdle over and behind the cephalopodic knight. “Rokkyu!” (Rock you!) she shouted as she threw out an aerial Power Wave, then chasing it with, in order: a Homing Attack, a flurry of spinning umbrella strikes, and a modified heavy Burn ‘Brella that wreathed the parasol in the same empowering flame. “Burn!” (Burn!) she vocalized yet again--with no amount of toughness or intimidation factor in her voice to be taken seriously--as she lunged at the creature to finish it off with a fiery jab. Her feet hit the dirt again for the first time since they first arrived, and she turned, smiling gleefully, to fire a sustained first stage (blue) laser blast into the enemy crowd, imbuing it with Power as well.

Momentarily clear of any threats in her immediate proximity, the child took the moment she had to catch her breath--a need most atypical of her that she suddenly found herself having. She had a fairly good idea as to the reason too. It turns out the overuse of borrowed foreign power exceeding one’s natural limits that they’re as of yet ill-acclimated to is its own kind of counterintuitively taxing, and no amount of arbitrarily fashion-based psychometrics in the world could make up for a noticeable physical disparity in such a case. With this in mind, she now thought the better of over-relying the Power Cap, and decided she was going to have to get slightly more creative if she was going to survive the enemy waves that followed. As a start, she took the Primid and Armight spirits in a hand each to crush them for an additional (if potentially meager) item or weapon. Banjo did much of the same with the armful of spirits he had, but took the method an experimental step further by feeding a fistful of them to Kazooie midway through itemizing, loading her like a gun and ‘chambering’ what t/he/y hoped would be new rounds of viable ammunition. Fox, unaware of this process or its nature, forewent it for simplicity’s sake. After disembarking Brother Grimm for the second time, he quickly flourished the Beam Sword and rushed onward back into the fray, ready to take on anything and everything that met him there.

After the koopa troop made the first move the rest of the team raced into the fray, pummeling and pounding the subspace army into dust with admittedly a bit of trouble. The sheer number of low level enemies were a bit of a pain to anyone lacking a lot of aoe or crowd control, but everyone started getting both the hang of it and the upper hand fairly quickly.

It looked like the team was going to win the first real encounter of the G rank quest handily right up until a spooky specter rose out of the ground and let out an eardrum splitting shriek

”Oh ouch. A Floow. Those things are nasty!” Bowser grimaced as the sonic assault bombarded the courier's position, before yelling ”KILL IT QUICK OR IT’LL JUST REGENERATE!”

The ghost’s banshee howl was a herald of things to come as the subspace army rolled out some of its nastier troops right as the Koopa Troops’ own where timing out, the few that remained at any rate. The poor troopas and goombas had mostly acted as distractions while the rest of the team got the job done. Only a few souped up dry bones remained, who congregated around the sentry turret, helping it fend off attackers while it gradually ran out of ammo once the engineer disappeared.

The size increasing sumo Nagagog’s, demonstrated their ability right off the bat when they were struck by a grenade from peach and promptly doubled in size as a result. There was also the terrifying scythe wielding Greap and, considerably down the totem pole from those, some fluffy Spaaks, incredibly annoying Trowlons and a whole host of fire Primids adding some numbers to their bigger, badder comrade’s charge. Despite the wide array of enemies that had already come at them, Bowser was well aware that the sub-space army had plenty more tricks up its sleeves that might come in as even more additional waves.

That was an issue for later, for now there were two Nagagog’s heading straight for the Koopa King. Another when for Jr, but from what the king saw he and Kamek were having more issues with the flying, zapping Spaaks than the grounded goliath. That was about all Bowser saw before he put all his focus on the two fat yellow Nagagog closing in on him.

”YEAH, YOU KNOW WHO THE REAL THREAT IS HERE, BUT YOU STILL DIDN’T BRING ENOUGH GUYS!” he roared as he counter charged them and their small escort of fire Primids. The Nagagog, Bowser remembered from both commanding them and fighting them, where straight up sumo wrestlers in their fighting style, meaning they favored their bellies over their limbs for attacking. The pair jostled each other as they came at him until one pushed ahead and got to be the one that clashed with Bowser. The two heavyweights charged one another in what looked like it would initially be a head on collision. At the last moment however, the Nagagog leaped forwards, launching itself the last bit of the way towards Bowser, trying to strike him with its full mass in a belly flop. Bowser meanwhile, remembering this was how they acted, turned at the last moment, presenting his spiky shell and then launched himself with a leap towards the Nagagog with his own full body attack.

The two collided with epic force, each harming the other with the bone jarring collision. Bowser’s shell, spikes and mallow sticker gave him an edge, the Nagagog stumbling away from the collision point with several large holes stabbed in it. Rather than go down however, it laughed with a creepily childish voice as it rubbed its belly, before doubling in size again to become a veritable red titan.

”Oh right. You can do that again” Bowser noted with a hint of dismay as he looked up at the hulking sumo, right before it raised a fist and brought it down to try and crush the now comparatively small Bowser.

---

Jr made a grab for his bandolier of pokeballs with one hand as the other gripped the controle stick of his clown car, jerking it back and forth to dodge the incoming ball lightning projectiles coming from the half cloud half machine enemies that where harassing anyone in the sky. When he finally managed to grab the singular filled pokeball he had he cracked it open with a cry of ”Go Mimikyu!”

With a flash of light Jr’s Mimikyu appeared on the edge of Jr’s clown car, flailed with her long arms to try to keep her balance as Jr continued to dodge lighting shots, before grappling the pompadour like horn on Jr’s head, reeling herself in and then nestling herself against the boy’s topknot

”Copycat those lightning shots!” Jr ordered once the pokemon was in position, which delighted the pikachu wanna be ghost pokemon immensely, causing it to merrily bob its fake head back and forth a few times before it pointed its lightning bolt shapes stick it used as a fake tail at the closest mechanical cloud.

”mimi-KYUUU!” she cried, causing a slow moving bolt, identical to the Spaaks’, to fly out of the end of her stick-wand-tail. The bolt soared towards the slow moving cloud, striking it with ease. The spark seemed to have no innate resistance to its own attack, looking rather angry at being struck. They could tell the red eyed, spike jawed thing was angry because as the pair watched, the cloud shifted from a happy white to a stormy black.

”Uh oh” jr said, ducking and veering off to one side as the storm cloud pulled a quick loopdeloop, building power as it did before unleashing a fast moving lightning bolt instead of one of the slow moving shot’s of its fluffy peers. The bolt struck the clown car with deadly accuracy, causing it to wobble in the air, emit smoke and setting off a bunch of warning alarms.

”Gah, Mimikyu keep copycatting while I, uh” Jr kept jerking the control stick on the car around wildly to try and dodge while his searched the storage compartment and found the necro smasher. ”Ah hah”, he cried happily, before smacking the inside of the car, repairing the damage just in time for them to be hit by a second lightning bolt. Ducked down inside to avoid getting shocked jr frantickly hammered away, rapidly draining supply of metal in the smasher as the ship was hammered again and again with lightning while mimikyu returned fire, seemingly ineffectively.

”Bolts to this I’m taking us down.” jr yelled, predicting that if he didn’t he would just end up down there anyway, only in a crash rather than a landing. He popped his head out of the top of the rim of his car and rapidly guided them down to the ground, the go kart wheels deploying right before they landed. A glance upwards revealed one still angry cloud, as He watched it blasted one of Kamek’s red clones out of the sky, and a shower of Spaark sprites slowly drifting down to the ground, which where joined by another as Mimikyu copied the storm cloud’s lighting shot again to vaporize another of the still white clouds in a single powerful lightning shot.

Jr didn't have time to debate whether this had been cheeky insubordination on the part of Mimikyu who wanted to mimic the poke mascot for as long as possible or if she was actually being pretty clever, because his attention was drawn to the sound of something stomping towards him. The fifth yellow Nagagog had never given up its cause and so now it came lumbering towards Jr.

”Oh come on!” Jr yelled, as he hit the gas.

---

Kamek’s last remaining red clone (he’d lost one already learning how the Spaark’s worked independently from Jr) charged the storm Spaark with its spiked tentacle drawn after it took down its comrade. The green clone cast a defense spell upon the clone, allowing it to survive the Spaark’s final strike before the clone clubbed it over the back, smashing the Spaark’s battery and poofing the cloud into its spirit.

”Ak. This is quite the dust up.” Kamek said, mostly to himself as the remaining red clone rejoined him, its form flickering, close to dissipating. No amount of defence buffs would keep it alive now, he predicted. Which was an issue, as doing a one two punch with the first shot darkening and then a second killing the Spaark wasn’t reliable enough with just two of his slow moving shots (if either one missed he was screwed), and using melee charges wouldn't work with the red clone so beat up. So instead of continuing to try and clean up the skies Kamek took off, sweeping away from the cloud of Spaarks while avoiding their shock balls and taking in the rest of the battlefield.

This let him see first Jr driving frantically away from the yellow Nagagog that was lumbered after him, possibly while screaming, and towards the sentry nest of the now timed out engineer which was mainly occupied by the few remaining dry bones, all hideously and uniquely mutated by Blazermate.

It also let him see Bowser rapidly rising away out of a mob of fire Primids and two Nagagogs, both now red.

”Oh no. Sire!”

---

”WOWOWOWOW WHERE ARE WE GOING!” Bowser yelled as the Trowlon finally managed to sneak under him in the chaotic brawl he was in and began to rapidly hoist him skywards. Unfortunately for the Trowlon Bowser and fall damage were not well acquainted, and there was no arbitrary ring out height for it to reach. Which meant that when the King punched a fist through through the red gems that seemed to be its eyes and destroyed it the King, foolishly, fell without fear.

”LOOKOUT BELOW!” he roared as he plummeted down towards the pack of enemies fist first, only for his fall to suddenly slow and then stop.

”Huh what!” he grunted, glancing around and spotting four familiar looking Toadies holding onto his shell, their surprisingly strong arms and propeller hats keeping him aloft. Kamek’s minions rapidly carried him away from the mob waiting below to crush and or burn him to death and instead quickly hauled him over to where jr had set up camp next to the sentry turret and dispenser. The rapid fire and knockback of the cannon had proved a perfect counter to the Nagagog, knocking it away while it enlarged and then finishing it off as it tried to charge the second time. Both jr and Mimikyu were madly hammering away at it to refill its ammo stores when the Toadies dropped Bowser off there.

”Good work, now get back out there and make sure no-one else gets dropped on their heads!” Kamek, who had also joined jr at the turret, commanded his propeller powered minions, causing them to salute him and then fly off, their small and nimble forms easily avoiding the shock balls from the Spaarks, in order to look for anyone else being hoisted skywards. They’d either try to bring them back to the sentry or, if given orders, would follow thee to the best of their ability.

”Ahh, that’s better,” Bowser said as the healing beam of the dispenser locked onto him, gradually clearing of several scorch marks and one giant fist shaped bruise ”good work Kamek”

”Thank you sire.” replied

”Fights not over yet.” Jr reminded them

”Alright! Together this time!”

”Right!”

Geralt found himself entranced by the flow of combat. Dodge, parry, strike, strike, strike, parry, dodge, dodge, parry, strike! The Primids were hardly a match for him, but they were catching on to that fact. More came at once than previously, and as the fight drew on, Geralt found himself relying heavily on the assistance of his new allies. As they fought to keep the enemies off the Brother Grimm, Geralt slowly focused more on maintaining the line they were holding than wanton slaughter. Rushing off to cut down more of these things wouldn't do any good if they destroyed their vehicle, or worse, surrounded the Witcher. He could fight, and he could even fight well while outnumbered, but it wasn't exactly a habit for the mutant.

As the veritable army the Bowsers controlled vanished, Geralt found himself glad he'd decided to focus his efforts with the group. Considering that he was now outnumbered a dozen to one by the damn things, even with the others focusing on a chunk of the horde, he was still looking at an uphill battle. "Never easy, of course." The Witcher grunted.

And then it got worse. A pair of armights flew over the Primids, and Geralt audibly cursed, renewing his Quen shield and readying his sword in both hands. "Come on, you piece of filth!" He challenged the monsters, stepping forward and cutting down one of the Primids before backstepping to avoid a cross-bladed slash from one of the flying monsters. A Primid took the opportunity to lunge with its sword, forcing Geralt to throw himself to the side, lifting his sword through its arms and leaving it to dissolve into a Spirit.

Returning his attention to the bigger threat, Geralt groaned as the Armight began a series of slashes with its arms, each parry jarring his bones as he diverted the force behind the attacks. Baring his teeth, Geralt dove in towards the monster, stabbing it through the mouth and turning it into a Spirit.

It was at that point that things went wrong. Geralt's Quen shield burst, and a pair of blades skittered off of his armor harmlessly.

And then a spurt of blood exploded out of his leg as the second Armight stabbed along his thigh, thankfully not impaling the limb, but still drawing quite a bit of the fluid.

Cursing again, Geralt stabbed one of the Primids that had attacked him before falling back, calling out to the others. "They're getting through. Might need a little hel-"

And of course, because things always go from bad to worse, Geralt found his sentence cut off as a Trowlon scooped him up onto its body and started rising into the air. Keeping himself from panicking, Geralt stabbed his sword downwards into the creature, eliciting a cry from it as it shook itself, trying to remove its passenger. As he was being shaken about, Geralt struck the thing on its...head?...dazing it for a moment. Pulling his sword free, Geralt punched the creature's head-looking part again, resulting in the two of them slowly descending as consciousness faded from the creature. Indents in its head gave the reason for that.

The Witcher fell from the attacker unceremoniously as they were about twenty feet up and it faded from existence, leaving behind its Spirit.

"Whoresons." Geralt spat as he shakily rose, looking around. "Hey, Blazermate...could I get a hand?" He asked hesitantly.

The Courier enjoyed his position quite a bit and had to hand it to himself, it was a good tactic. Bastion’s turret form absolutely hammered the enemy forces before they could get a leg up, and the rest of his small army did their part to make sure Bastion remained unaccosted, or otherwise took out their own fair share of the subspace army. Gaige-Tron was laughing maniacally as it went to town as well and the Courier wondered for a moment if maybe he programmed the robot to be just a teensy bit too crazy in his efforts to capture the personality of Gaige.

Their position of authority was soon overturned however, as a ghostly apparition rose up from the middle of his encampment. “Behind you!” Gaige-Tron shouted. The Courier turned round just in time to see the floow as it began its cacophonous attack. Wave after wave of piercing, damaging sound resonated outward into the group. Bugfoot covered its ears but still took heavy damage to its carapace. The strikers were even less fortunate, as the lakelurk was poofed away in an instant and Bastion was left so heavily damaged that the Courier recalled him intentionally to recuperate. Gaige-Tron did what it was doing best up until now, acting as a shield for the Courier and putting up its EradiShield. Unfortunately the EradiShield wasn’t up to snuff and broke after a good portion of the attack went off, which left Gaige-Tron to take some powerful shockwaves. The robot was damaged, but still in fighting form and its auto-repair protocols were engaged. The Courier himself got away with only some minor aftershock (as did Drumstick, his loyal chocobo mount), but it still left him slightly disoriented.

He shook his head, hearing the bellowing of Bowser with vital information: kill it quick, or it will regenerate. ”You’ve got to be shittin’ me!” he spat, pulling out his shotgun. He popped a bit of coyote tobacco chew to offset the disorientation, the chem immediately taking effect and increasing his perception and concentration. ”Ivories, keep’em off me!” he shouted, and the donphan grunted in response. A few primids came charging at him, but they were quickly flattened into pancakes by the rolling pokemon.

Time came to a near standstill while the Courier focused on the floow with his shotgun. He targeted each part of its body. Body shot: 99% chance of hit. Left arm: 74% chance of hit. Right arm: 77% chance of hit. Head: 92% chance of hit. Well with those kinds of odds, he was for sure going for the head. 3 shots queued up just as the floow was about to start shrieking again. Bang bang bang! The pellets of the first shot tore through the air and into the floow’s head, causing significant damage. The second shot did the same and left the ghost-like creature barely hanging on, but it wasn’t deterred from its sonic shriek. Shockwaves once again began to emanate from the creature as the third volley of shotgun pellets flew through the air. Most of the pellets were knocked aside, but a few flew true and in that instant the floow was finished off. Its segmented body fell apart. The shockwaves ceased right as they knocked the Courier off his chocobo and onto his ass.

”Gah!” he cried out, gripping his shoulder where he landed. Despite all his cybernetic enhancements, despite being virtually superhuman in his durability, that still hurt like Hell.

He looked off to the side, seeing Bugfoot swatting aside some primids with his big meaty claws, then toss a flaming primid way up high into the air with his horn. The movements were pained and sluggish, not made any better by how the fire primid managed to scorch the bug as it went into the sky. The Courier couldn’t let it go on like this and returned the heracross to his pokeball, standing up gritting the tobacco between his teeth. Ivories came rolling back to his side, still none the worse for wear. The donphan seemed to be taking some pride in that its rival pokemon was returned before she was. Gaige-Tron came rolling on up as well, blasting some approaching primids in the head with its peashooter before coming to a complete stop.

“I got you something, boss.” The robot held out its mechanical noodle-arm revealing a small mote, a little colorful orb. Inside the Courier could see the colorful ghost he had just vanquished.

”Heh. A real glass cannon, that hombre. Gracias, GT,” he said, snatching up the spirit. He turned round to take stock of the battlefield. There was some kind of scythe-tank driving around attacking them, a bunch of the small fry still running about, and some rather big boys in primary colors stamping about the place. Oh, and some flying carpet looking things were flitting about the place now in addition. So that was a thing. The Courier held out the spirit in his hand and spoke to it. ”Alright ghostly friend, how’s about you go some haunting fer the good guys? I’m sure that rolling scythe thing would love t’hear yer lovely singing voice!”

---

Jak and Daxter were making quick work of the feyesh and other airborne enemies without much hassle. Despite Light Jak’s wings being fairly slow for flight, maneuverability wasn’t a high priority when the morph gun was capable of mowing down all their foes with impunity, and Daxter was up to the challenge. At least he was, until reinforcements arrived. Suddenly there were fliers with ranged capabilities in the form of lightning shooting clouds, and carpet looking goons that could bring other goons with them!

”Uh-oh. Jak, you don’t happen to be able to use your shield again, do you?” Daxter asked worriedly as a spaak sent a ball of electricity hurling their way. ”Jaaaaak!”

Jak did not respond (not that he could talk in Light form) but instead completely stopped flapping his wings and adjusted himself in the air to fall feet first. Daxter freaked and jumped back up to Jak’s shoulder, throwing the morph gun up in the air in the process, which was quickly snatched up by its owner. The ball of lightning flew right over them as they fell down, and Jak revved up a yellow eco spear and impaled the spaak.

”Uh, Jak? I can’t help but notice that we’re still falling. You gonna uh, start flappin’ again?” The answer to Daxter’s question came in the form of action. The light eco surrounding Jak dissipated in a flash, leaving behind plain old vanilla Jak.

”Hang on,” he urged his friend, then popped off the jet board and surfed the air with it. ”Woohoo!”

A trowlon came to scoop up Jak, but he just flipped off of it with a shockwave, knocking the thing senseless. He flipped upside down and began rotating like a helicopter, a pleased grin across his face. Meanwhile Dax’s face had turned green and he was doing his best to hold in his lunch. The ground was quickly approaching though, and that meant the time for showing off tricks was over. Jak flipped back over and aimed his trajectory carefully, impacting against the side of the head of the largest nagagog. The jetboard released a shockwave directly into the monster while Jak flipped back and onto the ground.

Jak kicked the jetboard back up onto his back and swapped over his morph gun to its latest form: the Sporebloom. He quickly unloaded four shots of red eco “rot” into the behemoth nagagog, noticing a meter on the weapon rising with each shot fired. Well, if raw power just made this guy bigger and nastier, maybe a heaping bunch of rotting spores would knock it down a peg!

Things were going great. Sure, the Flying Machine got electrocuted a few times, but the leather bits of Xuen’s Battlegear helped insulate Donnie from the electricity, and who didn’t expect the fliers to pose a threat? Still, he wasn’t sure the engines could take much more of this, and he didn’t intend to die in an autogyro crash today.

Then Vivi popped out of existence, and Donnie remembered the problem with Strikers: They could only manifest for a few moments at a time. He swore internally.

Thankfully, he had another solution. He’d seen the peashooters flying from the bottom of his aircraft, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to assume that Cuphead was down there. He’d seen the kid fire the same projectiles only a few minutes ago, after all.

“OI, CUPHEAD!” he yelled over the manic whirring of the rotors and the din of battle. “I KNOW YOU’RE DOWN THERE! I’M GONNA NEED YOU TO SHOOT THE FLIERS!”

”Golly Donnie!” Cuphead said from right behind the monk. ”Do you always holler this much?” He chuckled, almost literally melting away back down into the underside of the flying machine where he resumed his iron grip with one hand while firing off at crazy speeds with the other. He focused his fire on spaak in the distance that was lobbing lightning at them. Just because it was a cloud didn’t mean he couldn’t wallop it good, right? After all, he had walloped a genie and several ghosts before, and they were kind of like clouds! After a second or two of concentrated fire, it dissipated just like the mooks back home on Inkwell Isle would.

Cuphead turned his attention to the side where a trowlon was coming toward them, carrying a couple Primids like some 90s Disney animated movie! Cuphead grinned and began firing off at that. It proved to be a fair bit more mobile than the spaak so he missed some shots, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t keep up with. After about three seconds of leading his target, the trowlan was taken out and its small entourage found themselves plummeting to certain doom. ”Haha! This is fun!” Cuphead cheered!

His joy was interrupted by a sudden electric shock! Another spaak had hit the machine with a bit of lightning, and despite being made of ceramic the little cup wasn’t exactly insulated. The electricity caused the nerves in his hand to tighten so he thankfully never lost his grip, but even a small hit was a big detriment to the easily broken Cuphead. Two long cracks worked their way down his head, and a rather sizable bandage appeared from nowhere on his chest, as if to indicate his injury in a “family friendly” sort of way.

”Why I outta!” Cuphead snaked his way back up the flying machine and then jumped up in the air! With both hands free he slapped both fists together and a sizable blue energy ball flew out, looking eerily similar to Ryu’s signature hadouken. The fireball connected and instantly poofed the cloud monster like it was never there! And Cuphead even landed back on the flying machine to boot!
“Hang on, I got this!” Donnie said, in a lower-but-still-loud voice, recognizing that perhaps what he said earlier was overkill. Donnie pressed a few buttons to put the flying machine in a stationary hovering mode, then he cast a spell. His hands glowed with mystical energy, and Cuphead was surrounded by a bunch of green mist that seemed to soothe and heal his wounds. The bandage popped out of existence and the cracks healed.

Cuphead looked around at his injuries with wonder, then slapped his knee. ”Hot dog!”

Unfortunately, in that time, a Trowlon had managed to get into boarding range of the Flying Machine and a bunch of Sword Primids rapidly tried to do their worst to Donnie and everyone in the machine.

For his part, Donnie slammed the first Primid’s head into the roll cage, knocking out its lights before dropping it to the ground below. Another Primid managed to a slice against his arm, revealing that the beam swords seemed to inflict some kind of full-body damage rather than directly cut the opponent, leading the monk to rear back in pain. Donnie, having enough of this, activated Touch of Karma on the offending Primid, and every other slash simply redirected the damage onto the poor bastard who tried it in the first place, rapidly falling apart into Shadow Bugs.

As for everyone else on the Trowlon, they saw this display and seemed visibly confused, scared, and intimidated, not daring to make another move. Donnie capitalized on this with a Chi Burst that sent the three Primids left to their deaths. The Trowlon was still left, however, and with its payload gone, it was free to do whatever sinister tactic it pleased.

The trowlon seemed to realize that it wasn’t remotely able to combat the combined forces of Cuphead and Donnie, but it wasn’t the sort of monster to give up so easily. Rather than fly away, it ignored all self preservation instincts and flew straight for the upper propeller of the flying machine! If it got itself caught up in the mechanics, they’d have a one way ticket to the ground!

”I’ve got this!” Cuphead said, jumping up toward the trowlon, but it was clear that his jump simply wouldn’t be enough to make it. Then out of nowhere the little cartoon gained a sudden burst of speed, dashing in a straight line for the creature and intercepting it! Cuphead grabbed the carpet-like creature and wrestled with it in the air, while it in turn wrapped around him like a mummy. It was in that instant Cuphead realized the folly of his maneuver… And began plummeting downward with the trowlon wrapped around his body.

“DAMMIT!” the monk yelled in a decidedly un-enlightened voice as he sent the Flying Machine, damaged as it was, plummeting downwards to keep up with the Trowlon. The Boom Biter would catch Cuphead in the explosion, the only way to help the child would be to cut him out!

Both of them rapidly fell hundreds of feet as Donnie reached out and sliced the Trowlon with a slash from one of the Fists. He had to get uncomfortably close, and tried not to hit Cuphead directly, but he couldn’t be sure. He followed this up with another slice, and then a third. He couldn’t exactly afford to be surgical when sending his autogyro in a death spiral, but it was the only way to free him.

Thanks to the powerful slashes of Donnie, the trowlon was heavily weakened and tattered, enough so that Cuphead could tear himself free in a burst of strength! His arms and legs stretched out a bit in bulges while his straw spun around and around in his head. He then spun in the air to face in the direction of the flying machine’s death dive and dashed forward through the air, grabbing onto the side of the machine. ”Thanks a million, Donnie!”

“Just helping a friend in need! Now, stand by for some turbulence!” The monk started to slow the descent of the Flying Machine as best he could, while still providing enough forward motion to get air over the top rotor. This sent the flying machine in a sharper parabolic arc than he would have liked: He felt the g-forces from stabilizing the aircraft getting to him, but such a short exposure at such a low airspeed would likely not cause significant, or even permanent, damage, possibly not even to the infamously-fragile Cuphead.

With that, the autogyro stabilized its flight path, and thankfully it wasn’t bothered by enemies for the time being. “Cuphead, you alright after all that?”

”Swell!” Cuphead exclaimed, taking some potshots at one of those horn-headed freaks that shot out gusts of air. Another minion bit the dust.

Donnie tilted the control stick, and the Flying Machine started to dive downwards again, this time on a trajectory for the Brothers Grimm. It looked like he was going to use the truck bed as an impromptu helipad, which wasn’t a bad idea given the jagged, rocky canyon around them made the smooth truck bed the best option. It wouldn’t exactly be professional, but it would work.

“I’m bringing this thing down, we’re joining the land battle,” he explained to Cuphead as they descended. “The enemies are weak, but they’re smart, tactical, and have the numbers advantage. We’re all alone out here, and they know it. Why would the carpet-thing be so willing to throw its life away if it didn’t know that ten more would replace it? The best thing to do, I think, is to join our allies and stick to our strengths. I’m a melee fighter, and I can tell you’re not a sniper by trade.”

”If I still had my charge shot I could prove you wrong!” Cuphead laughed, clearly unperturbed by the danger he was in.

With that, the Flying Machine jostled as it made landfall. “Well, here we are!” He got off, waited for Cuphead to get off, and dismissed the Flying Machine in a puff of smoke, leaping off the thirty-foot truck and yelling, “COME ON, LET’S DANCE!” Shifting into a flying kick, his chi-enhanced foot collided with the face of a red Nagagog like the fist of a demigod, causing it to fall over, stunned, before he rolled, stood, and began kicking ass in earnest.

Cuphead kept his position in the bed of the Grimm, using the walls as a position of cover while he popped up to spray dozens of peashots at any and all enemies he could pinpoint in all the chaos going around. And lord, there were a lot of enemies, so he didn’t have to search too hard!

---

Linkle's unrelenting icy assault halted momentarily as the vast majority of the koopa troop that had been so valiantly holding the line up and vanished. She brought her fingers to her lips and let out a sharp whistle that echoed across the battlefield. Immediately she spotted three little dots of white weaving to and fro through the horde of regular soldiers toward her. They were a little worse for wear, feathers ruffled from the battle, and as they barreled out from between the legs of the primids at top speed Linkle saw that same group of primids get thrown aside as a giant chicken monster barreled after them.

A quick look around told her that most of the awful horn monsters were just flat out gone, and a moment later Linkle charged past the rough defensive line they'd formed to protect the Brother Grimm. Her girls shot past her underfoot as she draped the bow back over herself and shot forward boot first at their pursuer. There was a crisp, cool impact that the big bird monster just powered on through. Linkle was forced to hop backwards on one leg, foot still planted on its chest, as the thing just kept charging forward. As she was being pushed along she reached out and grabbed her crossbow out of her outstretched boot, put it right against the monster, and fired over and over again. The crossbows had greater power now, and from this range it wasn't long before little fractures started appearing in the monster's flesh.

Grinning, Linkle bent her knee and kicked off the monster's chest to buy herself a little space. She darted forward, leaping into the air and flying downward to deliver another kick. This time the monster’s chest caved in like the shell of an egg, but instead of being sprayed with goo or spirits a small yellow chick emerged and fluttered off into the sky as Linkle stared. The sight was dumbfounding to her.

She didn’t have time to be distracted for long. An ear splitting sound suddenly echoed across the battlefield, making her wince even as far from it as she was and drawing her attention back, to the weird ghostly creature that had snuck around to the Courier's gun nest. An explosion drew her attention back to the enemy's side of the field, a contingent of yellow and white creatures emerging from the dust cloud and making their way down the field flanked by what looked like a bunch of low flying carpets. Those zoomed in much faster, and Linkle jumped as one of them flew under her.

Unfortunately, that one flew up under Tora and started lifting him high into the sky. Luckily he was smart enough to jump off before it went too high, and someone was close by to catch him. Another went for Euden just after he triumphed against the growing monster. More were moving stealthily, snaking their way along the ground toward Bower, Geralt, or….OH NO!

Linkle started to sprint back to the defensive line around Brother Grimm. Everyone else was too busy dealing with the new threats, they didn’t see that someone was assaulting the commander. Linkle was very fast though, and had more than enough experience with huge battlefields to cross them without getting murdered. As she approached Peach just on the heels of the carpet thing she leaped toward it just as it wormed its way under the Princess, slamming her free hand on what she could only think of as the creature's tail. She thought she felt it rippled in surprise, but it didn’t have the freedom to move like that for long. Cold coalesced around them, spreading out from Linkle’s palm as ice began to spread across the creature and spill off of it onto the ground. It tried to lift up and take Peach on a round trip into the stratosphere, but found itself shackled to the earth by an uneven lattice work of gleaming ice.

Linkle sighed in relief, popping back to her feet. She pulled her other crossbow and turned around, scanning the field for more sneaky assassination troops. This was by far the weirdest collection of monsters she had ever seen.

Wave two struck like a crashing wave, its muscle pitted against the heroes' heavy hitters while its guile sought to lift them off their feet. As the party fended off the Nagagogs and in their various ways evaded falling to their deaths off of Trowlons, the Ace Cadet charged into the thick of it with his mind set on the biggest prize. Its cleaving blades descended toward him, but the hunter deftly swerved out of the way. The scythe-points lodged in the ground, leaving the Greap wide open, and a lifetime of capitalizing on such opening in monsters made the Cadet more than capable of seizing the chance. Instead of leaping for its round, red head, however, he went for a less obvious weakness—the poles of its scythes. He brought his sword down on one in a heavy chop, but his one-handed blade was no axe. It jammed halfway through, leaving the Cadet a moment to wrench it free before the Greap pulled its own weapons loose and raised them up once more.

A winged, insectoid shape darted overhead, raining lightning bolts, and one gravitated toward the Greap on account of its potlike metal body. It evidenced no effect on the body, but the head and scythes sizzled, lightly smoking. In silence the monster reoriented itself on the Ace Cadet and swung once more, its attack brutal but no less two-dimensional than list time. This time, however, one of its scythe-hafts snapped clean through thanks to the damage it sustained, and the incredibly oversized blade clattered to the stone. Not even pausing to acknowledge the injury, the Greap mechanically continued its assault with just one blade.

Nearby, in the area of the battlefield glut with the remaining Primids, Banjo and Kazooie cracked open a Ticken while Fox tore through a squad of the mooks, even taking out one overenthusiastic grenadier with its own explosive. With the enemy's reduced numbers Tora and Poppi could fight freely alongside them, steadily beating down Primid after Primid while weathering whatever the goons had to throw at them. Relying on the pair to grab enemy attention and open them up, Euden routinely cut in to cut their foes down, which proved to be a lethally efficient strategy until the last couple Borboras showed up to blast them, Banjo, Kazooie, and Fox back toward Brother Grimm. Linkle, who'd been thinning down their numbers, fought alongside her Cuckoos against a Ticken elsewhere. None other than Hat Kid heroically leaped into the fray, redirecting one Borboras' windstream to singlehandedly wreak havoc on the enemy formation. Bytans sailed away like errant volleyballs while Primids flopped end over end in comical fashion, and while the Subspace troopers blundered around, the heroes renewed their attack. Hat Kid joined them in the fray, bonking and bashing her little heart out.

More enemies arrived, but the kid never even touched the ground, a veritable whirlwind of flame and adorable fury. When she eventually did run out of steam, Tora, Poppi, and Euden gave her the breathing room she needed. “Meh, meh, meh!” shouted the Nopon, rocket-blasting himself upward to land on and squash a Bytan beneath his weight. The last Ticken approached, but Tora tossed the Mech Arms to Poppi. She blasted forward into a crazy spin, wildly ramping up her centripetal force until she was nothing more than a flaming blur. Her Mech Arm's backhand struck the Ticken's head, instantly shattering it and annihilating the bird within. Tora, meanwhile, moved to help Euden as he clashes swords with an Armight. Laughing to himself, the Nopon jumped up behind it, bounced once, and then clamped onto its back. With his wings he grabbed the Armight's helmet, then let go with his nubs to fall down. His weight and grip put the Armight into a backspin, flipping like a figure in a foosball game. Euden grinned, amused as he was thankful. “Great job!” He leaped into the air and came down atop the Armight in a flaming sword plunge, killing the fiend instantly. After regrouping, all three looked around but found only a couple stray Primids left, all under attack by Blazermate's zombies—especially the heavily-mutated thing that used to be a Nagagog.

Elsewhere, the heroes were wrapping up their own fights. Linkle's quick thinking and reflexes spared Peach a rendezvous with the clouds, instead trapping the offending Trowlon in ice. After Kamek's Toadies saved his hide, Bowser rejoined his crew to take out one of his two Nagagog challengers without much ceremony. Geralt disposed of his own Trowlon, one of the last to plague the heroes, before seeking out Blazermate. The Floow that decimated 6's entrenchment met its end at the Courier's hands after the man braved the jaws of death to rattle off a salvo of killer shotgun blasts at close range. With most of the fight elsewhere, he then took a shot at enlisting the Floow as his third and final Striker. Perhaps sensing oblivion, or the chance to dish out more pain, the strange spirit obeyed. It re-materialized in a flash, quickly floated over to where the fight with the injured Greap raged on, then let loose its agonizing cry. The barrage scarred the thing's pot-body and cut deep gashes into its head, leaving it on death's door. The Ace Cadet could easily finish it off at that point, provided they didn't get caught up in the Floow's scream attack, although as 6's Striker it could only deal a quarter of its true damage as friendly fire.

Of course, anyone could be forgiven for taking their eyes off the downed Greap for a moment to watch Jak's impressive jet board display as he took on the last Nagagog, which originally went for Bowser. In tandem came Donnie's daring rescue of a falling Cuphead, having been defending the skies and raining down fire until the little get got tangled up. Jak stunned the Nagagog it with a hard-hitting trick, which got follow up by a high-octane kick from Donnie. While it reeled the morph gunner took the chance to pulverize its guts with root-rotten slugs, filling the Nagagog with pain and infection. It fell to its knees, and the ground shook beneath the impact. It looked up to find Peach walking toward it, her new boomshot in hand. Before it could try to attack her a violent coughing fit sneezed it, and by the time it was done Peach was close enough to put it out of its misery. The boomshot's thunder turned half the monster to ash in an instant, and the rest went limp.

Peach took a deep breath and shouldered the weapon. She looked around at the battlefield. The chaos made the time fly by, but in truth it had been only minutes since her team got attacked. Now, the heroes stood victorious over the few remaining mooks. As she watched, the Engineer's sentry gun plugged a few holes in the final Bytan as it tried to replicate, then timed out and vanished alongside the monster. The last couple of Primids posed no threat. Still, Peach's face bore nothing but cold contempt. “Good work. Do not pity these things. They are scum,” she explained, inviting everyone to head her way. “Soulless minions of the Subspace Army, their sole existence is to get in the way of making things right. If their master is this region's champion, this upcoming brawl is going to be a rough one.”

She turned to face the path leading into the canyons. “Make sure to restock your supplies and get healed. Let's not stick around to see if they have friends.” The Princess proceeded, leading the way. Prince Euden followed, with Tora and Poppi not far behind.

---

The winding canyon path twisted every which way, the walls rising and falling, leading around the edges of precarious cliffs, through tunnels, and over bottomless pits. It branched several times, but as long as the heroes could see the sky, they knew where to go. The otherwordly purple-black mass loomed close by, marking their destination. Kamek, of course, performed scouting runs frequently, ensuring that the team took the right path. After a solid twenty minutes of travel, Kamek returned to report a large grassy basin area dead ahead in the canyonscape, sitting right on the precipice of the great distortion. Tora, glancing around at the dusty stone, wondered how a verdant valley could be so close. But sure enough, as the heroes continued, scraggly yellow grass began to crop, getting thicker and greener the farther they got. Something seemed...off, however. Things looked normal enough, but they didn't feel quite right. Maybe it was the air itself, affected by its time in close proximity to the anomaly. As the heroes entered a final tunnel, Tora took a deep breath, then shook himself to loosen his tense muscles.

Ahead, the light grew closer and closer until the party emerged into the light of day. When their eyes adjusted, they found themselves on the edge of a sand-colored path, staring out across a roughly circular valley surrounded by tall cliffs. It had trees, a river, even fields of what appeared to be wheat and a pretty waterfall. And it had a mountain in its center, shaped like a corkscrew, with a hanging bridge attached to its top that led into the mouth of a giant stone head. Just beyond that lay the anomaly's edge.



A few moments after the heroes took in the sights, something shifted just above the mountain. From a singular point came a burst of light, followed by an entity most familiar to many present. Master Hand floated in place, making just one motion. It spread its fingers wide in a flourish motion, creating a bubble shield around itself that then turned invisible, then relaxed. Once the entity was at ease, a most unwelcome, unnatural voice manifested in the vibration of the very air.

”Seekers of restoration, coveters of light. You have not yet balked from the arduous road you have undertaken. One light you have claimed of the thirteen. But if you imagined this one as easily taken, you are as foolish as that who bore the first. A monstrous thing waits before you, its otherwordly power a terror to behold. Yet before you throw yourselves to the slaughter, I will stop you here. Observe.”

Master Hand zoomed upward, then snapped its fingers. A blinding flash filled the area, and when it faded a tower stood atop Spiral Mountain. More importantly, six figures stood upon it. Four were adults, all holding rifles: an Assassin, a Sharpshooter, an Elder, and a Skinbreather. One was younger, a Boy wielding a strange-looking bow. The last stood above them all, a Giant taller than five men, with a colossal greatbow. Within the eyes of the six snipers burned the crimson of Galeem.

Over the head of the giant archer, Master Hand flexed its fingers. ”I have made these spirits' weapons Binary. Every shot, a zero or a one. Pass or fail. If your skills are found wanting, you will not proceed.” The entity floated upward, glowed, then disappeared. Yet its voice remained a moment longer. “Fire at will.”

The heroes had three seconds. All six snipers, save the giant, moved to the edge of the top of the tower. They crouched behind the battlements, peering through their scopes or down the arrows of their bows. Three red dots darted across the landscape, homing in on their targets. Euden's eyes were wide. “What's going on?”

Peach knew. Though no veteran of the battlefields, her time skirmishing against the rabbids taught her a thing or two about weapons. Luigi used a weapon capable of dealing high damage from an incredible distance, and these people were clearly preparing a similar attack. Two of them wielded bows, but Peach didn't doubt for a second that they'd compare to their rifle-shooting fellows. “Scatter!” she screamed, turning to run behind a nearby boulder “Get to cover!”

Euden panicked, still clueless about the enemy's weaponry, and turned to follow her. Slow on the draw and headed for cover that was too far away, he got painted by a red dot well before he got close to safety. The End shot first, but onlookers weren't in for an invisible bullet. Instead, a literal black arrow zoomed through the air. It caught Euden in the shoulder, blasting straight through him, and a golden light spread across him from the impact point. A split second later he fell to the ground, gray-toned and paralyzed as if turned to stone.

A handful of other shots peppered the heroes as they scattered. At the end of the volley came one of the Boy's arrows. It hit the ground late but exploded on impact in a golden dome several meters in diameter. The sight of it going off drove Tora to hunker down even farther into his patch of tall grass, terrified. “Princeypon gone in one hit!? M-m-meh, meh!” he stammered. “Quick Poppi! Change to Alpha!”

Hiding behind a tree nearby, Poppi nodded and transformed. In Alpha mode she had a smaller profile and stronger defense, not that it seemed to matter. The activity behind the tree caught the attention of the Giant, who without even looking took aim and unleashed his own arrow. Like a ballista bolt it hurtled through the air, and on contact ripped the tree to kindling in a tremendous blast. With a cry Poppi jetted away, and the Sharpshooter took aim. Her shot missed Poppi by a hair as the artificial blade dove behind a small hill, instead destroying a flower patch in a flurry of petals. Taking aim once again, the snipers prepared to fire on anyone who moved, and in the case of the Giant, made a distinct sound.

---

Linkle didn't have any wounds that needed healing, but she did take the time in the aftermath of the battle to stop by at the dispensary Blazermate had thrown up. The marvelous machine chugged at her approach and spit out a cluster of arrows for her. Seeing as they were in short supply the girl hung around until it had dispensed an even thirty-six which she stored in one of her pouches. She also took the time to find her cucoos, who had group up together behind one of the Brother Grimm's massive tires, and coax them out so she could present them to Blazermate for healing.

The group made their way deeper into the canyon the monsters had been guarding so fervently, through winding passes and canyons and air that seemed thick and heavy as soup. She could only compare it to the Color. The big black ball they were steadily advancing toward was wrong in a similar way. With the Color at least you could try to ignore it, avert your eyes to keep it from getting in. Here the wrongness was everywhere, bearing down from all directions. A pressure that you couldn't escape. Maybe it was good that she'd gotten acclimated to this sort of wrongness on the hilltop though. At the very least she didn't feel afraid.

It turned out she really should have.

The feeling of wrongness didn't disappear even as they emerged onto a quaint hilly plain carved out of the middle of the canyon, dominated by a giant stone witches head and the black bubble just beyond. They only had a few moments to take that in before what Linkle pegged as the real source of the unease made himself known. The hand.

He floated there above the spiral mountain, gloating just like a villain should and throwing down another obstacle in their path to one of Galeems precious champions. This was no hand selected cruelty like last time, however, throwing people into a fight for their lives against people they loved. This was just something that was hard.

He plopped a tower on the top of the mountain, six figures dotting its ramparts. Three people with rifles, one with a giant crossbow, one with a giant everything and one that was terrifyingly familiar. Linkle started, transfixed by the boy in the blue tunic. She didn't know him from any legend, hadn't read about him in any of Hyrule's history, but from her dream his identity was unmistakable. "Guys." She said, pointing a shaking finger at him. "I'm up there!"

It took Peach's command to break her gaze from the boy. She didn't need much of an explanation for what "scatter" meant. There might have been one of her up there, but he was flanked by three Michaels. She'd seen the sort of damage a single Micheal could do. Linkle immediately sprinted for the edge of the canyon wall, diving behind a nearby cliff wall. She turned to take count of her cucoos, who had turned out to be right on her heels, and that gave her enough time to spot Euden just standing there. She was about to call out, but could only gasp in horror as one of the marksmen drew a bead on him and fired. Luckily the shot had just gone through his shoulder. Unluckily, that didn't seem to have mattered. Golden light radiated from the wound, crawling over the boys stiffening body as he clattered to the ground. "Euden?!" she called out, but she didn't get a response. He just laid there, grey as stone, a golden base forming at his feet.

The others fired, black arrows raining from the sky. One of them struck near her hiding spot and exploded in a flash of golden light. Another slammed into a tree Poppi had been using for cover, tearing it to pieces like it was nothing. She looked back to Euden's still form and wondered what a shot like that could do to him. She stood up, steadying herself against the wall with her arm and getting ready to run out there and drag him somewhere safer. When she did so, though, she heard a metallic clank as her wrist knocked against the stone wall and remembered that she didn't have to.

There was a metallic whirring noise as the beetle she had bought fluttered out from behind cover, beating it's metallic wings with all its might. It's great big grasping jaws opened wide as it clamped down on one of Euden's arms and started dragging him back across the grass to where Linkle waited, arm outstretched.

By the time the Koopa troop regrouped and hyped themselves up for round three the battle was all but over. A few scattered Primids remained but they were rapidly dealt with by the remaining automated defenses or spirit gatherers.

”Oh. Was that it? Just two waves huh.” Bowser said before chortling ”Gah ha ha, this lot must have gone soft without someone as awesome as me in charge!”

”You lead these guys papa?” jr asked

”Yeah yeah, me plus Ganadorf, Wario, Ridley, few other guys… Hmmm, Wonder if that backstabbing wizard and oversized space lizard are around here somewhere? Anyway yeah, we had this thing going with the Master Hand before it turned out to be a puppet on someone’s stings. The big glove’s really been getting pushed down a lot lately huh.” Bowser explained casually before hucking a fireball at one of the remaining subspace soldiers.

”So could I also...?” Jr asked

”Yeah probably.”

”Sweet!” jr said before hopping out of his clown car and going scavenging for spirits. As he did the two elder koopas got the Toadies to bring them some spirits of their own from the battle while they worked their way through the ones Jr and Kamek had gathered on the road. One exception to this destruction was the Trowlon that had attempted to airlift Bowser, which he easily convinced to become a striker to be used as a temporary hoverboard later on.

”Your name is now Carrie” he told it.

Jr then came back with a stack of the highly numerous Primids and Bytan which he absorbed into his army of minions. Mimikyu had also picked up a Spaark sprite. Her desire to shoot lightning was a well known factor by this point, Kamek a was curious as to whether the creature could in fact absorb spirits, and jr interested in the power that might bring him. All this culminated in the first pokemon fusion experiment between the living cloud and the pokemon. The result was... interesting. The doll looking pokemon gained a battery on its back, its shadowy body became fluffy, cloudlike and highly pettable, though it maintained its dark hue. It also gained metal teeth sewn where the drawn-on mouth once was. Everyone agreed this was the worst and something should be done about it as soon as possible. Mimikyue seemed both oblivious to this and very pleased by her new Electro Ball move.



Once they’d sorted everything out and Peach gave a vicious derision of the Subspace army’s right to live they set off into the canyon. They had to leave the cars behind, meaning some of Bowser’s shopping ended up being transferred into jr’s clown car and duffel bag. The amount of sweets within said shopping took a sharp drop as a result. This also gave people their last chance to grab items from the leftover pile, along with any meat or candy they happen to want from the King’s shopping trip.



With last minute preparations all sorted out the team set off on foot though along the treacherous canyon road, which included a few tight spots that the king complained loudly about whenever he had to push himself through them. Fortunately they did not come under any more attacks while traversing this dry landscape and with Kamek’s aid they traversed their way through the maze towards a grassy area that ran right up against the great distortion with relative ease. After one final cramped cave they emerged into the verdant valley and came face to fist with a familiar foe.

After Bowser made a failed attempt at fireballing the shielded Master hand the Troop resigned themselves to listening to it indirectly insult Bowser repeatedly via the mockery of his double and a warning about the otherworldly power of the guardian that the troop arrogantly ignored before it clicked its fingers and spawned a large stone tower atop the spiral mountain at the center of the valley. Atop it there appeared six fighters, one of whom Bowser and Linkle both recognized as Link, the hero of Hyrule.

The hand vaguely described changes it had made to their foe’s weapons before vanishing, leaving them at the mercy of the snipers, who were armed with an equal mix of bows and weapons like Micheal‘s sniper rifle. The troop didn’t need convincing to move, they were raring to get going after being forced to sit though even a few moments of the hands yapping and were already in the process of charging the tower the moment their foes opened fire. Peach’s yelling for them to get to cover was ignored right up until the first black arrow found its mark.

”Gah. How come they don't have to use oversized hunks of junk to fire those!” Bowser yelled as he rapidly changed direction from a frontal assault and tired to find king sized cover

Fortunately for him Kamek had immediately recognized their disadvantageous position the party was in and had flown straight into the foliage of one of the trees that dotted the valley, and fortunately it was not the one that got obliterated by the titan’s arrow. Once there he did not cower, but instead rapidly cast two spells in quick succession. As the arrows rained down on the party Kamek’s tree suddenly and rapidly quintupled in size, roots bursting from the ground, trunk thickening and foliage spreading across the sky till the tree towered mighty and proud above an area to the left of the entrance. The now massive leaves and branches of it’s foliage provided visual and physical cover, making it harder for the snipers to spot and get a clear shot at those below, while the trunk had scratched tall as the spiral mountain itself. Several Kameks could be seen from below, each hovering below a branch of the mighty tree’s foliage, all of them remaining still, the copies acting as decoys for the real one who was focused on maintaining the enlargement spell.

”Nice one Kamek” Jr called, as he rapidly ascended under the cover of leaf towards the entrance to the tower.

Bowser meanwhile had an idea during the brief refuge in audacity the tree’s sudden enlargement granted. He rummaged around in a pocket and received a silvery spherical bell which he affixed it to his spiked collar. In a flash of light he transformed himself into the cat like Meowser, complete with cat ears, tiger striped fur, long sleek tail and sharp claws. He made zero comment about his new lees than intimidating feline appearance.

Instead he yelled ”TOUCH THE BASE OF THE TROPHY TO FREE PEOPLE” at the team in general but also Linkle specifically, before scampering towards the tree on all four paws and narrowly avoiding getting obliterated by a ballista sized shot from the sharp eared giant, bell jingling as he ran. With sharp claws he gripped the side of the tree trunk and, after waiting just a moment for potential passengers, began rapidly climbing it in leaps and bounds, relying on the leaves above and the thick trunk in front to protect him from harm while he ascended. He also summoned Heel, and commanded the Rabbid to reach inside and grab the ball within the bell in-order to try and get it ringing so loudly.

The toadies, who had been hovering around uselessly took this command to be an instruction, and flew over to help speed up the rate that the mechanical beetle was dragging Euden towards linkle.

High above Bowser Jr ordered Mimikyu to use the move copycat before bursting from the foliage in his clown car. Sitting on the rim of the car his now cloudy ghost pokemon used its long arms to form a titanic bow as part of its copying of the Giant's attack. A severed stick from the tree formed the bow itself while one of its long ropy arms formed the string. With its free arm it was pulling back a Black Arrow like the ones being fired at them and with a cry of “Mimik-kyuuu!” loosed the arrow at the very same moment as the pair emerged from the tree line.

The tree branch bow shattered as the pair’s retaliatory titan arrow flew upwards, blindly aimed at the battlements of the tower in an attempt to ward off counter attack, while they themselves flew towards the door of the tower with all the speed Jr’s clown car could muster.

Banjo took aim with his spirit-loaded partner at the depleting horde of the Subspace Army, but Kazooie momentarily ‘misfired’, her shot delayed with a hiccup before spitting out a sword tip-first on a straight flight into an unfortunate Primid’s back. The feat was closer to a comically violent circus stunt yielding a meager, incidental result than the work of creative tactic. Banjo winced upon seeing this at the realization of what he accidentally subjected his partner to.

“S-Sorry about that. You alright, Kazooie?”

“*cough, cou-*Yeah… I’m fine,” she replied dryly, but otherwise no worse off; probably needing little more than a drink of water. Banjo put her away to give her a breather, and seeing as the conflict was dying down anyway, there wasn’t much need left for either of them to engage.

The skewered puppet-being spent its last moment staring agonizingly at the blade tip protruding from its chest before Fox came rolling over its back, gripping the sword by its hilt and fluidly drawing it from the dying Primid in a full vertical swing. He added his other sword arm to the draw, slicing both the fell shadow puppet and another approaching one in the same move and finishing them with a reverse stab and forward thrust from an arm each. He examined the Beam Sword as it began to flicker, suggesting that its utility had just about run its course, so he casually threw the broken weapon aside without looking, splitting a random Primid’s head vertically down the middle before the blade’s light faded out completely. With his now empty hand he drew his blaster and let off a few rapid volleys of potshots at the few enemies that remained while Peach spoke. She needn’t tell him twice, as he had been dispatching them with extreme prejudice already. To boot, they had shared past experience in dealing with the Subspace Army, so they both knew what was at stake (perhaps her more than him).

When they were clear of the last of their opposition, Fox holstered his gun and ‘sheathed’ the steel sword at his back as he made his way into the canyon pass at the front of the line, helping the other leaders set the pace. Hat Kid slung her new shield around her back, stowed away her new sidearm (which now put her a step closer to having a real gun [and edge]), hopped aboard her recovered scooter, and followed suit behind the party leaders. The animal duo fell in with the group on foot in short order.

The intrepid party pressed on tirelessly (except Kid, being the only one left with ‘tires’) for close to half an hour through the barren one-way corridor of cliff faces until, eventually, a light at the end of their path came into view. Odd, that, considering what they were heading for; the great, aberrant sphere of darkness contrasted by the luminous end marker. Adding to the disconcerting oddity of their path’s final stretch was the growing presence of fresh Summer greenery, after travelling through miles of bare, sunless wasteland to get where they were going. The group pushed on for just a minute more until they crossed the tunnelled threshold into open daylight, to a sight most familiar to only two of them.

What they came upon left the duo floored. They took all of their first moment after arriving to reassure themselves that they in fact were where they believed themselves to be.

“Banjo? Are we really...?”

“Yep. We’re home, Kazooie.”

Indeed, they were, as hard as it might have been to believe. Sadly, the feeling it left them with wasn’t that of a warm welcome home, but rather one more sinister and foreboding. Perhaps the void’s edge resting just behind Gruntilda’s Lair wasn’t a sight one would exactly consider ‘inviting’. Even still, that wasn’t all that struck them as ‘out of place’...

“A starting area in the land of starting areas. I should be less surprised, but…”

“Let me guess, you’ve got a bad feeling about this?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it the graphical update?”

“Sort of, but no. I mean the place looks better than we left it.” She was referring, of course, to the fact that the terrain had not yet been partially destroyed, as per the events of their second adventure. It was as if time itself saw fit to remake the valley anew. The sole exception seemed to be the bore hole in the mountainside that they arrived from.

“Oh yeah, I noticed that too,” he said, having only just noticed. Gazing back at the lair and their ominous destination that lay just beyond it prompted an obvious thought from him. “So… you think ol’ Winky has anything to do with this?” He asked his partner, referring to their nemesis by her last name in jest.

“If she does, I can’t imagine her doing it alone, or having a lot of input. Handiwork’s too competent for that.”

“Hmm. Makes sense,” Banjo added, cupping his chin and nodding his head. “In any case, I wonder who-” Banjo stopped shy of finishing his thought to direct his attention upward to the movement over the mountain, him and Kazooie shielding their eyes from the sunburst to behold the spectral entity that emerged from it. As one might expect from the literal right hand of the Lord of Light, the Master Hand addressed the heroes in condescending word of ill omen before instantly summoning a stone tower with six marksmen upon it atop Spiral Mountain with but a simple gesture. He then issued the conditions of the challenge he set before them and summarily vanished. On his departing command, the Illuminated* warriors under him took their vantaged positions, marked their chosen targets, and let fly.

Fox, Hat Kid, and the duo were quick to heed Peach’s call to take cover, with Fox being the knowledgeably quickest to do so. Though the Kid, bear and bird didn’t share the same battlefield experience in dealing with long-distance assaults, they knew a gun when they saw one, and they weren’t keen on being openly available targets for them. Especially considering what they were capable of in this special case, of which Euden was made a terrifying example when a beaming black arrow pierced through him and left him inanimately petrified where he fell. The eyes of the platformers went wide at the sight, stirring them on into higher gear to find their way out of sight.

Fox swiftly rounded the nearest corner on the clearing of oversized tree stumps where he hugged the canyon wall with his back, Hat Kid ramped the stream crossing while diving from her scooter into a tall patch of dry, golden grass where she would lay prone, and the duo decided that the quickest route to safety was directly up, Spring Jumping up onto one of the cliffs overhead and scurrying their way behind one among the several rising rock formations where they would take care to keep their heads down. The latter of the three (or technically four) knew the terrain best by default, but the feeling they got was that they wouldn’t easily be able to take advantage of it with a stark distance and firepower disadvantage. They wouldn’t have long to deliberate on their next course of action, so they made a rushed mental reassessment of the situation and their options. The conclusion they came to was that they would have to act boldly if they expected to make any headway in this challenge, and Kazooie had a simple--and possibly bad--idea for how to get started.

She handed Banjo the bottle of redish-pink knockoff from their latest loot roundup and trusted him to know what to do next. He hesitantly examined its contents while he glossed over the label, then pulled the cork and downed the first of five servings. Him turning away with a mild reaction of disgust might have indicated just how pleasant it was. The flavor and consistency were closest to that of rice water… if the ‘rice’ in question was an artificial substitute. The results, however, as far as the intended effect, were much more satisfying--if at first startling.

The ursine turned head over foot with a surprised, helpless yell as he starting rising, but Kazooie was able to catch and stabilize the both of them at the zenith of their concoction assisted ascent, unfurling in a spiral as she emerged in full flight. Though they were already capable of flight, it made sense for them to cheat their height as much as they could without exhausting their precious feather supply, but would spare a couple--or another drink--if they needed the extra boost. On that note, Banjo grabbed and plucked the feathers from the two hats they received and discarded the remains, aimlessly casting aside what they couldn’t use of them.

By this point they were likely to be fired upon by any number of the nested shooters, so they would be doing their best as far as keeping dynamic in their evasive and advancing movements. Thankfully, the ever impatient and headstrong Koopa family were already making their own advances on the tower, which would almost certainly help take some of the heat off of them. They banked, twisted, dipped, climbed, stalled, etcetera in every attempt to stay clear of the trophifying shots that came their way as they tried to close in on the leftmost shooters. Although it would be difficult to manage a successful hit while dodging, Kazooie unloaded their entire collection of Bytan Balls at the heads of their assailants; two for the frontward human bowman, one each for the rifleman and tri-bow wielder on the left. If her aim and their luck held true, the rubberized shots could serve to disrupt enemy fire, possibly striking multiple times/enemies per shot, with some bouncing back into Banjo’s hands to restock--or maybe they just miss and none of that happens. Either way, it was worth every shot they could take to try.

Assuming their chance bought with their distraction, the bear and bird tucked their arms and wings to their sides in order to gain speed--as much as they could short of relearning Beak Bomb--as they closed in on the two shooters head-on. They did their best to line them up to prevent one from shooting past the other as the duo recklessly charged toward both with every intention of knocking them from the tower. For contingency’s sake, they readied themselves for the case that the frontmost shooter acted to get off a point blank shot on them, for which they would swerve around them in a bullet spiral to check their teammate over the ledge. While their gambit was undoubtedly risky, they stood to gain substantially, should they succeed. This, of course, was the best case. The worst case was that they get hit with a statue ray and accomplish nothing whatsoever. Most likely, they would have to take a plunge to clear themselves of the line of fire, whether they took anyone with them or not.

Grounding one shooter over the gambled two would be better than none, but if it came down to it, none would be preferable if it meant staying alive without being imprisoned in one’s own form. In any case, they couldn’t keep up avoiding fire at their going rate, so they would aim for the moat as they fell. Directly below the tower out of the line of sight was as good a place as any to avoid fire from those atop it. The pair knew they could duck into the underwater alcove under the mountain if necessary to buy themselves some time, and they had the collective lung capacity between them to manage. They would/could only wait out long enough for the enemies to momentarily forget about them, however. At which point they would begin their tactful ascent up the mountain and through the tower.

While Fox picked arguably the best spot on ground level for interchangeable cover, where he could exit from any point, he knew he wouldn’t be able to get any closer to their enemy without them first being sufficiently occupied. There was one among them that he could guess at the capabilities of: the blue clad archer that fronted all of them. If he had recognized him, Fox would have remembered him as an ally; a friend perhaps. As they were, now, he saw him only as another foe, no more friend to him than those at his side; the other side; the enemy's. He had his mark, but would have to wait for his opportunity to make a dead rush for the tower’s base, ducking between the trunks for cover if any shot should be aimed for him.

Hat Kid made what could very well have been the riskiest, most impulsive maneuver of them. Her chances were dependent on not being seen entering the grassy plot, and her scooter rolling to a stop just off the trail adjacent to her hiding spot may not have helped those chances. The good thing about it was that she wasn’t readily visible to be picked off, which reduced the odds of her taking a hit. The bad part was that she couldn’t freely, carelessly move through it while any of the hunters were looking, lest she disturb the brush enough for them to notice, so she dared not do so if she fell under immediate suspicion. She would have to keep a vigilant eye out for that at all times to be sure.

From where she lay she had two options for escape: the waterfall’s basin, which could cover and lead her downstream into the moat, or back on her scooter to make a speedy getaway. Her timing for either would have to be as careful and precise as she could make it. She readied herself to don her Sprint Cap at the drop of a hat to make haste for her chosen route.

With the combined effort of everyone, the battle in this area was winding down. Even the more powerful units that were summoned were, for the most part, dealt with. Blazermate got a new, big zombie out of the deal, and there were some pretty neat spirits all around the place alongside the various weapons some primids had used. Sectonia's Lightning didn't do as much as she would hope to the scythe weidling primid, but the Cadet, someone Sectonia really didn't even pay much attention to, finished the job of handling the strange beast. To be fair, even though she was flying above everyone, she missed a few things, some that Blazermate noticed thanks to her ability.

While Sectonia was flying about the decimated area, the last of the sentry's ammo cleaning up the few stragglers that were left, she swooped and grabbed much of the airborn spirits that were left like the mechanical crackos and the other flying subspace enemies. Blazermate couldn't really join in the lootfest herself, as she was busy healing those who were injured most notably Geralt, who took quiet a beating in this fight. Blazermate had very, very little interaction with the man, the rest of the group having met him during their travels in the Land of Adventure. "Coming! Don't bleed out now!~" Blazermate said, with a bit of teasing in her voice as the immediate danger seemed to be gone, putting her healing beam on the man. The others who weren't as badly injured either came to blazermate herself, or healed around the Dispenser, some also getting ammo from the building.

Looking over all the spirit Sectonia had gotten, mostly Spaaks and Twolons with a few primids mixed in. She had seen the ability to summon a literal army that the 'king' had under his command. However much like these creatures, they looked numerous, but weak. Such things, lacking both beauty and power, wouldn't stand in her army. Finding very little use for them, she crushed them all to see what she would get from their remains.

The party marched up and through the valley, Blazermate gaining Medaforce as she went by healing everyone's wounds, riding on the shoulder of her new largest zombie, her little zombies following behind obediently. Sectonia looked at the medabot both impressed, and disgusted. She was impressed that this medabot knew how to act like a queen, but being the queen of such hideous creatures... Eventually the makeshift party found its way into the next area, an area that Banjo and Kazooie recognized, Spiral Mountain. According to them, this was their home which surprised Sectonia. Blazermate thought the place looked nice, but Sectonia was a bit off put by the fact that something out of a storybook seemed to be the home of that strange duo. It still lacked the elegance of Floralia, and that awful lair with the ugly head was really ruining this place, but still, it wasn't half bad.

As the group entered the area, the right hand of Galeem, Master Hand, appeared and issued everyone a challenge. With a snap of his fingers, 6 new fighters appeared atop a large stone tower. 4 with rifles, 1 with a bow, and a giant statue with a crossbow. Summoning them, Master Hand told everyone the 'rules' of this 'challenge'. These people in the tower could instantly one shot people with their dark blasts, making Blazermate's healing useless.

Seeing as these were all snipers, most everyone got to cover. Sectonia had a bit of a difficult time finding cover due to her size and flight capabilities, ending up having to blink towards the upper mountains to find a spot to hide and being away from the main group. Blazermate meanwhile could duck behind the rock that most of the others were hiding behind. Thankfully she wasn't the one getting shot at this time, instead one of the others who was moving with the group stood and got shot, with the other shots blasting apart surrounding everything. The person who got blasted, Eudin, got turned into a trophy.

Bowser commented on everything, being very familiar with everything here. Sectonia wasn't in earshot, but Blazermate was as Bowser commented on how the last time he had dealt with something like this, the guns were bigger, and even if people get transformed into trophies they could be revived by touching their bases. Still, it made her healing beam all but useless here, as no one would be taking damage. Linkle was also concerned with one of the snipers up there, the boy with the bow. Fox and Bowser recognized him too, but they weren't as concerned as her.

Blazermate watched as the others who were more melee focused did what they could to get closer. Bowser showing a... Rather weird new ability that turned him into a giant cat version of himself. Blazermate knew there were cat medabots, but cat bowsers? That was rediculous! Thankfully for Bowser, Sectonia was too busy enacting her own plans to pay any attention to him and his Meowser transformation. The others made their own attemps to get closer as well, although Blazermate, a flyer herself, didn't think flying and having no cover against guns waw the best idea. She knew sniper medabots that could easily shoot flying medabots out of the air, and if this was anything like that...

Still, looking at everyone move, and thinking about the rules of this challenge, Blazermate looked at her healing arm with a disappointed look on her face. "Man, I feel kind of useless..." Blazermate said, still behind the cover she used to watch some of the others advance. Mulling over this challenge in her head, her eyes then snapped to her suffering arm. "Well, if healing wont work..." Blazermate said, a thought going through her head. "Maybe I should just take one of them out. No one here has seen me use that before."

Much like Blazermate, Sectonia also saw what happened with these snipers and the weapons the used. A weapon that could instantly take down any enemy in one hit? She could make great use of a power like that, but such a power would be dangerous to deal with head on. Using the mountains as cover and the others as distractions, she stayed out of the line of sight of the snipers, blinking accross gaps that would give them sight of her, as she snuck up to get into range to slice them all up. It would take her some time, but using the mountain valleys and Grunty's Lair as cover, she could get close enough to blink the sniper nest to really cause some havoc.

Blazermate, enacting her idea, commanded her zombies to move forward and advance. She hoped that the others would use them as cover, as the weren't really used for anything but as distractions for the snipers to shoot at. She moved around as well, finding a different rock to hide behind while she got her bearings. Pulling the medaforce she had built up in her medal, Blazermate, when she figured the coast was clear due to the distractions, moved out of her cover, took aim using both of her arms at the one in the poofy coat, and fired her Medaforce Beam at the sniper nest. After a short period of charging and glowing, a massive beam fired out of both of her hands, forming one large laser that moved at blistering speeds, much faster than anything the snipers were shooting. This did use up all of her Medaforce though, meaning that she would have to recharge after this challenge was done.