@Lugubrious

Doom Slayer

Level 1 Doom Slayer

Location: Dead Zone

Word Count: 318



The Slayer was staring the woman that was speaking to the group, he senses a demonic presence form the woman. Like with V and Nero he would be wary of the woman. For the time being he was going to watch her like a hawk, in case she would be trouble down the line. Reminded of the last time he trusted a demon, he was trapped on the moons of Phobos. Turning his head towards the woman, squinting his eyes at her in a squint that could burn a hole in your head. Of course they could not see with his helmet on, But their was a menacing aura around him.

He felt that the group should not trust this demonic woman, but he didn’t think the group would care what his opinion were on this woman. Walking with the group though the parking lot of the mall, noticing the zombies and other creatures. All of them were going to feel the rage and pain of the Slayer’s fist. Reloading his shotgun and pistol before going into battle. Sprinting at the hoard of demonic creatures, making sure his presence was known to them. Firstly he would be clearing out the group of undead, which would make it easier for the others to pass.

Taking them out was the easy part, the more difficult part was the other creatures coming at him. Starting with the bat like creature flying around his head. Hurling stones and rubble at his head, which made a loud thud.

Knocking off the zombies that were surrounding him, Occasionally using the butt his shotgun like a baton.The old hag coming towards him trying to claw at his arms and back, The hoards of monsters starting to surround him. He hoped that the group would come over to help him form being overwhelmed.

The great dragon rampaged forward like a midnight tidal wave, and the heroes hurried (or in some cases, were hurried) out of its way. Not everyone prepared had themselves for such a titanic beast, however, especially one that bore down on them so quickly. As the party scattered, the Courier and his entourage, Jak and Dakster, Cuphead, Donovan, Hat Kid, Banjo and Kazooie, and Fox didn't quite get out of the way in time. None got so unlucky as to fall beneath one of the Ender Dragon's feet and get trampled into the store, or snapped up by its ebon maw, but even a glancing blow from its enormous limbs or chest was a heavy impact that sent them sprawling. None got even close to flying off the island's edge, but rolling across end stone wasn't exactly pleasant. Such a monster need not even make a real attack to dish serious pain; just the act of moving in its enemies' vicinity presented a threat.

The others, however, did not let the Ender Dragon move on and take to the skies again unscathed. While getting out of its way Geralt peppered its face and head with blaster shots, his weapon's inaccuracy not an issue against a large target on approach. Junior and his Pokemon worked together to unleash a pair of twin Laughing Ghosts that rushed after the beast to detonate against its hide—unfortunately, they moved a lot slower than the dragon did. Link's arrow struck the beast's back and left a visible scar between its scales, and the first wave of Sectonia's light rings cut in just after. Cadet managed to snag his Clutch Claw on the Ender Dragon's foreleg as it went past, which abruptly yanked him after it, and then the monster was gone. It took to the air, left the island, and began to circle around. The Laughing Ghosts swerved to track it, but detonated against one of the island's obsidian towers. Even in this lighting, anyone who happened to look at the impact sites could tell that they left not so much as a scar on the smooth, glossy black stone.

Tora, meanwhile, jumped up and down in frustration. “Crap!”

Poppi side-eyed him. “Masterpon forget that missile arts only usable after hit with basic attacks?”

The Nopon signaled for her to lift him up as he watched the dragon come around. “Honestly,” he said as his partner boosted upward, holding him. “Given circumstances, little moment of panic more than understandable, meh.” Poppi set him down on top of one of the obsidian towers, where he stood at the approximate height of the leviathan's cruising altitude.

A moment later the Ender Dragon flew toward the island again. Purple welled from its mouth, and as it soared over the island it released blast after blast of ender acid. The stuff splashed against the end stone with loud, dangerous hissing. Timing the jump, Tora waited until the Ender Dragon got close before slamming the Mech Arms against the obsidian beneath him. The blast sent him flying into the dragon's path, and using his weapon's hands he grabbed hold of its upper tail and hung on for dear life. Poppi flew after it, getting as close as she could.

As the Ender Dragon passed the tower, a beam of purple energy shot out of the crystal atop the spire to lock onto the beast. While it looked like an attack, that didn't exactly make sense given its placement here along with the dragon, and it also didn't look like it did any damage. In fact, to Poppi and the Cadet, it appeared to be the opposite. They were close enough to see the wounds from Sectonia's rings, Link's arrow, and Geralt's shots close up, and to see the beam peter out the moment the wounds did. In the heat of the moment, however, Poppi was concentrated on her masterpon.

After completing its acidic bombing run, the dragon turned toward the island again. With Poppi on board as well, Tora could start pummeling the dragon's hide, although the assault didn't so much as slow the beast down.



While waiting for an opponent to make their move meant one could fight reactively, figuring out their foe's strengths, weaknesses, and moveset, it also meant surrendering the battlefield and playing by that foe's rules. Sakura would not be doing that. Instead she leaped on the offensive, and to begin her match with Ryu she unleashed a full-force spirit ball that flew quickly across the distance that divided them. A less experienced fighter might have jumped over the linear hadoken to deliver a jumping attack, but all that awaited such a maneuver would be a quick shoryuken to the face. Being no amateur, Ryu contented himself with blocking the blazing projectile and seeing where things went from there. He did not, however, anticipate Sakura going all-out aggressive. The girl sprinted after her hadoken to press the attack. Ryu had just enough time to throw a jab, but if Sakura was this familiar with his fighting style, she probably knew he could and would instead go for block pressure. As such, he held firm on the defensive.

He chose wrong.

Sakura met him not with a blow but with a grapple. In a remarkable gymnastic maneuver she flipped over his guard to pull him off his feet and send him into the air. Ryu knew how to fall, and he hit the ground with enough grace to get back to his feet immediately, but his face bore a scuff from where it hit the dirt along with a look that could only be termed 'mildly impressed.' Still, he didn't wait around. He advanced toward his opponent, stopped at the perfect range, and began to apply pressure. He alternated between high and low strikes, varying his targets and techniques, never committing to a sequence heavy enough that Sakura could sneak in a counterattack. It seemed as though he fished for an opening to start a combo, but he did not expect Sakura to mess up her blocks; his intentions lay elsewhere. Finally, after a tense few seconds, he unleashed a Collarbone Breaker, a tricky blow that needed to be blocked high. Sakura had to recognize and adapt to in the span of less than a second to avoid getting opening up.



While the Slayer certainly didn't seem happy about having Pandemonica along for the ride, he seemed to understand that he was already tolerating a heavily-armed quarter-demon and a human commanding three full demons, so a harmless-looking, tired secretary who happened to be a demon wasn't that big of a deal. That left the group able to focus on the threats ahead.

Straightaway the Slayer busied himself with mopping up all the small fry and medium fry, exterminating zombie and demon alike regardless of how on-fire they might be. Nero decided to go after the biggest fish, that being the vaguely doglike monstrosity of twisted metal. It reminded him of a heavy-metal spinoff of the Cerberus demons, which he knew Dante faced multiple times in the course of his adventures, but this thing acted more like a Behemoth. It heedlessly tore through any monsters in its way, devouring them with its three heads. As he approached, Nero wondered what happened to what the beast ate, since it featured slavering mouths at both ends. Of course, he didn't play to find out. “Hey, poochie!” he called, getting the beast's attention. “Let's play!”

The Greed replied by blasting fire from both of its forward maws. Nero jumped over the wave of flame and launched downward with a Payline. Snarling, the monster raked at him with its crimson claws, but Nero's technique brushed the attack off as he drove the Red Queen between its necks and into its body. He landed on its back and ran across, dragging his embedded blade. As he jumped off, pulling the Red Queen free, the Greed's rear head snapped at his leg. Its teeth tore free a strip of his right pants leg and bloodied the skin beneath, but the devil hunter didn't seem too bothered. He landed with a roll, unleashed a couple shots from the Blue Rose, and promptly dodged back out of the reach of the rear head's ice breath. Having clawed the life out of a prowler, Nadia then jumped in to attack the Greed, but her nails didn't even scratch its steely armor. “No good!” she called, jumping away. V moved in with Shadow and Griffon to help take the Greed down.

Meanwhile, one of the bedside brutes swooped toward Pandemonica, leering at her. In a salacious voice it called, “Hey, babe! You look like you could use a pick-me-up!”

The demoness blinked. “Oh, you have some? Black with two sugars, if you don't mind.”

Smirking, the incubus lunged. “I'm thinkin' red with cream!”

There was a snapping noise, and the demon dropped dead, its neck twisted neatly backward. Pandemonica stood over the corpse, adjusting her glove with a resigned expression. “You must have me mistaken for Modeus. I'm in Customer Service. I trust you're satisfied.”

Nearby, Nadia landed on top of another incubus, driving it face-first into the ground. Her eyes were wide. “Whoa, you're one cool cat!” she said.

Lying on the ground beside her, her target sputtered. “Guh! This ain't what I had in mind when I said I wanted pu-!” With a slash of her detached tail Nadia sent the demon's head rolling, and when his body dissolved into ash she stomped on the spirit. Some sort of horn manifested, which she left where it lay. The victors glanced over just in time to see the Slayer put down the surprisingly tough hag monster, and not long after, Shadow crushed the Greed's last remaining head with its flytrap form.

Nero lingered over the Greed spirit for a moment. “I'm not a weapons master like Dante, but...maybe something like that'll give me something useful.” He destroyed it, and to his surprise the spirit reconstituted into a prosthetic arm. “Hey, that's not half bad.”

Nadia looked down at the itemized result of the hag. “Aw, sweet...a knife.” Shrugging she stuck it in one of her pouches to followed the devil hunter and his associated across the remainder of the lot and to one of the many entrances to the mall. She glanced up, watching the edge of the building get closer and closer to eclipsing the root that rose from it. “So, this is it, huh? If this gets tough, you guys better not fur-get to keep me safe.”

Since the sliding door wasn't working, Nero kicked through the glass. He turned to see Pandemonica holding back. “Stay out here if you like, but there's probably a cafe or something in here,” he told her.

“I see.” The demon promptly followed the rest, and with the party at his back Nero forged inside. Immediately he saw the chains everywhere, stretched haphazardly across open space. Almost every wall bore iron bars over its recesses, and in them were crammed humanoid shapes beyond counting. They moaned as they struggled in vain, packed like sardines and pleading for succor. From his time in hell the Slayer harbored familiarity with such surroundings, but the others needed a moment.

“Jesus...” Nero muttered before glancing back to check on his crew. V looked grim, Nadia looked like she was about to throw up, and even Pandemonica seemed pretty displeased. While this place matched neither what Nero knew of the place from Dante nor Pandemonica's workplace, it certainly fit the bill for hell. The sheer number of chains served to inhibit their progress, so Nero drew the Red Queen and started cutting away. “C'mon,” he told the others. “Let's put down whatever screwball lives here and get the hell out.”

After a while of working through chain-infested halls and stores, littered with pools of lava, they came to an area where the ground had given way. The entire back half of the mall seemed to have sunk down into a fiery pit, but enough chains stretched across it to make a way over. As nimble as she was quick, Nadia could run along the chains to get over the gap, but the others needed to be a little more careful. Nero slung himself under, climbing hand-over-hand, and V called upon both demons to help him. Pandemonica managed somehow, balancing slowly but surely across. The real problem seemed to be the Qliphoth root; the team had underestimated its size. It was farther away than it looked, and not in the mall itself at all. On the other side of the lava pit, sitting on the edge of the cliff, stood the remains of a great courthouse. It was from there that the Qliphoth root rose.

The dragons came down upon the group and proved Poppie and Kamek’s forced extraction of their master’s from its path to have been the best decision, as the bulk of the beast bowled over those too slow to get out of its way. The mage cringed under his oversized glasses at the beating their target’s opening gambit had delivered, but fortunately no lives had been ended and instead only some bodies and egos had been bruised by the blow.

Up above, the dragon soared onward, having received a couple of arrows lodged in its side and scratching from the bee queen’s magic ir retaliation as it climbed up and away from them. After it chased Jr and Mimikyue’s fiery balloons, the pair of shots slowly deflated as they failed to catch it until they eventually deflated entirely and fell from the sky as sad extinguished rubber bags of failure. ”OH COME ON!” came a cry from Jr in response as he raised his arms in exasperation exclamation while floating above them.

As the dragon began to wheel around for another pass Bower grunted, then retrieved the lucky bell from his pocket and clipped to his choker, transforming himself into Meowser ”Not just gonna sit here and take this!” he told Kamek before running towards and then launching himself half way up the nearest tower. Cat claws penetrated the strange stone as Bowser stopped his downward momentum and left gashes in the tower, before he began to rapidly climb it.

”Good idea sire!” Kamek called after him, before racing upwards towards another tower and calling out to jr ”Young master! Up up. We’ll punish the beast when it comes in low!”

”How does that help me I’m already flying?… oh wait I know!” Jr said after a few seconds of thought, before following their lead.

As the dragon moved in to bombard the grounded group with acid the troop all reached the top of their respective towers. Atop them floated strange pink floating crystals suspended inside two layers of glass framework hovering above a burning pierce of stone. These pieces of the environment were ignored for now, as the troop instead began to make use of the pillars as firing platforms.

”Primid Party! Form up and light up that dragon” jr called out, bringing out the pyramid spirits he’d collected from their first encounter on this boss run out as a striker team. The purple skinned, green clad mooks of the Subspace army piled up on top of the pillar at his command, each one coming equipped(this time round) with chunky, primitive looking Super Scope.

”Line up, give that big jerk three rounds rapid! No one makes me look bad and gets away with it!” Jr ordered, jabbing his paintbrush towards the beast. Complying, the goons formed an organized firing line on the pillar with one row of them kneeling while the other stood behind them. Together, they all scoped out the mighty beast before, as commanded, each one fired of a burst of three projectiles at the dragon.

On Bowser’s tower, the big man himself took a deep breath and began blasting fireball after fireball out at the dragon while on his Kamek commanded his clones to start tossing out classic magikoopa spells while the mage himself summoned Quiet atop his tower. All of this firepower was, befitting bad guys, big, glowing and slow, but there was a lot of it. Even Mimikyu, who jr commanded to shock the Ender dragon, somewhat fit this trend with their hurled electro balls, even if they were a fair bit quicker. Collectively they filled the air with shots, most of which were destined to miss.

The only expedition then would Quiet, who after being summoned and instructed by Kamek took one look at the bullet hell her turtley boss’s cohort was producing, mentally despaired at the utter lack of markswomanship on display and then got to work. She scoped in her rifle, tired to avoid going blind from the shower of glowing shots and found her target. She took her time, scanning the beast for weak points and as a result got a close look at the effects of the purple beam fired from one of the towers as it struck the beast. The wounds it had taken, both from the retaliation to it;s dive bomb and from any grazes from the Troop’s projectile vomit, were swept away in an instant. This, she knew, was a problem.

”Lit bob-ombs alive, good thing that wasn't one of ours,” Kamek said in alarm as he turned to look at the crystal floating next to them. He rubbed the chin of his beak as he examined the crystal with the eye of someone well versed in all things arcane before saying loudly ”Some kind of support magic I believe?” before adding a ”Wouldn’t you agree with your highness?” directed at Queen Sectonia, the only other mage in their party.

Quiet slammed the butt of her gun into the ground, getting Kamek’s attention, before pointing at the dragon (which was wheeling around again after being healed and mostly ignoring its hitchhikers) and mimicking applying bandages to herself.

”What? You aren't injured. What are you doing.”

Quiet pointed at the crystal and quickly repeated her action.

”The crystal? Look just, leave the magic to the mages and keep shooting while I study it” Kamek replied, waving her off.

Exasperated, the sniper simply took matters into her own hands, shoving the mage aside as he attempted to examine the crystal, drew her knife and plunged it into the dragon healing artifact. This caused it to explode, instantly dispelling Quiet as Kamek cried out in surprise and shields himself from a light shower of dust and ash the detonation caused.

”They explode? Fool of a... well I supposed that is good to know… oh. Oh dear.” Kamek noted as he looked down at the blast crater left atop the tower, before turning and warning the others ”Be careful! The crystals explode if hit!”

Atop their towers the two royal koopas had very different reactions. Bowser took one look at the crystal, recognized this as an instant kill boss kill switch (for himself) and promptly got the heck out of there. After a short run up he leapt from his own tower towards Kamek’s now explosive free tower, claws sinking into the side of it before he started hauling himself up it to a bomb free zone.

Atop Jr’s the Primid shooters all collectively glanced over their soldiers at the explosive barrel glowing crystal behind them with nervousness before Jr (who was safely floating away from the crystal) yelled at them ”Did I say you could stop? Shoot shoot shoot! Your almost out of time. Give it a charged shot!”

The Primids scrambled back into position, and began holding down the triggers of their weapons, causing a bright red glow to begin emanating from them. Once fully charged up the battery of guns unleashed a flurry of larger, faster moving projectile towards the Ender Dragon. The recoil from these shots collectively bowled the Primids over, causing them to collapsed comedically into a disorganized heap before their time ran up and they too dissipated.

Sakura spiralled back up to her feet and saw the look that briefly flashed across his face as he stood to re-engage. For a moment her heart swelled with pride, but it was time to get back to the real fighting. Unfortunately for her, Ryu was able to engage first, which was not what she wanted. She would have to attack him more next time, to stop him from going on the offensive himself. As Ryu predicted, Sakura was a skilled enough fighter to block his series of strikes. Brief impacts of blue energy emitted from her forearms as she deflected the force behind his blows. Dropping low to block his low punches and standing back to full height to stop his upper hits. Unfortunately, he wasn't committing to anything. The young woman was extremely eager to counter-attack, interrupt Ryu's offense and begin her own. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing or a sign of her impatience, just a reflection of her aggressive fighting style.

Toward the end of his last few probing strikes, she very briefly began to drop her guard and try to get in a punch of her own before retracting and blocking his next punch.

He's not planning on keeping this up forever. Eventually I'll counter these attacks, and he knows it. He also probably knows not too commit to any big moves because he knows I'm jumping at the chance to get in a hit of my own. But I don't think he knows that I'm not just gonna sit here and block forever. No way! He probably thinks I'm too overeager, or am waiting for the perfect moment, so he's gonna go for an overhead to break my defence. Not gonna happen! I'll take any chance I can get, even if it's small! Here it comes!

Sakura grimaced and grinned as she absorbed the collarbone breaker, so strong it felt like Ryu was punching her twice with one punch. She let the strike's momentum carry her down into a crouching position and then used it against him, transition into spinning leg kick that would snap out at Ryu's knees. Not enough for a sweep, but enough to get her into another one of her combos. A striking elbow into his midsection.

For the final move in this combo, Sakura would do a move Ryu would recognize as a rip-off move inspired by one of his own: the Shoryuken. Recognizable, but certainly different. Instead of a swirling flame fist, Sakura popped upward like a firecracker, her fist flashing yellow and cracking like gunpowder. Enough to launch Ryu into the air. Before he could land though, Sakura would finish her spin and dash underneath him, and launch her next attack. Another uppercut.

"Shouoken!" She shouted, the firecracker hitting his back and sending him into a backflip and landing on the ground. She knew he was going to get up fast, so unlike last time, she dashed ahead yet again to meet him as soon as he got back onto his feet. As soon as he did, she would attempt another throw. A simple but effective grab of the wrist, sticking her leg behind his ankle, and a hard spiralling push would flip him head over heels. If that worked, as soon as he got up from that one, she would do the same thing again, and again. Sakura was attempting to count on the fact that her attacks would be so predictable and repetitive that Ryu would be expecting her to do literally anything else and try to do defend against those possibilities, only to be greeted by the same move yet again. If this somehow managed to work four times in a row, she would stop at the fifth time and back off.

It was a bold move, to be sure, but Sakura was just that. Bold, offensive, big gambles. Often she was a fan favorite simply because she was so fun to watch, and it was certainly fun to fight this way. Here was a woman who, having trained almost entirely on punching bags, treated her foes and the world as just that. A canvas to paint her martial artistry on, to see each picture become more beautiful and better each time she attempted it. Learning more and more every encounter. Her dull red eyes were alight with the thrill of the fight.

@Lugubrious

Doom Slayer

Level 1 Doom Slayer

Location: Dead Zone

Word Count: 442

The Slayer grappled the hag's arm spinning her around like a rag doll, slamming her into the creatures around him. Releasing his grasp on her arm unintentionally ripping of her arm in the process. He could see the body of the hag slamming into the imp like creature, the imp who reminded him of the fire ball hurling creatures on Phobos. The imp as he nicknamed it was coming back at him, to which the Slayer dispatched him easily with a hard punch to the face. Wiping some of the blood and brain matter on a near by corpse. Turning to face the bat like creatures feeling his blood boiling, he hated flying demons because of how annoying they were to dispatch.

Firing his pistol at the bat like creatures, making sure to stomp their little bodies so they don't get back up. Noticing the rest of the hoard coming towards him, reloading his shotgun and firing a few shots at them. Noticing the hag running at him swinging her one arm wildly, waiting for the hag to come closer to him. Aiming his shotgun so the barrel of his shotgun was pressed against her face. Pulling the trigger and blowing the hag's head off of her shoulder. Unlike his comrades he did not come up with a witty one liner before pulling the trigger. Clearing out the hoards and other demons that were surrounding him, all of their lifeless bodies surrounding him. Feeling that the demonic Secretary could have helped them fighting the hoard, but then again perhaps she has not combat experience.

Looking over towards the demonic dog and the group fighting it, Watching it's now twitching lifeless body turning to ash. Finding V, Nero and Nadia's fighting skills to be impressive for demonic scum. Once again following the group to their destination, seeing the half sunken mall and the frightening situation to cross the gap. He did not think he would be able to cross the chain safety. Looking around the area noticing a empty looking car and noticing a skateboard inside of it, a reminder of innocent lives lost. Grabbing the skateboard and standing a few feet away from the gap. Putting away his weapons and getting on the skateboard and skating towards the chain, Grinding on the chain across the gap. Throwing the skateboard away and looking toward the courthouse.
If this was the origin of this creature then they would need to move quickly. Starting to jog towards the courthouse, hoping that the others would follow him.

Though Jak had gotten a head start toward the large floating island where the boss no doubt was lying in wait for them, he wasn’t the first to arrive thanks to his light eco wings being largely clunky and ineffective. At one point Sectonia passed by and seemed to give him a strange look of approval? Well, he was mute in Light Jak form so he naturally said nothing, but even if he retained his powers of speech he’d have ignored the weird gesture. Daxter on the other hand shot her a mean mug look and stuck his tongue out.

”Weeee!” called Cuphead as the giant bee alien carried him to their destination. Once they landed, he hopped out of her hand and slicked back his straw, then spat on the ground to look like a bonafide tough guy!

The Courier would have the most difficulty crossing and thought about the situation. Those black creatures could teleport sure, but they weren’t exactly appealing. Besides, the spirits were all claimed and he didn’t want to agitate anymore to start another fight. Then there was the matter of his robot, Gaige-Tron, and his chocobo mount, Drumstick. She wasn’t a flying bird, but seeing those chickens (cuccoos?) of Linkle’s gave him an idea. ”GT, hitch a ride with the monk. He’s got a whole mess o’things that c’n help I’m sure.”

“No problem, boss! Initiating ‘Freeloader.exe’ now! Haha, just kidding! I don’t have freeloader software, but I am totally gonna hitch a ride!” The robot sped off to Donnie and latched onto his flying machine without so much as a please or thank you, ready to go.

”Come on out, Bugfoot!” the Courier released his heracross from his pokeball.

“Hera!” it cheered excitedly.

”Gonna pull a repeat of last time. I need you ta launch me an’ Drumstick up high, then we’ll glide t’the next island. We’ll keep doin’ this until we reach that big one over there. Comprende?” Bugfoot saluted enthusiastically and got into position. Drumstick didn’t seem so keen on the idea, but she calmed down with a few pats and encouraging coos from her master. Heracross hurled them both into the air with its mighty horn! Then Drumstick flapped her wings like she’d never flapped before, guided by the Courier to give them a softer landing. Once they hit solid ground he pointed the pokeball back to Bugfoot, recalling the pokemon, then simply let it out again next to him. Rinse and repeat three more times and the Courier finally got to the big boss arena.

The Enderdragon showed itself as everyone found themselves surrounded by tall obelisk spires. A powerful engine of destructive force which bled into the nightmare world it reigned over, it let out a roar and attacked! Cuphead thought he could take it on headfirst. After all, he beat Matchstick and that guy had three heads so this guy would surely be a pushover, right? Well, that mindset proved to be instantly wrong as he was bowled over, as were also Jak (who wasn’t able to react quickly enough with his light wings) and the Courier (who had just gotten there and was caught off guard).

All three were tossed around like rag dolls, though the two wastelanders could take the hits without much trouble. Cuphead got several cracks in the process thanks to his less than durable body, but he still sprang up without a moment’s hesitation. ”Why I oughta!” he called out and began firing his peashooter while running across the ground.

Jak dispersed his Light form, the wings going with it. Clearly this beast would be far far more mobile than he was in the air, so it was best to stick to the ground and attack at moments of opportunity. He swapped the morph gun to Rootrot mode and activated his jet board, zipping and zooming around the arena at super speeds taking potshots at the Enderdragon whenever he could. It didn’t look like the rootrot was doing any damage, but then he didn’t expect it to. This beast was huge and would not go down without a ton of punishment, but the rootrot would slow it down, hopefully. Weaken it enough so that everyone could get a lot more shots in on it.

The Courier gazed upon the dragon in all its glory and froze for a moment, taking it all in. It was… A freaking pop tart with rainbows coming out the ass?! Well whatever, it was clearly incredibly dangerous, and spat out huge breaths of acid to boot!

”Remember boss!” Courier called out to Bowser, who was atop a spire in cat form, ”Y’promised this one to me!” He popped some coyote chewing tobacco to increase his perception, heightening his senses to incredible abilities, then kept his eye on the dragon. It swooped down and he spurred Drumstick on to take cover just in time, while Jak nailed it in the head with some rootrot and Cuphead dashed through the acid cloud, seemingly invulnerable, peppering the dragon with shots. Something seemed off about it, but he couldn’t put his finger on what exactly that was just yet.

As the Courier applied the extra damage stickers he had received from the koopas onto his anti-material rifle, one of the spires shot out a blast of energy that collided with the dragon. He activated VATS, intending to catch the action as the beam was connected to the dragon, but his timing was off too late by a fraction of a second. The beam was gone, but so was… Didn’t the dragon take some minor nicks and cuts? He didn’t see any signs of injury, but he was certain it had taken at least some small damage, coyote tobacco chew never lied.

He deactivated VATS and let things play out for a moment. One of those snipers from earlier, the first one he had killed, tried to communicate something to Kamek but he was too prideful to care. She then attacked an obelisk, blowing it to kingdom come along with her physical form!

”Whoa!” Jak called out, flying back from the shockwave, having gotten a little too close.

”Watch it, beak-face!” Daxter yelled, shaking his fist at Kamek. ”That was your girl that almost took us out! My fur’s gonna have that nasty burn smell for days!”

”Take out the towers!” the Courier called out. ”I ain’t no wizard, but I know what I saw an’ I reckon she saw it too! The rainbow pop-tart ain’t hurt no more!” The Courier took aim at the nearest spire and it with enough killing force to penetrate heavy artillery armor.

The force of the dragon pulling him along wasn't exactly unexpected - one look at the size of the creature would clue anyone in to it's strength - but the Cadet still found his arms straining as the clutch claw's cable fought against the dragon's forward movement to reel the hunter in. Eventually the cable won out, and Ace Cadet landed heavily against the beast's leg. He clung to her dark scales until she began to turn for a second pass at the rest of the squad, and only then did he scramble up onto the dragon's back. No way do I want to fall into that void!

Tucked between the ridges on the dragon's back, the threat of being blown off as it flew wasn't as immediate. That, and the dragon didn't seem to notice or care that the hunter was hitching a ride. It made sense, the thing was massive - and he was only one nuisance compared to the many still on the ground. Scratch that - two nuisances? Looking down along the length of the dragon's back, the colorful Tora stood out plainly against the monster's inky scales. Cadet was emboldened and started to make his way toward the nopon. It was rough going, what with the dragon's muscles shifting under his feet and the ever present push of wind as she flew, but he continued his stumbling progress down the dragon's body.

The hunter had only just caught site of Poppi flying closely behind when the dark monster suddenly lit up in purple. What the..? Cadet leaned over the side of the dragon, curious as to who the heck had blasted it with a giant purple beam, but... Huh? From that crystal thing? The Cadet's brows furrowed, and he looked between the spires with the crystals atop them to the dragon's hide, the minor wounds on it quickly sealing themselves up. ...aw man, you've gotta be Kirin me.

The Ace Cadet wasted no more time and found his way to his teammates, holding onto one of the dragon's spines tightly as he addressed them. "Tora, Poppi! Did you see that thing? That beam? It helped the black dragon - it healed it!" Or it did something close to healing it, but either way it was troublesome news. They'd never be able to beat the thing if it was getting healed. Their comrades on the ground needed to know too, but it was difficult enough to shout over the rush of wind to the two in front of him, it was impossible to get a message to the rest of the group - at least for Cadet, who couldn't fly but was determined to bring this beast crashing down.

"It's head is back the other way. If we work together I think we might be able to crash it and give the others an opening! Even if we can't, it'll hurt a lot more if we whale on it's head than it's hide!"

Geralt, frankly, wasn't all that surprised that his attacks had little noticeable effect on the dragon. It was a damned dragon, after all. He watched the creature fly up, undaunted by the blows struck against it. Tora, Poppi, and the Cadet had managed to grab onto it as well, which would either go well for the group, or terribly. Geralt figured it would likely be the latter, and set about trying to find something he could do other than ineffectively fire at it with his blaster.

Looking around, he noticed there were quite a few towers made of that strange, black substance. Even when a few of his allies' attacks hit them, they seemed to take no damage whatsoever. He could also barely make out a crystal atop the ones he could see the tops of. They might be valuable, or they might be catalysts for some kind of magic, he wasn't sure. Either way, he might be able to use the towers as a vantage point to get a better shot at the dragon from.

It was around that point that the dragon came around for its next attack, spewing a vicious acid all over the ground, causing the Witcher to roll out of the way of a pool that threatened to dissolve him. Careful to make sure he didn't get himself killed, Geralt moved a bit more around to see if he could get a good sight line on the top of one of the towers to try and...teleport to it. He hated the notion, but it was necessary. One didn't fight a dragon without pulling out all the stops. Come to think of it, he had his draconid oil as well! He couldn't guarantee this otherworldly dragon would still be affected by it, but it couldn't hurt either.

It was about that time that Geralt saw the crystal atop one tower, and Quiet, explode into nothingness. He cringed for a moment before realizing that meant something. A regular crystal didn't just up and detonate like that, meaning it was likely a catalyst or a piece of some kind of spell or other magic. And based on the fact that a beam of energy shot out at the dragon and didn't kill it?

Well, Geralt didn't know what that beam actually did. It could be protecting it, giving it energy, healing its wounds, it could even be hurting it in some way they didn't understand. But if there was one thing that Geralt knew, it was that unknown magic was bad news. And if those crystals could be destroyed, well...who better to do it than the guy who could....UGH....teleport?

He was never going to get used to that. Damn those monsters and their usefulness.

"Keep it distracted, and don't fucking look at me!" The Witcher shouted, turning to the best spot he could find and quickly teleporting to the top of the tower. Pulling out a dimeritium bomb, Geralt smirked. A double wammy, an explosion and a magic dampener. Whatever these crystals did, this bomb would end it for sure. Gently placing the bomb, Geralt channeled the sign of Igni at its lowest possible power, a spark barely forming and lighting the wick.

Not giving it much extra though, Geralt turned and warped to a spot on the floor as far away from the dragon, far away from his allies, and far away from the tower as he could get.

The other creatures were everywhere. Surrounding him. All...averting their eyes. Sure, they looked at him, but not at him. The difference was subtle, but noticeable. He felt...peaceful. "This...huh. Not that bad." He mused, before enacting the next part of his plan. Moving to take cover behind one of the other towers, Geralt pulled out his draconid oil and the cloth he used to oil his blade, before drawing his silver sword. This would have to be quick, and with his new proportions Geralt found himself somewhat clumsier when it came to the finer points of where his equipment was. It seemed that some of the pockets and pouches on his person had shifted somewhat when his body did. It wasn't overly burdensome now, but in more fevered combat it could hurt him.

Still, he went about it as quickly as he could while still reasonably making sure his blade was sufficiently coated in the oil. "Alright. Here we go..." Geralt mumbled as he moved back towards the others, trying to find a tower with no crystal that he might be able to attack from.

---

Link was pleasantly surprised to see the arrow actually sink in, even if the monsters quickly took off again after barreling over most of the group like a runaway Lynel. He noticed something though, and whipped up his Sheikah slate to zoom in and confirm it. Yep, the dragon definitely wasn't alone anymore. Some madman had actually gotten up onto the thing. Link envied him. He had tried to ride dragons, but for some reason he had never been able to get a good enough grip. Maybe it had something to do with them being holy creatures and the idea of him riding along between their horns was to undignified for the world to allow. Whatever the case, between the damage and the riding, this was clearly a lesser class of dragon than what you found in Hyrule.

He went to put the slate away, but he noticed something had changed about the screen. He didn't have time for that, however. AS though responding to his earlier though the dragon spun in the air and made a beeline back to the island, it's mouth full of boiling purple energy that it launched at them. Link backflipped backward as the purple acid slammed uncomfortable near him, drops splattering on his clothes and face. The dragon did not get away unmolested, though, as soon the sky erupted in light. The Koopa's had taken the time to climb up the various towers and launch a volley of projectiles at the dragon as it passed over him, but among the rain of beams, shapes, and fire was a distinctive shot of purple energy that seemed to home right in on the dragon.

A few moments later there was an explosion atop one of the towers, apparently one of those valuable looking crystals going off judging by how it was just gone and he heard another moment shout that the crystal had healed the...what? What was a pop-tart? He looked at the dragon though the slate again as it retreated, and understood. The wound it had gotten from him was nowhere to be seen.

He also saw that it had gotten more passengers, the turip man and his friend. Link decided that was perhaps the best shot he would ever get. He quickly selected the Rune that had somehow reappeared on the Slate and took careful aim at the dragons lower back. Snap! I wasn't the best picture of the actual monster, but he registered it anyway. It a beautiful picture, the little turnip guy wailing away on a creature a hundred times his size while the guardian girl looked on and the readhead shouting to to tell them something. He would have to show this to Zelda when he found her.

With that done and the Dragon turning back to the island Link decided he should do something about these towers. He looked up the one Bowser had so helpfully left his claw marks in, only to find the big Koopa had abandoned it. He spirited to it, stopped to catch his breath, then jumped up and started climbing up to the top.

---

Linkle also heard the Courier's warning about the towers, but she acted on this information much more quickly. After all, in battle if your comrades called out for something to be done you did it. It had to be important. Besides, if she was going to give Imani another shot she wanted this on to count.

She ran for the nearest tower, dodging between pools of acid, and shouted "Team jump!" The cucoo's behind her darted forward and placed themselves under her feet, throwing with all their strength as she leaped toward the tower. At the apex of her jump she locked her eyes of the top of the tower and felt the world turn inside out as she teleported up there. Shaking a second to shake off the dizziness, she looked up to find herself face to face with the crystal. It was a beautiful thing. It was too bad it had to die.

Linkle reached behind her back and unloaded on the thing with a flurry of thrown bombs before turning her gaze to the ground and teleporting again as the top of the tower went up like a jumbo sized bomb. She only got halfway to the ground, and the disorientation kept her from doing anything more than bracing for impact and hitting the spongy stone with a dull thud that it took a moment to pick herself up from. The cucoo's skittered over to show their concern.

Blazermate seeing a bunch of her allies get bowled over by the ender dragon, had to stop healing Bowser and Tora, keeping their overheal, and instead swapping over to heal the group of people who got hit. The biggest thing she noticed was that Cuphead, the weird looking western anime guy, got hit the hardest comparably to everyone else. Apparently he was extremely fragile, and his whole body was a weak point which concerned Blazermate greatly. Thankfully when Blazermate got to healing the cup boy, his low HP also made healing him very quick and she was able to jump to a few others before the dragon came around again. She didn't know why Tora just stood there for a small bit before bieng picked up by Poppi and placed on one of the pillars. Blazermate wasn't sure it was a good idea for those who couldn't fly to be ON those pillars, but apparently Bowser and Linkle thought it was a good idea too, even if Linkle did jump down afterwords.

Sectonia meanwhile was watching the dragon fly about, having hit it with her light rings. She was expecting a bit more damage than that, considering these were her second strongest attack, but that was just a testament to the strength of this 'dragon'. As her gaze followed the dragon, she saw one of the crystals atop the pillars channel something into the dragon with its wounds healing instantly. Being someone who loved making things out of crystals, magical crystals were something she was familiar with. Kamek noticed this too, and asked Sectonia for her opinion on the matter. "Yes. Some kind of support magic indeed. Best to get rid of them." She said.

Kamek's summon, Quiet was ahead of the bee queen however, and shattered one of the crystals with a melee attack, causing it to explode. Thankfully Sectonia was looking at this, as she had drew her swords and was ready to teleport around to slice each one of them up. "Hmm..." She said, giving Kamek a nod as he warned everyone that it was explosive. That Bowser sure had some decent minions himself if this blue robed.... what did he call himself? koopa? was anything to follow by, although she figured Kamek was a bit more akin to her Taranza, more an 'ace' among minions than anything.

Still, watching a few of her allies attack a few crystals even though they couldn't fly or really hit them from range was giving the queen a bad look and that couldn't stand. Deciding to focus her attention on the crystals, she targeted ones that the others hadn't attacked, throwing her light rings at them to destroy them safely from a distance. Best part was that if two crystals were lined up and close enough, one of her larger rings would destroy both of them without much issue. And considering these rings were about four times her size, aiming them wasn't that difficult either. She did make sure to not aim her rings where they would hit some of her other commrades, mostly Bowser and his son, who made their way up the pillars. Although why Bowser now looked like he hit himself with an ugly stick trying to make himself beautiful she had no idea why. She'd need to fix that tattered suit too...

Blazermate meanwhile was busy hovering out of the way of the Ender dragon and its acid breath, healing up those who needed it. Her Ubercharge was ready, and if someone was looking like they'd get attacked severely by the dragon, she was ready to attach and deploy it on them. Otherwise she was busy healing Cuphead, Jak, the Courier, and all the others who got hit. Dell hadn't recharged yet, and there were no zombies nearby, so this was all she could really do against this dragon. At least she was pretty nimble in the air and unlike the dragon could reverse direction fairly easily. While not everyone was healed up, Blazermate had to swap her medibeam to Tora as the guy had grabbed on the dragon's tail, and he'd need the overheal to survive whatever the dragon was going to do with the onion bird man.

With the duo’s unceremonious, but official, induction into the ranks of Smash, the brief intermission was over. Proper ceremony and celebration could wait until later. The matter at hand demanded their collective attention, which the Princess called upon for the pre-mission briefing. Her speech served more to inspire than direct, and certainly, it was somewhat inspiring… in the sense that it inspired some confidence in Fox that someone of reasonable competence was taking charge in his (or anyone else’s) absence. Though either of them were preferable to nothing as far as direction, between her and Bowser, he had a clear preference. At Peach’s last line, a corner of his mouth cocked up slightly in a light, satisfied smirk. She may yet have a latent talent for squad leadership if left to foster it, but likelihood of sharing the burden over shouldering it ensured she’d be able to do so comfortably--relatively speaking.

With that, the party proceeded across (or in some cases over) the bridge in managed order, which, in the way of steady traversal, posed no issue for Hat Kid, Fox, or Banjo and Kazooie. For the latter two it almost stood as a reminder of old times… if not for the excess of company, the change in landscape, the difference in objective, and pretty much everything else. This sentiment of alien circumstance carried over well into Grunty’s Lair, the interior not so much as remotely resembling its former self. A finely laid brick corridor took the place of the open, methodically carved out cavern that they remembered from before, ending some ways in at a darkened well frame embedded in the wall--no doubt an entrance into the looming dark that hung over the lair. Upon confirming its safety and simplicity of use the party entered through one at a time.

On the other side they were met with… something not entirely unexpected, but certainly foreign to anyone there. A veritable archipelago of largely barren, pale yellow stone lay suspended within backdrop of infinite darkness in every direction. Fox observed quietly to himself that this was, in fact, NOT the Subspace, though it was conceptually not too far off. Of course, it wasn’t Space proper either, as him and Hat Kid knew too well to be the case (unbeknownst to one another). Despite the evidently ominous nature of this place, the child was less put off by it than most present. As far as she was concerned it was just another pocket dimension to be cleared; pretty standard fare; nothing to be too worried about.

The thought came to her too soon, as a few of their comrades were beset upon by a small number of hitherto unseen wraith-like aberrations, likely native to this dimension. With the sudden increase in their presence, the creatures’ immediate proximity to their accosted allies, and their sporadic teleportation, Fox found some difficulty focusing on any of them long enough to get a clear shot off. Banjo and Kazooie struggled similarly to find an opening amidst the madness to jump in for an assist. Just as well, for one of their allies managed to intuit and call out the secret to the creatures’ behavior so as to prevent further drawing their ire. Hat Kid was spared the danger of looking directly at any of them by her Hat’s waypoint focusing on the center of the central island.

Inevitably, the issue of safe traversal to their target destination came up, regarding those among them who couldn’t fly or jump far enough to at least reach the scattered islets and avoid a perilous fall into the everdark. To that end, Hat Kid, Banjo and Kazooie, and even Fox could probably all make it with mild difficulty using the latter method, but it was for the better that they take a less circuitous route along with the others so as to not lag behind and risk possible delay by more Endermen. Jr, otherwise unwilling to take passengers, would end up hauling a technical stowaway by the propeller of his kart with Hat Kid using it as an attachment point for her Hookshot, hooking onto it as the Koopaling took off flying overhead. In similar fashion, Fox nimbly hopped onto Euden’s back in dragon form, landing lightly in a kneel and keeping a handhold on for the duration of their crossing. Light as the pilot was, he expected (and hoped) the prince wouldn’t mind. Finally, Banjo and Kazooie shot themselves skyward in a streak of red stars that marked Flight for them, and promptly estimated in their heads an inability to cover the full distance to the island without spending precious resources. Between Red Feathers and the Trowlon-lon Milk, they could more easily spare the latter, so Banjo threw down another serving of hard watery swill to triple their launch height and coast the rest of the way over.

At varying rates, by varying methods, everyone made it to the island a little at a time and carefully made their way toward its center. A period of unsettling silence and inactivity that hung in the air like the atmospheric haze around them marked the prelude to the impending conflict, followed by a chorus of Endermen to sound off the arrival of their foe. A pair of purple lights aglow in a starless sky revealed against the dark a great ebonic drake that claimed this dimension as its domain. The beast swooped down to set itself atop the frontmost obsidian spire, making its imposing presence known to the intruders in guttural announcement before entering a ramming dive toward the clustered heroes.

To some end the Ender Dragon’s opening attack succeeded better than expected, knocking aside roughly half of the party that failed to scatter in time. Banjo was bowled straight over underfoot and sent tumbling along the porous stone, Hat Kid contacted with the Dragon’s head while trying to jump over it, and Fox dashed wide of it, but not enough to avoid being struck by a wing end and thrown back-first into one of the spires. By the time they got back to their feet the Dragon was already out of their ranges, so the best they could do at the moment was to spread out, keep mobile, and let the more range capable of their group go to work on it until it circled back.

While staying on the move, Hat Kid tried to analyse the situation to figure out what she could contribute and how, and she noticed something peculiar. Neither Jr’s MOAB balloons nor the Dragon’s corrosive bombardment (both of which they made a point of steering clear of) did any discernible damage to the spires. She began drawing parallels to the previous boss battle in her head. Black Pillars; Black Spires; Both seemingly indestructible; Both bosses so far have been dragons; these are probably just coincidences, and I’m definitely overthinking the wrong aspects of this… Her internal rambling did point to one relevant truth, however: that this boss had a gimmick… and some were already onto it. It was then that she noticed a beam trailing from one of the spired crystals to the Dragon, and another subsequently detonating under the knife of a Striker. She didn’t exactly know why, but this struck her (as well as others, it seemed) as a necessary step to bringing the leviathan down.

“Hey!” she called to the animal duo, pointing to any one of the crystals being besieged by their allies, trusting they would understand from there before Sprinting off to find Jr’s kart and grappling onto it again. She carried her momentum of her upswing through by entering into a vertical wall run up the height of the nearest spire, detaching her hook as she reached the top and pushing off the crystal’s housing cage in a soaring backflip. Her time perception dilated at that exact second just long enough for her to switch hats, donning what appeared to be a conical witch’s cap. She then manifested a full vial of unknown contents--seemingly from nothing--shook it for a second until it activated, looked down to smile and wave at Jr, and hurled the improvised chemical explosive at the crystal, all while passing over the Koopaling. She righted herself on her backfall and hooked onto it once more.

With a proper directive given to them, Banjo and Kazooie immediately saw a way to make themselves useful, even if it had limited uses. Banjo neared one of the spires, chugged another swig of the reddened lightener, and ascended for the crystal that sat atop the structure. His ascent was more graceful, controlled, deliberate than the first time around; closer in manner to an assisted jump. As per the pattern and dynamic, Kazooie took over from there, seizing aerial control when the potion’s effect wore off. Once they were lined up with the crystal, she reared back in anticipation, expending one Red Feather, and tucked her wings as she shot forward in a breakneck kamikaze dive, aiming to shatter the gem on impact. Unlikely as it was to be the case, should one more hit be necessary, she would repeat the attack accordingly. After which, she would need to spend another Feather to stay aloft at their height.

The assault on the spires didn’t go unnoticed by Fox whilst seeking cover between them. His problem was being able to hit them from his poor angle on the ground, as well as having an acid spewing dragon to evade and occupy. The battle was still young, however, and he still had a narrow window to make a move before the drake came back around to make another run. As he made haste for any unassailed tower with a still intact jewel atop it (should there happen to be one), Fox drew sights on any one of the nearby Endermen, intentionally antagonizing the gangly spectre to draw it closer, leaping over whatever reckless attack it threw out, and footstooling off of the unsuspecting creature to propel himself higher. With an additional wall jump, followed by a variant propulsion technique, he quickly boosted to the top of the spire in a jetstream of white smoke. From there he got a good look at the Ender Dragon on its return flight to the island, as well as the coordinated crystal destruction being conducted around him. By this point the Enderman he offended would have teleported up there to meet him. Fox then dove from the tower, air dashed away toward the open, and turned to litter the gem with a rapid volley of lethal red light on his way down. The explosion resulting from its destruction would surely take care of the pursuing Enderman.

He landed closer to the center of the battlefield between the spires in the midst of the Dragon’s impending return, and measured the next action he took against that of the beast. If it bombarded them again, he would stand his ground just long enough to throw out his Reflector to respond, having seen the caustic projectiles once already and evaluated them, based on identical past experience, to be manageable. Otherwise, if it attempted another straightforward physical assault, he would instead disengage and clear himself of its path. From there (in the latter case), he would harry it with prodding blaster fire from below, aiming for its beaming violet eyes that made for the easiest target.

It took a while for Donnie to process what he was seeing, once he made his way to the large island by Disc anyway.

That “boss.”

That was no ordinary raid boss.

That was a Light-forsaken dragon.

Dragons, on Azeroth, might as well be gods. Azeroth had pantheons within pantheons, on top of other pantheons, where almost every religion was true to some extent.

Dragons were powerful enough that they had their own worshippers, known as the Sect of the Dragons. And this was for one reason: The TItans.

Primordial Azeroth was ruled by the Elemental Lords of fire, earth, water, and air. Then the Old Gods, Y’ssarj, N’zoth, Yog-Seron, C’thun, and others invaded from the Great Dark Beyond (also known as outer space), defeated and enslaved the Elemental Lords and their underlings, and made Azeroth the seat of their so-called “Black Empire,” an empire of Voidspawn and eldritch creatures. They created several species that persisted to this day, such as the mantid and the qiraji.

The Titans, mortal enemies of the Old Gods, saw this infestation, and could not allow Azeroth’s world-soul to be corrupted. So they invaded the Black Empire, destroyed it, defeated the Old Gods and imprisoned them beneath the planet’s surface.

The Titans seeded Azeroth with their own brand of mechanical life, creating numerous installations and machines designed to keep Azeroth from becoming corrupted, and oversee this new world.

To watch over Azeroth, they took several proto-dragons--animalistic dragon-like creatures from the Elemental Planes--and empowered them with intelligence and incredible power. They divided these new dragons into five “Dragonflights,” ordered by color, each led by a Dragon Aspect, who had mastery over a specific natural domain. The Black Dragonflight protected and watched over the earth. The Red Dragonflight was charged with controlling and restoring life, capable of regrowing the land in the event of mass death, conflict, and strife. The Blue Dragonflight was given mastery and control over all magic, including Azeroth’s network of leylines. The Green Dragonflight were the protectors of the Emerald Dream, the spiritual realm of life itself. And the Bronze Dragonflight were the protectors of time.

The conflicts Azeroth faced could all be traced back to the Titans and the Old Gods in some way. And the dragons were massively influential on Azeroth’s history as a result.

And granted, this dragon didn’t look like any member of the Black Dragonflight he knew of. This thing was far too purple. But it was the lord and master of this dimension. He knew that by context alone. This realm of floating islands in an endless void was this dragon’s purview. It was its guardian, just as the Dragon Aspects were the guardians of Azeroth.

So, he stood for a while, intimidated, unsure. You didn’t just blindly run at and punch a dragon, especially one you knew nothing about.

He observed his allies going ahead to attack. The dragon regenerated. Oh joy. But those four crystals seemed to be the ones empowering it, judging by the purple beams they emitted.

And then Donnie ran for his life, even using a Chi Torpedo, to avoid a bomb heading his way, which exploded into acid when it hit the ground. Thankfully, he wasn’t hit, but that had been a close one! But he had to admit, it felt good spiraling through the air like a missile for the first time since he got here.

But that did it. He needed to get into the fight.

He drew an orb and held it high, the containment spell within becoming undone, revealing the Dwarven Flying Machine. It was damaged by the electric shocks, sure, but it was largely mechanical rather than electronic. It would work fine, for the most part. But he couldn’t account for Tora’s modifications, since he didn’t know how computerized they were. Except for the holographic targeting system, which...was that magical or electronic? He wasn’t sure which, it could be either.

Either way, it didn’t matter, as long as the Flying Machine shot straight.

He got in, powered up the engines, and drifted off into the air. He kept an eye out for the dragon as he flew. His life literally depended on it. Wait, why was he trying to multitask? This was what Strikers were for! He summoned Vivi again to make his life easier. “Vivi!” he said. “If the dragon comes anywhere near us, tell me! If it tries to shoot us, tell me! And if it tries to eat us, tell me!”

“Understood!” Vivi replied, sitting on his lap again.

...Donnie really needed to get a second seat for this thing.

He aimed carefully at one of the four crystals. Really, it was just a hunch on his part based on the available evidence, and he had no idea what this thing’s magical properties were. But if it contained enough magical energy to cause near-instant regeneration in a creature that size, he did not want to be on the receiving end of what would happen if that much power was released all at once. Such as a Boom Biter blowing the crystal to kingdom come. So he was pretty far away from it, though he wasn’t stupid enough to get near another crystal or fly over the void.

He lined up the holographic arc with the crystal atop the tower, his finger curled around the trigger...and he squeezed it three times.

Three Boom Biters soared towards the target in a majestic arc. He did not want this thing to survive the explosion. If his hunch was right and it would explode on a shatter, the same logic dictated that it would vent magical energy along a crack. And a jet full of cosmic eldritch void energy to the face was not something anyone wanted.
Barring Vivi hadn’t screamed bloody murder and interrupted him, or the dragon didn’t suddenly take offense to his continued existence for firing explosives at the thing keeping it alive, he would get the hell out of dodge and move on to the next crystal.

Tora held on for dear life with one Mech Arm and bashed at the dragon's pitch-black scales with the other. Acting more out of impulse than intelligence, he was surprised to see that his weapon's metal fist was leaving dents in the leviathan's armor, and even more surprised to see them repair themselves a moment later. The wounds left by various other sources, from the Primid firing squad to various spells to balls of rot and fire, fared no better. As the Ender Dragon passed by the obsidian towers, more streaks of light reached out to latch onto it, quickly undoing any damage dealt. Though the lack of any concrete measurement of the beast's vitality made it difficult to confirm, the correlation was hard to miss, and after avoiding their enemy's acidic bombing run a number of onlookers saw it, too.

Kamek slowly recognized the healing function of the end crystals first, and his discovery informed the actions of his striker. Though unable to speak, Quiet communicated the conclusion well enough to any onlookers by rounding on the gem floating nearby and jamming her knife into its glassy surface. Her target abruptly and loudly detonated, exploding like a bundle of TNT. Kamek and company took a two-hit combo of bursting flame plus the wallop of the pressure wave. The old koopa, however, fought through the pain to shout his findings to the others. His allies either repositioned or renewed their attack, but with nine more crystals remaining, the Ender Dragon took no damage -even from the charged shot- that was not swiftly undone.

Soon after the Courier deduced the more vital of the end crystal's two functions, and he wasted no time going after the nearest spire. From the ground he couldn't see the arcane stone atop it, but even in the midst of drug-induced delirium he could hazard a pretty solid guess. Even with a high-caliber sniper rifle, however, he could not pierce multiple meters of ultra-hard stone. His bullet got a few feet in, leaving a web of obsidian cracks in its wake, before its momentum came to a dead stop. Some of the obsidian blocks shattered, but in a shocking turn those that weren't completely destroyed unmistakably and instantly restored themselves a moment later. This material, it would appear, was unlike anything he'd ever seen before.

By now Tora recognized very well the ferocious report of Michael's rifle, which never failed to herald a payload of withering force. He expected the Ender Dragon to answer that thunderclap with a bellow of pain, thrashing in the sky, but it only wheeled around for another pass at the island. “Meh?” His barrage of attacks concluded with nothing gained but some focus to use for arts, he watched as the Ace Cadet clambered his way over to speak some sense. Tough as it was to hear him over the roaring air, Tora got the memo—better to deal some damage where it would be felt. Meanwhile, their teammates could deal with whatever appeared to be undoing their attacks. Using his Mech Arms the Nopon hurried after the Cadet up the monster's back, his muscles already burning from exertion.

Down below, Geralt quickly grasped the plan and put his new powers to use by leaving a bomb atop one of the towers to detonate after he retreated to a safe distance. Though tough to reach, the end crystals boasted no durability to speak of, and blew up easily. Link began his own ascent, not nearly as fast as the Witcher's but far more remarkable, for he somehow managed to scale the tower's sheer, shiny surface with nothing but his bare hands. Meanwhile Linkle followed in Geralt's example, nimbly slinging her own bombs to take out a third end crystal. Sectonia, determined not to be outdone, sent forth her rings of light to destroy even more. Since she assailed them from long range, however, a good few of her rings missed, and while she did get one the varying heights of the towers prevented a multi-kill. Worse still, one of the crystals she targeted turned out to be protected by a cage of iron bars, which took the ring's punishment heroically and then restored themselves the next moment just as 6's obsidian had.

Sectonia need not trouble herself with the caged crystal however; Hat Kid leaped to the rescue. The plucky girl used Junior's flying clown car as a grappling point to send herself skyward, sprinted up the sheer surface of the tower, and backflipped off the iron lattice to switch hats and whip up a potent brew midair. Her hurled vial shattered against the cage, blowing up in a cloud of colorful smoke with enough force to bleed through the bars and strike the crystal. It detonated as the kid sailed over Junior's head, her intrepid stunt an incredible success.

Soon after, Banjo and Kazooie crested another spire. The pair pivoted midair to allow Kazooie to execute a daring dive attack, heedless of Kamek's warning. It took just one blow from her beak to shatter the crystal, and that blow set off a point-blank explosion that hammered the pair in brutal fashion. Heavily wounded, and with Kazooie unconscious, Banjo had only a moment to try and grasp the edge of the tower before plummeting over the edge and toward the ground below. Donnie demolished the crystal of an adjacent tower in far safer fashion by raining down artillery from a distance.

By the time Fox returned from his own brief trip up and down a spire, leaving four out of the ten crystals in operation, the dragon arrived. She flew low to the ground at high speed, her wings extended and her head down spewing acid. Her flight created a front of air before her and a river of acid behind, and she tore through the center of the battlefield like an ebony hurricane. The wall of air she pushed along slammed into all those remaining on inside the circle of towers, be they on the ground or within fifty feet of it. The turbulence alone could fling climbers from towers and disrupt low-power flying machines. This time the force and follow-through of the Ender Dragon's onslaught would carry anyone caught up in it toward and over the edge of the island, provided they didn't crack against one of the towers first or escape via an ability.

Both Peach and Euden had attempted to avoid the dragon by breaking to opposite sides, but neither escaped the wind front. The princess pulled out her parasol, got caught up in the currents, and flew sky-high. The prince couldn't shapeshift again, and so hurtled, yelling, across the ground. He struggled to bring his sword around and plunge it into the end stone, but in the utter chaos he couldn't get a sense of his position. He could only swing wildly, up until the point his sword happened to hit the ground hard enough to jar it from his grip. A moment later he tumbled out into open space. The Ender Dragon passed overhead, and he began to fall.

After a moment the dragon whipped around, turning on a dime in an impressive feat of maneuverability to face the island once again. The move cut its speed, but it also wrenched Tora and Poppi -lacking the security of the clutch claw- loose from her back. By this time the artificial blade boasted an abundance of experience catching her rotund masterpon as he freefell, but doing so meant she couldn't turn her attention down below. She plucked Tora from the height of his arc and zoomed back toward the battle below. The Ender Dragon flew above the island slowly, seeking individual targets to blast and swipe at rather than just belting out acid on a bombing run. Bowser caught her eyes first, and she hovered over to lay in some pain. Tora and Poppi approached from behind. Even if it was still being healed, Tora figured he might be able to outpace the regeneration, and if not he could at least stockpile power for a Blade Combo. “Poppi, switch wind core!” he called. “If get level three, can seal blowdown!” He let loose a barrage of missiles, peppering the leviathan's back and wings.



Tenaciously observant, Sakura weathered the string of blows until Ryu went for an overhead, at which point she made her move. She threw out a low quick and quickly transitioned into a unique shoryuken, tailored in her own style. Her fist detonated against him jubilantly, and he flew upward. “Hmgh!” he grunted, getting a feeling of what else lay in store. His opponent ran beneath him to take advantage of his lack of in-air recovery with a mirrored sparking uppercut. The martial artist felt that one, but he was far from defeat, or even from losing his composure. He spotted Sakura coming in for another helping as he hit the ground and bounced to his feet. It seemed she wouldn't be relenting for a moment, utilizing a blistering offense to avoid giving him the chance to think. In a situation like this, fresh off a fair hammering and faced with an exuberant ball of energy bearing down on him, a man would have to be crazy to do anything but block.

Or wise.

As Sakura rushed in to throw him Ryu crouched down and intercepted her with a speedy light kick. From there the rhythm of the combo flowed, beat for beat, as easy and natural as his heart. His leg muscles brought him back up to deliver a standing medium kick, and without so much as setting it down he gathered himself into a chamber before sending a fully-fledged donkey kick Sakura's way. 'Excessive punishment' it might be to some, but this girl was asking to be given as good as she gave. Besides, anything less would no doubt be taken as an insult. Ryu's countless hours of practice kept his form perfect as he then transitioned into a tatsumaki senpukyaku, obliging Sakura to come face to face with the might of his hurricane kick. He spun through the air like a top, his extended foot leaving a trail behind it as he carved through the air. It would only hit once, unlike his friend Ken's multi-hitting variant technique, but it could not be taken likely.

“Do not expect to trick me twice,” Ryu declared as Sakura slid clear. He maintained his stance, but continued to speak. “You've improved. Show me what you've learned from other worlds!”

He couched his hands and began to gather energy. A brilliant blue light swirled around him, focusing into a sphere between his hands. “Shinku...” Sakura would know this move, a formidable technique among their more-or-less shared arsenal. This much stronger hadoken packed a lot more punch than its typical counterpart, but it carried the same limitations. Still...there seemed to be an awful lot of energy around Ryu.

“HADOKEN!”

Ryu thrust his hands forward, and instead of a fireball a frothing beam of power blasted forth. It reached from the ground to above the man's height vertically, and the same horizontally. Its sapphire blaze blinding, it covered the distance between the fighters in an instant, only failing to hit Sakura if she preemptively dodged. In such a case, however, Ryu exerted some effort to move the beam in her direction, tracking the girl's movement.



The sight of the Doom Slayer using a skateboard to grind across one of the chains leading to the courthouse left the others completely baffled. “Nyow there's something you don't see everyday!” Nadia laughed, the least affected, while Nero could only stare with his mouth ajar. After a few moments interspersed with disbelieving blinks, he accepted reality for what it was and let out a deep exhale. Then, shaking his head, he turned to climb the stairs to the courthouse door.

An unsettling wind flowed from within the place, seeping out through those great, cracked-open doors. The strange, whistling vapor raked across the skin, chilling the flesh despite the heat of the molten lava only a few hundred feet away. It helped the devil hunter and his crew quickly put the unusual sight behind them, and brace for the fight that undoubtedly lay ahead. Nero laid a hand on the door and pushed it gently, peering inside. What he saw made his face tighten. “Well, we got the right place.” Foregoing subtlety, he pushed the door open and sauntered inside.

His footsteps echoed off the stone floor, though not so loudly as V's cane as he followed right behind. They moved quickly through what was once no doubt a lobby, but could now never be mistaken for anything but a prison. Iron bars lined the walls, holding ranks and ranks of withered captives as they shuffled inward toward...whatever might lay in this fell building's center. The intruders proceeded down the hallway, fighting through the deathly wind, and in only a few moments arrived at the courtroom.

While places of law often favored at least facades of classical design, hearkening back to the authority and civility of the ancient democracies, this room look almost air-lifted from a polis of the Greeks, or perhaps from their underworld. Of circular design, and featuring tiers of columns and arches reaching up the stories, it was as ghastly as it was magnificent. Flaming braziers provided light, though the air sweeping across the floor was cold. In the center towered a monstrous judge, his visage grim, plucking with his tendrils the pitiable and eerily human things that emerged from the arches around him. He seized one despite its protests and brought it close to his wrinkled face, sniffing deeply. “Ah...” he rumbled, his voice gravelly, deep, and oddly cultured. “Suicide.” As it wailed, he cast the victim down a pit that lay at the bottom of the stairs leading down from the room's entrance. Then, his eyeless face fell on the intruders. “Who comes into my house of pain?”

“Housekeeping,” Nero called, drawing the Blue Rose to aim at the judge's face. “We're here to take out the trash.”

“Hmmmm...” the monster grunted. “Then I, King Minos, will judge you...accordingly.”



He leaned back, and Nero started shooting. V rode around the pit on Shadow, with Griffon opening fire, and Nadia leaped over it. She sprinted toward Minos as he doubled over, and a wave of fog rolled out from his mouth. Thinking quickly, she leaped over it, stretching her legs apart with her muscle fibers for maximum air. She landed on Minos' face and stabbed it with her tail over and over again. Far more quickly than she expected, the judged reached up and clenched his fist around her, making her eyes bug out. “Buh!?” The next moment he slammed her into the ground before him, then brought his fist up to pulverize her. Shadow burst up from the ground and extended a tree of spikes from his back, which pierced the fist as it came down.

Nadia used the chance to scoot out of the way. “C'mon, Fortune,” Nero called as he ran up, swinging at one of Minos' tentacles. “These things don't mess around.” Still a little squeezed, Nadia took a moment to catch her breath before circling around. All the while, Pandemonica stood by the door, watching with a bored expression.

Through a combination of yelling and explosions the party expanded upon and clarified Quiet’s deduction and work, shutting down more than half of the crystals through a flurry of firepower. ”ahhh Bandages. Healing. I get it” the slightly confused kamek noted as he conjured a white orb and tossed it to one of the attack clones, switching it to a white mage to heal him.

”Right then, only four-” Kamek began before another explosion echoed from the tower Jr had been using as a firing platform for his minions after the boy hucked a glob of explosive goo onto it’s crystal ”Three left,” he corrected himself.

”Alright! Couple of fireballs should seal the deal. These better not regenerate, that’d be a pain” Bowser added, but before he, or anyone else, could take down the final three healing crystals the Ender dragon swooped in with another attack, and this one was a doozy.

She came in like a hurricane, flying low and dragging a howling gale of air after her. A brief initial impression that she wasn't going to hit anything where rapidly disavowed when the wind blast hit the troop. Kamek and his clones, all supremely light, were hurled along after her path like strands of straw, all clinging to their brooms. The true mage vanished in a panicked teleport, narrowly avoiding the fate of three of his clones who slammed into other towers and dissipated in an instant. Sectonia did the same thing that the koopa mage had done, teleporting to mitigate the wind buffet and keep her spot in the air.

”wow wow wow waaaaaaa!” "miiii miiii kyuyuyuyuyu!"

Jr was far less fortunate, his clown car spinning end over end as he clung to its internals and Mimikyu clung to him in turn, long arms wrapped around her trainer’s arm several times over to avoid being tossed to the wind. The car smacked into a tower with a clonk, the ultra-hard obsidian cracking its pristine while surface and killing the engine, causing it to fall to the fortunately more spongy ground. Both the boy and machine were tough but the landing still hurt like heck.

Blazermate didn’t fare very well much like Jr, but unlike Jr, she didn’t have anything to shield her body from the impact against a pillar. Using her combat knowledge, she managed to lessen the damage dealt to her parts by rolling as she hit the pillar, but this still severely damaged her suffering arm part that she used to brunt most of the impact. ”Owwwww” Blazermate said as she glided down to the ground, landing beyond the pillar near where the dragon had stopped to watch its chaos unfold

”Owwwww” jr complained as he crawled out of the lightly smoking clown car along with Mimikyu, who’s cloud like body seemed to have absorbed most of the impacts without much of an issue. Jr. echoed the same discomfort Blazermate felt at hitting one of those pillars.

”Are you alright young master?” asked a suddenly repairing Kamek, who had returned from the high altitude location he had vanished to in-order to stabilize himself without fear of smacking into something. The mage offered the prince a hand, and helped him to his feet.

”yeah. No. Everything kinda hurts.” jr admitted, his body having been jarred by the impacts and aching in complaint about not being allowed to lay still far a fair while longer despite the danger.

”oh dear. Well that is no good. We’ll need to do something about that right away” the mage replied in a concerned tone, before glancing around and asking ”where did my minions run off to” while looking for the white mage clone.

---

Sectonia, having easily recovered from the air buffet of the Ender Dragon, watched the others as they dealt with it in a much less elegant way. A few slammed into columns, some actually rode the currents somewhat gracefully, and one…. Fell off the edge. ”sigh…” The bee queen exhaled as she began to rapidly blink, closing distance much faster than she could normally by flying in order to catch the falling Euden and bring him back to the platform much like she said she’d do. After all, a Queen doesn’t go against her decrees.

Around the area where the others had been scattered flew Kamek’s white clad doppelganger and the team of toadies, the stout propeller born minions helping to pick people up and while the white mage healed some of their lesser wounds.

---

”Who cares about them” jr replied to Kamek’s wondering about where his magical medical aid had gotten off to ”where is Papa!? Where is the dragon!?”

The answer was clarified by a roar. When Jr, Mimikyu and Kamek followed the noise round the side of the pillar jr had crashed next to they found the answer to both of the young prince's questions.

Bowser, thanks to his meowser transformation, had had a far better landing than most as, after being blown off the tower he’d landed on his feet (and hands) and used his cat claws and the Mecha-mit to dig into the ground and avoid being blown clean off the side of the island, leaving great scratch marks in the process. The fall being about twice of what the king regularly leapt around ment it had still hurt his legs and arms upon landing and, worse, he’d apparently drawn the ire of the ender dragon as she hovered over her scattered foes, looking for targets to snuff out.

As the king got to his feet her shadow fell over him, causing him to turn in surprise and then raor ind defiance as her claw came down to smash him to pieces, the king raising his claws to block the crushing blow. There was a flash of light as the claw of the dragon struck down onto the king, and then a shower of dust.

”no!”

The dragon sneered for a moment before a look of surprise crossed her face as her claw was pushed up and the dust cleared, revealing Bowser standing in a small crater, his body coated in a glowing blue metallic field and his eyes ablaze with golden light.

”Phew, just in time! Go beat her up big guy!” Blazermate said, her healing beam having just barely been able to attach to Bowser allowing her to ubercharge him and herself to make them completely invincible right before the claw hit the koopa king.

”GAHAHAHAHAHA! This feels great!” the glowing king laughed before spotting the relieved looking Kamek and Jr ”Kamek! Make me bigger! I want more power!”

”Yes Sire!” Kamek called back before brandishing his wand.

”Mimikyu, copycat Kamek!” jr instructed, the mon replying with a nod

”Swoop wings and salamander skin,
look out dragon here comes the king!”

“Mimi. Kyu! Kyu! Kyu!”

The mage and mon chanted and then thrust their wand and tail stick towards Bowser, firing twin blasts of rainbow colored energy into the king who began to rapidly grow and grow and grow. Combining his own dark magic with Kamek and Mimikyu’s spells the ubered Bowser grew to immense size shoving the ender dragon back as she blasted his invulnerable frame with acid to no avail.

”NOW I’LL SHOW YOU WHAT A REAL BOSS LOOKS LIKE!” the now equally massive turtle dragon growled, right before the ubercharged timed out. ”UH OH,” he said in response to the loss of his invulnerability, eyes darting back and forth for a few moments of panic before they hardened and he went on the offensive. Roaring, he swiped at the ender dragon with a mecha mit bladed claw slash at her at the same moment as Tora and Poppie’s volley of missiles arrived. Thankfully Bowser did get 12 seconds of uninterrupted healing allowing Blazermate to build him some Overheal for his now incredibly massive health pool. The medabot also healed a much smaller amount with her passive healing thanks to the Uberheart, but her suffering arm was still in bad shape.

Over by jr the mage and mon where both kneeling (or just crouched down to give the impression of kneeling in Mimikyue’s case), the butt of their wand and tail planted to the ground and grasped in both hands as if each weighed a ton while they maintained the spell while a still shook and a little thirsty jr stood guard wearily.

Sectonia watched as the whole ordeal went down, a bit shocked and slightly intimidated at how massive Bowser had gotten. Apparently his ‘buffoonery’ was just how he was, but he could actually back up his ‘king’ title with a massive show of force. If anyone could see her face, they’d see that she was impressed and intrigued with Bowser for the first time, instead of just annoyed at his loudness. Even so, the cat look was still really, REALLY stupid, causing her to chuckle at the whole situation. She did still manage to bring Euden back to the platform, putting him on top of a lower obsidian spire away from the edge so that he wouldn’t be a bother again. She then followed up by firing a large light ring at another crystal.

@Lugubrious

Doom Slayer

Level 1 Doom Slayer

Location: Dead Zone

Word Count: 224

The Slayer said nothing after he had skated over the chain; not wanting to tell the group of his teenage years. Besides that was not the main concern at moment. Walking with the group into the courthouse; scanning the area of the ruined courthouse. Reminded of people criminal, civilians, and officers; all of them going on about their lives. This thought made him clench his fist; All of the normalcy and good in the world being destroyed. Hearing a voice calling them; talking about them being judged; but he thought this person was least qualify to judge them.

But their was a demonic presence he could sense; readying his shotgun cocking it loudly while looking up at the figure. He wondered what kind of creature he was going to summon; he was going to enjoy killing both the summon and the demon. This bastard pissed him off; he couldn't put his finger on it. But he could not wait to beat him with his severed leg. Seeing the large snake like creature; he hated snakes even at a young age.

Running towards Minos firing his shotgun at the face of the creature; seeing the smoke shooting out of his mouth. Watching the smoke flooding the ground. Thinking on his feet and jumping on Mino's tentacles; firing at it's tail hoping to cripple it somehow. Wanting to shot or rip off his tentacles. Protecting Nadia from Mino's fist by moving closer; shooting at his eyes.

Unfortunately, her throw was countered. Her knee threatened to be swept out from under her by a kick. Sakura gasped through her gritted teeth and tried to steady herself, but a medium kick slammed into her side. Blinking from the pressure, his attacks were too fast to give her a chance to counter. With one eye open, the other one squinting, she saw at the last moment a huge kick heading straight for the side of her head. A moment passed, and the young woman was greeted with a spinning tornado kick, a massive move that sent her stumbling backwards. "Phfuh!" She exclaiming. Dispersing the momentum from the strike, she slammed her heel on the ground a few feet away and was immediately back into battle posture.

Dang it! How did he know I was going to do that!? This man really just kicked me like, four times in a row. Now what am I gonna do? Would another throw work? No way he would think I would be stupid enough to do another throw. Or maybe he knows that I think he wouldn't think I'm stupid enough too- oh, geez! Her internal monologue was interrupted by a declaration that almost sent chills down her spine. Immediately she sensed a massive power gathering in Ryu's Ki. He was about to go all out!

Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod! It's the Shinku Hadoken! I can't believe he's actually using it on me! The same thing he used on Seth and M. Bison! He's actually going to do it on me! Is this the greatest moment of my life!? So cool!

The question is, Sakura thought to herself, time slowing as she considered her next move; what am I gonna do now? It's probably going to hurt. She bounced briefly from one leg to the other. Probably too late to dodge, now. Plus, he would have just reacted to my dodge and hit me while I was dodging. Could I block it? Fat chance. Maybe if I hadn't gotten wasted by those kicks earlier. A better fighter would probably be able to figure out what to do here, but...I only see one option. I'm running out of time to counter!

Sakura, channeling the latent energy she had developed during this fight, smiling brightly and gathered her hands around an invisible ball."Here we go!" She exclaimed, her stance almost mirroring Ryu's.

"Shinku..." A bright orb of yellow and blue light flashed in between her hands, lighting up the side of her body. Her face grew more serious as she channeled her inner strength into something more, something greater. All those years of mimicking movements of her heroes at her bedroom mirror. The time when a little spark of energy zapped from her palms and shattered the glass. People thought it was stupid. People told her she could never become a Street Fighter, that she was just some stupid little fangirl.

Look at me now.

"HADOOOKEN!" The young woman screamed. As if it weighted a thousand pounds, Sakura lugged the glowing ball at the oncoming beam of energy with great effort. Zooming forward with an immense pop, a similar frothing blue energy trailing behind, the orb slammed into Ryu's blast. For a brief but eternal moment, the beam would be held up. Sakura watched with wonder as the orb rolled defiantly against the oncoming storm, causing the beam to sputter and bend inwards.

Finally, though, her hadoken succumbed. The beam pushed and overwhelmed it, crushing it like the tides of the ocean.

"Wuh oh-" Sakura observed. Her now seemingly diminutive form was completely submerged in blue light. It was blinding, deafening, but unfortunately, not numbing. The air was pushed from her legs, then the air that she didn't know was in there was pushed out, too. A tremendous bludgeoning impact. The beam vanished, the hadoken ending, and Sakura was sent flying backwards. "Ooof!"

Sailing through the air, for a few precious seconds she was weightless.

Wow. That was pretty intense...what a rush! Doesn't get much better then that. I guess my little ball move could use some work if I want to play in the big leagues, but that wasn't so bad. Maybe next time. Back to it, then!

Colliding hard with the ground, Sakura grunted, flexed, and bounced backwards off the dirt. Heels over head she landed gracefully and immediately began her sprint back towards her opponent, as if the Shinku Hadoken hadn't hurt at all. Of course, it had, but the best fighters operated at full capacity under strenuous. Red sneakers flattening the grass, Sakura tried to get her offense started again right away. In many ways she was similar to a spinning wooden dummy. Each strike, no matter how effective, would result in branch spinning back around to slap the striker in the face."Attack!" Sakura blurted out, hyping herself up with a brief, punctuating battle cry.

As she neared her target she crouched down, sweeping her powerful leg at Ryu's ankles in an attempt to knock his legs out from under him. Completing a full three sixty she would launched herself into the air. Clutching her hands together she would bludgeon them into his head, swinging through her spread legs. It was an odd little move, but one that was a bit clever. A crossover. One might attempt to block the attack, but she was pushing herself deceptively far forward with her small jump. It would actually collide with the back of the opponent's skull rather then their face.

I've been pretty straight forward so far. A little trick like this should catch him off guard!

"Almost there!"

The ride was a lot rougher than the Ace Cadet was used to - and by now he had plenty of experience clinging to the back of monsters. The pull of wind and gravity as the dragon ripped through the air was a lot different from the wild bucking of much smaller creatures. Still, after traveling down the beast's back once already, progress back up towards it's head was a lot faster. He could tell they were close when the acrid stench of whatever the dragon was letting loose from it's mouth was strong enough to sting his nose. That it was something dangerous didn't even need to be said: it was being hacked up by a black dragon. Whatever it was, it was acidic. Possibly even straight up acid. Cadet hoped everyone on the ground was okay, it was too difficult to get a clear picture of them when the world was rushing by on the dragon's back.

...until suddenly that picture came in with crystal quality. After the dragon's slice through the space just above the island, she turned and hovered, giving the hunter a clear view of the others. It seemed Tora and Poppi had been flung off, but seemed okay - the rest of the group was spread out, many of them thrown by the force of the dragon's dive. Between her immense size and the wall of winds she could create with it, her flight and proximity to those healing crystal things... well, this dragon was a huge pain to fight, wasn't she?

The break in wind pressure let Cadet cover the last bit of distance quickly. He burst out from between the dragon's horns and slid down her snout, getting a great view of the gigantified Koopa King putting the pressure on her. This was the perfect time to attempt a take down, and that's exactly what the ace hunter did. Crossing the brief expanse of the dragon's face, the Cadet brought his slinger up and unloaded the yellow stone into it's wicked purple eye. This would usually be the point where the hunter would bail and fling himself off of his target to watch as it went down, but the fact was he didn't know if it this tactic was effective against a beast this size. So he stayed put, grounding himself and pulling the dark scythe from his back. The goal was to get the dragon on the ground, away from the crystals and closer toward the horde of heroes eager to defeat it... if he could accomplish that it would be great, but even better would be if he could get the enderdragon to smash it's face into something in an attempt to be rid of him. To that end the hunter lashed out with the blade with a punishing draw attack, then cutting across her scales with as many quick slashes as he could make before the beast could dislodge him.

The Courier cursed. The anti-material rifle he had borrowed (and had no intention of ever giving back) from Michael penetrated some of that tower, but not all of it. Some blocks were annihilated, but where it failed to pierce wasn’t even cracked as his empowered perception could see the black stone actually repairing itself. So it operated in sets of blocks, and it was all or nothing eh? Damn, that meant that until those crystals got taken out he was more or less useless in this fight. He had been pushing his luck with the heracross-toss maneuver, his donphan didn’t have any way to get him up high, and none of his strikers could do the job either. No way he could get up there without one of their flyers carrying him, and they were better spent rescuing anyone that fell off the edge.

Speaking of which, the ender dragon came swooping down with incredible gale-like force, knocking tons of the group aside, many of which were in danger of falling off. The Courier and his chocobo couldn’t get out of the way in time and were sent flying! Drumstick thrashed and flailed at the helplessness, and he couldn’t get control of her in time as they went toward the edge. The duo came within mere inches of tumbling over the side, but the Courier traveled with a posse for a reason.

“I’ve got you, boss!” cried Gaige-Tron. The robot helpfully grabbed onto the bird with an extension of her tube arm, while the other arm transformed into the pickaxe mode and securely buried itself into the ground. The Courier nearly lost his weapon, but caught it by the strap with his boot. For a few brief seconds the three flailed in the air like a chain. A moment later and the squall had past, with GT releasing her boss and his mount.

”There there, girl. It’s all gonna be alright,” he cooed, calming the bird. ”Gracias, amiga.”

Nearby, the blast of air caught up Jak and Daxter as well, knocking them around for the third time already in such a small time frame. The duo went flying off the ledge, with Daxter screaming in absolute terror, only to have his worries proven unfounded in an instant when Jak’s light wings sprouted and they returned to the ledge none the worse for wear. ”Don’t scare me like that! Next time get your glow on and save us before I piss my pants!” Daxter gestured to his pants which, yes, had a dark spot right over the appropriate area. Had Jak’s eyes not been glowing tunnels of pure light at the time, they’d have been rolling.

Perhaps ironically, of the three it was Cuphead who fared the best against the ender dragon’s concussive gust of wind, despite being the lightest. He charged in straight ahead to meet the dragon nose to nose and then, at the last possible moment, initiated a dash through the air, becoming intangible and zooming right past the air cushion of force. His maneuver left him directly above the charging dragon, and he parried his body right off the tip of her horns! Once up, he gathered his energy to unleash his peashooter’s EX attack, hurling a big ball of energy straight down at the beast like a hadoken!

The Courier took note of how many towers still had crystals left. Three, no, two, Sectonia was attacking another one. He’d leave her to it. Furrowing his brow at the crystal he’d failed to shoot, he instead willed one of his strikers into existence: the ghostly flo. ”There’s a glowin’ rock up top there waitin’ ta hear yer beautiful song, hombre. Git to it.” Wordlessly, the spectral subspace monster flew directly into the spire with its intangible body and ascended upward. Once it neared the top, the flo unleashed its sonic scream on the crystal. Like a million needle jabs all around, the crystal cracked and exploded, wiping out the flo with it.

The Courier spat. ”Fuck that tower.” He setup the anti-material rifle, empowered by stickers, and took aim at the ender dragon, waiting for the perfect moment.

A ways off, Jak was flying up through the air, still armed with the red eco powered rot gun. The dragon was far faster and more agile than he was in the air, but it was thankfully otherwise preoccupied by Bowser, who had grown larger than they’d ever seen the koopa king grow before. This was an opportunity that he couldn’t waste. With only two or three of those magic crystals unaccounted for, it was time to take them out so the dragon lost its support. While Jak flew, Daxter took hold of the gun and lobbed an explosive salvo of root rot at what should be the last crystal. With another shot accounted for, and all the shots plugged into the dragon, the charge on the gun was very nearly at its highest point.

Back at the dragon, Cuphead latched onto it by grabbing with his hands and holding on tight, landing near the Ace Cadet. ”Howdy!” he called out. ”How’s the taxi service? I didn’t realize I’d be riding with a buddy!” Holding on tight as he could with his left hand, Cuphead left go with his right and held his index finger against the powerful beast, firing off his weak but rapid peashooter directly into it… For as long as he’d be able to hold on, that is.

Back on the ground, the Courier had his rifle ready to go. He had enough stamina for 3 VATS shots and the creature was huge: the chances of missing it would be laughably low as long as there was no outside interference. Assuming all the crystals were destroyed, he’d take that as the signal to activate his ability and queue up 3 shots directly into the beast.

---

Linkle was about ready to take out another of those crystals when the dragon came back, spewing a great river of acid as it came. The acid was more of a distraction, though, because the monsters real attack was just it passing overhead. Wind, stronger than any she had ever felt before, slammed into Linkle and send her tumbling over the ground like leaf in a storm. Pain exploded in her body as she slam, slam, slammed her way across the ground. Her whole world was an alternating vision of yellow stone and black sky before, suddenly, the pain stopped and she could see nothing but the yawning void. It took her a second to realize what that meant, and by that point she was already in freefall.

Linkle threw her arms around, twisting her entire body in the air to spot the island she had been on rapidly zooming away from her. To he relief she also spotted three white forms frantically fluttering back toward the island. The cucco's were so light the dragons windstorm had lifted them up and thrown them high into the air, where instinct had kicked in and they had started gliding back toward solid ground. Whipping her head around she managed to spot Euden having also been thrown off the island falling some distance away, but the Bee Queen had gotten to him before Linkle had to intervene. She couldn't really spot anyone else, so with all her current worries settled she decided to start making her way back to the island. She stared intently at the edge of the place, concentrated, and the world turned inside as she was warped a little closer to the island.

That was all right, Hyrule wasn't built in a day.

She warped again, getting slightly closer. Another. Another. Ano-no, she shot off to the side. Reorient, reorient! Another. Another...

By the time her clawed fingers wrapped around he edge of the platform Linkle thought she might just throw up. The constant ups and down, the momentum pulling at her than stopping only to pull that her again, the dizzying amount of consecutive warps, it had all combined into a serious case of nausea. As such she was exceedingly grateful when she felt someone grab her by the arm and start to pull her up. Linkle helped them out, digging her boots into the rock and pushing herself up back onto the island.

She had expected someone she knew, probably Geralt cause they could probably look at each other safely, but unless Geralt had taken in a dozen more of the shy monsters spirits since she'd last seen him this definitely wasn't Geralt. She stood in a semi circle of six of things, all looking at her strangely. The most helpful of the lot let go of her arm and took a step back. "Uhhhhh...thank's a lot." She said awkwardly. "You guys don't seem half bad."

One of them suddenly warped away and through the hole in the circle Linkle could see how thing had progressed while she'd gotten back up here. Bowser was giant sized again, the very sight of which made her lat out an excited little squeal, and was going claw to claw with the dragon itself. She scanned the spires and saw that the rest of the crystals were either taken care of or in the process of being taken care of, so the dragon was the best thing to focus on. She stepped through the hole left by the departed monster and started running toward the chaos when suddenly the one that had taken off came back, a frantic cucco clutched between its cage like claws. It held it out to her and Linkle took it, running her fingers along its crest to calm it down. The other two she could see running up behind the monster. "Thank you." She said, as though talking to a little kid who had brought her a interesting buy they had found. "You guys should go to another island, we'll stop bothering you after we beat this dragon."

With that she gave the posse a little wave and sprinted back toward the fighting.

---

Link was much closer to the thick of things. Having found himself sliding off the smooth obsidian spire on account of its remarkable ability to heal all the damage Bowser had down to it on his ascent, we was luckily still very close enough to the spire to get a grip on it as the dragon came down. If there was one thing he knew about dragons it was the incredible wind current they generated in flight, and when this one came down to weaponize it he hugged the spire for dear life as it passed to void being thrown off the platform.

Now the monster was down, grappling with a giant sized Bowser, and Link joined the firing squad or Tora, Poppi, and the Courier as he started unloading arrows into the beasts back while it was busy.

Geralt came out of hiding just in time to see the Ender Dragon flying at the party, a powerful surge of wind propagating from it. Sighing at his luck, he turned right back around, hiding behind the tower he had just left, waiting until he heard the sound of the wind fading. His experiences with things that moved that fast told him that once you heard the threat and could recognize it, it was gone. Hoping that the pattern held true, Geralt stepped out once more, just in time to watch the dragon launch Tora and Poppi from its back as it turned on an oren.

Rushing forwards as the dragon hovered over the ground and moved towards Bowser, who was absolutely crushed by the thing's massive claws, kicking up a huge cloud of dust. "Dammit!" Geralt yelled as he forced himself to move even faster, reaching the fight by the time the dust had settled and he could see that Bowser was actually fine.

He vaguely remembered Blazermate being capable of doing something like that when everybody had discussed their abilities and equipment with one another. "Good catch!" He called back to the medabot.

Now that he was in range, Geralt moved around to the side of the hovering dragon, silver flashing out and biting into the beast's scaled flesh. He didn't stop to see the effect his attacks had, instead focusing more on following the movements of his enemy so as not to be launched by a kick he didn't see coming because he was too focused on doing a bit more damage. Too many Witchers died for fool mistakes like that, and he didn't fancy going down that road again. Even with those...cat things...the Cadet had to rescue them in a pinch, Geralt wanted to avoid dying any more.