With everything the Seekers faced thus far, from undead hordes to rampant machines to criminal organizations to cosmic horrors, it seemed almost comical that the danger presented to them by the canyon raceway seemed to be nothing more extraordinary than reckless racers. Still, taking a bike to the face at seventy-plus miles per hour, let alone a Goron, was no laughing matter, and the group buckled down for a grueling slog uphill through the dusty, windswept streets of the Redstone City.

After the fourth collision it became clear to Tora that going against the flow of Riders would demand not just constant vigilance and terrific reflexes, but also a steadier hand than he had. As much as he wanted to be the cool guy shrugging off impact after impact as if they were no more than leaves in the wind, his aching wing told him that he couldn’t keep this up forever even if he swapped his shield arm. Every blow against his shield would jar and numb him that much more, and sooner or later his poise would be so shot that another strike would blow his defense wide open and send him bouncing down the mountain like those spherical, white-furred Shiverians. Hiking uphill took it out of the Nopon inventor, Riders or no Riders, and having to repeat even the easiest part of the climb sounded absolutely awful. “Poppi, we need change tactics! Switch to QT mode for evasion!”

The artificial blade nodded, but before she could change she boosted to the right to avoid a whooping, bearded man on skis. Right after passing her, the guy tripped over a rock all on his own, went flying like a propeller, and slammed into a tree only to fizzle right back onto the ground, right as rain, and continue on his way. “Poppi was wondering how long it take Masterpon to tire of getting slammed by cyclists. Happened sooner than Poppi thought.”

Waving his free wing to clear out some dust thrown in his fast by the skier, Tora gave her an incredulous look. “Wait, Poppi already think of doing this? Why not say so sooner?”

His companion smiled. “It look to Poppi like Masterpon want to keep proving how tough he is. Poppi not want rain on Masterpon’s parade.” Before Tora could rebuke her, she began her transformation, reconfiguring into her more agile QT mode in a centrifugal pirouette of scarlet ribbons and orange sparks. Tora looked over at Braum as if to say can you believe her?, but the giant only chuckled as he stepped up to give them cover. With a much larger stature and a much heavier shield, the Heart of the Freljord could do a lot more to defend the team from the multisport menace.

Not far away, Big Band and Peacock seemed to be taking a more proactive approach. After trying to parry a couple Riders and not seeing the dividends he would have wanted from such a risky maneuver, Band made the pragmatic choice of taking the racers’ ability to restore themselves to heart and just punching them instead. With their armor and range his Brass Knuckles could pulverize the bikes of any Riders foolish enough to not swerve out of the vintage virtuoso’s way. Nobody he struck down even seemed to react to getting hit, and of course they blipped back to normal the next moment. Peacock happily followed his example, sending out George Bombs ahead of her to blow incoming Riders out of the way. At one point, a small pack of them detonated all of her bombs at once, leaving a long Rider hurtling straight for her. Peacock just snickered, then pulled her hat down around her head. A hole opened up in the dirt directly in front of the offending racer’s bike, through which her metal teeth extended from her wide-open mouth like a bear trap. It snapped shut on the bike’s tire the next instant, causing the Rider to flip forward and slam straight into the ground. Her bike practically exploded, although it reappeared in one piece right after. Back to normal, Peacock flicked a cigar at the woman as she cycled on by, then dusted off her gloves with a jagged grin. “What a maroon!”

The others dealt with the cavalcade of riders in their own ways. Naturally, the lucky few just flew right over it all, watching the chaos below like pinballs bouncing around in a machine, but the rest needed to employ quick reflexes, quicker thinking, and no small amount of strategy. Going straight up the central avenue through the region, where the various routes through the network of canyons tended to converge, offered the most room for evasion and the best visibility, but it also guaranteed the most traffic. Packing into one of the smaller sandstone corridors off the beaten track, meanwhile, meant a trade-off of fewer Riders but worse conditions for dealing with them. Once Tora, headed up the main path with most of the others, realized how unfeasible it was to physically block the avalanche of racers headed his way, Jesse stepped up to take over defense, and Midna lent a hand. Her telekinesis created a mobile wall of safety for her team that the average Rider could only crash against, but not every reckless daredevil headed her way was created equal.

“Look out belooooooow!” came a boisterous bellow, accompanied by a thunderous rumble growing louder by the second. A Goron, nearly half a ton of rigid stone and muscle curled up into a living boulder, came rolling straight for the procession of heroes. Unable to control his own path in the slightest, the unstoppable force bore down on Jesse’s telekinetic barrier. As impressive as the FBC director’s supernatural feats had been, none could rightfully predict whether or not her defense would hold out against a head-on collision with what might as well have been an out-of-control truck, but luckily they didn’t get the chance to find out. Sectonia added a little magic to the mix, creating a crystalline ramp to send the formidable Goron up and over her teammates, protecting them from harm.

“Nice save!” Necronomicon commended the bee queen. Hovering above the action not too far from Sectonia gave both the Persona and her passenger Mona a bird’s-eye view of the commotion below. “Hope you’ve got more where that came from, though. Raz is right, it doesn’t look like this place is running out of Riders anytime soon. We should hurry!”

Mona crawled over to the edge of Necronomicon’s top and peered down into the canyon paths. “There’s gotta be a better way to do this that doesn’t involve a massive detour,” he muttered, surveying the scene through squinted eyes. His gears turned for a couple moments as he watched the Seekers continue to defend and dodge below. Then something clicked, and his eyes went wide. “Wait, duh! Hey, guys!” he shouted down. “Quit fighting through the trenches and get up on top! It’ll take more jumping and you’ll need to be careful not to fall, but there are pretty much no Riders up here!”

Down where they’d taken cover behind a few stacks of tires, Joker, Skull, Panther, and Fox exchanged sheepish glances. Panther broke the silence with a nervous laugh. “Hahah...we probably should’ve thought of that already, huh? Guess we’re all a little short on brain juice today.”

“Man!” Annoyed more at himself than anything, Skull rubbed his head, ruffling his croppy yellow hair in the process. “This kinda crap is why we need Makoto.”

“Perhaps Oracle was right when she joked about us four sharing one brain cell,” Fox commiserated, sounding gloomy.

Joker jumped up onto the tires, then hopped over to a ledge on the nearby cliff. “We can laugh about it later. Let’s get going.”

The Phantom Thieves wasted no time scaling the canyon wall. Since the precarious narrow high roads, with neither walls nor railing to safeguard the edges, were especially difficult to navigate on any vehicle, not even the most daring Riders stayed up there to endanger the Seekers for long. Tora followed suit, rocket-jumping with his Mech Arms and a little help from Poppi, while Peacock teleported up through the use of a portable hole. That didn’t stop her from continuing to throw George Bombs down into the action, of course. With the high road looking a little too narrow and fragile to accommodate his size, Band remained down below alongside Braum, where they took one of the side paths to minimize contact with Riders, even as Braum’s fellow Lakeside refugee the Scout zipped right up to the top. “A to D, skippin’ B and C!”

With the going neither quick nor easy for anyone no matter which path they chose, except of course for the cheating fliers, it was close to an hour before the Seekers finally put the Redstone City in their rear-view mirrors. When they reached the top of the labyrinthine sandstone raceway, and all the arches, columns, and crevices finally gave way to more ordinary terrain, they quickly discovered the source of their frustration. Being the frontrunner, Fox was the first to see the startling line he predicted, albeit more expansive than he expected and flanked on either side by a wooden platform that sported a fluttering orange and teal banner. As he watched, Riders appeared out of thin air on top of those platforms in a constant stream, each barely even stopping to get his or her bearings before heading over to the starting line. In the time that first Seekers to arrive spent taking a breather and waiting for the rest to catch up, the starting horn signalled the launch of not one, not two, but three new Mass Races, each with between sixty and a hundred participants. A few riders loafed around, doing tricks and such, but most exhibited a single-minded fixation on the main event. With the whole concept of Ferrystones still fresh on the brain, Big Band plodded over to examine the flag platforms that the Riders used to warp in, but could determine nothing special about it. If this constituted a fast-travel point, it seemed to be one exclusive to these bizarre sportspeople--if people they even were.

“Everyone okay?” Tora asked, waddling between the various members of the group to check on them, accompanied by Poppi all the while. Even if he couldn’t heal any injuries they may have sustained, he and his companion offered what they could, be that water refills or moral support. The Nopon made extra sure to visit the group’s newest additions Raz and Therion, eager to start them on the road to friendship. “Doing good so far!” he told them. “If friend ever need hand, just call Tora!” A wink and a thumbs-up sealed the deal as far as he was concerned.

Before long everyone had reconvened at the rest area by the starting line. Everyone was hot, dusty, and at least a little bruised or battered, but mostly okay. Already the ambient temperature had grown temperate, which came as a welcome change from the brutal heat of the desert floor. Some ice from Poppi and Sectonia’s antlion’s, along with water from the canteens, helped cool the heroes the rest of the way down and get them ready for the next leg of the journey. Looking back made it clear that they’d already come a pretty long way, both vertically and horizontally. The colors of Tostarena Town already seemed quite distant. When the party turned their gaze back toward the mountain, they could see the snowline not too far off, with white-capped redwoods nestled among crags peering down at them across a sloped field of rocks and low-lying plants. “Making progress, meh!” Tora chirped, trying to be positive despite the immense amount of journey still in store for them. Once suitably refreshed, he and Poppi set off once more.

The trip up through the field of rocks offered no more peril than the occasional shifting stone underfoot, although the heroes did glimpse some wildlife here and there close to the ground. Sandshrews and Diglets poked up from their burrows on occasion, while here and there a woeful-looking Silicobra snaked between the rocks, steering clear of the Diggersbies that lorded over the place with smug looks on their chubby-cheeked faces. Bit by bit they got closer to the redwood-masked cliff edge whose elevation change marked Split Mountain’s snowline, the air growing cooler and more crisp as they climbed. By the time that the rocks finally gave way to rugged grass beneath the boughs of towering redwood trees, Tora was huffing and puffing all over again from the exertion of clambering up and over rocks with such stubby legs. He couldn’t afford to just plop down in the shade and relax, however--not with that strange, heavy, breathy noise echoing through the trees, rising and falling like the tide. Better to be safe rather than sorry, the party hiked a short way farther in search of the source, crunching through autumnal life litter amidst the megalithic forest. On the way Band kept an eye on the cliff face, but found no means of ascent or entry that might grant them access to the winter wonderland above and beyond. Once the group finally tracked down the source of the noise it took them a moment to process what they were seeing, although as always Skull seemed happy to state the obvious for everyone. “Holy shit,” he exclaimed, trying and failing for obvious reasons to keep his voice down. “That’s the biggest freakin’ bear I’ve ever seen!”



Out from what could only be a tunnel through the solid stone poked the head of an enormous brown bear, sound asleep. Big Band realized that the sound everyone heard must have been its snoring, loud enough to fill the mountain slope for miles. Dollops of snow lay on top of its head as well as the earth around him, but neither the cold nor the noise of the newcomers seemed to bother him one bit. No matter if they shouted in his ears or bopped him on the snout, in fact, the bear just snoozed on peacefully, the steady inhale and exhale sending whirls of leaves up into the air with each breath. His only reaction to anything seemed to be a slight twitch when leaves brushed against his big, black nose.

At that point the group could disperse through the clearing, able to relax and ruminate on options and alternatives. “If we could get him to wake up and move, we might have an easy way through to the next part of the mountain,” the detective observed. “Trouble is, I don’t think we wanna start a fight, so what’re we gonna do to rouse him?” He glanced at Peacock, who looked like she had an idea, and shook his head to shoot her down without so much as a word in. The girl pouted, crossing her spindly metal arms in a huff.



Just as Nadia hoped, Ace used the myriad of boons given to him to the fullest. Wielding his exquisite blade with the power granted by Kamek, he took advantage of the vulnerable state that Nadia and Junior left the Shark Giant in, and like that one chef back in the Maw’s ghoulish kitchens carved through the sea monster’s scaly flesh with lethal precision. Nadia joined in, wielding her own tail as a sword to hack away at the monster while it struggled, though rather than be blinded by the prospect of revenge, she made sure to steer clear of Ace’s wide-range longsword swings. In a few short moments the intractable fishman lay in malodorous chunks, soon to dissolve, and the Cadet spited what little remained by crushing its spirit straightaway.



Already soaked, Nadia saw no harm in sitting down, leaning back on her arms as the last of her grievous injury faded away. Her chest heaved as she tried to calm her pounding heart. When Ace asked if she was okay, she flashed him a smile. “Yeah, I’m alright.” The Life Gem was truly an incredible thing. A punctured lung in a place like this would typically mean certain death, either through bleeding out, suffocation, both, or infectious disease that followed in the wake of injury, but she’d gotten off with just unbearable agony. Right about now, Nadia’s numbness came as a real blessing. Ace’s lifepowder helped chase away the last of her pain. “Aw, you’re sweet,” she purred, bumping her shoulder against his. “For real, thanks. That got pretty intense for a moment, huh? Just goes to show, it’s true what they say.“ She shot him a mischievous look. “You can tune a guitar, but you can’t tuna fish.” After Ace took a moment to ask a favor of Kamek, the four headed for the hole in the wall to take stock of the situation outside.

The fighting throughout the village center raged on, but cooperation between the scattered heroes appeared to be giving them the edge they needed against their ruthless aquatic adversaries. Naturally, this bore the most fruit against the murloc rabble that had emerged to complicate the various fights around the contested plaza with shameless potshots and vicious attacks of opportunity, forcing a few of the Seekers to prioritize their elimination above all else. Spurred onward by the chance to finally take revenge against the monsters that wiped out his crewmates, Delsin did well for himself despite the abysmal circumstances. His chains whipped against the fishmen as effective crowd control, even if his flames mostly sizzled and turned to steam thanks to both pouring rain and sodden targets. While he got their attention Bowser mopped them up, putting his varied arsenal to work to methodically take down murloc after murloc with cannons, water cutters, poison, tooth, claw, and brute strength. Though he took a number of hits from their seastone tridents, fishbone weaponry, and harpoons, his rampage continued unabated. The few fishmen that managed to escape him fell victim to Rika’s bombardment, and when the fighting concluded Blazermate cleaned up, creating foul thralls from murloc corpses in tandem with cheerfully mending her allies’ wounds.

The efforts of the four to keep the murloc mooks from troubling their allies allowed Link to put all his focus into the fight with Tidehunter, a duel that demanded both his utmost strength and ingenuity. What Leviathan lacked in straightforward stopping power he made up for in cunning and debilitation, making him less easy to take advantage of compared to the near-mindless Shark Giants, and more dangerous to underestimate. The Hero of the Wild not being decimated by Tidehunter’s anchor smash was a relief, but it took only a couple hits for Link and Peach to realize where the monster’s true strength lay. A blast from the princess’s scatterboom already barely put a dent in her opponent, but a cut to her attack power made her shots downright pitiable. Unbeknown to Peach, something about Tidehunter’s hide negated a flat amount of damage from every attack, which applied separately to each of her shotgun pellets, reducing her output to basically zero. In the heat of battle she couldn’t tell what exactly was going on, but it became clear nonetheless that she needed to try something else. Tidehunter was in his element, and had the two right where he wanted them.

While she backed off to wait out the debuffs and figure something out, Link battened down the hatches. He wasn’t about to let this overgrown fish rope him into this lopsided battle of attrition. This was a formidable opponent, possessing not just a power but a plan, yet he lacked finesse. With eyes narrowed to guard against the stinging rain, Link bided his time, defending with ice as well as his blade, until finally his ship came in. When Tidehunter overcommitted, Link slowed down time to unleash his withering counterattack. His dancing blade aglow with the flash of lightning overhead, as he slashed again and again, cutting deeper and deeper, until his sword itself gave up the ghost. As it exploded into shards of light the flow of time resumed, and Levithan’s guttural cry heralded the splash of his anchor into the water. He fought to avoid floundering, found his footing on the slimy bottom of the basin, and lunged forward to crush Link between his jaws, but the Hero was already in motion. His own anchor, dredged up from below by Link’s magnesis, dealt him a sickening uppercut. At that moment Peach leaped from the water’s surface, whirled through the air with the grace of a dancing crane, and with an elegant spin kick launched a torpedo directly into Tidehunter’s cranium.

Its explosion filled Leviathan's vision with stars, and for a moment, punished both from above and below, he staggered. But the Champion of the Sunken Isles would not be done in so easily. His bellow filled the drenched arena as he executed a titanic lariat, pushing through the water with his sheer bulk to send up a mighty wave. The disturbance was enough to knock his foes back despite their shipgirl infusions, and in the moment afforded to him, Tidehunter pounded his fists into the basin floor. Instantly, a ring of tentacles erupted from the solid stone around him, each like a fleshy geyser and strong enough to launch just about anyone into the air. He seized hold of his anchor with his other hand and surged forward to smash Link back down into the ground. As Peach soared she felt a surge of helplessness, but only for a moment--she remembered how Nadia managed her own aerial momentum during the fight aboard Shippy. The princess took hold of Chao Ho’s greatsword-sized fan, wheeled around, and kicked off it midair to send herself into a headlong dive. “Yaaaaaah!” The next moment she struck home with a torpedo-powered axe kick into Tidehunter’s head right where her first explosive softened him up, stopping him in his tracks. Around him the outward rings of tentacles continued to wreak havoc throughout the basin, but Peach kept her attention on the task at hand. Memories of the fight in the Paved Wilderness guided her hand as she grabbed hold of the monster’s fin and focused Grimm’s soul-harvesting power, trying to reach into his body and draw out the spirit within. She took hold and started to pull, straining terribly as he fought her every step of the way, until finally his spirit appeared from his body, radiant with prismatic light that shone through the gloom across the entire basin. Though she planned to shoot it or something, the spirit was like a heavy-duty spring pulled to its limit, and it was all she could do to keep the spirit out. Luckily, she had a hero on hand adept in the art of lethal finishers. “Link!” she growled the clenched teeth. “Do it!”

Not too far away, the tone of Sakura’s fight against the Sea Crawlers had shifted, even with the sudden abduction of the one she called Clammy by Bella. Grotesque and animalistic as they might look, the monsters worked as a capable team; if they weren’t double teaming the street fighter in a double-pronged assault of amphibious might and electrical mayhem, one was shielding the other. It ended up feeling almost like a tag-team match, similar to how she’d seen the popular wrestling R. Mika fight alongside her partner Nadeshiko, but with a lot more oceanic magic in the mix. Bruises, electrical burns, and gashes were accumulating across her body and limbs. Still, Sakura used Arashio’s mobility to fight them toe to toe, deftly avoiding being put into a blender between the troublesome pair, and she landed her fair share of blows. The battle of attrition continued until, with no warning, Clammy’s head erupted from the water right by Sakura’s feet. At the sight of its open mouth and lolling green tongue she braced herself for a surprise attack, but none came. Instead Bella pushed up from below, shoving Clammy’s severed head to the side. Though soaked to the bone and sporting a few new bite marks, the Water Princess looked pleased, both with herself for expertly eliminating one Sea Crawler and with Sakura for hanging in there. “I’m here, mon cherie!” she practically sang, oblivious to Crabby as he charged at her from behind. Before he reached the Seaplane Tender’s monstrous tail burst up from underwater once more and sank its fangs into its unprotected bicep. Bella glanced backward just long enough to make sure she had a good grip before she fired. Before the Sea Crawler knew it, it lay on its back against the rocks, its arm blown off by the blast and sent flying clear across the plaza. Bella rose from the water to stand on its surface alongside Sakura, ready to rush the dizzied crab and isolated eel-ectric down. “Let’s put zese ugly things to rest!”

Meanwhile, Geralt’s struggle against Fizz continued to worsen. Try as he might, the Witcher just couldn’t seem to hit the slippery little squirt, and his prodigious size was quickly revealing the danger of inordinate exsanguination. His Strikers and his bomb managed to do some damage, but nothing decisive, and every moment spent fighting meant more blood lost. Still, as bad as the situation seemed to be, every problem had its solution. Though used to working alone and not without his pride, Geralt made the pragmatic choice to call for backup rather than doggedly keep at it. And Barely had he called for help then a friendly face appeared.

“I got your back!” Mirage called, cruising forward over the water with his pistol drawn. Fizz turned with annoyed scowl and without a like of hesitation hurled a little orange fish at the interloper. With the fight against Geralt going well, he chose to let fly his ultimate ability and Chum the Waters to dispose of his opponent’s reinforcement in one fell swoop. Once it hit the legend, he had only a scant few seconds to make peace with whatever he believed in before a megalodon would emerge from below and chomp him in half. But the bait passed right through Mirage, causing him to flicker and Fizz to blink in confusion. The hologram disappeared to reveal the real Mirage immersed in the water at the fake’s feet, grinning as he brought the barrel of his trusty Wingman out of the water. “Bamboozled!”

The shot rang out and Fizz balked, shot straight in the chest by Mirage’s revolver. The legend got off a second and third shot into the shocked trickster before Hat Kid footstooled off his head and leaped straight for her target, fists extended like a superhero in flight. Fizz dodged to the side only for Hatty to hook a sharp left mid-air and bop him right on the head anyway. As she bounced off, the girl latched on to one of his tentacles with her umbrella’s grappling hook, then soared up and over the frame of the well. “Whee!” From there she dropped straight down, becoming a counterweight that yanked Fizz off his feet and left him hanging above the well. From there, all it took from the Witcher was a well-placed chop from his silver sword to slice the irksome creature twain. As he dissolved, Hatty's hook latched onto the well frame instead, preventing her from falling any further into its depths.

That left just one major foe to deal with: the Judicator. Spinal and his Dhelmise, however, seemed to need no assistance. With the monster a captive audience thanks to its anchor chain around its waist, the Pokemon bombarded it from afar with Shadow Ball and Energy Ball, while the skeleton pirate carved up the body. His scimitar cut around its teal chitin armor and into its verminous purplish meat, or into the wan, sagging flesh of its human half. The Judicator couldn’t keep up with Spinal’s frenetic swordplay, especially with skeleports in the mix. When it attempted to use its trump card and unleash ghastly azure fire from its scales, Spinal brought his wriggle octopus shield up in a defensive stance and absorbed the damage, which his Power Devour converted into green skulls that he shot right back. With the punishment already sustained by Geralt’s efforts, and no minions around to empower, the Judicator was doomed. Spinal finished the fight in decisive fashion with a leap onto its back, where he lopped off one head, then the other, then finally carved its torso straight down the middle, laughing all the while. His Dhelmise then pulled tight its chain, severing what remained of the abomination’s brutalized humanoid torso. The rest of it sagged to the ground, limp, to become a wet pile of ashy sludge.

After that...nothing. The fishing village was quiet, except for the low roar of the surface and the steady murmur of rain against wood and water. Everyone gathered around the well, where the injured reported to Blazermate and Kamek for treatment. No casualties, although with the shacks full of nothing but rot and gunk their only souvenirs -apart from the spirits of the slain- would be their newfound stress and fatigue, and those wouldn’t be healed as easily as the heroes’ bodies.



“Hey!”

A small voice echoed up from the well as Hatty ascended, drawn upward by the retraction of her grappling hook. She swung her legs and hopped over the rim, where she waved for everyone’s attention. Once she got it, she pointed downward, indicating that her top hat was telling her that the team’s next objective lay at the bottom of the well, beneath the basin that formed the epicenter of not just the village, but the entire detestable island. Those who remembered seeing the Judicator emerge from it could scarcely relish the thought of encountering more eldritch horrors down below, although on second thought maybe it came as a stroke of luck that the Koopa Troop’s clamor had drawn the monster out of a potential ambush. Nadia wiped rainwater from her eyes as she shivered from the cold. “Well, if that’s the way, then that’s where we oughta go. Anywhere that gets meowtta this damn rain is good in my book.” Realizing that she’d just sworn in front of two entire children, she chose not to elaborate on her feelings any further.

Peach nodded. “Hopefully we’ll have a moment to get ourselves together down there, but like as not we’ll run into more trouble, so everyone stay on your toes. Let’s go.” With any brave volunteers in the lead, the party climbed down the ladder, one person at a time. Being large enough to divulge the sizable Judicator, it admitted even Bowser and Geralt without a problem, and despite widespread doubts the wooden ladder held long enough for each and every hero to get to the bottom.

The ladder took the Seekers down into a grotto of shiny smooth stone, eroded to a moist polish by countless years of flowing water. It featured a great many natural pillars, and strange formations hung down from the ceiling which Nadia found herself not wanting to look too closely at. Despite the grotto’s ankle-deep water, it provided plenty of room for the heroes to get out from the rain and try to dry themselves at least a little. It offered no real danger either, since while more sea maggots littered it and there appeared to be at least two clusters of jellyshrooms, the newcomers could avoid them without difficulty. The most striking feature of the grotto lay on its easter side, where one of the walls abruptly opened up into another cave. It seemed more spacious and well-lit than this one, with a wooden railing to boot, but only when Nadia sauntered over to lean over the balcony did she realize how much larger it was.

With wide eyes she stared down into a gigantic, roughly cylindrical cavern with a floor blanketed in its near-entirety by a carpet of corpse-white sea slugs. The bulbous things lay heaped wall to net-covered wall, masked in places by crude walkways and stairways of rotted wooden planks and illuminated by braziers where more of the creatures burned. Among them were a few handfuls of spiral shells, like the sea maggots but a lot bigger, and the pale shapes that extruded from them seemed to Nadia almost disturbingly human. The nets stretched up all the way to the second floor where she stood aghast, that floor being a strictly manmade affair of wood that circumnavigated the cavern’s upper reaches. To the feral’s further incredulity the whole affair extended a good distance, after which it split into a few branching paths around a single, fog-covered opening. It was a lot to take in. “Good gravy,” she breathed, wrinkling her nose. “And here I thought the last place smelled bad!” She retreated from the edge to give the others a chance to see, wondering just what in the world they’d gotten themselves into.





Content to bring up the rear, Albedo followed Linkle and Frisk in observant silence as the three neared the shadowed mansion, his corgi trotting right by his heels. Considering the possible perils that might endanger an unwary animal on this trail, he had harbored second thoughts on bringing his dog along for the climb, but the faithful creature seemed almost as determined to see this task through as Frisk. Unwilling to remain on Linkle’s sled, he made the ascent under his own power, assuring his owner in short order that he had nothing to fear. Those short, stubby legs meant that the dog would have to tackle any snow drifts literally head-on, but none arose to block his path, and he steered well clear of the cliff edge as the path wound upward. In fact, the little guy kept just behind Albedo and to the left, as if constantly herding him away from the precipice. The alchemist couldn’t help but smile as he watched the adorable beast patter along. Treat must have left quite the impression, he thought.

Only when they pushed through the mansion’s wrought-iron gates, making it scream in protest, did the corgi’s ears flatten somewhat against his head in momentary, involuntary fear. Even if such a thing was to be expected of metal left exposed to the elements long term, the sudden, piercing creak came as something of a shock. As the trio proceeded through and across its frost-coated yard, Linkle regaled the others with a legend from her own world’s history that told of another isolated manor atop another frigid peak. She described it as the home of not just a wholesome yeti couple, but also a certain resident evil, which given the current situation begged the question. “Spooky, hm?” Albedo gave the mansion another once-over. It certainly lacked color and outward signs of life, an austere dwelling of antiquated make where old things once and perhaps still lived, neglected but still a long way from falling to decrepitude. He could find no more traditionally off-putting spectacles like the hanging dolls in the deadwood grove, although now that he looked he could see smoke rising from the chimney to spiral up into the gray-white heavens, a dark stream leading to a turbulent sea. “I suppose it does have that sort of feel about it,” he admitted, picturing skeletal hands pulling back those second-floor curtains to leer down at the new arrivals with vacant sockets. “The evidence would suggest that there is nothing in store for us but Treat, however, and phantoms seem to be the least of her concerns.”

After everyone got their gifts ready, the Skullgirl rapped her knuckles against the mansion’s door, loud and clear. Albedo stood back, present in hand, to give the more genial and welcoming members of his party the spotlight. Given Linkle’s track record and Frisk’s irrepressibly amiable attitude, he saw no reason to believe that they would encounter any trouble showing the wolfgirl that they meant no harm, or even brightening her day, for that matter. In a way the alchemist almost felt guilty; despite being neither a physical or psychological oddity, poor Treat lived alone, and unwanted, unnoticed save for the rabbit-folk whose perennial intolerance evidently brought her constant misery, while he found himself with more undeserved kindness and companionship than he knew what to do with. The affection and care she showed for his corgi stood as all the proof Albedo needed of Treat’s compassionate nature, hidden away like the rest of her beneath the invisibility cloak of introversion. Even if he couldn’t repay the people around him for the consideration given to him, he could pay it forward by helping out this lonely wolf as much as humanly possible.

By Albedo’s calculations, Treat couldn’t have been back for long. She moved quickly, with fear lending wings to her feet, but her pursuers, powered by righteous conviction, followed nearly as fast. The alchemist only hoped that the wolfgirl didn’t conceive of the situation as a chase, hole herself up in her house, and pretend not to hear Linkle’s knocks. The thought of the so-called ‘predator’ fleeing and hiding in fear from her supposed ‘prey’ struck Albedo as exceedingly ironic. Before long, however, his posse’s patience was rewarded. Just a few moments passed before there came the muffled sound of footsteps headed for the front door. A click came from the lock, and with tentative slowness the door slid open for Treat’s face to poke through. When she found Linkle and Frisk with big presents and bigger smiles, her look of trepidation turned to confusion. “H-huh? What do you want?”

The newcomers did not mince words making their intentions clear, doing their best to reassure the flighty wolf that, beyond the shadow of a doubt, they bore her no ill intentions. As they spoke they offered their gifts, which she dumbly accepted as she stood in the threshold lacking any idea of how to deal with the situation. Nevertheless, she did not run away, but listened to her visitors talk. A little explanation, as well as the affirmation of the more familiar faces among the three, sufficed to explain that Linkle just happened to be a newcomer with rabbit ears rather than a member of the reproachable local population. The double offer of presents from beneath Snowdin’s Christmas tree sealed the deal, and when Treat realized her mistake she turned red from embarrassment. “Gahh, I’m so sorry!” she moaned, burying her face in her hands. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. Judging you ‘cause you’re a rabbit...well, I’m no better than the others judging me for who I am.”

Of course, that prompted another round of consolation, with even Albedo joining in. “Please, think nothing of it,” he told her. “And if I may, don’t think yourself akin to your persecutors. While it would seem that their unprompted animosity has conditioned you toward self-preservation, you have done nobody any harm. The same cannot, however, be said for them.” He waved his hand as if to dismiss the thought of rabbits from her mind. “But there’s no need to worry. We did not come here to make you feel bad, but to try to make you feel better. Maybe you would like to open your presents?”

Treat sniffed, the words of her visitors making her eyes glisten. “Yes, yes,” she mumbled before clearing her throat. After wiping her eyes, she pushed back through the door. “Come in, this way.”

She led the way through the house, rather nice despite the dolls scattered around and a singular, rather ghastly portrait, but surprisingly cold. In terms of temperature, Albedo could discern no meaningful difference between the interior and the brisk, winter-gripped mountain outside. After closing the door behind them, Treat brought her visitors through the parlor and into the living room on the opposite side, where a single fireplace smouldered with flame. Being the only source of light and heat in the whole place it naturally drew the eye, and on its mantle Albedo found a plaque whose inscription read Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace, as well as the logo of a company called Tomorrow Corporation. In front of it lay a big sleeping bag covered in patches, stuffed with pillows and blankets like an over-filled burrito. A cookpot sat beside the fire alongside a spitroast, with a small stack of plates and utensils nearby, and on the other side stood a handful of cardboard boxes also from Tomorrow Corporation. Albedo took in the whole scene with a solemn expression. All of a sudden it made sense as to why a disheveled, depressed wolfgirl might be possessed of such a fancy mansion with such striking decor both inside and out. She didn’t so much as live in it, let alone own it, as just camp inside of it--she amounted to no more than a hermit, or even less elegantly put a squatter, a spurned girl in a spurned place. And yet, she didn’t seem to have cannibalized the place, turning anything and everything to her own well-being. Instead it looked as though she’d tried to take care of it, as much as she could. The realization made the alchemist look at her in a new light.

“Um, just a, just a moment…” Treat put down the gifts, then went to open one of the boxes. Unable to suppress the urge to peer in, Albedo risked a peek and discovered a wealth of janky-looking toys inside. Treat took a couple and tossed them in the fireplace, where they immediately caught fire and blazed with sudden vigor. “There,” Treat sighed, sitting down by the fire with her legs crossed. She stared at her guests, still uncomfortable, and waved awkwardly at the couches. “Uh, y-you know, sit anywhere. Best by the fire, though. I’m, um, well, sorry about...this place. Could be better. Could be worse, I mean, yeah…” She trailed off, staring at the floor.

Albedo sat against one couch, not too far from the fire. “Thank you for inviting us in. I think you’ve done well for yourself,” he remarked. “My camp in Dragonspine is far colder and more meager, all things considered.”

The statement took Treat by surprise. “O-oh, really?” She pulled one hand away from the fire to scratch at her neck. “Well, if you’re still cold, I have more fuel for the fire.” As the group watched, one of the toys in the fire burned out, but from its charred corpse sprang a handful of yellow coins. Treat collected them all and added them to a small pile next to a Little Inferno catalogue. Albedo’s endeavor to connect the dots left him wondering how a company that put enough money to buy its products inside its products stayed in business, but if this bizarre perpetual system meant that Treat could stay warm, he decided not to question it.

Once she warmed her fingers up, Treat commenced the opening of her presents. She handled them gingerly, almost reverently, as if she couldn’t believe they were really hers. From the Kreidprinz’ gift she exhumed a tasty-looking fun snack set, within the Skullgirl’s she discovered a darkly beautiful Black Shawl, and inside the Fallen Child’s offering she found the quintessential Bonk Helm along with a pack of Nuka Cola to use it with. The sight of it made Albedo’s brows rise. “An article of headgear that dispenses drink? How clever.” Unable to tell if the presents were good or not, he watched Treat’s expression warily.

He needn’t have worried, however. “I...I don’t know why you’re being so nice to me, and...and I don't know what to say,” Treat sniffed, her eyes watery again. This time, it looked as though the floodgates might burst at any second. “But...thank you, thank all of you! I d-didn’t think that, that anyone cared. It’s been so long since...since I’ve felt this happy!” Despite her best attempts to staunch the flow, puffy-cheeked, she broke out into a fit of ugly crying. Albedo looked on, not quite sure how to respond. Was what the newcomers did really that impactful? Anyone could take a gift from under the tree and pass it on, after all. Just how lonely was this girl?!

Yoshitsune wasn't the happiest with Jesse's answer but it was an option. He thanked her with a nod before moving to meet with the others. They had a long way ahead of them still.

On the racetrack, Yoshitsune used his Kamui levels to perfectly dodge the oncoming traffic, though he did choose to stay near one side to, hopefully, reduce the number of racers approaching him. Sora, on the other hand, merely cast aero on himself, allowing him to move slightly faster and be slightly shielded. Neither of them left the track unharmed. As he saw some of the others get hit, especially Tora, the keybearer used Cure to heal his allies. Eventually, they made it past the track.

Upon arriving at the giant sleeping bear, Sora approached slowly and cautiously. Instead of trying to find a way to wake the bear, the teenager began attempting to squeeze around it. It didn't work. The samurai chose to begin looking for an alternate path up, though found none that wouldn't be extremely hard for most of the party, himself included. It seemed nobody could think of anything yet.

"I hate the idea," Yoshitsune began, "but we could try to defeat it without waking it. I'm not seeing another way unless someone can speak with animals. Or unless this beast is intelligent."

"Out of the question!" Sora quickly replied. "He's just trying to sleep. How would you feel?"

"We don't have time for feelings," the samurai sighed.

"What about flight?" The keybearer asked, motioning towards the giant bee queen.

"And how many trips would it take for those who can fly to carry the rest of us up to somewhere we can walk again?" the feudal era man asked, motioning towards everyone else.



With the murlocs in the immediate area taken care of, Bowser seemed willing enough to help Delsin recharge. Once the flames were rolling, Delsin stuck out his hands. "Like this," he replied to the turtle as all the flames were sucked into his hands, recharging him completely.

Then there was the largest fish monster. Delsin tok a few shots but didn't feel like he helped much in that fight. "I gotta catch up," he said with a smile, offering each of them a high-five.

Once the battlefield was cleared of all monsters, it seemed as if they were gonna travel again. Just as they were about to set out, a strange but familiar feeling washed over the Conduit before he was floating again, his eyes glowing orange until he landed. With a shout of joy and victory, Delsin quickly tried out his new ability: grenade.



Seeing the small explosion he'd made, he immediately knew how to utilize it best. "That's never happened without a core relay before," he said to himself, looking at his hands.

As everyone began climbing down the ladder, Delsin jumped down on the opposite side of the well, letting himself free fall until he needed to use the hovering ability from his flames to slow his descent, landing safely at the bottom. Looking around, he shuddered, "Horror much?"

He waited until everyone was down before asking, "Where to next?"

The team edged forward up the craggy mountain slopes as if they were in a sandstorm, only one where the particles of sand were as big as cars and flying at them just as fast. Not the best metaphor, but an apt one!

While some of the less agile climbers tried to hunker down against the oncoming racers or find a way to brute through, Raz was pretty used to having big things flying at him. He sidestepped a biking father who had his child irresponsibly strapped to the back of his bicycle, ducked under a small round creature riding a giant floating star, and even managed to clear a couple of smaller Gorons with well timed jumps. He was making decent progress on his own, until another attempt at Goron-hurdling took a turn. Raz landed on one of the rolling creatures, running atop it just long enough to lose all the ground he covered and then some, before stumbling over the Goron's rocky skin and tumbling to the ground. A pretty ungraceful landing after the stunt he just pulled, one that left him with a bruised knee, a bruised ego, and a mouthful of pebbles and dust.

"Pleh, caff!" Raz coughed and spluttered, only just rolling out of the way of a screeching ATV from ramping off his head. "Okay, going against the tide, not the best move," he admitted as he picked himself up. At least others found a better way forward to make up for his blunder. Maybe nobody noticed?

Raz was square in the middle of the lane, the walls to either side still pretty far apart, and he knew all about running across the road, which probably also applied to running across an active race. His stumble on top of that Goron did shake something loose, though. Not, like, physically, but mentally.

"Oh yeah, I've missed this one!" Raz hopped in place, and under his feet a bright orange orb with a green ring popped into existence. Already on a slope, the Levitation ball started to roll downwards, but Raz was (pretty much) an expert on this thing. With big backpedaling steps, he skewed the ball sideways, turning his downward descent into a curved arc towards the wall, almost like he was surfing. He flung past several of his fellows on the way, but he made extra sure to aim himself towards one of their newest additions; Ellie. Compared to the others who all had their own ways of dealing with the onslaught, she seemed to be ill equipped for it, and Raz was nothing if not helpful.

"Incoming!" He shouted right before he passed Ellie by. Once he was close enough, Raz also tapped into another power he was sorely missing, and a big hand the same color as his ball formed, plucking Ellie up by the underarms, and pulled her along with him. It was probably a sudden shift for her, buuuut hopefully she'd be more grateful for the safety than any possible whiplash she got.

Once they got to the wall, Raz poofed his Levitation away and set Ellie down, now that they were away from most of the riders. "You know how to climb?" Raz asked, though continued with, "just follow my lead," regardless of her answer.

At the race's starting line, once everyone was back together, Raz accepted any water offered, hoping to wash out the taste of rock, sand, and machine oil from his mouth. Don't ask how that last one got there. "Hey, thanks," Raz said to Tora, giving the Pon a friendly pat on the, uh, shoulder-ish area. "Next time we run into speeding bikers, I'll be sure to stick with you." He meant it, too, and it wasn't a completely unlikely prospect in this world, so who knew?

The next part of the trek was, thankfully, less exciting. As the hot stone canyons bled away into dense woods, Raz started to shuffle his warmer clothing on, trading one jacket for another and slipping on one shoe after the other while continuing forward. Quick-changing could come out pretty useful outside of performing.

When the group slowed down to another involuntary stop, Raz hurried to the front. "I hope this bear isn't telekinetic," Raz worried, putting out an idea that nobody else would've thought, and probably won't stop thinking about now. It was much, much bigger than anything he'd seen before, and luckily, it was asleep, even if that was impeding theme. "Too bad it's still... uh, ya know." Raz left the vague point in the air, gesturing at the bear, not wanting to spring the crew's secret mission when there were some newbies around. "Otherwise I could probably wake it up mentally. Maybe we can just... pet it? Awake?" Raz manifested his TK again, idly pushing it closer and closer to the bear's head, as if testing the waters of the idea.

---

Midna’s assessment that there was an end to the madness seemed to have been an entirely wrong one, as wave after wave of racers just kept coming and coming over the ridge line and swerving around their little bastion.

”Would you all kindly fuck off! Some of us are trying to walk here!” She yelled at them, before throwing a rock at a passing bike rider and watching him tumble off his mechanical steed as it struck him in the dome.

It turned out the best way to deal with the riders was some lateral thinking that let them, well, not deal with the riders. Of course some like Sectonia were already doing so, but a bit of clambering and helping hands up pushed most of the more mobile team members up to the towering architecture surrounding the canyon. Once up there they proceeded to platform across while the small but tough team who were unable to do so got off the main road and took some winding side paths where they could stay out of the traffic.

Midna lent them a hand by racing ahead on her wolfos steed (which was incredibly deft at climbing, leaping and bounding through the towering teetering obstacle course with ease) and scouting them out a path that avoided any dead ends. Both because it was a nice thing to do and because it reduced the amount of delays and waiting around that had to be done that would have been caused by non optimal pathing.

After a fair bit of this they finally found their way to the starting line, and found out why there was no end to the racers as wave after wave after wave of them were spawned in by some kind of starting line closer to the base of the mountain. Midna arrived last with the ground ploders hot on her heels.

”So this is where the jester show starts?” she said, raising a hand to shield her eyes to take it in before shaking her head at the nonsense of it all, simply calling it ”Ridiculous” and then moving on with her life

She took the short break. They had to pull her mask off again and then take a few moments to try and dust herself down to clear off the, well, dust. This cleaning wasn't helped by her Wolfos shaking itself clean like a wet dog, sending sand flying everywhere much to the annoyance of anyone nearby.

After that break/recovery period it was time to move on. They ascended up towards the snowline, passing by nothing but a few critters of little interest to anyone who wasn't a Pokemon trainer who could see the hidden potential/collection value in the various shrews, snakes and weird mole things. If they had had one, Midna might have been interested in the future blade handed hedgehogs, shotgun snakes and weird mole things but now in a triple pack. But there wasn't so she ignored them. Meanwhile the big slightly goofy bunnies that were at their max potential already, and who could have been a nuisance if they wanted, clearly didn't have any interest in risking life and limb in trying to shoo these invaders of their territory away.

A most wise decision considering Midna was having to hold back her Wolfos mount’s natural instincts to go chasing after all these critters with some very stern words and forehead chops.

Past those they climbed further and further till they reached the beginnings of the snow, the world turning cool in the daylight for the first time since they set off, and found their way blocked first by a vast cliff and then, upon finding what might be a way though, by the most massive bear you ever did see.

”Goddesses, but he is” Midna agreed with Skull at the sheer size of said bear.

Once they were done marveling at the bear some fearless fools decided to give it a bit of a bit of poking, prodding and yelling in the year to try and wake it up. Unfortunately it seemed like if it didn't threaten the bear, then said bear was happy to simply snooze through whatever they were doing too or around it. Sora and Minamoto started arguing about whether they should fight it or go around it, both poor plans in Midna’s eyes, while Razputin suggested petting it awake.

”I mean that’d be better than stabbing the big thing, but I’m not sure if you can wake it up with pleasantness. Not that I think it will hurt to have it in a lax mood if my idea works out” she says, while adding her own large magic hand to the mix. Rather than going in to pet the bear however, this one was delicately holding the biggest leaf she could find (inspired by how said snoot sniffled when the leaves blew by naturally) between its thumb and index finger, which she proceeded to use like a feather to tickle the bear’s snoot.

”You try and keep it calm with some petting, while I give this nose a little tickle, and we’ll see what happens” She said, casually putting the boy in the line of fire if things went wrong with her plan.

And that was the end of them. Well. almost all of them. You could almost forget that the giant half dead beast was laying there, looming over them all, until the violence came to an end and the quiet of all but the rain allowed its haggard breaths to be heard and drawing the attention of the koopa king while the traditional post fight spirit distribution/mulling over was going.

”We should do something about that” Bowser said, with what might be seen as uncharacteristic empathy for the horrid beast. Or maybe him doing stupid things to help monsters was entirely expected, this one just coincidentally didn't happen to also look like a curse child.

”Kamek!” He barked

”Yes sire?” The mage in rather bedraggled robes replied.

”Shrink that thing for me so we can toss it back into the ocean.”

Kamek glanced at the giant monster, then back at the king. He looked like he was going to object, but thought the better of it, instead drawing his wand and waving it slowly while chanting.

”This fish’s size is truly obscene,
I’d much prefer if it was the size of a sardine!”

Before thrusting the wand forwards and sending a shimmering projectile towards the beached monster. Stuck as it was, it proved unable to avoid the slow shot which stuck home with ease. For a moment it seemed to be taking effect, but before the creature could get even a few percentage points smaller, the hex broke and returned it back to normal size.

”Hey what gives!” Bowser complained as the mage looked down at his wands, up at the fish and then back at his wand.

”I’m sorry sire, this has never happened to me before!” the old mage replied, before trying once, twice and thrice more. ” I think my magic isn't strong enough to affect it sire.”

”Gahhh. Do I have to do everything myself!” Bowser complained as he stomped forward and demanded that Kamek ”Size me up and I’ll push it in!!”

”I’m not sure that that is the best… oh dear” Kamek tried to stop him, but knowing that the king would likely stubbornly march up to the jaws of death at his usual size if he didn't do his job, the mage was forced to comply

A distant observer, if there had been one, might be taken aback as the beached titan was joined by one more seemingly out of nowhere, the king expanding under his mage’s magic to be a towering juggernaut standing face to face with the almost dead thing which he told ”Alright stay still, this’ll only hurt for a second” before trying to rudely manhandle the thing back into the water.

Instead the leviathan’s six tentacle arms lashed out, directionless but dangerous, to beat across the rain-soaked koopa king’s face, body, and limbs. Though devoured, harvested, and otherwise abused to the fullest extent of marine cruelty, Scylla tenaciously clung to life, animated by sheer malice and spite to exact whatever punishment it could on those around it. As incredible as it seemed, covered as Scylla was in grisly wounds and filled with both parasites and blight, this creature was just too angry to die. Broodlings crawled from its body to protect their mother as Scylla wrenched back and forth in death throes, trying to attack whatever it could get its claws on.

”Oh dear” Kamek sighed as he palmed his face with his free hand in contrast to the panic of the other two members in the troop who raced to his defense by hammering one of the leeches with gun and firepower.

”Ow hey no I’m just trying to help you stupid fish freak” Bowser yelled right before getting stabbed in the mouth.

“You really need to learn your lesson” Marie Korbel, the former skullgirl now striker informed him as she materialized and summoned a horde of skeletons that charged in over the king's shoulders before stampeding over his thick dome and leaping onto the oceanic titan “this one doesnt even look like kid”

”It’s not my fault it made me feel bad laying there!” Bowser tried to say, but the blood in his mouth made it mostly unintelligible.

“Bowser!” Link called out, his voice reaching the troop just moments before he skatted up quickly enough to impale one of the parasites that had crawled out of the wounded monster with his trusty brandistock. As the monster dissolved he looked up at the titanic struggle playing out before him and wondered just what the Koopa King had expected to happen. Luckily this was only the third biggest sea monster they had encountered today, but the sight of Bowser’s bleeding mouth still sent a prickling feeling crawling across his brain. “I need to get up to it’s head.” He said, hoping Kamek or Junior had a solution for him. He couldn't climb Bowser himself to get up there in the weather.

”I can bring you up!” Jr called over and down and was about to descend to do just that when Marie, finding her legions unable to finish the job and ruining out of time, decided to speed things up as as she summoned a wall of skeletons beneath the hero of the wild, launching him up about a third of a way there before Jr swept Link’s flight to catch him and bring him the rest of the way, following the hero’s directions as they ascended to help his father, clown car straining under the additional weight but managing to climb nonetheless.

They ascended up, up, up, and as they leveled with the monster's head Link urged the boy to go higher still, until they were above the creature's thrashing head. Thanking Junior, Link leg go from where he had caught onto the clown car and whipped out his bow as he dropped. He knocked an arrow, pulled back, and a familiar feeling of calm washed over him. The wind rushing past his ears seemed to quiet as his perceptions and reaction time sped up. Time, for Link, slowed to a crawl as he aimed at the creature's thrashing head. Eye’s were always a weakness, and this thing had six of them.

He let three arrows fly, each one burying itself into one of the creature’s red eyes. They burst like Chu’s, and the combined shock stilled the creature’s head for a moment. Link felt time move normally again as he swapped the bow for his Sahagin Trident and dropped, prongs down. He drove the Trident down into the creature's skull as he landed, the weapon absorbing most of the impact as it sank in.

Though no legendary weapon, and damaged catastrophically by the weight and strength that drove it home, the well-aimed polearm did the trick. It plunged through weakened, brittle armor and malnourished, diseased flesh to break bone like an eggshell, and pierced the yolk within. Already on death's door, Scylla couldn't sustain the critical hit, and with a wretched howl that rolled across all of Carcass Isle she finally died. Her body began to disintegrate, aided in it's dispersal by the pounding rain, but it would still be a long time before the monster melted away completely--long enough for anyone to honor the tradition of picking over the corpse for anything that might be of use, if anything worthwhile still remained.

Link tumbled off as Scylla’s head crashed to the ground, again finding himself at the feet of the Koopa King. “Are you alright?” He called up to him.

”Gah, mouth hurts” Bowser complained, clutching the side of his mouth as he started shrinking down again as kamek ended the spell and shooed his healer clone forwards to see to the kin’s wound, only for it to be added too when a bone bonked him on the head.

He grunted and looked up to see and hear Marie shouting “Learn” before peaceing out.

He grunted again and then sighed ”That’s what I get for trying to help, huh? Stupid fish monster.”

“Nothing that comes out of the water in this sea turns out to be friendly.” Link said, dismissing the spear and gesturing at Rika. “Wait till we get back to where the water is blue. People there, at least, seems to appreciate your help.”

”Well I suppose it's another few spirits for the pile” Kamek said, trying to get a bit of positivity out of the situation, before looking at Link and nodding towards them, to suggest he take first pick, both as the slayer of the beast and as thanks for bailing the King out.

Link looked back at the slowly dissolving monster, considering. The situation seemed like it was finally quiet and he felt, at least for now, the anxiety flow out of his body and be replaced by the old curiosity. “I wonder if it had any more surprises in it’s stomach?” He said, walking around the beached beast to the hole Tidehunter had made when he had extradited himself from it, which had only widened as the monster began to turn to ash. Hopping up and holding his breath, he took hold of the squishy edge and pulled himself up to peer inside in search of treasure, more survivors, or possibly the spirits of those that hadn’t been hardy enough to survive inside the monster. Spotting something interesting, he unequipped all his armor and pulled himself inside despite the blood, guts, maggots, and blight pooling within.



In just a few moments an eerie blue light started shining out of the hole, and you could track Link’s movements inside the monster from the movement of the light and the squelching sounds as he walked around. A few minutes later a wickedly barbed spear came flying out of the hole, embedding itself in the earth. Link followed, pulling himself back out of the hole covered in gunk but with a look of satisfaction on his face. As he put his other arm over the lip of the edge he was holding onto a pair of shears even gorier than him, the bloodstains caked on and uneaten even by stomach acid. After dropping out he clipped the shears a few times. “I’ve used a lot of weapons, but nothing ever like this.” He said dubiously, before dropping them and lifting up the spear instead before sharing the rest of what he had found inside the monster’s belly. “You guys want these scissors? I can’t carry any more weapons in the slate. Apparently, this doesn't count.” He said, producing the Crescent and offering it freely along with the scissors and two of the lanterns. “I think these might be magic. They glow without fire.” He was keeping one, definitely. He’d attach it to his belt as soon as the rain was finished washing him off.

”I could take one of those” Kamek replied, getting his toady to take one of the lanterns and then combined it with the pole lantern he had uprooted before to make a biolumions lantun on a metal pole that, carried by the Toadie, made for a nice hoovering lightsource.

”I uh, guess I’ll take these?” Bowser said, before picking up the oversized pair of scissors with one hand, seemingly intending to wield them more like a bludgeon than anything else, and then sort of awkwardly handed them to his tentacles for them to hold (the tendrils wrapping around the blade like a sheath) while he wasn't using them.

That still left a lot of things on the table, including the host of spirits from the battle, to distribute.

@DracoLunaris@Rockin Strings@Dawnrider

---

---

Link didn't understand anything. Tidehunter had pushed them away, he had pounded the ground, and then something had unfurled under him and he had tasted sky. It any other situation he would have whipped out his glider and turned this attack to his advantage, but there was no way. The tendril that had knocked him up had also coiled around his mind, locking him in a daze. He fell back onto the waters surface, still standing but like a limp puppet. At the mercy of the hunter before him.

The first thing he remembered coming out of that haze was the Princess calling his name. Not his princess, but close enough. He shook his head as his senses came back to him, the sight of Princess Peach locked in a mortal tug-of-war for Tidehunter's very soul greeting him as he awoke. For a moment he thought he was having another nightmare, Peach's form momentarily taking on a dark and terrifyingly slender aspect in the moonlight as she drained something out of the fish man. Then she gave the order and his body was propelled by instinct along. He drew his steel sword and held it out behind his as he skated in, a glint of light traveling up the edge of the blade, and then spun. The blade cut an arc through the air and right across Tidehunter's unprotected neck. A gout of cold black blood spewed out as he fell, the link with his spirit severed along with is life. "To the bottom I go," he managed to gurgle out before his body began dissolving.

Link, unmindful of his own pounding injuries, skated over to Peach and the spirt she had collected to make sure she was okay. As he did so, he noticed that the sounds of fighting had quieted. He looked around, and to his relief was able to see everyone had made it out of this one with no more than a few injuries. The only unknown element left in the area was the Stalfoe's that had shown up unexpectedly, who stood off to the side sharpening its weapon for the next battle. He couldn't help but wonder if that battle included them.

He skated over to it, approaching slowly as the creature turned its head slightly to fix one of its sockets on him. "Thank you for the help." Link said, trying to be diplomatic.

The only answer he got was the SCHEEINK, SCHEEINK of the stalfoes whetstone across it's blade as it stared at him.

"We're here to battle the boss of this island. The strongest creature here. If you know anything about what it's like deeper into the island any information would be apricated. Are there other survi...uh...sane people besides you?"

SCHEEINK, SCHEEINK

"I would be willing to pay you."

SCHEEEEEEEINK, SCHEEEEEEEINK

Maybe it couldn't talk without a tongue. Or maybe it just wanted to be left alone. "Well, we're going to headed back to the mainland after we're done. We could carry you with us if you would like."

SCHEEEEEEEINK, SCHEEEEEEEINK

This was getting him nowhere. Luckily, before he could annoy the stalfoes into a fight, a commotion was kicked up on the other side of the basin. A wrathful roar cut the air, and he turned to find the monster the fish people had been harvesting whipping its tentacles at a super sized Koopa King. "Bowser!" He called, instantly turning tail and skating across the basin toward the source of the disturbance.

---

Situation with the sea monster thoroughly handled, and richer for it, the hero of the wild road back to where the others had gathered to start distributing the spoils of the battle. He wanted to start stomping Murlock's looking for a shield, but he held off because he was already looking to claim one of the bigger prizes. The one he had left with the Princess. "Can I see Tidehunter?" He asked her, taking the big burly shark man in hand. Northampton's modifications to his body weren't all back, but there was one he had to correct. Besides, if he were going to be as fast on the water as a Zora the least he could do was semi-look the part. Without a moments hesitation he slammed the Tidehunter's spirit into his chest.

Link wasn't the only one that went through a dramatic transformation, either. Or at least that's how it looked. The newcomer, Delsin, rose up into the air as they were about to travel down the route Hat Kid had found into the depths of the island. He rose into the air, glowing as though he too had just absorbed a spirit, but when he dropped he still appeared the same. Save, of course, or a new power. A new way to use a few of those fireballs he had cast at Tidehunter, an ability that he had seemingly lost due to Galeem's diminishing effect on all that came under it's power. He had never seen so clear an example of someone getting something back.

Regardless of that strangeness he descended down the well after everyone else.

---

The grotto they found themselves in was, thankfully, dry if you had the good fortune to be part shipgirl and were able to stand on the ankle deep water. Link, having spent enough time in the rain to wash off Scylla's stomach gunk, took the opportunity to put his cloths back on and pull out one of the lanterns he had acquired to give them a little more light in the dark of the cave. He tensed up, bracing for the ambush, but none came as they traveled through the caves.

Eventually they came to a wooden balcony, which Ms. Fortune investigated and then recoiled back in disgust. It didn't take Link long to realize why, as he walked over and looked out across the literally writhing floor. The smell was worse than the sight, like what came out whenever he had tried to combine fruit and fish. The sickly sweet smell of rot, combined with cooking meat and the briny stench of the sea all rolled into one. If he hadn't had a cast iron stomach it would have made him gag. The worst part were the shapes slithering out of the shells, pale and slender. Almost beautiful in an ethereal way, though he doubted that that assessment would last if he got any closer than this to them. He pulled out the slate and zoomed in, concluding they were either once women or every dedicated mimics before taking a picture right as one lifted up.

He heard Delsin comment on the horror of the place and grinned. "This place isn't as bad as the last one we were trapped in." Experiencing The Maw made you look at things differently. At least no one was being tempted to jump down and eat those snail women. He hoped.

On being asked where they should go, he pointed out the walkways leading around the sides of the room. "I don't relish jumping down there. This is either a trap or a nursery. Kid?" He turned to face their intrepid little scout before pointing across the way to the wall of fog. "I'm guessing through there though, right?"

Gleeming or not his arrogance and pride still got the better of the young demon following the fight that took place in Al Mamoon, Laharl asked no questions nor did he bother acknowledging the fact they helped free him of Galeem's influence.

Annoyed by everything that lead up to this point, Laharl stormed off in a fit but it seemed harder and harder to go anywhere during the day that followed without hearing something about the people he left and how they took down the Resistance. At first Laharl dismissed the news, but as he wandered the streets he came to the realization that he may have been too hasty leaving the group when he did.

After all they could be useful to him since he had no servants nor allies to call his own, thus the boy found his way to the armored train they used to arrive here in the city. Sitting at the very back of the train as it made its way away from the city, the others were too busy to have taken notice of him or they knew and simply didn't care.

Laharl stepped off the train, his red eyes taking in the surroundings from the jagged peak of the looming mountain to the roaring mayhem of racing echoing throughout the valley, he watched as the Seekers struggled to cross. And so he followed, from a distance unsure wether to announce himself or not.

Somehow though he would need to win their trust, first however he needed to catch up with the other Seekers and not get hit by the race cars speeding through the twisting canyon. Luckily for him his physiology was far more advanced than a normal humans, being a Cambion and all gave him an edge. Laharl deftly dodged oncoming vehicles and falling rocks nearly crushed him to a fine paste but his strength as well as the boys perseverance carried him through the endeavour.

Dirty, and out of breath Laharl trudged behind the group as they ascended the steep mountain slope while the demon boy tried to open his parched mouth to call for the Seekers attention. It had been a long ride, he had not eaten nor drank a single drop of water and it showed.

Mustering what strength he had left, Laharl found his voice finally and yelled out one word "WAIT!" then the poor boy collapsed, falling to his knees. Thankfully he didn't lose consciousness, but the hunger and fatigue he was experiencing had taken it's toll on him.

Sectonia managed to save a few of her minions with her little plan. After all, while these creatures barreled down with much force, they were not all that threatening without any control behind it. With her flying above with Necronomicon, who was thoroughly enjoying Sectonia's little platform summoning skill, something she had to do a few more times when prudent so the others could get up the mountain unharmed.

Once they had reached and passed the starting line that these 'racers' were coming from and were out of that hazard course, the group took a bit of a break to relax a bit before the next part of their travels. "I have known much better 'jesters', those weren't even worthy of being fools. " Sectonia said, looking behind where they had come from at Midna's remarks more or less agreeing with the imp.

--------------------------

As they progressed further, they found a bear resting in the middle of the path. A very large bear that was even bigger than Sectonia herself. IT was sleeping however, and while it seemed to be at peace, many of the others were deciding how they should go about dealing with this thing. Some were poking it to no avail, Midna was going to make it sneeze, and others just wanted to fly over the thing if possible or even fight it. Sectonia did have a few ideas of her own. "Well if you can hold it down, I suppose my new secretary could brainwash it. Although I feel we would still need to fight it a bit even in that case." Sectonia offered. "Otherwise while I could defeat it without issues since I'm sure it can't fly, you all would be in quite a bit of trouble." So with that, her plan was to mind control the thing, if the others little schemes didn't work. Heck, if her plan worked, she would have quite the wall for a minion.

===================================



Blazermate was having a bit more fun that she should've cleaning up the remaining Murlocks while the others dealt with the larger threats. At first she figured that skeleton with the anchor was going to be an enemy, but he ended up helping in the end, a welcome sight in this frankly disgusting rotting island. With a combination attack from frankly, most of the group, Tidehunter went down with Link getting the final blow, Peach showing a, very spooky, ability to conjure a weak point when there wouldn't be one, and one that was just as critical as a medal to boot! She wasn't that strong or could take many hits, but making a weakness out of where there wasn't one was quite something for sure.

Bowser meanwhile was acting like the big heroic teddy bear he was, showing compassion for a giant monster that was, frankly quite rude to the king and Bowser suffering some damage for his attempts at being a paragon. It was a good thing he was a tough turtle... thing, otherwise he couldn't take risks like that with Kamek thinking the same thing. Still, his efforts were in vein and they had to end up killing the thing anyway. With the battle over, Blazermate called all of her undead murlocs over while she got to healing up everyone's damage, having a special word for Bowser. "Aw, you tried, thats what matters." And Kamek, who while he didn't need healing, he did aid the others and as such Blazermate got a bit of a side word with the koopa mage. "I know he doesn't like being called this, but Bowser is just a big lovable tough teddy bear isn't he?". She'd show a smile, if she had any facial expressions to give on, so Kamek could only go by her tone.

Blazermate had no desire for any of the spirits herself outside of grabbing one of those lanterns Link had gotten, not as good as a flashlight, but it'd do in a pinch. Tidehunter out of all of them did spook her the most though; why did his big attack have to be TENTACLES? Its always tentacles... so instead she spent her time healing and playing with her new undead murloc thralls. She found they were very organized for zombies, all things considered, but she only has a small squad of them, so they probably wouldn't last long. Nor were they even strong enough to carry the medabot, so she had to catch her ride on Bowser again.

----------------------

It didn't take them too long to get to the next area, some of the group apparently smelling quite ripe over all the disgusting stuff they had to wade through. Thankfully none of this bothered Blazermate at all, there were advantages to having a smelling system you could just turn off! But still, that didn't help how disgusting this all was. "Ugh... If I got more control over this suffering arm, do you think I could raise all the dead stuff here and make short work of the boss?" Blazermate said, trying to say something to get everyone's mind off the disgusting sight in front of them, with these ghostlike eels that looked like trouble just slithering around everything in front of them.

The others' help came none too soon, Mirage barreling in haphazardly with weapon drawn and a shout of support, only for the semi-aquatic creature to toss a fish of all things at-and through- the Legend, revealing one of Mirage's holographic clones while the real one unleashed a burst of revolver fire into Fizz's chest. Hat Kid followed up immediately after, bouncing off of Mirage's head and perform a literally impossible feat of aerial acrobatics to strike the nimble creature, following up by hooking him with her umbrella and disappearing into the well, leaving the thing dangling and helpless.

Geralt, being a professional slayer of monsters, felt nothing but a slight resistance as his silver sword sliced through the helpless creature, it dissolving into ash while he grabbed its Spirit before it could fall.

Turning to the Judicator and Spinal, Geralt was glad to see that their battle was soundly decided on the side of their silent ally, temporary as that title may prove to be. Between his own blade and his Pokemon's attacks, Spinal had the Judicator on the ropes, quickly dispatching the massive creature and leaving its Spirit to be the second for Geralt's collection, giving the skeleton man a nod and a quick "Thank you."

As the others gathered themselves, Geralt stashed the two Spirits in one of his emptier pouches, drawing his flask of Swallow and taking a dose. Almost immediately, his wounds began to stitch themselves, and his belly felt just a bit fuller. Sure, he could have asked Kamek or Blazermate for help, but he saw that they were busy assisting Bowser in his latest hare-brained scheme, and it wasn't like he was hurting for potion anyway. He'd barely taken a sip of the stuff since he'd met them all in the Land of Adventure, owing to the various abilities his newfound allies had.

Putting the flask away, Geralt withdrew the two Spirits again, one in each hand. To the Spirit he'd grabbed from Fizz, he said, "I imagine to you, we seem like murderers and monsters, and you were just defending your home. I don't quite have the time to explain it all, but our mission is one of importance beyond that of any one place, any group of people or even nation. And we need all the help we can get. You'll be able to fight once more if you join me, and we can bring peace to this place."

Regardless of the result, he turned to the Spirit of the Judicator. "As for you, I can promise more fights. Our journey is bound to be a perilous one, and with your power I'm confident it will be just a bit more manageable. If a chance to use that blade of yours is what you want, I'm glad to give you that opportunity."

His piece said, Geralt waited for the others to gather before descending the ladder, taking a position at the front of the group to hopefully spare the more manageably-sized members the chance of an ambush. Between his armor and his bulk, he was reasonably confident he'd survive the few seconds it took to make room for the others' descent.

Thankfully, however, no ambush came. Merely a disgusting, dank grotto. As the group got its bearings, they saw the other cave off to the Eastern side of the grotto, and made their way over to observe, finding an even more horrifying place than this one or the things they'd seen above. The floor of the cavern below the balcony they'd found was littered sea slugs and spiral shells from which protruded disgusting, partially humanoid things.

A closer look at the upper floor showed that the path stretched on quite a bit, and he saw the one entrance that was absolutely covered in fog, and sighed. "And of course, we'll need to go through the fog. At least I have some Cat on me..." Geralt grumbled. This would be such great fun!

As the body of the beached beast began to decay and the least threat was dealt with, it was time to start covering their slain flows into power and resources for use on the road ahead.

Jr scooped up one of the mundane murlocs and raised it up above his head, calling a swarm of their spirits into the first and taking them all on as another striker mob for his growing legions.

Kamek meanwhile took 4 of the luminous ones and crushed them for materials, fishing for magic trinkets, useful do-dads and tricks he could fit up his sleeves while Rika did the same with a pair of the diseased ones.

Then, finally, once the others were done scavenging the body of Scylla and it had rotted into ash, Bowser stomped into the fading soot of the titan’s body and then crouched down to pick up her glowing spirit.

”You might have been a stupid monster, fighting me when I tried to help, but you where strong, so you get the honer of fighting for me” he told it simply, before then turning and moving on from another failure. He was, after all, incredibly used to them.

”Then just don't cast magic on him then. Whatever it's his loss” Jr was saying to Kamek when the king rejoined the rest of the troop.

”But I just don't understand what the problem is?” Kamek replied, finding himself more frustrated than he felt like he should be about being more or less unable to help Ace anymore, at least directly. Frustrated enough to talk about it to the unsympathetic ear that was Jr anyway. Rika at least tried to answer the question, suggesting that “Saying a bunch of words and then suddenly having a big Bowser is kinda unnatural tho, right? Maybe he just finds it spooky”

”It’s not unnatural! It’s magic, there's nothing more natural than magic. It's a part of everything and everyone” the mage replied, doing the inconsiderate thing and making this about him not Ace.

”Can it Kamek” Bowser told him, before pointing all of their attention towards the Hat wearing kid was pointing down the well ”you can complain after we get out of this rain” he said, the king just assuming that there was more stuff down there than just a water source, as if it was a warp pipe to an underground area.

Sure enough, one look down found them a rickety ladder leading into some kind of cavern system, though out of all of them only Rika had to use the ladder, which involved removing her gun gauntlets and strapping them to her back so she could actually handle the descent properly. As she climbed own in the middle of the group (so she wouldn’t be left vulnerable while taking the gauntlets on r off at either top or bottom side) Kamek and Jr simply hovered down into the underground, while Bowser took one look at the ladder and flicked on a lucky bell, before cat claw sliding down the inside of the well.

The underground they found was no 1-2. Instead it was just as dank and wretched as the rest of the island had been but ”Hey, at least we’re out of the rain”

Most of everyone was more than happy to take advantage of that. Kamek shook off his bedraggled robes and then gratefully accepted a close brush with Bowser’s firebreath if it meant warming up and drying off a bit, after which Rika and anyone else who wanted to take turns did so as well. Jr meanwhile took a moment to upend his clown car in-order to tip the pool of water that had formed at his feet out of it.

They all felt a bit better after that, and Kamek found his frustration with Ace dropping away as he warmed up and dried out. He was still confused, but he now remembered that now wasn't the time or the place for dealing with whatever that guy’s deal was.

Once everyone was ready the troop moved on once more, skimming on or above the shallow water that was apparently inescapable in this place. After a bit of marching they suddenly exited the natural cave and instead entered a more artificial place akin to the rotting village above, just buried underground. Most of it was just dank and dreary, but the massive pit below the structures held another lovely horror, or rather a multitude of them, namely piles and piles of sea slugs and some humanoid looking ones that certainly went no Bubblainian.

Blazermate wanted to, of all things, go down and zombify them all.

”If you wanna be stuck here all day, then sure, we can do that. But I don't know about you, but I’m sick of this place” Bowser replied ”And sick of hauling this busted airship around too”

”If they are useful in a fight then I would not want to tangling with all of them at all to be honest” Kamek pointed out, before sending the three non lantern carrying toadies and his clones forwards to see if they where, and also to give the branching paths a bit of a scout to see if any where faster, safer or more interesting than the rest.

“Do you think you could get that dispenser thing out for a bit while we work out how we are getting around? I’d like to stock up on ammo if we’re getting close to the big nasty of this place” Rika asked Blazermate as Kamek’s expendable minions checked the place out for them, the ship girl sending out her pair of scout planes to do the same after she remembered she had them.

Level: 1
Experience: 6/10
Currently In: Snowdin Outskirts, House Beneviento Treat's House
Word Count: 464 (Exp +1)
Albedo @Lugubrious, Linkle @Gentlemanvaultboy

Frisk assumed Linkle saw how they were hiding the fact that the place gave them the creeps, seeing as she took the initiative to knock first. Of course she had to hide her bunny ears again, the child took a moment to help her put her hat back on and dust it off. Gotta look presentable. ....Anyways, they picked up their gift and waited for Treat to answer. It took a bit. That they could understand. They huffed out small, cold cloud of air, looking around to occupy their mind. Hm. That waterfall was interesting. But it wasn't as peaceful or pretty as the one back home. With it's crystals like stars illuminating the closest thing to their skies, the glow of the quiet blue water running through lakes and bridges, and especially the echo flowers.

Hm. Maybe this place just needed some flowers. Ones that probably wont kill her. Maybe less yellow too.

Oh wait, the door got answered! Frisk looked back to treat with a warm smile, holding up their cyan present. "We didn't want you feeling boxed in. So we wanted to gift you some stuff." They explained. In the form of puns no less. The trio did have to explain that Linkle wasn't from Snowdin and simply just had rabbit ears. The child couldn't blame her for being confused abouy it though, they still are. When the wolf girl realized her mistake, Frisk gently patted her on the arm to ease her fretting. Though they did feel like they needed to say something.

"Let me know who the heck has been bullying you, and I'll promply bonk them with this stick." They surprisingly said bluntly, attempting to hold their "weapon" up menacingly.

Then Treat invited the three in and... It was still cold. Did this place not have electricity, or a heater or something? Their eyebrows furrowed, trying to figure out why it was so cold. On cue, they were guided to the living room, where a lone fireplace burned. Like Albedo, Frisk frowned in realizing this wasn't even Treat's house house. Treat was just taking refuge in a slightly creepy manor that hopefully it's owner wouldn't want back. Their remorseful frown neutralized when she offered them seats.

Frisk didn't know about the other two, but they'd rather be by the fire. They watched as Treat went through each of their gifts. The child's gift, their gift of patience, turned out to be a soda drinking hat kit. Huh. Atleast it's practical. But Treat's reaction to their gesture of kindness caught them off guard. Their eyes actually widened for a split second when the wolf girl broke down in tears of joy. So they did the only thing they thought of to do, and pulled her into a hug.

Sakura was off her game, but being able to take the hits felt good. Though she couldn’t deny that getting tag teamed by these two goons was a bit tilting. Aforementioned wrestler R. Mika was someone she had personally gone toe-to-toe with, and Nadeshiko and Mika were far more respectable threats than these two fish henchmen. So getting tied up with them was frustrating. Almost like she was disrespecting Rainbow Mika just by not being able to mop the floor with these two.

Sakura grunted as she was zapped. It had the odd effect of briefly turning her entire body black and lighting up her skeleton for all to see. Embarrassing.

What was she missing?! How had these things gotten inside her head? Frustrated, Sakura slammed her fist into Crabby’s armor and backed up. Bella arrived, and Sakura was grateful for the help, but the street fighter had higher expectations of herself.

Slapping the sides of her head, she psyched herself up. “Don’t worry, Bella-san. I got this.” She just had to remember what she could do, and how far she’s come. She’d started to forget about all the things she could do.

Sakura dashed forward, and opened up with an EX move. “Straight through!” Her body lit up orange and she flew forward with her leg out, becoming a spinning black. She smacked Crabby across the armor. It didn’t matter if she was blocked or not, because now she was in range.

“I said I got this!” She yelled out in defiance to no one in particular, clenching her fists and taking a stance. A burst of energy emitted from her body and her fists were alight with blue flame. Water was pushed away from her in a circle as a gust of wind ruffled her clothes. Activating her V-trigger after an EX Tatsu gave her the advantage.

Sakura was tired of her attacks bouncing off this guys armor, so she did a throw. She wrapped her arms around his one good remaining arm, held it in an uncomfortable position, and broke it right out of its socket. Claw arm hanging limply by his side, Crabby was now vulnerable. Sakura dropped low. An inky black miasma briefly outlined her form as she prepped a Focus Attack. The armor breaking move would be more than enough to shatter through Crabby’s natural defense. She shot forward, bringing her knee into the monster and crumpling it to its knees.

Next, she used her V-Trigger buff to explode into a massive punishing uppercut. Rings of energy followed her fist like a comet. She did one Shouoken, and before her opponent could go flying, Sakura was in the middle of another, even large one. Sakura span in the air as she and her opponent flew upward. “Buh-bye!” Sakura said angrily, and it was true. Crabby exploded into ash as the apex of the uppercut burst into beautiful pink flower petals that faded away along with Crabby’s remains.

As Sakura landed, she jumped ten feet into the air over a targeted zap of electricity. On the way down she riddled Zappy with cannon fire, knocking it over. Zooming over, she dropped into crouch and swung her leg around, sweeping Zappy up in a concussive three-hit vortex that pulled it upwards. “Take this!” She finished it off with a launching high kick, her own leg going beyond 180 degrees, her foot almost going over her shoulder. Another explosion of blue-pink energy, and Zappy too was banished.

Sakura popped off, victoriously punching the air and swishing her palm at the falling ashes, grunting a few japanese taunts in the dead monster's direction. “Konoyaro.” Calm reached her heart again after the elation of victory and revenge cooled off. She spat some saliva into the water and wiped some of the blood leaking from her nose.

Sniffing, she rubbed her bruised arms, holding them to her chest. A little red in the face, she smiled at Bella. “Thanks for coming to help me, Bella-san. Kinda lost my cool a bit back there.” Rubbing the back of her neck, she averted her eyes and looked down at her arms. Still softened as a part of the trade off. Of course her ki was still strong, but she was lacking the extra edge that being in peak physical condition gave her.

“I still need Araisho’s mobility and firepower. But I’ll be happy to finally set my sneakers on some solid soil again after we get outta this place. And get all my muscles back. Plus, I’m a little worried someone will end up yanking on my cat tail.” Sakura said. As for the spirits of the trio of dead monsters, Sakura was content to let them melt into the murk they were born from, or let one of the others pick them up. She wasn’t interested in having them as Strikers or as items.

Huffing out a sigh, she reunited with the others. She watched her bruises de-purple, her burns smooth out, and her gashes knit together. All thanks to Blazermate’s healing abilities. “Thank you, Ms. Blazermate.” She bowed.

Once down the ladder of the well, Sakura gawked at the strange formations on the ceiling of the grotto. “What the heck?” She said, and that was really all she had to say about that.

The next vista was repulsive yet alluring. This was one of those houses of horrors that beckoned one in. She wanted to see what was around the next corner. She especially wanted to see what was behind that distant fog wall. The last thing she wanted to do was fall into the first floor and get separated from her comrades. However if that did happen, being a ship girl, she wouldn’t be lost in the drink. Therefore the risk was much less to her than it was to say, King Bowser.

Sakura hopped over the railing, planting her feet on the shoddy wooden construction. “Only way is forward. Just like you guys, my bet is on that foggy door. The scariest looking place is always where the next challenge is. That’s what I’ve learned so far.” Carefully, Sakura walked forward, one foot in front of the other. Hopefully, she’d be able to deduce if the second floor was solid. Junior had already sent some of his minions, but they looked like they weighed a few dozen pounds at most.

Sakura bounced up and down on the second floor. “Seems pretty solid to me- Waah!” She yelped and suddenly fell over, like the floor had given out. But she hopped back to her feet shortly thereafter. “Sorry. Not funny.” She giggled sheepishly. Then she kept moving forward, looking to make the long trip over to the foggy door.

@Majoras End@Lugubrious

---

Linkle rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet until they heard the sound of approaching footfalls and the click of the door unlocking. Slowly it opened up to reveal they're skittish quarry. "Hello!" Linkle greeted warmly, Frisk following her up with a punny explanation as they both presented their presents to her.

All they accomplished was changing the expression on Treat's face from wariness to confusion, but as far as Linkle was concerned that was a step in the right direction. Still, it took a little doing to convince her that this wasn't some kind of wolf hunt and that the presents were safe to take. As she took them her face turned as red as her eyes and she buried he face in her hands, a posture that Linkle empathized with recognized. "No, no, it's fine. They're not even really my ears, they were more like a parting gift from a friend. It's complicated. I'm not even offended."

Albedo affirmed that she didn't have anything to apologize for in his own logical way. He had a way of pointing out things that should be obvious, but somehow wasn't at the time. Frisk on the other hand laid a comforting hand on Treat, held up a stick, and just offered to bonk anybody that messed with her. Linkle found it hard to argue with that because it was the solution she would have gone with. It was the solution she had gone with, when she was their age. Still, that would end really badly in this world. "I wouldn't go that far. They'll bonk back, trust me. That would cause a riot."

The inside of the house was dark, but not dark enough that what little light there wasn't didn't gleam eerily off the eyes of the dolls that littered the house. At least it was confirmed that Treat wasn't the one obsessed with dolls, given the portrait hanging in the parlor. The dark woman depicted in the frame was contrasted by the white garbed, putrid looking doll seated on her lap. Linkle got an inkling of a suspicion about this situation, one that was confirmed when they entered the living. True to its name, Treat was living in this room. She had her whole life set up here in front of a dingy little fireplace. She didn't live in this house because it wasn't hers, she just occupied it. Linkle guessed that the portrait must depict the mansions true owner, from before it was picked up and flung haphazardly into this world.

The sight of her operating the Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace and the short conversation about the relative coldness of this place and Albedo's outward camp inspired a few more questions in her. First of all what kind of magic ran that fireplace and where could she get one, because she found it just as enchanting as the shower back at the motel. If she had had one of those things back when she was a kid she wouldn't have been able to resist throwing all manner of item in there, especially if money popped out whenever you burned stuff. The other question, though, she quietly asked Albedo before settling down next to Treat and Frisk as close to the fireplace as she was able.

"How cold is it in here?"

The answer she got was that it was basically the same temperature as it was outside.

As she watched as the wolf girl start on opening the gifts Linkle offered, "I've got some real logs on my sled we could throw in there." That line of thought stopped as soon as Treat pulled out her first gift. Appropriate enough it was a treat, what looked like a set of candies in their own crisp packaging. From Linkle's she extracted a long black shawl, something that Linkle nodded approvingly at. Good choice, destiny. From Frisk's she pulled out a weird hat that Albedo identified as a drink dispenser and a pack of what looked like potions that glowed a bright blue. She had to resist asking to try one.

Overwhelmed, Treat broke down in tears. Linkle didn't mind this time. There was a difference between good and bad crying, just like with good and bad stupid. This was a good cry. It was lucky Frisk was there to wrap the girl in the hug Linkle didn't feel like she could give her in her state. Instead she leaned in closer. "If I left someone as good as you worse off for having met me I wouldn't be any kind of hero at all. I really am sorry that I scared you, Treat. You want to be friends?"

Once through the Riders and toward the top of the mountain, the Seekers encountered a massive bear. "Yeesh." Jesse rolled her shoulder, contemplating their options. No matter what, it didn't seem to wake up. A few ideas went around. Of all of them, Jesse probably liked the bear brainwash plan the most.

"Yeah." She nodded along with Sora and some of the others. "Killing this bear would just leave a bad taste in my mouth. They didn't do anything wrong. Killing something while their asleep is also a dick move. I think between the twenty-something of us we can come up with an alternative." Jesse said.

Jesse unholsted her Tool Gun, considering the weapon. She crouched down, keeping her voice decently low. "I could try shrinking it. Doing so might wake it up, but if we can evade it for long enough I'm bet with the jumpstart I have on it, we could get it down to cub size and just scare it off." Jesse thought about if that would really be better than just killing it. This creature probably relies on its size to survive. So shrinking it and leaving it is probably a death sentence anyway. On the other hand, did she really give a shit about that? She was in fucked up video game narnia land. There was a significant chance the bear had just been sleeping here for the entire duration of the World of Light and would sleep there for all eternity.

"Hmm. Alternatively, it could be a... magical creature. Maybe my Tool Gun beam just bounces right off, I dunno." Jesse rubbed her chin.

"Or I could just shrink it while we all blow the poor bastard to smithereens. Again, bad taste, but we'd get over it and there's less of a chance any of us get mauled to death. Or we just keep looking for a way through the mountains and then there's a zero percent chance this bear mauls any of us." Jesse shrugged. In the distance, she spotted Laharl running up behind everybody.

"Upfh." Jesse made an amused noise. "Keep it down, would you?" She said, even though that didn't really matter.

With nearly two dozen people around who could put their heads together in order to get to the bottom of the team’s bear predicament, Tora decided to give his weary bones some much-needed, much-deserved rest. He found a comfortable pile of leaves to use like a bean bag chair and parked himself there to catch his breath, filling his lungs with wonderfully crisp air. Despite two whole days spent exploring the Sandswept Sky, trudging, trundling, and battling through its sweltering heat, he just couldn’t get used to such an inhospitable climate. Poppi no doubt felt the same, with the hot, sandy environment taking a constant toll on her systems that demanded continuous counteraction, and in truth Tora worried a lot more about her than his own comfort. All said, even the toasty badlands of Mor Ardain seemed nicer by comparison, which was saying something. Sure, it had been an incredible trip and all, especially the whimsical candyland around Parnasse and the majestic city of Al Mamoon, but exposure to a more temperate climate reminded the Nopon just how badly he wanted to call this place quits and go somewhere nicer.

“Ahhh,” he sighed in relief. “Nice, refreshing breeze make Tora big happypon.”

Standing beside his leaf pile, Poppi patted his head. “It nice to give internal regulators break. Still, where we going it going to get very cold, very fast. Please enjoy while Masterpon can.”

Tora sighed again, this one a bit heavier than the last. The obligation of a Seeker of Light meant expeditions into ever more dangerous and unfriendly places, overcoming both terrible odds and conditions for the sake of the mission. He couldn’t see into the future, but he could look up past redwood boughs, swishing fall-color leaves, and snow-flaked crags at the literal mountain of hardships that awaited him. Finally escaping the awful desert heat only to end up missing it a couple hours later would be a stroke of irony. No matter where he went on this adventure, things probably weren’t going to get much better–just a different shade of stressful. “Grass always greener on other side,” he grumbled, but even if the road ahead looked tough, he didn’t plan to pack it in. He’d come a long way from Tora the Hermit, the Nopon who slogged through each day in isolation waiting for his ship to finally come in. Rather than fixate on the future in hopes of a paradise that might never come, he could savor the little moments of peace and company, like lying in a bed of leaves in the dappled sunlight and brisk air of this autumnal forest of colossi. The Nopon’s breathing steadied, and with his wings tucked snugly around his body he listened to the others debate what to do next.

Yoshitsune, who it seemed had decided to persist in accompanying the group despite the exceptional difficulty that the mountain climb promised him, favored fighting the brown-furred behemoth that blocked the Seekers’ path if nobody could communicate with him. Big Band greeted his ideas with skepticism, since they banked on the bear sleeping so deeply that not even direct attacks would wake him, or that someone capable of animal speech could rouse the beast when all other attempts at waking him went unheard. In a similar vein, Sectonia suggested mind control, though that amounted to an attack and came with the condition that the entire group pitch in to stop the creature from moving.

“Fight him? Brainwash him” Tora interjected, horrified. “How rude! How you feel if you just napping peacefully, and suddenly along come meanypons and attack for no reason? Also, big bear Gleaming, so if we hurt him it become battle to death! It not bear fault he in way, so no need be cruel, especially since friends are heroes!” That statement, of course, rubbed Mao the wrong way, but the demon kept quiet for now.

Sora countered with a different strategy, which unbeknownst to either him or the detective actually saw use by the team when confronted with the wall of ruins two days prior. Since then, however, the group had grown a whole lot, and not everyone could be carried by the gang’s resident fliers. Plus, even assuming generous use of Jesse’s Tool Gun, such a plan still didn’t account for resistance from the mountain itself.

“We gotta keep A, together, and B, a low profile,” Band was saying. “Far as we know, this whole place is one big accident waitin’ to happen, and who knows what kinda enemies we might find. The way I see it, our fliers are like insurance. They can rescue folks who fall or get in trouble, or get us around a problem when there’s no other way. Call me paranoid all y’all want, but we can’t afford to spend ‘em if it ain’t an emergency.”

Joker, having been pondering the situation with crossed arms, gave a nod. “Besides, this is the first puzzle we’ve run into on our way up the mountain. If someone’s taking a test and has to cheat on the very first problem, maybe he shouldn’t take the test.”

“Sho ‘nuff. We oughta try everythin’ we can.” Band declared. He turned to face the bear and began to deploy his instruments. “Luckily, I got rhythm. Let’s see if I can’t make ‘em dream a li’l dream of me.”

The detective produced his saxophone and began to play. With an expert hand he manipulated his instrument’s keys, popping open and shut the little holes all along its length to control the pitch and fill the redwoods with blues. When his audience snored, he merely played over it, putting body and soul into such a lively, motive solo that Tora couldn’t suppress the urge to leap from his bed of leaves, with Poppi right on his heels. They needed to exchange no words to understand that music lit a fire inside each of their spirits that couldn’t be extinguished. As if all their fatigue had been washed away the pair launched into dance, totally unsuited for the music but wholly from the heart. All too soon the performance came to an end, and with it both Poppi’s jig and Tora’s frolic. Unfortunately, despite the music and affection shown to him, the bear snoozed on. Band stowed his sax and shrugged. “Ah, well. Not a bad note, at least!”

“Tora thinks he enjoyed it!” the Nopon reassured the musician. To him at least, it looked as though the beast smiled in his slumber.

The Phantom Thieves, meanwhile, had continued to workshop a solution. Finally, Skull snapped his fingers. “Wait, hold up! Mona, your guy Zorro’s got a spell that can wake someone up, right?”

Mona shook his giant head. “Not wake someone up, necessarily. Patra cures Sleep when it’s inflicted as an ailment.”

“Huh?! Waking up is the same damn thing as not sleeping!” Skull insisted. “Give it a try, at least!”

To the catlike thief’s chagrin, he went through with his ally’s suggestion, summoning his Persona to cast Me Patra on the dormant bear before them. A pillar of gentle blue light shone for a moment, then faded, but when it was gone the creature slept on, blissfully unaware that anything happened. Mona shot Skull an annoyed glance. “There, just like I said, only now I’ve lost more mana. Listen to me next time, dummy!”

Skull spun around to glare down at him. “Hey, get off my back! At least I’m thinkin’ of stuff!”

“You sure that’s what you’re doing?”

Before things could escalate any further, Panther stepped in. “Mona, please. Chill out.”

The little thief’s manner changed completely. “Whatever you say, Lady Ann!”

Hearing it just about made Skull’s eyes roll out of their sockets, and Panther’s weren’t far behind. She directed a helpless shrug Skull’s way, and with a grunt he turned his attention back to the task at hand.

At around that time, a sudden shout reached the group from a short ways off. Everyone turned to see none other than Laharl collapse among the branches and leaves, coated in sweat and dust from his run through the Rider-filled canyons of Redstone City. Tora sprinted over as fast as his little legs could carry him. “Never fear, no-shirtypon! Nopon Rescue Service on the way!” By virtue of nothing more than helping pick Laharl up off the ground, Tora somehow restored thirty percent of his vitality.

Right after the demon found himself blasted with a splash of water from Poppi’s Mech Arm, meant to shock his body into action as much as to quench his thirst. “Poppi thought you abandon team!” the artificial blade mentioned. “It good to see you again!” The same couldn’t be said by Mao, who smirked at his rival as Laharl shivered from his dousing.

While a few team members helped Laharl, Raz and Midna enacted their one plan, a two-pronged approach that involved physical contact. The aspiring psychonaut stroked the giant bear, which by itself did nothing but keep the creature happy, while the Twilight Princess went for his big, black nose. With some leaves she tickled its nose, which again prompted the reaction she noticed earlier, but by itself turned out to be insufficient. Dialing the tickles up a notch with the introduction of some feathery hair, however, provoked a much more notable response. The bear jerked slightly with a series of sharp inhales, then finally unleashed a terrific sneeze so powerful that it not only sent anyone directly in front of him tumbling away, but shot the bear himself backward. He slid a few hundred meters before coming to a stop in a bank of snow even bigger than himself, and through the cave opening poured light.

The tunnel itself proved to be very short, but it precipitated a remarkable change in the environment. Stepping out of it brought the heroes’ feet down upon snow, pillowy and cold, and when they took stock of their new surroundings, they looked upon a white forest bathed in soft, ephemeral pink by sunlight filtered through marshmallow clouds, their eyes wide in wonderment of winter.



As they watched, the bear rose from the snow drift where he lay into a sitting position. He loomed over them, his eyes aglow and his shaggy mane fraught with icicles, but his expression held no malice. When he opened his muzzle he spoke in a strange, booming tongue, but the meaning of his words echoed in the newcomers’ minds.

”I dreamt of your arrival. But you are too late. And this land is too hard, too cold. The spring blossoms sleep under the ice, high upon the mountain peak. There is nothing to do... but sleep.”

So saying, Baur laid his great bulk back down, and his eyes closed once more.

With the possibility of being attacked gone, the tension faded, and Big Band allowed himself to relax. He let out his breath in a long, low whistle. “Whew. I dunno what I expected, but this sure wasn’t it.”

“It’s beautiful,” Panther murmured, mesmerized. Towering trees arose from the snow-covered slopes as the land inclined further upward, creating rosy light rays of uncommon splendor. Here and there the terrain evened out enough to permit the existence of icy pools, interwoven together by brooks and rivers. The largest among them even featured a mist-veiled waterfall, pouring down from a higher section of mountain. Here and there stood lantern monuments, mostly unlit except for the one next to the waterfall, which not only burned but also floated above its pedestal like miniature planet, orbited by pieces of stone. It was a magical scene, but with the magic came a strong chill. Though not bitter cold, anyone without insulation would probably want to layer up, and none more than Panther. “Joker, can I have my coat now?”

As he withdrew it from his Inventory, Band gave some advice. “Now’s the time to put on those cloak thingies we borrowed from the sports shop.” He passed them out to anyone who came his way, quickly running through his stock of seventeen. The mantles would work well to keep the cold out, at least at this relative altitude, but without sleeves they would need to be thrown over the shoulder to allow for the use of one’s hands. With everyone clad in their shin-length gray mantles, they sort of matched his trench coat, too. Once everyone was warmly clothed, they could proceed. “Alright, let’s watch each others’ backs now, y’hear?”

The Phantom Thieves set off immediately, not on their own but giving the rest some room to breathe while preserving line of sight. Once Poppi switched to her Fire core, Tora bounced off through the snow as well. Though jovial, he kept his eyes peeled for any potential threats lurking around. Scattered around were grayish-blue plants like giant flytraps, motionless unless touched, at which point they would snap shut with a painful chomp. Tora ended up so focused on avoiding one that he accidentally ran into a bluish globule that dangled from an overhead branch, which he mistook for an icicle. It stuck to him, and with a yell the Nopon got hauled upwards, pulled like a hooked fish toward a triple-jawed plant creature. Once he got his bearings he managed to pry himself free with his wrench and land safely in Poppi’s arms, but the fisher plant appeared to take no damage, and merely let down its line again for next time. Of course, Peacock shot at it anyway.

Confident in the assumption that all kinds of enemies lay in wait throughout this wintry wonderland, the team began their climb anew, seeking various routes up and over the tricky terrain.



Though everyone could use a break out of the rain, their collective descent underground along the path that Hatty scouted for them could wait for a few moments while the victors collected their spoils. If every cloud had its silver lining, even in the midst of an ever more torrential downpour beneath storm skies, it was that the most grueling fights offered the most numerous rewards. With the grotto beneath the well about as safe as anyone could hope, common sense dictated that the heroes should hurry to collect the spirits that their aquatic enemies left behind and go down to make use of them in peace, but with more than a couple uncommonly adventurous souls on hand, things didn’t pan out quite so simply.

Bowser took it upon himself to approach the decrepit sea monster jammed into the eastern pit harbor, seemingly unfazed by her many spiked tentacles or elephantine proportions, so that he might better her situation. If the Koopa King expected to become pals with the beast, however, he found himself disappointed. Scylla seemed determined to drag anything and everything she could get her claws on down with her, and in the end took a concerted effort from several Seekers to finally put down for good. Even in death, however, the ungodly thing continued to linger as long as she could, and from her entrails Link managed to harvest a handful of useful items. Then, seeking perhaps to undue the infirmity stamped upon his being by his fusion with Northampton, Link took the spirit of Tidehunter into himself. As the Koopa Troop divided up their own rewards, and a handful of heroes took on brand new Strikers, the Hero of the Wild’s kaleidoscopic lightshow briefly illuminated the drowned village center.



Once the looters finished up, they followed their counterparts out of the downpour and below ground into Hatty’s grotto, trusting in her hat’s sense of direction. After them followed Spinal, for though Link’s attempts to communicate with the skeletal pirate resulted in no more than awkward silence, the possibility of grand riches seemed to provoke some kind of response after all. Even if he didn’t chance upon the Mask of the Ancients in the island depths, no pirate with his salt turned down a chance at loot, and where Spinal went his Dhelmise followed. Rather than climb down he just jumped, and though he burst apart on impact the cackling skeleton wasted no time pulling himself back together.

Another few moments and everyone was down, although not without a little trouble. The ladder, already warped dangerously by the weighty witcher’s descent, ended up snapping halfway through Bowser’s climb and expediting his journey to the cave floor, although a little fall wasn’t going to hurt much more than the Koopa King’s pride. Unfortunately, the grotto offered the weary heroes little in the way of hospitality, and investigation into the offensive, vicious rotten-fish smell that assaulted their noses yielded a good view of a repulsive scene. Nadia didn’t need to look around at her teammates’ faces of profound disgust to know that nobody liked the thought of going down there. After Delsin’s question received an answer by way of Hat Kid’s reluctant point downward, though, there could be little doubt that their future held a whole lot of slugs.

“Eugh…” Nadia winced, finding that when she withdrew her hand from the wooden balcony railing it came with a few globules of unidentifiable slime. Everything about the scene, from the despicably abundant slugs to the weird lights to the almost gelatinous feminine figures oozing from their shells, to the handful of creepy murloc shamans tending to them, struck her as incredibly, unignorably wrong. Like some long-buried, primordial secret, never meant for human minds. Still, it couldn’t be helped; it wasn’t like the group could turn back now, or even hang around up here for that matter. The algae-slick boards beneath her groaned beneath the weight of the others who’d come up around her to look down from the second-floor balcony across the tons upon tons of squishy, pale invertebrates, and those sea maggots were probably inching toward them right this minute, along with who knew what else. And thanks to Delsin’s report, the threat of mutative disease loomed over all; the heroes needed to blow this joint as soon as possible.

The feral appreciated Link’s attempt to downplay the situation, but she didn’t know if she could agree with him. The Maw sucked of course, no bones about it, and it was many things, but was it more flat-out gross than this? Nadia didn’t think so. Hatty confirmed for him that the fog-shrouded cave system past this cavern was their destination, which meant that the Parasite Farm below was their way forward, like it or not. Blazermate’s attempt to break the ice, meanwhile, earned her a dubious glance. Was she not happy with the wretched, shambling, smelly minions of debatable use she’d amassed already? A cry from the side made Nadia jump, and she punched her muscles to jump to Sakura’s aid, but the girl was already back up before the feral could reach her. When the street fighter revealed her prank, Nadia let out a dry chuckle as she shook her head. “Ya got me.” Her attention then turned to Kamek and Rika as they sent out a few of their minions to probe the road ahead for any unwanted surprises. Bella deployed a few seaplanes of her own to lend to their efforts, but their reconnaissance failed to provoke anything to reveal itself. “Looks like we’re not getting out of this one,” Peach sighed as the scouts returned, opening her parasol with a fwoomp. With a final wry smile she vaulted over the railing and floated down.

Nadia watched her go, noting that she’d be able to glide over and skip most of the Parasite Farm. smart. She couldn’t do that, but she had her own tricks. The feral gave the others a cheeky salute and dove over the railing. As she fell she twisted enough to grab hold of a plank on the balcony floor, after which she allowed her muscle fibers in her arm to extend, lowering her down toward the slug beds. While she couldn’t stretch the whole way down, a few small swings back and forth built up enough momentum for a somersault leap onto one of the boardwalks that lay atop the malodorous heap, and naturally Nadia landed on her feet. For the first time since arriving on Carcass Isle she found that she wasn’t standing in at least ankle-deep water, much to her delight, even if these bone-white boards weren’t exactly dry. Or clean. With a grimace she kneeled down over a slay slug nestled between two of the planks, but not even a curious poke evoked any signs of life. “I think…they’re dead?” She glanced around, wary of the snail women but otherwise unthreatened at the moment. “If nothing’ else, the rest of ya could just jump straight down into ‘em. Like a big ol’ ball pit, hehe…yuck.” She spotted the glutinous wretches beginning to crawl her way, making weird noises a little too mistakable for voices for her taste. Uneasiness put springs in her feet as the feral scampered across the boardwalks and toward the far end of the cavern. The shamans she passed shrank away from her, holding their fishbowl stalves warily. If they didn’t want a fight Nadia wasn’t going to give them one.

After a minute or two, everyone -even Spinal- had crossed the parasite farm. Aside from the odd lunge from a snail woman, easily avoided and left behind, nothing troubled them. In contrast to the aggression of their village-dwelling cousins, the murloc shamans offered no fight, instead wholly concentrated on whatever they were doing in their little nooks and corners throughout the cavern. Nadia did not dwell on it, but approached the branching path alongside the others. At this point the planks ended, forcing everyone to walk on the invertebrates themselves, but luckily the creatures seemed to be as tightly-packed as they were gummy, which made for better footing than one could have hoped for. Only that one tunnel out of the four present featured that bizarre fog, whose nearly two-dimensional surface struck Nadia as weirdly stable. The others led to the left-front, left-rear, and right respectively. Before she or the others could get too close, however, the slug mound before them began to shift, and a reviled presence made itself known. At first Nadia mistook the shapes arising from the mass as large slugs, but the emergence of the thing’s full body rendered her only more confused. This wasn’t a slug, or even a sea creature, but nothing more or less than a giant, disembodied hand in a featureless white glove.

The response of a few other Seekers, however, was immediate. They attacked without warning, giving cues for the newer recruits to join in on a preemptive strike against what surely must be a terrible enemy, only for their shots and spells to fizzle out against a bubble shield that became momentarily visible with each strike. It quickly became clear that no amount of force would harm the entity, no matter how much the veteran heroes might want it. When the Parasite Farm at last fell silent, the entity gave a wave of greeting, and spoke. It spoke not with words, but with vibrations of the very air itself, twisting and distorting a sound into existence that thrummed into the very cores of the heroes before it.

”Seekers of restoration, thwarters of curses. The depths weigh heavy on your hearts, stained as they are by the darkness into which you’ve plunged, yet still you have risen, bubbling up toward the surface. Yet this world’s curse is as bottomless as the sea, the source of all greatness, all things that be. It is too late now to escape it. All things must come, sooner or later, unto the abyss from which they came”.

Master Hand snapped its fingers, causing the fog wall behind it to turn black. Nadia felt a sudden pain in the palm of her left hand, and when she looked at it, she watched a pitch-black inscription appear on her skin that read 05:00:00. A chill ran down her spine as the entity continued.

”Before you traipse blindly onward and succumb to the deep, I will stop you here. If you would break the curse, you must first understand that speed is life. At the end of each of these tunnels you will find a fearsome foe. If all three spirits are not brought here within five minutes, you will die. Three.”

Nadia gulped, her bright blue-green eyes scanning the tunnels. “Wait, huh? You’re kitten me, right?”

”Two.”

She looked at the others, desperate for explanation. “What is this? Do you know this thing?”

”One.”

Peach grimaced as she rushed an explanation. “I’m sorry, Ms. Fortune. This is Master Hand, and it’s appeared right before we fight each region’s boss to try and screw us over with a ridiculous challenge. It looks…”

The air split with the sound of the entity’s command. ”GO!”

The seconds on Nadia’s hand began to tick down, and what was happening finally sank in for her. “Oh, hell.”

Peach clenched her teeth. “It looks like we’re on the clock! Listen, everyone. We’ll split into three teams of five so as to not put all our eggs in one basket. No time for drafts, just pick a tunnel and go, go, go!” So saying, the princess kicked her harness into gear and zoomed back toward the left-rear tunnel.

“Lightnin’ round, huh?” With a wry smile Nadia turned to sprint down the left-front tunnel. “Mew-sic to my ears.”



The left-rear tunnel led Peach to a large cavern that consisted mostly of a bright like, as shiny and still as a field of turquoise crystal. From that body of water and beneath the vaulted cavern roof with its massive stalactites rose a cluster of chiseled ruins dominated by the pillars and arches so characteristic to the temples of glorious antiquity. For a moment the Princess strained to identify whatever adversary that Master Hand placed here for her, even going so far as to wonder for a brief but terrifying instant if this might all be an elaborate trap, but she did not wait for long. She spotted ripples in the tranquil waters before the ruins, and from them rose a shape that Peach only for a moment mistakenly identified as human. Before her lurched a web-fingered, glassy-eyed, purple-scaled monstrosity, a vile parody of the female form, and the Princess readied her weapons to destroy it. Unfazed, the Siren put her conch to her swollen lips, and filled the cavern with her song.



At the end of the left-front tunnel Nadia found a giant flooded cave, its floor bottomless water as far as she could see. The far side featured a few immense stone columns, seemingly natural, beyond which she could see only fog. More importantly, she spotted the roughly triangular stone platform that crested the surface in the cavern’s center, the only foothold for anyone without a shipgirl spirit to her name. Without a moment to lose, she gathered herself and leaped from the mouth of the tunnel, soaring over the water for a moment before she landed and came to a stop on what she assumed would be her arena–the battlefield for her fight with whatever adversary that freaky hand had in store for her. No sooner did she make contact with the platform than her opponent appeared. Out of the water launched a the Oceanid, a living creature of pure Hydro energy. Serenely graceful, the water elemental soared over the platform, her single radiant eye fixed on the intruders.

“An assassin from our homeland? Or a fool who tresspasses upon the waters of the Fishing Hamlet?”

Like a dancer she whirled around, scattering orbs of water. Nadia dodged out of their way, assuming them to be no more than projectiles, but when the orbs took on the shapes of various animals she was forced to rethink her assessment. Boar, crane, hawk, and crocodile borne down upon her, ready to tear the feral limb from limb.

“Coveting the shapes of the living, pure water can take on many forms,” the Oceanid murmured. “In this way shall water deliver your punishment.”



Cackling as if he hadn’t a care in the world, Spinal took off down the rightward passageway, sword and shield raised for a fight. Bella reached out a hand after him. “Monsieur, wait!” Completely ignored, the Water Princess looked back toward Sakura. “Well, zat’s as good a way as any. Hurry, mon cherie!” With her leviathan tail in tow, Bella sprinted through the tunnel, her feeting pounding against the bodies of lifeless phantasm slugs. The path led her around a wide left turn and then a sharp right, then abruptly opened up into a new cavern, its recesses dimly lit by phosphorescent sponges and corals. Water pooled in its depths, and from it rose fascinating natural formations of stone, although they didn’t interest Bella nearly as much as the figures perched upon them, who were currently watching Spinal run around the room's perimeter to get at them.

The Seaplane Tender gasped, freezing solid. With wide eyes she stared at the enemies arrayed before her, not for any inherent horror, but for their familiarity. Closest to the water and by far the largest of the three was the New Southern Battleship Princess, laying oh-so-casually atop her crab-clawed, cannon-covered monstrosity with her legs crossed and a smile in her eyes. To her right, seated on the stone archway, glowered the stern-looking Abyssal Pacific Princess in lavender-tinted white, the waters beneath her churned by the presence of a ghostly leviathan who whose gargantuan maw yawned open like a gate to the underworld. Each wielded a spear, be it slung casually over the lap or held firmly in a ready stance, but it wasn’t the attendants that affected Bella so. Instead she gazed at the strange figure above and behind them, wearing fine clothes, an eerie mask, and a ring of gleaming black iron. Seaplanes hovered around her, their eager snapping teeth saying what the Abyssal’s masked face would not.

“It’s her.” she croaked, her voice low and urgent, as her tail coiled into firing position. “The Abyssal Sun Princess. Our master. The Commander of the Abyssal Fleet. And Pacific, and New Southern too?!” As she clutched in fear at her skirt, her tail went limp, and she let out a rattling breath. “M-mon cherie…I am sorry. We are doomed.”

She knew she’d been on to something with the tickling when she got some similar near sneezes, but the leaf alone wasn't enough. She ended up having to use her twin-tails as little ticklers, which put her right in the firing line hair when both the inevitable and the unexpected happened, as the bear sneezed itself awake as intended, but also sneezed so hard it catapulted itself out the other end of the cave

”FuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck” went Midna as Newtonian physics did their thing and she was hurled past the group and away into the woods somewhere.

The bear, presumably the bear anyway, then spoke in their minds about spring trapped under ice to which Minda’s response was to pull herself out of the bush she had landed in and yell ”Then maybe don’t live on a freezing cold mountain then!” at the bear, but alas, her advice fell on deaf ears as the bear promptly went back to sleep.

She was then given a moment to think, and it was clear that this was probably the best possible outcome. The way was unblocked, and they were not in the midst of being mauled by a giant bear. Now Midna had suspected it might have been some kind of mystical guardian or something like the light spirits of Hyrule, but it had been a touch of a gamble. Fortunately it had paid off and the worst that had happened was Minda being forced to pick leaves out of her hair and sticking close to Sectonia for a bit to heal her bumps and bruises.

The sight on the other side of the cave, of snowy vistas, falling water causing a hanging mist all bathed in the pink light might have been worth being sneezed on, but unfortunately Midna took one look at the place and immediately had the pattern recognition bit of her brain lob ‘torch puzzle’ at her frontal lobe as she saw the set of unlit lanterns scattering the place and the prominent lit one sitting in the middle of it all.

She ended up spending a bunch of time hovering around, using dry-ish branches to ferry the fire around to light all of them, because she knew that she’d not be able to let it go if she didn't, but not before getting dressed for the winter weather.

Midna’s gab specifically consisted of the uniform of an X-naut, that she’d gotten back a Rocket HQ. The nice warm set of gloves, boots and bright red crossed jacket all snuggled up around her body, though her being a bit (but only a bit) lankier than them made her not the perfect picture of a x-naut down there (she wasn't round enough either by far) but fortunately this was all about heat, not infiltration. Up top her neck and flower face were snuggled in the cozy white ruff while her eyes were double protected from snow and snow glare by a set of goggles worn atop her mask and helm. Finally the hat sat on top of her fused shadow (replacing the sombrero) which caused the little flaps on top to stick up like alert bunny ears.

All in all, very snug. Amusing the outfit even came with a nice red and black striped stocking that wrapped around her flygon tail keeping even that added limb nice and snug and thematically on-brand.

Her ride meanwhile got no such luxuries, but fortunately her wolfos was still nice and snug in its soft fur, and likely would be just fine for a fair bit of climbing yet.

With that all sorted, the princess, having been able to dress herself in a flash thanks to the way the alternate costumes worked, and her steed set about bounding around the clearing lighting up all those torches to see what, if anything, would happen as a result while they waited for everyone else to do their more traditional, and therefore manual, wrapping up.

Geralt, like the others, found the next part of their journey absolutely sickening. Unlike some of the others, the giant Witcher had no methods by which to avoid traipsing through the damnable lake of slug-like creatures, corpses bursting under his heavy boots. In true professional fashion, Geralt ignored both the sickening sounds and the nauseating odors that pervaded the cavern, instead directing his energy ahead and to their goal. Soon, the Guardian of this cursed place would be felled, and the Seekers could carry on in their journey.

Their arrival at the fog wall quickly proved otherwise however, with Master Hand showing his face once more. Geralt, remembering this thing from when they'd first met Link, and he joined the other Seekers in quickly blasting away at it, firing a few shots from his plasma pistol. The damned thing, of course, was shielded by some invisible barrier, no doubt the work of Galeem himself.

And now it was monologuing. Wow, that...was entirely fitting, wasn't it? Only the most insufferable bastards monologued, and this thing was definitely among those ranks. He couldn't wait to be done with this thing. Unfortunately, it would seem that this puppet of Galeem's was more than happy to play with their strings, imposing some time-based curse that afforded them a scant five minutes to slaughter and pilfer the Spirits of three chosen champions, with their deaths being the price of failure.

And it was counting down. How needlessly dramatic.

Geralt was off like a shot out of a cannon, choosing the left-front tunnel that Nadia had also gone down, trailing just behind her as the two ran. After a moment, they saw a wide, open cave, filled with water and sporting only a triangular stone platform for anybody to stand upon. Some of the others might be able to utilize the water if they had Shipgirl Spirits in them, but Geralt and Nadia were relegated to the limited area of the platform.

Once Nadia, and a moment later, Geralt, touched down, a being composed entirely of water appeared, asking if they were assassins after it specifically, or merely fools trespassing upon this land. Geralt, deciding that he did not have the time to fuck around, promptly summoned the Breaching Bastion and pointed it at the Oceanid, watching as the three orbs of water it launched transformed into several animals made of water.

"Huh. That's not something you see every day." Shrugging, Geralt placed his hand on the Bastion and shouted, "Cover your ears!" Before ordering it to fire on the Oceanid, quickly turning the rest of the guns on the hawk, whose agility might cause some issues.

That having been handled, Geralt drew his silver blade and took up a guarded stance, letting the Bastion do most of his fighting for now, and mostly fighting to prevent the enemies from reaching and damaging it.

The slog of going up the red stone area against the flow of mad racers was over. The Travelers pulled themselves passed the starting line, all too glad to be out of the race track. Primrose pulled out her fan to cool herself off, while Therion successfully fought the urge to kick over some of the racer's bicycles knowing it would do little harm to them anyway. It would have been a poor way to vent anyway. While the group took a short break to regain their energy, the thief among them was unexpectedly approached.

"...?" Therion furrowed his brows. He couldn't help being suspicious at Tora's generosity, it was just his nature. Though at least he wasn't being singled out or anything, that would have really put him on edge.

"Er, thanks." He fixed the retreating pair of Nopon and Blade with a strange look, though once they moved on he didn't dwell on them. He peered up, judging just how much father they had to go. Coincidentally, Primrose did the same.

Progress indeed, she thought. The snow would be harder to get through in general with the cold and the ice, but hopefully there weren't more racers up there. If there were a bunch of people coming down in sleds and risking an avalanche, then... well, she didn't even want to think about that. It would be enough to wipe out their whole party.

Still, they advanced. Over rocks, into grass, around various little critters. And then -

"Oh, my." Skull had put into words everyone's thoughts. This bear was huge. And apparently blocking the path forward. Pretty quickly the group jumped to discussing the best way to go about this situation. Certainly if they could get by the creature it might shorten the trip as Band suggested.

"...what, you want to wake that thing up?" Therion asked, skepticism written all over his face. Did they not see that was a giant bear? He could picture it chomping down on a handful of the group while the others slipped by. Even if it wasn't aggressive, it was a bear. It'd wake up and see some snacks right in front of it and probably wouldn't be able to stop from helping itself to them. Well, he was going to make sure he wasn't part of the group offering themselves up as this thing's breakfast. He turned about-face, headed away from the bear to watch from a safe distance. If they did it and didn't get eaten then hey, more power to them. Though if he had to choose, that wheel-footed guy's plan of just killing it in it's sleep would be his plan if they absolutely had to get by it. Shrinking and brainwashing... he didn't give either one much thought. He left them to try their ideas out.

Therion didn't get all that far before a face unfamiliar to him collapsed dramatically before the group. "What now?" he groused.

Though the half-demon was unfamiliar to Therion, and surely a couple of others in the group as well, for Primrose that was not the case.

"Laharl?" She was surprised to see him there. Last she knew he was still in Al Mamoon, yet to leave after she'd told him about the Alcamoth. She hadn't seen him on the train either, and yet here he was having trekked up the mountain after them. "Are you alright?"

She could hear Therion's soft snort behind her as she approached Laharl, keeping a bit of distance due to his... condition, even though she was mostly covered up in her cloak. She produced a waterskin and offered it to the boy after Tora and Poppi's rousing. She could only guess why he decided to follow them up the mountain now. A rush of wind blew from behind them with the bear's sneeze, clearing the way forward and sending a couple of their group flying back.

Therion gave an appreciative whistle, watching Midna and Raz be flung away and the bear pushing itself back. I'll be damned, it worked. He trotted over to the spot the giant animal had just vacated, looking out of the opening and into the tunnel that seemed to lead to the next area. The snow forest must be through here. He went through the tunnel, blinking the sudden light away once he emerged. When the bear rose up from the snow bank Therion was immediately on the defensive. His hand went to his short sword's hilt under his cloak, but the bear didn't attack. Instead, it spoke somehow.

"Tch." Being recited poetry by a bear... He tucked the sword back into his belt, loosening the tension in his shoulders somewhat when it fell back asleep. The tail end of the Seekers arrived just before that after getting Laharl situated.

"Too late...?" Primrose murmured, curious as to what that could mean. "You aren't taking a bear's words seriously, are you?"

"An intelligent, prophetic bear apparently." Maybe they were just words that didn't mean anything, but she still wondered about it as the group moved deeper into the snow. Once the dangerous plants were known, she summoned a small flame to her hand as insurance. It was a nice little source of heat as well. Therion clicked his tongue at the sight, as his own flame wouldn't come no matter how much he snapped his fingers together.

Laharl sputtered and coughed quite dramatically, shaking his head vigorously making his long antennae bounce as he shook flecks of water droplets from his hair.

Laharl blinked several times as he cleared his vision "Huh?" hearing a familiar voice jerked the half-demon from fussing over himself for a moment, his gaze drifted towards Primrose as she approached him cautiously to offer her waterskin to him.

"Of course I am!" snorted Laharl as if the question was ridiculous, he pointed his chin up and took the waterskin swigging it with a mighty gulp "I'm stronger than I look." the half-demon wiped an arm on his chin where water dribbled down, after which he gave his companion her waterskin back with a grin.

Before their conversation went any further it was interrupted by a gust of wind that blew the leaves around them up into the air in a cascade of fall colors, giving way to a small tunnel. As they went Laharl walked alongside Primrose while regaling her with the tale of how he got lost and found a stray dog in the alleyways of Al Mamoon, and how he returned it to the owner.

A rush of cold air made Laharl shiver as the group reached the other side of the tunnel, and into a snow-covered arboreal forest. It became clear that they had to be careful not to get caught up in the scenery of the woods, the group dressed in appropriate clothes and he hesitantly accepted a coat two sizes too large.

Sakura was still cringing out from her prank, hoping and grateful all the other Seekers would move on. Nadia was ready to leap into action. Wow, that was NOT funny. That would be haunting her tonight when she got into bed. Oof. Yikes. If there was any good to come from it, it was that Sakura would be too focused on that to really get squicked out by all the weird and unusual horrors lapping against the wooden boards below.

They were still pretty creepy. Lots of strange monsters. They didn't seem too dangerous, but it was all just a lot to take in. "This place is like...made of zombies." Sakura muttered, shuddering. At least they all had the strength to deal with it, now. Snail creatures and creepy crawlies flailed harmlessly at them, only succeeding in evoking a feeling of pity from Sakura.

Sakura blinked in muted surprise as a giant gloved hand appeared, and several people just started attacking it. Baffled, Sakura threw a lone hadoken at the thing, following the veterans que. All of the attacks fizzled out, making Sakura wonder if this thing was really even here, or if something could really be that powerful. "Who..?"

When the hand waved at everyone, she waved back. "Hi? Hello? What..?"

Soon it became pretty clear that not only was this hand an enemy, but a direct servant of Galeem. This thing was talking nonsense, and about to make them play some games right before the actual boss. Sakura's eyebrow ticced angrily. "What is this, Takeshi's Castle? Just let us through!" This was a startling development that she didn't like at all. Who was this thing? Why were they being forced to do this?

Growling, Sakura felt the pain in her palm, and lifted up the lip of the fighting glove around her palm to reveal the clock. This felt totally unfair. But Sakura decided to take solace in the fact that if this thing could kill them, it would probably just do it itself instead of making them play all these games. It probably just had Obstacle Course powers or something. Unless it was one of those bad guys that was stupid enough to keep giving the heroes chances to succeed over and over again, which she kind of doubted. The big hand probably had to try and kill them using only this challenge format, right?

Three spirits. Five minutes. Three routes. Kill or be killed. "Okay, no, this is fine! We can do this! See you guys in five minutes or less!" Sakura shouted encouragingly.

Sakura decided that, from the two things she had seen Spinal do, she liked him. He seemed like a character. Spinal picked a random direction and ran there, and Bella was going to follow him. The two of them had stuck together so far. Bella was one of Sakura's best friends in the World of Light.

"Right behind you, Miss Bella!" Sakura said with an affirmative nod. Sprinting along, Sakura slowed down as to not out pace the others too much, so they could all arrive together. Once inside the cavern, the street fighter took in the fighting arena, and their three enemies. Abyssals. Like Bella. Their very appearance seemed to shake Bella to her core. Doomed? They hadn't even thrown a single punch!

Sakura was distinctly offended, doing a double take towards Bella. "You can't be serious! I kicked your ass, didn't I?" Sakura said. She was ready to throw a punch at the fear and dread that had latched onto Bella's heart. But physically ripping the fear out of someone's soul wasn't an option, so Sakura just had to try and use her words. "We're so close! Only five more minutes of action! We can do this, I know we can!" She lifted and squeezed Bella's hand for a moment.

"Let's go, Blue Team! It's five on three!" She nodded back to Rika and Kamek, eyes wide, heart racing already. Sakura dashed forward, following Spinal's wake. She targetted the nearest one first. Closing the distance she fired her harness mounted cannons at the New Southern Battleship Princess. If she could dodge while moving forward, she would, but she could also block Crab Cannon fire at the cost of getting pushed further back.