---

Kamek did the magic thing, and everyone ended up inside the Threshold where the Radiant was. “What is that? Some kind of fucked up divine sock puppet?” Jesse said, squinting. Still, as far as Guardians went, this had to be one. Certainly had the look and feel for it. Big, majestic, powerful.

Just like that big ugly worm. But, like, the opposite.

Jesse moved to the front with her Shield to block some lances and rays. This, she found, was probably not a good idea. It would just keep shooting, and the attacks were coming in from all directions. She could hardly protect anyone like this, and it wasn’t even the best for protecting herself.

“Hey, Sven! Healing Waters!” She called out. The kooky alchemist tossed out a vial and it landed on the ground, creating a soothing blue pool of water that would heal whoever saw fit to stand in it. "That'll heal you up if you stand in it! Just, uh, don't stand in one place for too long!" Jesse warned.

"...Obviously!" She added with a nod of her head.

There was no pointing using Levitation here, as far as she could tell, other than quick bursts of height. Staying up there was just asking for trouble. Jesse made a noise of complaint when one of the spears scraped past her. She sprinted to the right and strafed, firing her Grip pistol shots in its general direction. Much more consistent DPS and easier to aim than Pierce shots, and this thing didn’t look particularly heavily armored anyway. She just had to do her part.

At the periphery of the desperate struggle, on the bridge that connected Tycoon’s platform to the rest of the structure, Giovanna hesitated. She knew that her allies needed help, and she wanted to help them. But when she stared at the battle that embroiled them, she couldn’t force herself to move. It was overwhelming. Various unknown powers went off constantly all over the arena, courtesy of both Karen and Tycoon, and the chaos created a profound visual overload for someone poised to join mid-fight. As bad as all that was, the sound rattled her much more. Over the racket of weapons and abilities Giovanna heard the Seekers’ howls of pain and roars of anger. Worst of all were the last words, barely audible over the raucous din, but far more deleterious for morale.

It was all happening so fast. Karin disappeared, taken somewhere by Karen, and after he returned alone Sakura mounted a final desperate assault, doomed to fail. Zenkichi got eliminated, empowering Pit with his last breath, and even Geralt went down for a moment. That left the spotlight on Pit against Nox, while Roland challenged Karen. Susie seemed to be persevering against Tycoon, but before Gio could so much as issue a warning, Sam had assassinated her. “Dammit,” she breathed. Where was everyone else?!

Of course, Giovanna wasn’t naive enough to ask that. They were gone. Those who hadn’t already disappeared, like Blazermate, Sakura, and Sandalphon, would join them thanks to Tycoon’s spells sooner or later.

More than anything, the secret agent wondered what all these extra enemies were doing here to begin with. Having waited outside, she’d spotted the Consul’s car as it sped through the Cornice, but she’d seen nobody in it but C himself. Giovanna only knew Mephisto from last night and Nox from Xatow’s briefing this morning, but she’d definitely heard about Jetstream Sam. If she and Pit struggled against his much less infamous associate Mistral yesterday, the swaggering swordsman would be a problem. That issue paled in comparison to Karen Travers, though. Everyone in Midgar knew about the OSF’s top player, best in class. This had been a trap, Gio realized, and after getting caught, the Seekers had been gutted.

That was why Gio hesitated. They’d outnumbered their foes more than two to one, but now, only three Seekers remained. They couldn’t win. Not anymore. There was no point in trying. Spurred on by Rei’s whining, Giovanna began to step backward. This was a foregone conclusion. Nox was going to succeed. Just what that meant for them, Midgar, or the world, Giovanna had no idea. There might be nowhere she could run. But at least she wouldn’t die here. Charging in now would be suicide. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, her anguish writ strikingly plain on a face that seldom betrayed anything.

As she turned to run, however, Gio hesitated once more. Against all odds, a certain angel seemed to be holding his own. Amped up by Heat Riser, Pit moved and struck like lightning. Again and again he descended on Nox, and though the Xelor strove to regain control of the fight, he couldn’t teleport fast enough to keep up with his opponent. Even his time shield failed to halt Pit’s offense, though ultimately its threat swung the momentum back in Nox’s favor as Mephisto interfered. Even so, just as it seemed like his foes’ jaws were about to close, the angel turned the tables. Knocking Nox away gave Pit the opening he needed to dispatch the enemy medic, finally allowing the Seekers to make definitive progress. But Giovanna knew it was too little, too late.

Meanwhile, Roland made a mess. To fight these monsters, he became a monster himself, horrifically half-melted into a mass of twisted meat. In that form he launched a vicious attack that dealt Karen Travers grievous injury, overpowering his defensive abilities to leave the Septentrion hemorrhaging blood. “Urgh…” he gasped, immediately grasping the severity of his wound. “I’ll…be back.” With that he activated Teleportation and immediately vanished, but the threat he left behind hung ominously in the air.

After recovering, Nox left Mephisto to die and warped over to challenge Tycoon itself, alleviating the aggro on Jetstream Sam. For a few seconds the two fought together, their peerless blades carving into the giant machine like a Thanksgiving turkey. When Karen made his announcement, however, Nox turned to look at the Fixer, mildly impressed. Roland, Geralt, and Pit were all coming, fatigued and wounded but not yet broken, and even Giovanna finally found it in herself to join their charge. “Not bad,” Nox admitted, banishing his sword as Sam took aggro. Around him, noxins full of wakfu had begun to accumulate. His eyes slid closed. “Looks like I’m forced to call you.”

I’ll always be here for you, Noximilien…

A handful of noxins zoomed out, divebombing the approaching Seekers in explosions powered by stolen life energy. The others injected their wakfu into Nox, and when the Watchmaker spread his arms wide, two enormous mallets of pure energy formed. “I pray that this drainage of wakfu is worth it!”

He lifted the hammers and descended, smashing the arena with such strength that it instantly snapped off the bridge and hurtled down into the depths of the mako reactor. In an instant, none of his foes had ground to stand on. Whirling around, Nox brought the hammers around in the mother of all baseball swings. They struck Tycoon, and the machine god hurtled into the wall behind it, where it stuck fast in a crater of its own making.

Meanwhile, Nox’s last teammate was falling. “Nooooooox!” he yelled, his voice trailing off as he plummeted down.

Sandalphon was falling too, though she barely felt it. Somehow, though her body begged her to give in, she’d managed to stay conscious. Tycoon’s spells hadn’t hit her as she lay on the floor, perilously low on blood. Was that a blessing, or a curse? It didn’t feel right to ask Illia for more, after everything she’d done already, but Sandalphon couldn’t help but pray as she slid toward oblivion. Goddess, she thought, unable to so much as speak. Deliver us…

“Do not worry!” the Watchmaker called. He flew over toward the Guardian, mallets extended to either side. “It’ll be undone. It’ll all be undone! All the harm I’ve ever caused. All the suffering we’ve endured!” With one final motion he brought his hammers together, crushing Tycoon’s torso and head between them. The energy wave of their impact split the rest of its body -and the wall behind it- vertically, and as the crumbling scrap turned to ash, Nox seized the Guardian’s spirit. His mallets vanished, and from inside his chest he withdrew a glowing cube. “With this final offering, I’ll finally be able to do what no Xelor has done before!” Eyes wide, he fed the spirit to the Eliacube, and the sides of the artifact began to open. Light poured out from within, engulfing Nox, the Cornice, Deep Ground, Midgar, the Dystopiascape, and everything. “I win!”

---

Goldlewis held his tongue for a moment, absorbing what he’d been told. This was an insane revelation to receive seconds before a climactic boss battle, but the arrival of Nox’s team threw a huge wrench in the Seekers’ plan. Of course, this wasn’t really up for debate, and he felt pretty sure that the others felt the same way. Whether or not Nox spoke the truth, his team couldn’t afford to lose one of the thirteen spirits they needed to defeat Galeem. That much was an immutable fact.

“Hate to break it to you,” the veteran began. “Bad shit happens to everyone. Happens to loads o’ good folks who don’t rightly deserve, every goddamn day. It ain’t fair.” His expression hardened. “So how many good folks did you happen to? How many got their lives unfairly cut short, just so that you could someday go back and right your wrongs? What makes you so worthy?””

Sandalphon stared at Nox, trying to parse the man beneath the mask. “It’s clear that any amount of sacrifice is justified if you cannot achieve your goal. At the same time, it seems like there’s a tiny part of you that isn’t completely gone. I understand your conviction; you must undo the evil you’ve wrought, so you must succeed. But even if you did manage to go back and save whoever it was you mentioned needing to save, could that person live with what you’ve done to make that happen?” She narrowed her eyes, her gaze questioning. “Could you?”

For a moment, Nox’s eyes were closed. When he opened them, however, they were as wide as saucers. In an instant, every ounce of resolve seemed to have drained from his body. He staggered drunkenly, almost falling to the ground. Karen stepped forward and grabbed the Watchmaker’s shoulder, trying to steady him, but Nox still dropped to his knees. Sandalphon watched, eyebrows slightly raised. Not believing for a moment that anyone could convince him, she only intended to use this conversation to buy time, but had she and the others actually gotten through to this madman, somehow? Or could this be some sort of ploy? Regardless, she kept her guard up, and after a moment, Nox lifted his gaze.

“Ten minutes!?” he cried, his tone utterly distraught. The intensity of it took Goldlewis aback. “All that wakfu spent for a jump of ten minutes in time?” Nox doubled over, holding his head in his hands as his voice grew more and more manic. “Two hundred years of researching and collecting wakfu for just ten measly minutes!? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

His shriek was harrowing–the cry of a broken man. Karen wrenched away from him, perturbed, and even Sam looked baffled, while Mephisto cowed like he’d been physically struck. Consul C, looking on, just tilted his head. All around, the noxins lying in wait lost power, going dark and falling apart. Shaking, Nox removed a dim cube from his chest, staring at it in helpless anger. “You accursed thing! Why lie to me!?” he choked out, delirious with despair. “You were supposed to help me go back in time! To rejoin my family! Answer me!” He lifted the cube and smashed it against the ground. “ANSWER ME!”

In reply, the cube just electrocuted him, and the Watchmaker sagged to the ground, gasping in pain.

Sandalphon stared at the cube, her pupils turning back from exclamation marks to power symbols. Then she looked at Nox. Not an ounce of fight remained in him. Some sort of revelation had defeated him. Was this artifact the source of his power? “As far as I can tell, this is no more than a magical battery. You say it spoke to you?”

Slowly, Nox dragged himself up onto his hands and knees. “The cube…” he practically sobbed. “It really was talking to me. I was supposed to succeed…”

Frowning, Goldlewis stepped forward. “Sounds like you’re off your goddamn rocker to me. Surely you ain't tellin’ me all those poor folks bit the dust just ‘cause you were hearin’ things?” Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, the veteran might have stepped forward to end things then and there, if not for noticing one thing. As Nox stared at him, at a loss for words, Goldlewis could see dark stains spreading among the bandages on his face. Were those…tears?

After a moment Nox stood, staring off into the distance. He took a gasping breath, and said, “I’m sorry.” Then he blinked away, never to be seen again.

In the silence that followed, wherein the Seekers wondered about the import of Nox’s words, Mephisto was the first to speak. “W-what is this!?” the boy gasped, white-knuckling his staff. “He just…we were supposed to…” He looked over at all the Seekers, then fell on his rear, trembling. “Why!? Can’t I have anything? Is my life just a…just a goddamn joke?”

Even Jetstream Sam grit his teeth, clearly dispirited by the team leader’s abrupt and inexplicable disappearance. “What a letdown.”

“...There’s still a way,” Karen muttered after a moment, his voice low and deadly serious. “The Red Strings. Even without Nox, we can still go back in time.” He scowled at Sam and Mephisto. “Lost your nerve, have you? No matter.” He stepped forward toward the Seekers, cracking his knuckles. “I’ll see this mission through.”

Goldlewis snorted in derision. “Hmph. You got some guts to take us on alone, partner. I’ll give ya that.” Emboldened by the dramatic reduction in enemies, he hefted his coffin, ready to fight. “Alrighty then. Come and give us all you’ve got.”

Just before the fight could begin, however, a shot rang out. Goldlewis flinched, assuming a defensive stance, but the bullet struck Tycoon instead. The machine god stirred, and when Goldlewis looked over at the source, he saw C with a smoking gun. Holstering his huge black pistol, the Consul sauntered forward toward the arena. “Quite a turn this has taken. Just the kind of drama I was hoping to see.” He stopped next to Mephisto, crossing his arms. “Still, we don’t want this to be too easy for ya, right? With Nox outta the picture, someone’s gotta sub in to take his place. Won’t be a full party otherwise.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “Plus, I’ll get yelled at if I sit back and let you guys squash the guardian. The others take this stuff so seriously…” He glanced down at Mephisto. “Doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun. Right, kid?”

The medic had clearly given up. “I…”

C reached down and touched his face. His magic worked in an instant, rewriting reality. Mephisto transformed, becoming an avian monstrosity with a black halo, a little like the Consul’s own. The sudden escalation took Sandalphon by surprise, her pupils turning into crosshairs as she jumped back and crouched into a firing stance, her Eye of Sol at the ready. The monster let out a warped cry that shook the arena, a hideous song that seemed to buff Karen and Sam a little. “What did you do?” the archangel demanded.

The Consul shrugged again. “Just keeping things interesting, like I said. Don’t worry though, I’ll play by the rules from here. My script has no room for accidents, got it?” On the other side of the Seekers, Tycoon unfolded its wings and slammed the ground like a war drum with its arms. Thanks to his helmet, C was already grinning. “Let’s rock.”

“That’s my line,” Goldlewis scoffed, but he was more than happy to oblige.

Breathing in, Sandalphon relaxed and stood to her full height. Though she didn’t understand what was happening, and her trigger finger itched, there was too much riding on the Seekers to get impatient now. It fell to her allies to make sure these leftover villains got their just resorts, and to her to keep the Seekers alive.





Though every one of the Seekers went into this final fight familiar with the overall game plan, the face-paced scramble against the Hollow Knight demanded that everyone live in the moment if they wanted to stay alive, pushing the team’s endgame to the back of Nadia’s mind. When the time finally came, courtesy of Organization XIII’s emissary, to dive to the heart of the matter, the memory of what lay in store for her forced the feral to steel herself. Then, with astonishing swiftness, she was plunged into the vessel’s dreams. The surreal final stage of the Seekers’ slugfest against Robin Goodfellow meant that this immersion didn’t come as a total shock, but Nadia didn’t know if she could ever get used to this sort of thing. Actually dreaming was one thing, but this was another. The clouds billowed with no breeze to stir them, and a strange sense of weightlessness meant that every motion took a concerted effort; just existing here was a fight to assert herself in a place where she fundamentally didn’t belong.

Then of course, there was the Radiance. She didn’t fly so much as float, staring down with unblinking, almost astonished eyes at the intruders who’d penetrated her real. The invader had become the invaded, and she was not happy, insofar as the almost celestial entity could express emotion. Her very presence scorched the minds of her challengers, threatening to slowly boil them from the inside out. Nadia knew she’d better get used to this dreamscape fast, and focus on the task at hand. The moment she turned her attention to more practical concerns, a sense of aggravation helped center her. If the Radiance planned to stay airborne, after all, hitting it would be a major hassle. Not even her bait launcher would help, since it materialized tigers wherever its steaks came to rest. That rather begged the question as to why she would get this close at all, but maybe the Seekers felt as wrong to her as she did to them. Well, if annihilation was a foregone conclusion, then Nadia meant to win. “Hey there! If you’re not happy to see us, don’t worry! You’ll be de-lighted real soon!”

Right away, blazing beams of light scoured the arena, several at once, flowing forth from the eyes of the Radiance. Like many of the others, Nadia moved to evade them. Her own eyes couldn’t shoot out lasers, but they were keen enough to perceive the barely-visible threads that preceded the actual rays, betraying her enemy’s aim. She saw Ganondorf try to return fire, but his summons’ projectiles’ slow arcs made them ineffective. In reply, the Radiance called down a thick pillar of light that traveled across the arena. It looked deadly, and if the battlefield were smaller it would have been a major issue, but Nadia was quick and the wall didn’t last long. A much more prominent threat appeared right after: an abundance of ivory blades that rained down from above, as lethal and linear as icicles. As the Radiance herself warped around, Nadia turned her attention skyward with gritted teeth. “This is sworda annoying.” Her frame was more than slender enough to thread the needle between these falling blades, but they provided a potent distraction. As she strove to stay dry in the pouring rain, an idea struck her instead of a blade.

While Ganondorf broke away from the group to jump at the Radiance, Primrose’s Makami and Rika in tow, Nadia tucked her hands beneath her arms and pulled off her hands. When she tensed her muscles, blood sprayed out across the polished stone around her like water from two hoses. Stepping onto the blood allowed her rigging to activate, and as the mechanical arms folded out from her backpack, their cannons took aim at the Radiance. “Ready to rocket!” She opened fire, and homing missiles of Hydro energy corkscrewed through the air. They hunted their target down, but their fire rate -only two every three seconds- left a lot to be desired. If nothing else, her intermittent barrage gave Primrose some covering fire as the dancer got close enough to follow up Ganondorf’s trident flurry with Ravaging Confession. More sun rays blasted the warlord back, however, and Primrose descended again soon after.

Rika and Kamek could get more airtime, allowing them to batter the Radiance with muck and magic. Nadia supported them while still skating, and the others quickly joined in their efforts, Primrose with her golden beads and Ganondorf with Blast Hornet’s drones. For a moment the projectiles pounded the Radiance, though the boss quickly returned fire with a flurry of swordblades like giant flechettes followed by homing light orbs. “Wow, this thing really has it out for you,” she teased Ganondorf, curious if his affinity for darkness was to blame. Therion took the chance to springboard off him, then left the big brute to deal with the orbs as he leaped up to administer a tremendous gout of flame. Eyes narrowed, Nadia let off two more watery drills, and on contact they reacted with Therion’s fire to proc Vaporize, adding insult to injury. “Hah! We make a good s-team!”

Her dedication to puns cost her, however, as silvery spikes suddenly burst up from the ground. “Agh!” she yelped, using the blood from her new stab wounds to help her spring away. When she landed, it was on dry ground, and her shipgirl equipment promptly folded up again. “Bull-ship! You’re s’posed to be rigged in my favor!” Her strategy hadn’t profited her, though, so while Bowser took up the mantle with his own cannons, the feral charged forward. Kamek’s kaleidoscopic elements joined the bombardment against the Radiance as she approached, blazing a colorful trail. The boss continued to teleport around, forcing her opponents to retarget her as she summoned arrays of gleaming nails that traveled horizontally.

Even so, Nadia pushed forward. This would be tight, but her agility and instincts would see her through. She sidestepped, hopped, airdashed, and fell through the razor waves, repeating each motion with equal parts speed and precision. Others got pushed back or pinned down, but she pushed through the patterns, until finally she got close enough to launch a Fiber Upper and snap up into the air to get her first taste of the Radiance. “Nyaow we’re talking!” In quick succession she landed Claws for Concern, Footloose, and El Gato, before finishing with Feral Edge, both boxcutters drawn and extended. New Moon gave the ensuing impact a silvery splash, complimenting Sectonia’s dark lightning. The next moment the boss teleported again, but drawing blood had fired Nadia up. She landed ready for round two.

By now, the Seekers had really spread out. Nadia noticed that the Radiance couldn’t really teleport anywhere without ending up near someone. That meant that the feral could wear herself out in pursuit, risking an approach through the dream invader’s relentless projectiles, or wait like a cat at a mouse hole for the Radiance to come to her. She waited for a moment in Sven’s Healing Waters, watching as the celestial thing replied to Sectonia’s void globules with light orbs. Her plan wasn’t intermittent cannon fire from her rigging, though. Sure enough, the Radiance ended up near her after a couple warps, and Nadia unleashed her plan.

As the Guardian unleashed a bursting blossom of twelve swordblades, the catgirl transformed into a bolt of lightning, blasting into and through the Radiance to materialize behind her back. When Nadia materialized, however, she reappeared with one of the flechettes jammed beneath her collarbone and out through her back. She yelped in pain, seeing stars. While her numbness lowered her pain sensitivity by a lot, this wasn’t something she could shrug off. Nevertheless, the feral shook her head to clear it, and pushed through the pain to complete her attack. Boxcutters outstretched, she began to spin vertically, slicing into the boss’s back again and again as she descended. It was too soon for New Moon, but Battery activated to add some extra electric punch to the first two slashes, so while the Radiance teleported again before Nadia finished she felt confident that she left it hurting.

Of course, the feral was really hurting herself, so after landing she dropped her boxcutters and pulled out the Ripened Heart. After a night’s rest the magical organ seemed fully charged, and once a jolt from it jumpstarted Nadia’s healing, she could get back to dodging projectiles–and coming up with better plans. She got moving just in time not to get stabbed as the Radiance summoned more floor spikes, covering fifty percent of the arena, before more beams of light blazed forth.

At first, Roxas was just as dumbfounded as everyone else. Why the sudden outburst? Why was Nox acting like he had already lost before the fight could even start? But the more Roxas pondered about it, the more he began to remember something from his own past that was, at least, tangentially related. And that was when it hit him. Time travel? Had a future incarnation of Nox jumped back in time into the body of his past self? That was the only thing that would make his sudden change in attitude make sense.

It also followed the rules of time travel, at least the way Roxas understood it back in his world. The rule was that someone could only go back to a point in time that their past self existed in, and that they would essentially enter and take control of their past self. And this seemed to fit that bill. Maybe. Roxas couldn’t be absolutely certain without just coming out and asking, and it looked like he wasn’t going to be getting an opportunity to do that as the tensions rose and C suddenly escalated things by changing Mephisto into another form and deciding to join the fight himself.

But Nox’s actions weren’t the only thing that got the Nobody’s attention. He noticed that Sam, too, looked just as perplexed as everyone else. In fact for a moment he even looked downright dispirited. And that was when Roxas knew what he should do. He had to at least try.

”Things aren’t going the way you planned, Sam?” Roxas asked him, approaching slowly and not drawing any weapons just yet. The man offered a slow shrug before he spoke back.

“You think?” Even Sam apparently couldn’t maintain his typical carefree attitude in circumstances like these. He’d deployed some sort of face mask from his armor to shield his nose and mouth from Mephisto’s clouds, and his eyes were narrowed against the stinging haze.

”Why were you even doing this, anyway?” Roxas asked, ”You know as well as we do what’s really behind all this. So why suddenly throw your lot in with these guys?” The Nobody coughed as the looming clouds began to envelop them. He shielded his mouth with his sleeve and his helmet’s green visor deployed as well to shield his eyes.

“When someone offers you a chance for a nice, clean do-over?” Sam responded, “Well, it’s kind of hard to say no.”

”There’s still another way out of this.” Roxas offered alongside another cough.

“Oh? Do tell,” the samurai replied, his tone quite humorless as he gave the boy and his allies a dubious glance.

”Help us eliminate the Guardian. When it’s gone, everyone in Midgar will remember the things they forgot… just like you did. I can’t promise it’ll be perfect, but maybe that’ll give you the do-over that you’re looking for?” he coughed again while awaiting the response.

“Hmm…” Though one hand continued to rest on the hilt of his sheathed katana, Sam rubbed his chin with the other, and did seem to be considering it.

”How about this then?” Roxas offered instead, ”Let’s see who can land the first hit. If I do? You join our side. If I can’t? You can do whatever else you want. No tricks, no gimmicks. Just you, me…” Roxas paused in order to summon Oblivion and proceeded to hold it both hands much like Sam would with his katana, ”...and our blades.”

After a moment, the suggestion elicited a snicker. “Everywhere I go, it’s the same. Everyone wants a piece of me. I fight and I fight, for this cause or that, and the moment I run into someone stronger, I’m under new management again. I’m tired of being a blade, passed along and wielded by other men.” He shook his head. “I thought this would be my chance to start all over. But in the end, it was too good to be true.” Sam tilted his head back slightly, staring down the bridge of his nose at Roxas. “So you know what? I’m done. No more recruiting. No more causes. It’s time I started fighting for myself.”

Roxas could only smile at this. ”Then I guess that’s that.” He turned away from Sam, knowing he needed to go join the others in the fight, ”But you know… I’m not really looking for a blade.” he said with another cough, ”Just looking for friends really. I guess I was hoping I could count you as one.” he couldn’t really wait around for a response this time, and dashed off to go join the fight.

“Hah.” On some level, Sam expected Roxas or his allies to try and recruit him by force. The idea that the Seekers might just let him go hadn’t even crossed his mind. It made for a welcome change of pace, but the Brazilian wasn’t going to give them too much credit. After making sure that nobody would rush him the moment his back was turned, Sam turned to go. “Friends, huh?”

Mephisto’s smog and Tycoon’s spells hurried him on his way, and after another moment, Jetstream Sam was gone. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but for once he’d be the one to decide.

Midna blinked in confusion at Nox’s sudden and then her mind went into overdrive as Goldlewis and Sandalphon talked to the man, till right as he blinked away she came to conclusion and acceptance of the fact that ”He just came back from 10 minutes in the future. He already beat us” and wasn’t that a dreadful thing to hear when you were about to throw down all over again.

Yet the man had also just taken himself out of the re-running for the rematch, and in doing so disheartened all but one of his abandoned allies, prompting Midna to declare that ”We can do this” just in time for the Consul to inject himself into the proceedings and forcibly transformed one of the people who he’d brought here when they showed no interest in fighting.

”What is wrong with you?!” she demanded to know, as she launched and caught her Boltok Pistol into two of her free hands, leaving one holding the lance and the other the scruff of her wolf’s neck, keeping her on its back as she sent it straight towards Consul C.

Rather than launch into offense like Karen, the Consul held back, making any movement in his direction obvious. Though his helmet obscured his expression, it was easy to imagine the same smug smile on his face that he'd worn back at the debate the night before last, a poorly-veiled grin that suggested a secret known to nobody else. "The problem is, there's too much in here," C asked as he tapped his helmet, his tone teasingly nonchalant even as the wolf closed in. "'More than one hundred percent pure, unadulterated syrup'. You remember, right?"

”More like 100% nuts!” she sniped back as she closed in, only to spur her wolfos into leaping to the side at the same moment as she prompted her Beast Legion to the other. This put them at about 90 degrees apart as both mounted beast and invisible chimera pounced at Midna’s foe, the princess striking with her lance while the Legion slashed with its claws.

"Ooh, burn! But I've heard better." The combined attack thudded against a magic barrier in the form of a glowing teal smiley face, eyes crossed out and ringed by a ripple of murky darkness. Blocking reduced the combined attack to chip damage. "We can skip the formalities, you know. Why so performative?" C questioned the Twilight Princess. "Aren't you the least bit curious?"

Suddenly, the shield dropped, and C moved forward in a blur. He threw himself into an extremely fast combat roll, occupying not even a full second. Even stranger, his roll seemed to take him directly through Midna and her mount, and when he stood up behind her, he turned around near-instantaneously.

”What?”

He drew his left-hand gun with a flourish that launched Midna off her wolf's back. The instant he readied the pistol, a targeting reticle appeared near Midna, floating in space. It quickly floated toward her like a fairy, and the Consul's barrel traced its path. In two succession he struck her with two light smacks, doing negligible damage but keeping her in hitstun long enough for the reticle to land on her. Then C fired, and it was the shot's turn to juggle her while he wound up a big slug to knock her back a couple feet.

C was prevented from following up by Midna’s beasts darting in to claw and bite at the masked man, interrupting his combo and then attempting to dart away before retaliation, wolf pack style. A few feet away, dragon clawed toes and fingers dug into the ground to slow Midna’s (already slowed by a certain sticker) launch. She was, to her surprise, not that much worse for wares, at least compared to where she would have expected such an oversized hand cannon should have left her.

”That all?” she sneered, before retorting ”Try this on for size” as she whipped her lance up in an arch as she stood, launching a crescent moon shaped projectile at C to keep him on his toes. She finished the swing by letting go of the lance, causing it to fly away and into a portal, before preparing her claws and preparing to charge.

She was prevented from doing so as Mephisto, the man transformed by the Consul
(did a thing) and caused clouds (of some kind) to spread across the arena, most inconveniently right on top of where the pair were trying to have their 1 vs 1 (or 3 on 1 really).

Midna hissed in pain through her filter mask that kept her lungs safe but did nothing to protect her exposed skin, and promptly back peddled out of the cloud and away from C, her beasts doing the same to get out of the toxic zone all of them had ended up in.

”Alright, this is going to be a slow one” Midna acknowledged as she tried to require her target through the fields of fog ”So if you wanna talk, then talk. What should I be curious about?”

Another smiley-faced barrier flashed in the haze to intercept Midna's projectile. When it faded, C almost disappeared into the toxic gas, his rabbit-eared helmet faintly visible. It looked like he'd holstered his pistol in order to block, but now he drew it again. "Anything and everything. If this world doesn't tickle your fancy, your life must be terribly dull." Under cover of Mephisto's smoke, he adopted a two handed stance. In an instant his targeting reticle latched onto Midna's the legatus on Midna's arm, the device that allowed her to command her new legion. When the Consul fired with Steady Aim, his shot struck with pinpoint accuracy and enough strength to damage the legatus--or crush Midna's guard if she tried to block. The next second, however, C canceled his stance into order to focus and regain concentration. "Once you've seen the script, you can't unsee it," he muttered, holding his hand to his helmeted face. "But who wouldn't want to sneak a peek? That's just human nature."

Rather than lose her guard or risk her new power Midna blocked the shot with the far more replaceable Boltok Pistol. The unfired gun was blasted both from her hand and into scrap in the same moment, but let both her and her Beast Legion go on the offensive.

”Good thing I’m not human, so your going to have to try harder than that” she replied, both to his ‘offer’ and as a taunt, before sweeping a shadow hand slap through the cloud, kicking up a gust of wind that blew it away in the process. Her legion and wolfos both charged into the clear air, followed a moment later by the princess, all three looking to dart in and take a claw swipe at their foe.

With his face covered, C did not need to avert his gaze when Midna tried to waft away the toxic gas. It wasn't completely effective, and Mephisto would soon replace it, but that didn't concern him. "Technicalities, eh? Well, don't kid yourself." As his foes approached, the Consul hopped backward, casting Scapegoat. Two perfect clones appeared in front of him, both using Steady Aim. Meanwhile he hopped back again, tossing an orb of teal-and-black curse energy at Midna like a basketball. "You're human in every way that matters. Now more than ever. This wouldn't be any fun otherwise."

The words caused Midna to falter for just a step, after all how much of her heritage had she drowned in the spirits of others, but after that moment she decided ”It doesn’t matter. Twili is what I am, heart and soul, and you don’t know what I need” before using the artifact of her people she wore on her head to reach up and pulsing magical power into that hand. Curse and proto vollybomb collide, each annihilating the other

She declared his magical attack ”Cute” before offering ”let me show you mine” before pumping more power into her raised hand, forming it into an orb twice as large as she was tall. As she did so, her wolfos backed off, while she opened portals and blasted accuracy foiling sand forwards at the pair aiming at her.

”How about, instead I tell you my world’s script, repeated all across time: primordial evil rises, takes over, and then heroes rise and take him down. Over and over and over” before she proceed to volleyball spike the magical bomb down on top of all three copies of the Consul, be they real and fake.

The scapegoats didn't shoot, or even move, while Midna rained down sand on them. With his curse orb dispelled, the original just watched his opponent charge up an arcane bomb, reloading his pistol as he did. "Yeah, yeah. I know all about it. I bet you wish you were more of a factor, huh? There's nothing in this universe you, or anyone, can tell me." A moment later the bomb descended, and in the ensuing explosion the scapegoats vanished without a trace. C, however, used a little bit of tension to perform Faultless Defense, negating the chip damage he received while blocking. When the volleybomb's afterglow disappeared, the Consul was standing there in the clearing amidst the toxic smog, no worse for wear. He gave Midna the double finger guns. "That's why I'm so interested in what you humans do. The one thing I can't always extrapolate." He drew his pistol, and the reticle appeared to zero in on his foe once more. "Here's a hint. You won't beat me with pure power. Only by using that one-track mind of yours. You better surprise me!"

Midna hissed between clenched teeth in equal parts frustration, fury and fear as she wondered how in the world she was going to deal with him, only to notice a hint of movement behind C. Hoping it was a friend, she spread her hands out cockily and asked ”Why would I listen to your advice on how to beat you? How about we really test how much power you can handle instead?” before she opened a massive portal behind her, one big she began to pull the Blodia fused mecha wolfos out of as an temporarily enlarged summon, meaning that when it emerged, it would be far grander than the thirty feet tall it had already been. There was however, a reason she had never tried this before, and that was that the mecha wolfos which had been rendered more or less inoperable by its first fight, and thus was presently good for one thing and one thing only.

Being a massive bluff, and an equally massive distraction.

The came a crack as Bowser punched his own shell, causing a spider web of glowing fissures to form upon his armor lighting his load while also increasing his vulnerability to attacks.

”Good, now you can stop taking hits and-” his son began saying, having been the one to advise this change in strategy for the sake of his mana reserved, before being interrupted when the Radiance summoned a ring of white spears and launched them in all directions, prompting the prince to call out a warning of ”-dodge!”

”Huh? Gah!” Bowser replied before half lunging, half stumbling to the side as a spear came right at him, only for its flight to slow down just enough for him to avoid it thanks to Rika ducking in close to protect him with her shot slowing aura.

”Just a bit faster and you’ll be good” she told him encouragingly, before suggesting ”maybe Kamek can have his minions help with that? The green buffing ones” and then wondering ”Wait, where’d he go anyway?” causing all of them to look around in worry for the mage.

Fortunately the brief spike of fear they had was put to bed when they spotted the mage up and to the left, gradually floating his way back towards the battlefield. That fear was then promptly rudely awakened all over again when the Radiance seemed to follow their gaze, and promptly used her next spell on the mage. A string of three glowing homing disk shots were sent flying fourth towards him, each one casually adjusting its trajectory as the mage attempted to float from side to side to avoid them.

”Oh dear” was Kamek’s somewhat understated response to this as the shots grew closer and closer. Then at the last moment he tilted his broom straight down and went into a nosedive, narrowly slipping under the turning arch of the leading shot.

The second, however, smoothly swung down after him and, worse, the first proceeded to do a complete 108 turn so it could also race down after him.

”Well that’s not good” when a now a fair bit more concerned mage who was at risk of plunging down past the hazy cloud barrier surrounded the platform, which he really did not want to dive into without knowing what was down there.

Rather than panic quite yet, the mage waved his wand behind him, conjuring a doppelganger and sent it careening back into one of the chasing shots, only for it to cleave right through the magic construct and continue to race after him.

”Ah. Well. Here goes nothing” the mage declared as he twirled his wand and, mere moments from impacting the clouds, vanished in a puff of his own, before reappearing off on the other side of the arena. He paused there, indecisive, for a full two seconds, which would normally have been disastrous levels of passivity but fortunately the Randince had since transitioned into a vertical lance barrage and so wasn’t ready to target this sitting duck.

Unfortunately, the shots that had been chasing Kamek simply continued to do so. While one vanished into the clouds, never to return, the other two went racing right across the arena, which was very inconvenient for everyone currently raindancing around the falling spears lancing down onto it.

”Incoming from the side!” Rika called out in warning, having been watching Kamek’s chase out of the corner of her eye, before she bunny hopped over the first shot, and then double jumped to avoid both a spear and the second.

Jr was fortunately already out of their path, but Bowser got clipped, toppling to the floor and nearly receiving a lance to the noggin had he not tilted his head to the side just in time to avoid such a fate.

The shots continued on, only to, moments before they struck the dithering Kamek, dissipating into nothing, their power apparently spent.

”Ah, so it was, 2.75 seconds. Noted” he commented, having roughly timed them when they had been chasing after Ganondorf.

Back on the platform, both Jr and Rika helped their papa get back on his feet, but they weren't going to squander the brief opening between attacks by not throwing out their own.

”Bug strike her! Go” Jr commanded, prompting a shower of flukefey strikers, the toothy winged grubs from the home of tear’s sewers, to appear and launch forth to strike into the Radiance like a hail of missiles. They were followed swiftly by Rika’s vespikan queen striker, flanked by a trio of lesser vespikan berzerkers. Together they struck with the cohesion they had had fighting alongside each other in life, 4 large cleavers tenderizing the Radiance before she received a final titanic swing from the vespikan queen.

In response, the Radiance did her best impression of a bug zapper, a shower of beams lancing out from her eyes, scouring several lesser minions from the skies, and striking the Vespikan queen multiple times as said striker stabbed her spear sized venomous stinger to the claver wounds she and her demon worshiping nieces had inflicted upon the divine insect.

Both Jr and Rika stumbled as the feedback damage coming in from the strikers burnt them, but this time Bowser was the one who helped pick them back up as the Radiance blinked away to one side of the arena where she started another volley of lances. Rather than just let her do this again, Bowser dipped into his own bag of striker tricks, summoning Marie Korbel to form a wall of skeletons across that end of the arena. The barricade bent, buckled, and eventually on the third volley shattered under the spear based bombardment, but it was enough to give the troop time to heal up a bit, and the others to do as they will with the moment of respite the former skullgirl had provided.

Kamek for one used it to summon his dopplegangers, not wanting to be the single target for the Radinces shots again thank you very much. Though in a response to a call from Rika, he did convert one of the distractions into a green mage, which proceeded to pop a speed enhancing buff on Bowser. With that added boost, the king finally got the edge he needed to dodge around the last volley of spears, prompting a cheer from his children.

With Sam having gone, that was one less thing for the Seekers to have to worry about for this fight. But the fight itself was far from over. It wasn’t hard to see that Mephisto in his transformed state was the cause of all the white gas that was plaguing the Seekers in this fight, so Roxas decided he needed to focus on taking him out before all the white clouds of gas proved to be a problem.

He tried shooting a charged shot from his RockGun at the avian monster, but it didn’t seem to do much damage from what Roxas could see. And on top of that, the big bird also teleported away only to reappear elsewhere. Great. That meant anyone wanting to get rid of Mephisto was going to have to continually chase him down. Well, Roxas couldn’t fly around like some other Seekers, he was still capable of being mobile in his own way. So he used the dash of his StepSword and Flow Motion to try and keep up with and chase Mephisto wherever he teleported. He tried not to engage with the other enemies or get in any of the Seekers’ way while doing this.

When he got close he zoomed in on the Singer and nailed him with a Cross Slash. This naturally resulted in the avian teleporting away, forcing Roxas to begin the process over again. Roxas repeated this pattern a couple of more times, at one point narrowly dodging out of the way of a clash between Midna and C. But with the Singer continually teleporting around, and its gas slowly taking its toll on Roxas and everyone else, this was not looking to be a particularly good time for him.

”Hah… this is getting… really tiring…” Roxas gasped in between coughs. He began to wonder how much damage the gas had done by now and if he should pause and heal himself with Curaga. But if he did that, he’d lose all the rest of the MP and then what? It would be a lot harder to keep up with chasing down the Singer without any MP to use. And on top of that the Gas would just slowly undo the healing anyway, so what was even the point?

”No…” Roxas coughed, ”Can’t… let up… now…” and so he resumed the chase. He weaved his way past a chaotic confrontation between Karen and several of the Seekers. He could have stopped and joined any of these other fights, but if he did then the Singer’s gas would continue to slowly kill off the Seekers if it wasn’t stopped. After managing a StepSword slash and even following it with a Cross Slash, the Singer teleported away from the Nobody yet again.

”Come on…” Roxas gasped, ”Keep… fighting…” he staggered slightly. By now the gas was really hurting. But he couldn't just drain the rest of his MP on Curaga either. He wasn't sure he'd be able to keep attacking the Singer if he did that. And then what? Half a minute of struggling without MP while the gas slowly undid the Curaga's healing? No, there had to be another way around this.

As the Radiance continued to rain hell on the Seekers, Ganondorf had taken a moment to get his bearings and try to analyze the Guardian’s attacks for a moment. She teleported a lot, and almost all of her attacks were big, sweeping area attacks designed to keep her from being swarmed by crowds. Ganondorf was willing to bet that this meant she was less effective against a foe that forced her into a one-on-one at close range. And then came Nadia’s voice.

“Wow, this thing really has it out for you.”

Ganondorf grimaced, but nodded in agreement. ”I can assure thee that the feeling is mutual.” he offered back in response. Seconds later, Therion springboarded off of him and Nadia soon followed after him to team-up against the Guardian. After their attack came the Koopa Troop’s turn once again to try their hand at facing the Guardian. In the midst of this she unleashed a volley of light lances, and a handful of those even came in the warlord’s direction. He sidestepped one and tried to deflect the rest with this trident but one of them managed to slice past his lower mid section.

”You damnedable creature!” he hissed in pain. The wound itself wasn’t serious, but the light element behind it still burned a being such as himself. And this was also when Ganondorf looked down and realized he had been wielding his trident as if he were still right-handed! ”Bah, I knew this would take some getting used to! Curses!” and so he quickly moved the trident so that it would be held predominantly by his left hand. He didn’t expect this to have much of a profound effect, but at least it was a start.

That was when the Radiance teleported away from her fight with the Koopa Troop. After which she unleashed another volley of lances. But this time Bowser was the one with the answer as he summoned a wall of skeletal minions to form up and at least stop the first couple lines of fire. As for the warlord, he didn’t waste the opportunity to defensively duck behind the wall of minions. In those precious moments he re-summoned his Moblin archers whom he immediately commanded to ready a volley and fire only after the skeletons fell.

When they did, the Moblins let their arrows fly. Between that and the Moblins’ bodies themselves, Ganondorf was able to block a small portion of the next volley of lances. It wasn’t as wide of a coverage but it did give the Seekers behind him some kind of safe zone they could cling to. And once the volley ended, Ganondorf charged. He used bullet jump to sprint forward and launch himself up at the Radiance, intending to directly engage her once again.

”Die, knave!” he barked as he managed to catch the Radiance with a sweep of his trident. He managed a short flurry of attacks before she lashed back at him with lasers to send him back to the floor of the platform. But the warlord refused to be pushed back so easily. He had by some miracle managed to land on his feet and into a crouched position, ”Thou wilt not best me so easily!” and once again launched himself up at the Guardian.

This time he grappled onto the Radiance, using his trident to get some leverage around her head and neck area. And then he exploded. Well, not literally. He unleashed an explosive area of effect blast of his own. A power he had very recently obtained courtesy of Artorias - Abyssal Resurgence. Not only was this an explosion of dark energy, however effective that would be against the Radiance. But it also gave Ganondorf a nice little temporary damage buff that he was keen to capitalize on. He pushed himself off of the Guardian and then threw his spear at the Radiance and even managed to call a lightning blast onto it like a lightning rod just before she teleported away.

Only after that did Ganondorf crash back onto the platform. He staggered to his feet, still kicking but clearly not in great shape. He could only use Abyssal Resurgence because he had taken significant damage by this point. He was one of the only Seekers that was outside of Jr’s medico spell range earlier. That was probably why he had been taken into range of using Abyssal Resurgence. He could also enter his true form if he wanted to, but decided against it.

Ganon would be too slow and sluggish to take on a teleporting enemy like this. In fact doing that would just make the warlord that much easier for the Guardian to shred his health to pieces with her area-based attacks. And so with heavy breaths, the warlord pulled out a splash healing potion - one of only two he had left - and crushed it against himself. It wasn’t a large amount of healing, but it was something. Ganondorf summoned the trident back to his left hand, then decided to position himself a little closer to Jr in the hopes of catching a healing spell later on.

---

Jesse sprinted away from where she saw the spikes forming, firing one handed as she went. To avoid friendly fire she stepped up into the air so her gun arm was ten feet. Now she could shoot without having to worry about hitting any but the biggest and slowest members of their team. And she was low enough to the ground she could dip down and get her boots on the platform easily enough.

“Elastic Ooze! Enhanced jumps going down!” She called out as she fired her gun. Nadia made use of the healing waters, maybe someone else could make use of the ability to jump really high from one specific spot. If nothing else, at least Jesse could use it to get high into the air really quickly.

Which she did. Trying to find the timing of the teleporting Radiance, she plucked three boulders from the ground and jumped high into the air. When it teleported next, she thrust her palm forward and send them flying towards the Radiance to smash into the Guardian at high velocity. That was all the Energy she had for now, so she let herself drop fast and then bounce back up and away, Levitating in a different height to make herself harder to pin down.

Being a flyer, Sectonia was immune to the ground spikes summoned by Radiance. However the rest of her group wasn't and that was causing a lot of issues with their footing and inability to land a good clean hit on this thing. Meanwhile Sectonia was causing some celestial fireworks n the air as this creature countered her void globules with its own light balls, the energy of light and void evaporating each other in a beautiful implosion. This was interesting though, as this creature seemed to almost ignore hits against it, but it was using attacks to counter her void attacks? Well, that was something!

First things first though, dealing with the spike fields her allies had to deal with. While she couldn't help with the first few, she did notice that there were only two locations of these fields and they coincided where the Radiance was hovering. So Sectonia summoned two golden antlers to not only strike at the moth when she got close, but also act as some protection from the floor of the others. They could take a couple spikes before disappearing with their sheer bulk.

Sectonia meanwhile just continued to throw void globules at the guardian, dodging her vertical lasers and swords with her own teleport. Granted when those attacks were going out, Sectonia couldn't attack and dodge at the same time, she wasn't that nimble. Seeing the balls aiming for the globules did make Sectonia try one thing that was a bit risky. She'd teleport next to the Radiance after the guardian had teleported and threw void globules at it point blank to land some damage. This was during her little lightshow of lasers emanating from her that attacked all the fliers though, so it was very unpleasant to get hit by multiple beams.

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



Everyone was puzzled at Nox's new outburst. He went from declaring his intent to take this guardian's time traveling powers for himself, to... bemoaning his plans weren't going to work? Blazermate was thoroughly confused about this, while Roland and Susie had an idea of what happened. Susie could only guess with context clues, while Roland had his second hand experience to guess what happened. "Sounds like he already time traveled." Susie said, with Roland saying "So... from what it sounded like... he succeeded, but only reset the cycle back here. Like with Angela." Well, it didn't take long for Nox to despair and leave, seeing his plan as failed, with C replacing him.

"I don't blame the guy. Repeating cycles is not fun and I know I'd probably hang myself around cycle 4 or 5." Roland said, giving a bit of empathy to Nox. But now with C here, and using his powers to transform Mephisto into some strange abomination to get him to fight, well... they still had a job to do. And with Nox not interfering, well... He wouldn't know if this would be a different cycle or not, but it seemed like it.

Getting ready for combat, Susie summoned her business suit and went to deal with Tycoon, her big mech suit strong enough to deal with the large guardian's slaps. Keeping its attention from the other seekers in the process. Roland was about to dash in to deal with Sam, but Roxas concocted a plan and managed to convince Sam to at least leave the fight entirely. Seeing this, Roland gave the boy a thumbs up saying. "Nice work! 1 down 3 to go."

Blazermate was on healing duty as always. With the opposition being down an entire person, and the person she wanted to use her new striker on having left the fight, Blazermate instead saved Armstrong for now and instead summoned her engineer to set his base up and his sentry gun which would plink away at Tycoon as he was the closest. With the battle started, Roland had memories of his time on General Works, or 'keter' as it would eventually be known as. As Midna was dealing with C at the time, Roland moved in to clash sword to bullet with Mephisto, deflecting and taking a shot which halted his rush in. A good thing too, as Mephisto unleashed a cloud of gas or something that obscured the arena and did some light poison damage. Blazermate and Susie were immune to the damage due to being robots, and the engineer's sentry gun seemed to ignore the obscurement entirely. But Roland and the engineer striker itself weren't immune to the poison and started to take some light damage.

Having lost his first clash, Roland's emotion leveled up and he got Lies, a puppet's voice saying "Everyone lies, why are you saying it’s a bad thing?", which caused his attacks to randomly get faster or slower. Hearing Midna seemingly struggling with C, Roland decided to give her a hand as Blazermate found herself helping the group dealing with Karen. She'd give Roland her healing drone however, so she could give Midna and Roland some healing. Roland would join after Midna had just deployed her mecha wolfos, his large two handed sword having been sped up by Lies and allowing him to deflect the shot aimed at Midna before going in to strike at C.

"I could hear you two from over there." Roland said, striking with his large sword.

Intercepting the weak shot meant for Midna removed Roland's element of surprise. Though the fixer moved quickly to strike back, C had more than enough time to holster his pistol and block. By this point Mephisto's fumes had crept back in, and unlike the Twilight Princess, Roland lacked a respirator to take the edge off the caustic haze. Two opponents would be more difficult to deal with, but he wondered if the newcomer was just here to bail Midna out. "Your point being?" The Consul hopped backward, lobbing another curse ball at Roland. While the projectile moved slowly enough to deflect with ease, it applied the curse even on block, creating a murky aura around Roland's body. When C drew his pistol, his reticle moved with uncanny accuracy even without Steady Aim. He fired while running forward three times, locking Roland in blockstun, then jumped toward him, still firing. He came down with a stomp that failed to hit his foe overhead, but it did bounce the Consul up and behind Roland to land his jumping dust. The wily blow crossed Roland up, bypassing his defense, and sent him stumbling a few steps with an ache in the back of his head. Of course, that put C directly between both his opponents, but he didn't seem to care. "Things only ever start to exist when there's a reason for them to," he admitted, reloading quickly. "What's yours?"

"Only the crazies monologue mid combat unprompted." Roland said as he blocked the curse ball with his large sword, before reflexively countering the three shots that C followed up with, before drawing his longsword to deal with C's overhead. C's attack chain left him in advantage though, leading to his final hit smacking Roland behind his head and sending him stumbling.

Well, Roland would be lying if he himself wasn't sure how to answer that question. It’s been mostly to survive, but he wasn't going to tell that to his opponent. "I'm just an everyday fixer doing his job. Fixing being something you don't know much about." Roland said as he swapped to his X Baton to get ready for another clash with C.

His response elicited a tilt of the Consul’s head as he finished reloading. “And just who do you think fixed the game for Nox?”

Roland could only be confused by what Nox said. He clearly didn’t know what a fixer actually was. It wouldn’t stop him from using his X baton as its namesake and smacking it at C, getting blocked as was C’s fighting style, but leveling Roland’s emotion to 2 and causing him to gain Urging, a bolstering monstrous voice saying “Your craving will make the beats faster.” which made Roland faster and increased his HP. After breaking away to pull out a gun of his, Roland understood what C was getting at, sorta.

”Pretty sure it was you. From what I saw at the meeting, you and the other guy were actually running Midgar.” Roland said.

The Consul was faster. With the curse applied to Roland, his aim seemed practically automatic. He fired off a couple bullets to keep his enemy locked down, sneaking a curious glance at Midna on the sidelines, then turned his attention back to Roland. “Then you weren’t paying attention.” After jumping, he airdashed forward, then dropped with a downward gunshot. He did not cross Roland up, though, and upon landing he went for a throw that flat-out beat the fixer’s block. Considering that C just planted his foot in Roland’s stomach and kicked him down, however, the price he paid for getting opened up could be a lot worse. After that C backdashed in order to focus and regain concentration, though that left him open for a brief moment. “I don’t ‘run’ things. I just wind ‘em up and watch ‘em go.”

”Yeah you're nothing but a meddler” Midna agreed with C as she stepped back into the fray, having had to pause to catch her breath after an attempted distraction. Now she was back in though, and had re-armed. Two of her hands were holding one of the commando’s auto-pistols, the princess not at all confident enough to duel wield them like the man she had stolen them from. The other two she had the Sharpened Volcano Fragment, her enemy-igniting obsidian ax.

Her two wolves darted a head, once again attempting to harry C with tooth and claw, while she advanced, pistol firing pot shots over the heads of her beasts, ax hefted to deliver an overhead cleave once she got close.

Only a smattering of the bullets Midna sprayed out landed, but those that did caught the Consul during his attempt to focus, and they left him wide open for her wolves. They jumped on him, their jaws snapped shut around his limbs as they dragged him to the ground. While their viciousness in tugging C around made it somewhat difficult to aim for vitals, the Twilight Princess was nothing if not determined. She brought down the axe on C’s helmet, a loud crack ringing out as she chopped into it. He slumped down as the twilit wolf and Beast Legion released his now-burning body, but a moment after his back hit the ground, an arm just like his own reached out from beneath his body. Out of nowhere, a new Consul C emerged from the space beneath the fallen one, throwing off the original like a cellar trap door, and his reticle locked onto Midna’s head. “Bang.” He fired, damaging her mask, and as the fresh C stood the other one blipped out like a TV screen.

Minda stumbled back, hand clutching the rebreather mask, eye darting to and fro behind its cracked lens in confusion.

”What the? How? When did he replace himself” she questioned as her wolves moved to put themselves defensively between her and C.

Getting back up from the ground, Roland groaned in a bit of annoyance. ”Why am I not surprised this guy is a distortion. A weird one at that. Even spouts the same nonsense the blue sicko was going on and on about.” Roland said, using his own gun to shoot C before swapping to his lance. ”If he starts talking about hearing a ladies' voice, I'll be convinced he was part of that sicko’s band.” Roland said, switching to his sword to try for another clash.

As the Seekers exchanged words and philosophies with their newly-arrived opponent's, something...changed. Nobody but Nox seemed to be able to tell, but whatever it was, he reacted to it about as well as Zenkichi had to Aoi's death, stumbling and raving as though his life had just been ripped out from under him. And, based on the way he was talking...it had. Ten minutes. Given that he was just talking about undoing all the damage he'd done, the evil he'd wrought, Zenkichi got the feeling that this wasn't their first rodeo. And boy, was that thought harrowing. "Ten minutes...all he got was ten minutes. What a joke." Zenkichi shook his head, but that was neither here nor there. Nox gave up.

And with that, it looked like things were about to wrap up fairly nicely. Sam and Mephisto looked like the wind had been ripped right out of their sails, and frankly, there wasn't even a snowball's chance in hell that Travers could deal with the full might of the Seekers collected here. He'd put up a fight, but not enough of one.

Unless the other remaining Consul decided to join in on his own terms, transforming Mephisto into a monstrous bird-like creature. "You monster!" Zenkichi howled, summoning his greatsword. Still, with Tycoon stirring, they had to act, and even as the transformed Mephisto created clouds of gas that made Zenkichi wish his mask covered his mouth, he ran at the Guardian, buffing himself with Rakukaja to help shrug off the titan's blows and the sting of the gas clouds.

It was not an easy task, however, as Zenkichi found his vision obstructed enough that he had to abandon attacking more than once to reposition, which left him open to taking a surprisingly soft blow from the Guardian. Yes, he was defense-buffed, but still...that was like a feather! More threatening were the frozen lasers, which further reduced his mobility and forced him to maneuver around their lines of fire, lest he wind up being blasted around by them. Still, there were patches of safe zones he could work with, even if their relative infrequency limited his ability to dish out damage. But as soon as Rakukaja expired, Zenkichi threw it back up to keep himself covered. Susie seemed to be doing alright for the moment, and if things got dicey he'd be more than happy to throw a Heat Riser her way and keep her going, but he had another way to put the hurt on.

"Valjean, Megidola!" Changing tune to dodging and relying on Valjean to attack, Zenkichi found himself even more taxed as Tycoon ramped up its efforts, covering the arena with little balls that started getting larger way too quick. This time, however, he missed the mark, another target zone hidden by Mephisto's clouds, and the follow-up strike from Tycoon landed nearly head-on, launching Zenkichi a bit away and knocking him onto his butt. "Ohhh, that stings. Still in this thing, though." He mumbled to himself, stretching his arms. "Let's go for a One-shot Kill this time, Valjean." He ordered.

It was slow going, but between his many buffs and ability to deal damage from a distance with Valjean, Zenkichi was able to help Susie in slowly wearing down the Guardian.

It was hard to judge how long a battle would last. Despite the now numerous conflicts that Primrose had been a part of, she wasn't a warrior that could instinctually tell the strength of an opponent, nor could she calculate her and her allies' strength to compare it to. So it was more like a gut feeling when she felt her mana had recovered enough to last the remainder of the battle.

She launched her fire and shadow magic at the Radiance when she could, completely unable to contribute anymore empowerment to the Seekers via dancing given everything the alien light was throwing at them. She side stepped the conjured blades when they fell vertically, ducked or flew when they came horizontally, and generally did her best to avoid the rays of light that shown out over the area.

Therion was in the same boat, along with most everyone else - keeping evasive and contributing when he could. After his use of Hellfire he caught on to Nadia's pun quickly and noted the elemental reaction, but felt the need to let her know his contribution to that trick of hers would be limited. "Yeah. Just don't expect it to happen again anytime soon," he said just before the two of them split up to avoid the spikes. His fire spell was one of the more damaging options he had, but wasn't something he preferred to use all the time. In the mean time he was back to physical weapons, chucking his throwing knives and darts at the Radiance when it appeared close to him.

Both of them took a splash in the healing water of Jesse's striker to help with the damage they were steadily taking, but otherwise they kept on the move. With the arena half covered in spikes, getting out of the way of the Radiance's attacks was only getting more difficult - so it was with great relief that Jesse threw down the ooze and Sectonia summoned her antlers, providing more options for movement.

Primrose's Baldur Shell had already been broken through and had yet to recover, so she was glad to use the cover provided by her allies to get out of the way of the light rays. She cast Moonlight Waltz on the Radiance when it stayed put for a moment to throw yet another barrage at them. Then she cast Luna, using her own Boost to strengthen it and letting the spell track the Guardian as it teleported around the area.

Meanwhile Therion made use of the ooze rather than a teammate this time, having used it before. On the way up he barely evaded a flying sword and used Armor Corrosive again, on the Radiance itself this time. On the way down he intended to get another attack in, but it teleported away - not before conjuring another wave of searing light that began to wash over the area.


Pit would have told Nox off for his actions (if he knew what he was doing was evil, why do it in the first place?), but very suddenly the man had an unexpected outburst. It would be the first time in Pit’s experience that words alone got through to a villain without the need for a fight, but that… didn’t seem to be what was going on. It almost seemed like the wail of someone who had already lost, but as far as Pit knew it was everyone’s first time meeting Nox.

"What’s he talking about?" the angel asked, genuinely confused about what was happening. What did he mean by ‘ten minutes’? And his strange cube that has spoken to him and told him he would succeed, what was that about?

It was suggested by some that Nox actually had succeeded, that he and his crew had defeated the Seekers and managed to travel back in time to this moment, instead of whenever he’d actually wanted to go. Pit blinked at that, not looking any less lost. There was no way the Seekers would actually lose, right? He discarded that explanation entirely.

After what had just happened, it wasn’t as surprising to see Nox cut and run. Karen Travers stepped up in his place with another alleged method of time travel. He still meant to fight, even with one ally deserted and the other two unsure. Maybe if they subdued Karen fast, they could convince the other two not to fight. Mephisto already looked about ready to give up like Nox had, and Sam didn’t have the light of Galeem in his eyes that would force him to keep fighting. Pit twirled the bow in his hand, as much a restless fidget as a sign he was ready for battle. But the one to kick things off wasn’t himself, or Karen or Goldlewis - it was Consul C.

All of a sudden the Seekers were contending with two big monsters on either side of them, and the Consul himself had joined the enemy team.

Pit dashed into battle toward C's group at the same time that the rest of the Seekers moved. With Tycoon now activated it swung its massive arm across the area, nearly catching Pit in its path. When the angel noted the metal coming toward him, his head buzzed with thoughts of escaping the impact. He leapt up as high as he could, using his wings to go even farther. If he’d jumped even a moment later he wouldn’t have been able to clear it - but as it was Pit pulled his legs in so that Tycoon’s arm just barely passed underneath him. He landed with a roll on the moving metal and then popped off the side back down onto the arena as the machine god reset its posture.

It was the Guardian that Pit chose to focus on first. Everyone else was engaged already, leaving only Susie to pit herself against Tycoon and take the brunt of its attention. The angel started firing upon it, loosing light arrows as fast as he could nock them. He struck all over the machine, searching for any place he guessed might be a weak spot. Maybe it didn't even have one, as armored as it was. Still, this was their mission. Once it was taken town and one of them claimed its spirit, the fight would be all but won!

Pit had been bouncing around while firing to avoid what he could when he could, between Tycoon’s attacks and the stray offshoots from everyone else fighting. Robotic parts had flown off from the Guardian, firing lasers that seemed to have frozen in place that he kept an eye on too. He was doing a good job of playing keep away until the fog that had been gradually covering the area made its way to him.

He coughed, the clouds stinging his throat and skin. The longer he stood in it the more it hurt. So it wasn’t just a smokescreen, this stuff was actually doing damage! Pit beat his wings to clear a small area around him, looking for higher ground. Unfortunately the arena was mostly flat, so he had little choice but to use Tycoon for a lift.

"Be right back!" he said to Susie and Zenkichi as he passed them by, catching the side of Tycoon’s arm when it aimed at her. It pulled its arm back and Pit rode up with it, transitioning to the Guardian’s shoulder. From there, he could see a little better… but a lot of the battlefield was starting to become obscured. The smoke was emanating from the monster that Mephisto had turned into as it teleported around the area.

He also saw Roxas chasing it around. Last he’d seen the blonde boy had been talking Sam down, so he must have succeeded and moved on to another enemy. It was time to switch priorities and join him - especially if the fog was going to interfere with the others’ fights.

Pit dismissed his bow, replacing it with the rainbow orb that would become his Breaking Palm. He closed his fist around it and it began to adhere to his skin. The chromatic marks traced their way up his arm, and he opened his hand back up to unleash a helpful assault. Much faster and more homing than his arrows, the energy shots from his Palm could chase down even the slipperiest of foes. Since Pit couldn't tell where the Singer would appear next, he had to rely on the speed of his attacks to trace the battlefield and hit home. Shimmery rainbow energy blasts drove toward their target, piling damage onto the beast alongside Roxas’ attacks. When it disappeared and reappeared in another area, the energy blasts curved to chase their target if they were close enough.

The barrage of light continued, raining down on the Singer especially when it moved particularly far from the Nobody, right up until Tycoon decided it didn’t want a hitchhiker any longer. It didn’t even need to reach up and swat him; Tycoon shook its shoulder and unbalanced Pit, and when it threw its next punch the angel fell from his perch with a yelp. Bouncing against the machine god’s body wasn’t particularly painful, but it wasn’t fun either. He caught himself before hitting the ground, his wings slowing his fall so that when he landed it was in an undignified heap rather than a nastier impact. The rainbow glow of the Breaking Palm lit up the remnants of the fog in this area, and then the same energy that had been chasing the Singer crashed against Tycoon.

Blazermate’s @Archmage MC, Geralt’s @Multi_Media_Man, Sakura and Karin’s @Zoey Boey, Goldlewis Dickinson
Word Count: 2029 (+3)

Sakura looked at Sam, saying the same things she did before. ”You’re following around this guy, now?! You really need a hobby! If you want someone to follow, I know this perfect guy…” she trailed off. ”P-perfect for following! He’s really strong.”

Soon after that, however, her attention was brought to someone else. Nox had his little breakdown and left.

”Ohohoho! The self-defeating philosophy defeated itself. Who knew doing terrible things to justify terrible things was for total failures. Shame he got away, but I can’t imagine he’ll be doing much anymore. Not without his precious cube. What a fool.” Karin said dismissively.

“Leave the mocking for later,” Geralt chided, eyes narrowed at the others. “At least one of these fools still thinks he can win.” Following up with her own insult, Geralt smirked a bit to Karin, before drawing her steel sword.

What happened next was quite unexpected. C showed up, and somehow turned one of their number into a bird. Sakura covered her ears. ”Okay, I give up on trying to guess how this is going to go. Can we just start punching, now?!”

Sakura and Karin got into their fighting stance. Shortly after Sakura gave Roxas an encouraging pat on the back and a smile. ”You helped Sam and got him out of our hair. Easy as pie, Roxas-kun, easy as pie!”

“Good work, kid,” Geralt added, with a small sigh for Mephisto’s fate. “But things are still getting complicated.” As the gas clouds enveloped the battlefield, Geralt drew one of her potions, Cat specifically, and took a swig. She hoped it would bolster her vision through the gas clouds, and against a psychic like Travers, the immunity to hypnotism couldn’t hurt.

The arena was enveloped in smog, and Karen Travers stepped up to fight. Sakura and Karin were among the many Seekers to challenge him. ”Watch out for his metal body mode!” Sakura warned. In this true timeline Sakura was thinking more clearly. Her own failings had been completely overridden by Nox’s ultimate and total failure.

Karin nodded and dashed forward with Sakura following up behind. Sakura jumped up and launched a fireball at Karen, and then used Mental Connection to yank herself down and past Karin to hit her opponent in the side with a punch. Meanwhile Karin came in with downwards kicks towards his leg and angle.

When enemies approached, the Septentrion held his ground, activating Blastokinesis and Pyrokinesis as he waited for Sakura and Karin to come to him. A bubble shield encapsulated him while roiling flames flared up around his arms. Despite the extra protection he sidestepped the projectile, then Sakura herself, realizing that his foes planned to pincer him. Considering the other Seekers yet to come, he needed to move fast. With one hand he cast a blind swathe of flame toward Sakura, trusting his shield to take a hit from her while he focused on Karin. As she went low, further depleting his Blastokinesis, he stomped at her, then kicked upward in hopes of launching her. He lifted his hand, a compressed fireball held within to hurl at her and blow her away. While the others couldn’t see as well thanks to Mephisto’s clouds, Clairvoyance allowed the Septentrion to see everything for what it was.

Blazermate would soon join the battle as it seemed Karen was hurting Sakura and Karin more. While Blazermate had her Scan ability, she could see through the smoke and see everything much like Karen could, although with her it was more radar vision than actual sight. This did let her easily locate both Karen and the two street fighters, and apply her healing beam to whoever was getting comboed by Karen at the time. She could interfere more directly when her allies HP got lower with her own shield arm, but knowing these two fighters, they might not appreciate that so early in the fight. Plus this let her build her charge a bit.

Sakura and Karin backrose from their respective knockdowns. ”Keep focusing his shield!” She yelled.

Sakura felt herself get healed. ”Blazermate-san, where is he?” She ran towards where she got knocked away from. His powers weren’t exactly subtle, so if he used any she could see him.

A torrent of bullets tore through the haze as Goldlewis opened fire. “Travers!” he yelled over the roar of his Skyfish. “Come get some!” He couldn’t see his opponent, but he could see his stolen Pyrokinesis–the flames burned bright through the haze. As the bullets blazed a trail toward his position through the smokescreen, Karen quickly grasped the reason why, and in a flash his fire disappeared. Goldlewis grunted in annoyance, dropping his minigun for the UMA to collect as he scanned for any sign of the psychic soldier. A moment later, however, the Septentrion materialized from thin air, his arms ignited as he stared Goldlewis in the face.

“Here I am.” Just a second too late, Goldlewis realized that Karen must have turned invisible. He threw out his elbow to try and check his opponent, but Karen beat it out handily, his sudden reappearance empowering his first strike. The man landed a scorching punch, then stepped up with an explosive sidekick that knocked Goldlewis back. Knowing his allies were inbound, the veteran rolled backward to his feet, delaying his next move to give the others a chance to distract their foe.

”I can try to give you guys direction, but I can’t highlight him for you, I need to see him for that.” Blazermate said as she used her scan ability to see through the smoke to point out where Karen was, trying to give the street fighters and her allies some direction.

”Got it!” She said. Was she being presumptions when she assumed Blazermate had some kind of heat vision?

Geralt ran to Goldlewis, the shimmering shield of Quen covering her body, and the LCCB Assistant Manager Identity granting her both riot shield and armor, as she scanned the battlefield for their foe. Finding him, his invisibility broken from his attacks, she fired a volley of Quake Rounds at Travers, to build up some Tremor on him. Her salvo landed, catching Karen just as he moved to press his advantage against Goldlewis. Those special bullets did only minor damage, but the surprising punch they packed distracted the Septentrion in a crucial moment. Goldlewis jumped at the chance. “Crumble!” His Behemoth Typhoon whipped around like a flail, a massive weight on a beefy chain.

Still, Karen was determined not to give his foes an ounce of hope, even if it took spending his resources to do it. He activated Sclerokinesis and soaked both the mighty slam’s damage and its Tremor-amped stagger. Protected by his power, he didn’t need to actually block, so he essentially armored through the Behemoth Typhoon to stagger Goldlewis with a blazing elbow. He aimed it for the kidney, but the big man’s extra padding saved the day, sparing him from paralyzing pain. “Dammit!” he grunted. His foe followed up with a fiery roundhouse kick, but not fast enough to combo Goldlewis in hitstun, so the veteran backdashed and unleashed another Behemoth Typhoon. Still bolstered by Sclerokinesis, Karen pushed in to punish his foe for not learning, And Goldlewis sprung his trap. He canceled his special move with a purple Roman Cancel, and the same wave that reset him to neutral also slowed Travers down, just for a brief moment, but long enough for Geralt to act.

Geralt charged in, slamming into Travers in her base Identity, claws raking against his hardened body and digging through the last of his Sclerokinesis. She followed up with Igni, blanketing him in a quick burst of flames before he had a chance to respond. Still, he wasn’t one to get caught up in any one attack for long.

That’s why Sakura rushed in to slam her elbow into his back, and follow up with a spin kick to knock him back towards Geralt, off balance. ”Looking good, Geralt-san!” She said. ”...Geralt-chan?” Being attached to Sakura at the time, Blazermate used her rush to rush in herself and smack Karen with her ubersaw to gain a bit of uber and deal a bit of damage herself, while Geralt landed a nasty swipe to Karen’s side.

All too soon, Karen disappeared, using Teleportation to get the hell out of dodge. Thanks to their cohesion, his foes had landed their first clean hits, but the Septentrion didn’t let that bother him. Mephisto could undo whatever damage his opponents managed to rack up while he kept his head in the game. His attention lay on his resources and his opponents. His Pyrokinesis bottomed out, and as he extinguished his arms with a flourish, Karen spotted Blazermate patching the blonde girl up. “So be it.” He teleported again, appearing above the medabot, and as he hung in the air his Electrokinesis activated with a blast of sparks. The next second a deluge of thunderbolts descended, threatening both medic and patient with vigorous electrocution.

”Above!” Karin jumped into the air and planted her feet on Blazermate. She pushed them apart with a graceful back flip, causing the bolts to land between them. Afterwards Karin fired her grapple hook towards Karen to stab into his side. She pulled herself towards him quickly and aimed to double palm strike him back towards the ground.

Blazermate meanwhile had seen Karen appear above her after a bit and summoned her projectile shield to block the lightning bolts and save her and her patient from getting zapped.

The hook punched through and caught in her foe’s heavy coat, and the weight of the street fighter on the other end taxed Karen’s stolen Levitation enough to drag him downward. He attempted to grab hold of the line and send an electric current through it, but the extra hindrance got in the way, and the Septentrion wasn’t able to stop Karin before she flipped above him to slap him downward. With Teleportation still engaged, however, he blinked away the moment that Karin’s hook came loose. He reappeared only a dozen feet away and hurled another lightning blast at his attacker as he hovered. Karin pulled her hook back towards her. She crossed her arms in front of her and took the shot with a grunt. She flew backwards and landed on the ground, flipping back to her feet.

Down below, Goldlewis had spooled up his minigun again and opened fire on the airborne target, while Assistant Manager Geralt, freshly transformed once more, got a clear shot with her pistol. Karen turned and cast more lightning at the two, quickly exhausting his Electrokinesis. A bolt knocked Goldlewis down, but he got up again just as fast. “You’re spendin’ like there’s no tomorrow, Travers!” he called up, putting on a brave face. “How long you reckon you can keep that up?”

Sneering in annoyance, Karen swapped Levitation for Cryokinesis, descending like an icy comet. When he struck the floor, a massive wave of ice spikes radiated outward in every direction. Goldlewis jumped up and slammed down coffin-first, obliterating the ice within a small area. Meanwhile, Karen’s impact with the ground left him crouching, and he took a second to rise. Blazermate used her projectile shield to slow down the ice spikes headed for her and Karin’s way, summoning her Armstrong striker to bulldoze his way through the spikes and stomp the earth once he got next to Kaen, letting out an explosion. ”Go Mr. muscles, go!” Blazermate said as Armstrong gave a thumbs up before disappearing after doing his move.

Geralt grunted, hunkering behind her shield as the ice spikes appeared, angling it a bit downwards to avoid being caught from below like Y’s core had done with its own spikes. When the attack subsided, she returned fire with yet more Quake Rounds, circling around Karen.

When the fight began, Sandalphon wasted no time using one of her new abilities. A pulse radiated across the arena, scanning the Seekers’ opponents. Ultimately, this provided less benefit than the archangel would have liked. As one might expect, her foes were in top condition, and the various evasion, resistance, and defense buffs bestowed upon her teammates were so minor that she doubted that they’d notice. Still, when up against the likes of Karen Travers, Jetstream Sam, and a Consul, it paid to use every advantage at her disposal. What Sandalphon really craved was information. With the Septentrion, she could only assume that he possessed every psionic ability she’d documented throughout Midgar so far, courtesy of his parasitic Brain Eater power. On the other hand, C was a complete unknown, and the transformation he inflicted on Mephisto was rather alarming. Sandalphon could sense an immense amount of magical power emanating from his person, yet for now the Consul seemed content to use that pistol of his and a couple magic tricks. “Be wary,” she cautioned Midna and Roland through their sigils. “Work together, and don’t let him touch you.”

Out of the four, however, she kept her unblinking eyes on Sam. Unlike the others, she knew exactly what the Brazilian swordsman was capable of, and she did not like him menacing Roxas. For now the others didn’t need her support, though she did have Angelic Wings fully charged in case of emergency. So she stood by in Coordination Protocol, ready to intervene at a moment’s notice, but things took an unexpected turn as the two exchanged words rather than blows. Though unversed in reading emotions, Sandalphon could detect subtle changes in Sam’s face and posture now that she looked closer. It was clear that Nox’s capitulation affected him, just as it did Mephisto, and not even the threat of what C did to the young medic galvanized him into action.

With surprise negotiations underway, Sandalphon shifted her attention as the actual problem revealed itself: Mephisto the Singer. His toxic clouds were quickly covering the arena, piling up to create nigh-impenetrable banks of caustic smog. The pollution didn’t do much damage, but it would add up over time, slowly killing all the heroes present while the villains stayed hale and hearty. That wasn’t going to fly, and Roxas knew it, too. As soon as Sam turned tail, the keyblade wielder began to chase Mephisto down, navigating the other brawls throughout the arena. Sandalphon tried to cover him, but the haze crippled her accuracy, and the Singer quickly proved to be frustratingly evasive. Again and again the avian disappeared into the fog, showing up far away from Roxas to continue fumigating the arena. The effort of pursuit forced the boy to hyperventilate, gulping up the toxic gas, and it wasn’t long before the consequences caught up with him. Pit’s magic allowed him to lend a hand for a time from his perch atop the Guardian, but it wasn’t long before Tycoon shook him off. Worse still, Tycoon’s Magitek Crossray was poised to pierce through the fog. Roxas needed help, and if the others didn’t yet, they would soon. It was time Sandalphon took action.

“Your target flees when struck,” the archangel told Roxas. “You need to get close without attacking.” When the boy pushed himself to approach one last time, Sandalphon made her move. She blinked to his position, appearing only a few feet away from Mephisto’s flank. Stone-faced, she cast out her wires, then lobbed a Frost Lock at the Singer’s feathered back. The cold shock wasn’t enough to flash-freeze Mephisto, but he did jerk away, tightening the wires in the process. He struggled and strained against them, unable to teleport, but the wires just sliced deeper and deeper. Sandalphon lifted her staff, and four divine screens appeared around her. They rotated, picking up speed, as glowing circuits traced an intricate sigil beneath her. “Now.”

When the archangel brought her gunstaff down, the screens flared outward, and in the heavenly flash that followed her allies were healed for over fifty percent of their max health. Those suffering from poison found their affliction suddenly cleansed and their max health boosted by twenty percent in recompense. Completely rejuvenated, Roxas could now capitalize on the opportunity that Sandalphon provided.

And just like that - divine intervention. Almost literally in this case. Just as Roxas was struggling to think of his next move, the Nobody was suddenly healed right up, and the poisons of the gas was even cleansed on top of that. It was Sandalphon, offering a much needed heal and boost almost as if answering the Keybearer's prayers, "Ah, thanks Halo!" Roxas said into his earpiece to Sandalphon. He zoomed up to the Singer and used another Cross Slash on it, then followed that with a flurry of Keyblade strikes. Right on schedule, the Singer teleported away from him. But rather than continue the chase immediately, Roxas realized that he was relatively near Sandalphon's position.

"Hey, Halo?" he asked her, "I think it's time we give that oversized bird a little divine wrath."

“I am not angry,” Sandalphon replied, switching to the Eye of Sol as her pupils turned to crosshairs. “Just disappointed.”

“Light!” In moments Roxas was using his StepSword dash to move away from the Archangel, who herself teleported to a new position. Then Roxas aimed his Keyblade and shot a beam of light out of its tip that lanced through the air across the platform and right through the Singer. From her position, Sandalphon fired a blazing tracer round that also pierced the transformed Mephisto. From above, the pair of piercing beams looked a like a radiant X, with the Singer caught in the center of Heavenly Crossfire.

With a shrill shriek, the Singer crashed to the ground in a heap, badly wounded but still alive. Sandalphon approached and crouched beside the infected monster, leaning on the butt of her rifle. She pursed her lips, her brows slightly furrowed as toxic gas began to exude from the thing’s body. What happened to Mephisto wasn’t fair. She couldn’t imagine what terrible things he’d done as an accomplice of Jena Anderson and member of Reunion, but neither could she imagine what he’d been through. How much pain, loss, and despair, even before Consul Y shattered his hopes last night? And then in desperation he’d fallen victim to C as well. Even with all he’d done, he was just a boy. A child failed by this city. By this world.

Everyone says angels aren’t real, ‘cause if they were, they’d come down and help us…

As the smog began to thicken, Sandalphon manifested a friend heart, and in a brilliant flash Mephisto was restored. When the flare receded, the boy lay on the floor amidst the dispersing gas, breathing heavily. His wild eyes focused on the archangel. “Be not afraid,” she said as she knelt, her voice gentle despite the toxic irritants. She extended her hand. “I want to help.”

“Liar!” There was the sound of a gunshot, deafening. Sandalphon froze, her eyes wide, as blood flew from a fresh bullet wound. As smoke rose from the barrel of his pistol, Mephisto let out a burst of insane laughter, his eyes wide. “Who’re you trying to fool!? Huh!? Not me! Never again! I’m nobody’s pawn! You hear me!?” He fired again and again. “You hurt me! Hurt her! Took them from me! How d’you like it? Huh? Self-righteous Sankta! How dare you pity me!” Completely manic, he aimed his final shot at the archangel’s head.

Sandalphon’s gaze swiveled toward him, eyes refocused, and she burst into dazzling light. It faded a moment later, leaving behind a being of majestic beauty, white wings spread wide. In order to survive, Sandalphon had become Heavenly Wings, a holy draconic angel that towered over friend and foe alike. Only Tycoon, standing at thirty feet compared to her sixteen, still eclipsed her.

When she turned her face downward she found Mephisto paralyzed by shock on the floor. She also saw little black vortexes appear around the battlefield, cast by Tycoon. Sadness lingered on her face as she thought about him, as well as the little girl in Zone 09. Even now, she had no idea whether or not the girl or her dog survived the catastrophe that Mephisto helped unleash in Quarantine Valley, and that worried her. Once this was over with, she would have to go check. For now, though, Mephisto had found the wherewithal to move again. A new magazine clicked into place in his gun. “Forgive me,” the archangel echoed, her voice oddly resonant. “You’re right, of course. Salvation is not mine to offer.”

She beat her wings and flew backward, leaving the battlefield. Mephisto chased her off with a couple shots, missing them all, then stooped in a hurry to collect his fallen cane. When he bent down, he saw the vortex at his feet suddenly expand to a massive size, far too big for him to escape. “What the-!?” The next moment, the unfortunate boy disappeared, sundered by the raw destructive might of Artificial Gravity.

Sandalphon did not look to see what became of him. Instead she focused forward, dedicating the holy light of Heavenly Wings to the fight for Midgar’s future.



Once she recovered from her surprise skewering with the aid of the Ripened Heart, Nadia resumed her deadly dance with the Radiance. By now, she could feel herself getting a hold of a definite pattern in the angelic insect’s fighting style. Her sheer output of luminous lasers, homing orbs, and airborne swordblades boasted a serious intimidation factor, especially at first. They dictated the pace of the battle and demanded that the Seekers stay mobile, preventing anyone from getting too comfortable. Gradually, though, what started as a panicked scramble became controlled chaos as the heroes memorized the patterns–as well as their answers. The Radiance showed off over a dozen different attacks, teleporting between each onslaught, but they all proved to be somewhat one-dimensional, devoid of creativity or interplay. Once Nadia realized that, newfound courage pumped through her veins. For all its eldritch power, this effulgent entity seemed to be a problem that the Seekers could solve, and glimpsing a path to victory fired the feral up like nothing else.

That wasn’t to say the road would be easy, though, so Nadia couldn't be too gleeful just yet. Those who could cast, spit flame, shoot, or throw boulders had it easy compared to melee fighters like her. While her energy lasted, Nadia made her way through the Radiance’s unrelenting bombardment, dodging dozens of lances and lasers. Not being a machine, she couldn’t execute perfectly every time even when she knew what to do, and as the fight went on the feral racked up her fair share of burns and bloody gashes. Still, Nadia had one massive advantage in her corner: being part of a team. There was nowhere around the arena that the Radiance could teleport to where one or two Seekers couldn’t reach her. If her impetuousness left her hurting, she could ease up for a minute while the others picked up the slack, and when someone else stepped back she made sure to cover for them in turn.

When Nadia managed to get her claws on the bright-eyed bug, Nadia sprang up to deliver a short-lived air combo, punctuated by a blockbuster like Feral Edge or Purrge of Vengeance if her stockpile of Dramatic Tension permitted it, or New Moon if she had it off cooldown. Again and again her claws and boxcutters drew blood, spilling ichor that shone like the sun. Whenever a close combatant finally got the chance to dig in, shreds of moth fuzz drifted down like snow. Slowly, her team began to turn the tide. The Seekers could adapt, using their various powers for defense or mobility as well as offense, while the Radiance didn’t. Its incredible efforts still took a toll, but the price it exacted slowly decreased, while the heroes’ damage piled up.

Finally, just as Nadia’s energy began to flag, the Guardian seemed to reach a breaking point. Until now it barely reacted when the Seekers shot or struck her, but when Ganondorf -empowered by Abyssal Resurgence- landed a mighty blow, her poise suddenly shattered. She reeled back and fell from the sky, slamming into the platform face-down in a burst of light that radiated in all directions. The wave shattered the steely battlefield along its seams and cleared away the rolling hills of ethereal clouds all around. For a moment she just lay there as the team looked on, wondering if it was over. As those tense seconds ticked by, the sky of the dreamscape seemed to darken, as if the dimming sun had slid behind the horizon to turn the peachy heavens orange, scarlet, and finally a deep indigo. The broken monolith began to shake, and around it, a black tide rose from the depths below. When she noticed it encroaching on the arena’s edges, Nadia froze, reminded of the tar from the Orphan’s beach. This seemed somehow worse, though. It didn’t look like liquid so much as a pitch-black mass of indescribable bodies, piled together, hopelessly entangled, squirming and clawing. If the Radiance existed in the domain of dreams, then surely this abyssal darkness must be the stuff of nightmares. As much as she wanted to finish off the Radiance, Nadia didn’t dare make a move while this new threat loomed.

So she watched, struck dumb, as twisted limbs and barbed tentacles stretched up from the mire to grasp and ensnare the fallen Guardian. In a way it made sense that this darkness, whatever it was, would abhor this mind-searing light as well. Before the living darkness could fasten its grip however, the Radiance regained her strength. Light blazed from her eyes, scorching the shadows, and the second their grip slacked the Radiance teleported upward. She hung in the air for a moment above the broken arena, scarred and tattered, staring down at the Seekers and the abyssal limbs that reached and flailed below her. Then she flew off in a burst of speed, rattling the heroes with a sonic boom left in her wake. In seconds she disappeared into the distance, and there she stopped, a brilliant and unreachable star.

Around Nadia and her allies, the limbs of the abyss receded. The feral looked around, perplexed. She hadn’t considered the possibility that the Guardian could just leave, fleeing beyond the heroes’ reach. Beneath the clouds, a sea of roiling blackness now stretched out in all directions, but every fiber of her being told her not to touch that living darkness. She looked around at the others. “Well…what now?”

After a moment, her answer arrived. With everyone already on high alert against the verminous ocean, even if it seemed inclined to help them somehow, the team noticed the moment something began to push its way out of the murk a couple hundred feet away. Instead of some aberrant monstrosity, however, the shape that emerged from the squirming morass seemed to be blocky and angular, formed of aged metal and plastered with dull green paint. It turned out to be a train, four cars with glowing yellow windows led by a rundown engine, and it slid forward atop the writhing mass to pull to a stop by the broken arena as if it were a train platform. Nadia hopped across the fragments like stepping stones, approaching the locomotive, and when she drew near, a purple crab with a single red eye and a starry wizard’s hat popped up in the window. “Magikrab!” Nadia laughed, her expression delighted but bewildered. “What are you doing here? I mean, how are you even here?”

“Let me explain,” the crustacean began officiously, his childlike voice unusually serious. “...Uh, actually, that would take too long, let me sum up. As you know, egregores -or archangels, as you call them- are beings borne from humanity’s collective thoughts and desires…”

“I didn’t know that at all,” Nadia muttered, scratching her head.

Magikrab cleared his throat. “Ahem! Collective thoughts and desires, yes. Meanwhile, that thing…” He stared across the dreamscape, through the twilight, at the blazing beacon in the distance. “The Radiance. It’s the end of thought itself. Of individuality. Egregores can’t truly die as long as humans exist to give them form, but the infection spreads, that’s curtains. So on behalf of all egregores, the Stagmer-line sent me here to help.” Clacking his claws, Magikrab ducked inside and pulled the whistle, which resounded across the ink-black sea and night-stained clouds. “All aboaaaaaard! Now boarding at Platform A!”

This was shaping up to be another ridiculous situation. Nadia couldn’t help but smile as she shook her head. This world really was a gift that kept on giving. “Hehe. Hell, why not?” She glanced at the others and gave a helpless shrug. “Not like we got any other options we could choo-choo-choose. Ready for another wild ride?”

Unfortunately, the train featured no doors, so everyone needed to climb on top of it. Nadia jumped aboard with enthusiasm, fresh excitement coursing through her, but for some of her friends riding a special train to fight a giant bug wasn’t as novel an experience as one might think. Once everyone climbed aboard, the train began to move. It pulled away from the arena as the fragments sank into the darkness, then chugged along across the surface of the sunless sea. Dead ahead loomed the Radiance, like a lighthouse on a distant shore “Looks like we’re on track,” Nadia called over the rushing air. Her hair, ears, and tails flapped in the wind, making her glad she got her hair cut. “But that thing’s not getting any closer.”

“It’s fleeing as we approach!” Magikrab shouted up at the Seekers. “Time to pick up the pace. Hold onto your hats!”

A moment later the train lurched forward, suddenly picking up speed. Nadia dropped to all fours, burying her claws in the roof of the train car for grip, and after another moment the locomotive began to angle upward. Soon the whole train left the living darkness behind, soaring into the air on invisible tracks. Above the sea of clouds, the pinpricks of light that teemed in the night sky became shooting stars, a million cosmic arrows hurtling backward as the Seekers forged ahead. Nadia’s heart raced as she grinned from ear to ear, not even questioning it at this point. Now this was a boss battle, worthy of a war to save the worlds.



Right away, brilliant lasers like sniper shots began to fire on the train, forcing the team to take evasive action, but the barrage didn’t last long. In less than a minute, the train caught up with the Radiance. Having more or less shed its insectoid trappings, it shone like the sun, little more than a singularity of baleful light. Judging by the clouds that zipped past and the stars overhead, it must be moving at an absurd speed, but the Stagmer-line’s train could keep up with it, and thanks to inertia (and a little dream logic) the Seekers could stand up on its roof and fight. Recognizing the danger at last, the Radiance attacked, spitting out light rays, orbs, and swordblades with twice the speed, quantity, and intensity of before, made all the more dangerous by a much narrower arena that would curve to follow the Guardian’s path. But the heroes had come this far, and they weren’t about to back down.

”Well then. I knew I was wise to not go under those clouds, but I did not realize quite how wise” Kamek commented from on high as he observed the void rising up to try and smother the light that was their foe. At least the darkness seemed to be on their side this time, though he was a touch concerned as to what would occur once they won.

At any rate, they certainly hadn’t done so yet, and indeed the Radiance seemed to decide that it wasn’t going to give them the opportunity to be done ever as, after taking a lashing from the dark and then blowing it away, it promptly decided to just leave.

”Wait. It can just do that?” Jr asked, rather dumbstruck, while Bowser roared ”Coward! Get back here and take your lumps like a proper boss!” to no avail. It wasn’t coming back.

”Maybe I can sail on that?” Rika began to suggest, regarding the sea of black darkness around them, but fortunately before she could actually try this help arrived in the form of train based transportation. It was crewed by a friend of Nadia apparently, and their appearance here was apparently entirely unexpected as it had to exposit a bit to explain it, but more than welcome.

Speaking of expositing, given they had a touch of breathing room, Kamek decided to do some of that himself as he flicked open Robin Goodfellow’s book and sought out the Radince’s own page on it, just in case it held some helpful tips.



While the mage did wonder about who on earth the Pale King was, what stood out at the end was the note about darkness. That, and the earlier comment about the void, certainly explained what the shadow stuff was, and it also gave him an idea about a plan of (magical) attack.

While Kamek did that, and exposited to anyone that was interested in what he was reading, Jr used the moment they had to check on and top up everyone’s health with his healing magic, ensuring they'd all be primed and ready to go for round two.

After that, it was time to climb abroad. Climb being the key word here as they would be riding atop the train rather than inside of it. None of the Troop questioned this however, it was simply the logical place to fight from, and soon enough they were up top and ready for action.

They just had to reach said action first

”Well, this looks like it might take a moment” Kamek commented as they began their minuet long catch up to the Radiance, before he glanced at his green doppelganger and decided ”We might as well make the most of it”

Thus 3 more green orbs were tossed, three more green mages were made, and as they rolled on towards the second confrontation with the ‘end of thought’ they were put to work, giving each and every single of the party a nice little boost to their speed, attack, and defense.

Of course, the Radiance wasn’t exactly content to let them approach, and so proceeded to blast at them with inaccurate laserbeams which, fortunately, had a tell and wind up time that left them perfectly dodge-able. Things started going particularly well when Rika took point and the rest began a game of follow the leader, the troop, Kamek clones included, forming a line that dodged back and forth to avoid getting lasered under the princess’ guidance.

By the time they had arrived, everyone was boosted up by the clones, and Kamek wasn’t the only one who’d been busy prepping, as the front of the first train carriage was absolutely littered with iron knives that had been stabbed into the roof.

”Opening salvo, go!” Jr shouted as they got close enough to attack, having used the travel time to scheme as well as stockpile magic, thrusting a finger forwards and sending a hail of pre-prepared blades stabbing towards the Radiance, forming and launching more alongside the initial volley. He was joined in this by Rika who launched a fresh volley of disrupting shots at the Radiance inorder to debuff the firepower she was throwing back.

The Troop’s final hit came from combo attack from Kamek and Bowser, the king grabbing the mage’s doppelgangers by the broomstick and hurling forwards like javelins, and then, once they got close, Kamek had them cast his explosion causing dark magic beams spell.

The clones were, inevitably, cut down soon after launching, and it was an inefficient way of casting the spell, but it was safe and strong and that was what mattered, even if it did leave the mage rather drained.

Indeed, between them the Troop expended most of their rechargeable resource pools in that opening strike, which could have been an issue had it not been the plan. As a volley of swordblades came hurtling down the train, Bowser grabbed Kamek in one arm, Jr in the other and waited for a moment for Rika to grapple hook onto him before leaping backwards, over the heads of those behind them on the train.

The wind blasting backwards along their path, though nowhere near as strong as it should have been, caught them, sending the entire Troop flying all the way to the back of the train, and in so doing opened up the front-lines for someone else to give it all they’d got.

Just as Jr had planned.

Bowser touched down, thorny vines stabbing into the train’s roof for grip, his and Rika’s heels screeching as they slowed their backward flight, stopping them right before they tipped off of the back of the train, and right before the swordblade volley hit.

It was faster, but, thanks to Kamek’s now destroyed green clones, so were they. With speed he hadn’t had till now Bowser (still holding Kamek and Jr) stepped between the swordblades and received only a light scratch for his efforts, helped greatly by Rika sticking close to and slowing the shots down for him.

After they’d done that however they did have to face the slight flaw in their plan however, and that was that they were going to have to advance all the way back up the train to take another swing at Radiance.

”Nothing for it to get moving. Let’s go, let’s go!” Jr commanded as he was set back, leading the charge back the way they had come.

Zenkichi had to dodge another swing of Tycoon's giant arms as the Guardian attacked, but now that the smoke was clearing out, that was a bit easier to manage. He'd noticed Sandalphon's transformation, and the lack of a giant birdsnake monster thing meant that things were turning in the Seekers' favor. One down, and their healer was now their own giant murderbot to rival the Guardian. Blazermate was busy helping out the others dealing with Karen Travers, so both the Tycoon crew and the Seekers fighting C would have to be a bit more careful for a bit.

Zenkichi could do that, especially now that he could see where he was going. He drew his pistols, emptying both cylinders into the machine, before calling on Valjean to copy him with a simple Triple Down. Then out came his greatsword, and as yet another buff expired, he turned to Pit and called out "Tarukaja!" to give the Angel an attack boost. He, meanwhile, ran in to melee range to start swinging, careful to avoid both Tycoon's and Susie's arms, though in his focus on dealing damage, he forgot to check for giant lasers, sidestepping a punch only to have a frozen laser unfrozen directly into his face.

Blasted back, Zenkichi coughed and pushed himself back to his feet, sighing before running back into the fray to keep up the damage. He lacked a lot of versatility, but more than made up for it in the amount of punishment he could both give and take. Even that laser had only put a bit of a dent in his reserves, though his ability to keep casting and giving buffs was just about running on fumes by this point. He had maybe a Heat Riser and one or two more offensive casts in him by now, and from there on out it would be just him and his sword.

Adding to his problems was the strange little glowing ring that had appeared around him, and was just not going away, no matter how or where he dodged or rolled. It lasted a few seconds before detonating, stumbling Zenkichi for a moment as he frowned. That was gonna be a pain in the butt to deal with. Zenkichi activated Fury, howling as his body overflowed with energy, and he went into an attacking frenzy, both to keep his vitality from draining too quickly, and to stack the damage as high as he could get it before deactivating it a short while later. It was useful for racking up the damage quickly, but against a single big target, he couldn't absorb enough back with his vampiric attacks to make sustained use reasonable.

"We've got this, guys! Just keep on whaling on him!" He cheered, slashing another gouge into Tycoon's armor.

When they managed to deal some damage to this guardian, it seemed that darkness came from below to engulf this being of light. Darkness that got a bit of something in. Whatever that 'something' was, scared off the Radiance and made it retreat unlike their attacks. "So it is weak to the darkness it seems. With how Ganondorf is handling the attacks, its perhaps weak and strong against darkness. Unless that is an even stronger darkness, it did look a bit different..." Sectonia said. She then listened to Kamek reading about the Radiance from his book, and learning that it was fleeing to ascend to an even more powerful form.

"Hmmm... that book seems to be a bit confused with what it knows. It says this guardian can't be defeated, yet it does? Why would a book want to stir up dramatic tension?" With her wording, it seemed Bowser's flare for stageplay rubbed off on her a little bit. But that wasn't important now, since they had to chase the guardian. And almost as if on que, a friend Nadia had made arose from the darkness on a train offering the seekers a ride towards the fleeing Radiance.

"Why does this seem familiar..." Sectonia said, remembering having to use a train to fight another guardian before. But this one didn't have a giant cannon, so it would be up to the group at large to deal with this. "Well, there can be only one radiant beauty, so shall we slay a presumed god?" Sectonia said to get everyone ready for the approach.

Much like before, Sectonia had a bit of trouble keeping herself on the moving train. It was far worse this time however, as before she could keep her back to something when she needed to rest from flying. This time though? It was a flat train top and was much more difficult, needing to use a hand to hold onto the train itself most of the time, leaving her dodging opportunites to be quite limited at the moment.

To compensate for this, she summoned a golden antler and a crystal in front of her to use as cover from the blasts as they approached, offering the cover to anyone else who needed it. The cover wouldn't be indestructible, as she herself could shatter these crystals, so it would only take so much punishment before it broke. She could use this makeshift cover to throw the occasional void globule, knowing that the Radiance was scared of them, but the range and rate of attacks made them hitting being very low. Seems she'd have to be on defense for a while until they got closer.

Roxas sure was glad the poison clouds were finally gone. But with one problem going away, it ushered in new problems to take its place. Namely the rings that started appearing all over the place and detonating. The Nobody could keep himself out of them somewhat, but doing that meant less concentration on dealing with everyone’s real target - Tycoon. But if he could last a bit longer, his MP would be recharged and at least he’d have that to fall back on.

For the time being, he had to stay pretty defensive and evasive. Not only from the rings, but from occasional swipes that came from Tycoon’s big arms. His StepSword dash and the mental calculations that were made easier by the spirit within him were greatly appreciated. Roxas had no idea how he would have been able to keep up this kind of tempo without getting swatted or caught by a ring otherwise.

When Tycoon brought its arm down to slam on the ground, Roxas dive-rolled out of the way to narrowly avoid being squashed. He saw this as an opportunity and jumped up on the hand as it began to rise back up. Then he just ran along the arm for a couple steps and used the StepSword to dash at the Guardian’s face with a quick slice courtesy of the energy blade that ignited from his hand. The Keybearer was able to follow that up with a short flurry of Keyblade strikes at Tycoon’s face before noticing the other arm coming around for a swipe. So he dashed downward and out of its way, which also put Roxas back on the ground where he aimed up with his right gauntlet and fired off a charged shot from his RockGun at Tycoon’s head area.

This was all thanks to a bit of good fortune on his part, and Roxas knew it wasn’t likely he would find another opening like that again without using MP to create one. With that in mind, the Nobody simply went back on the defensive yet again. Although this time he wasn’t quite able to make a clean getaway from one of the rings, the resulting blast managed to barely catch him and sent Roxas momentarily sprawling.

”Gah, ow!” Roxas yelped, ”That’s what I get for pushing my luck I guess.” he muttered, pushing himself to his feet and refusing to let himself be slowed down by the hit. In fact there was already a frozen laser getting ready to shoot at him any moment now. Roxas went to roll out of its trajectory when suddenly the arena shook. Not that would hurt him, but it did throw him off his balance and sent him stumbling… just in time for the laser to unfreeze and clip him against his left side. Roxas recovered, but now he was starting to get frustrated.

So it was a good thing, then, that his MP had finally recharged. And so the Keybearer began to float in place and channel his Light. ”Alright, let’s see how you like getting laser’d!” As with his previous fight against Ninten and Lucas, Roxas began to call down columns of Light to strike the Arena around him. Their pattern was mostly random but he was able to keep it largely localized on Tycoon. Not that that would be particularly hard thanks to the Guardian’s large size making it an easy target. Tycoon did fight back though, attempting to swat Roxas with one of his arms or shoot him with one of his unfrozen laser shots. Between that and Roxas interrupting his channeling in brief moments to reposition himself to avoid incoming attacks, it almost looked like he was having some kind of laser light duel against the Guardian. And then Roxas intensified his assault, ”Give me strength!” and channeled his light more strongly. This made his light columns become bigger, stronger, and to begin striking faster.

Naturally this wasn’t going to last forever. Roxas’ Magic Hour Limit Break would run its course and be over soon enough. But hopefully he was able to deal some big damage with this and maybe give some others an opening they could capitalize on in the process.

Well this was all just peachy. First the Radiance looked in danger of getting swallowed by shadows, then she managed to escape and was trying to fly away! How the bloody hell was Ganondorf supposed to give chase? He could summon the phantom horse but that could only go for so long and then what? Plummet to his death? It was all so vexing. But when the strange locomotive appeared, it at least gave the Seekers some kind of workable solution. And so despite being in the middle of a deadly battle, the warlord piled onto the train with everyone else.

It sped along through tracks that seemed to appear out of thin air only to vanish again once the train passed over it. One had to wonder if the pilot could make those tracks appear in any direction or if the train was stuck on a fixed track. But now wasn’t the time to be questioning the logistics of their transportation. Unfortunately there was little Ganondorf could do while they were still a distance away. He re-summoned his Moblin archers and they all took shots at the fleeing Radiance, but the constant movement of her and the train made their accuracy pretty abysmal.

It wasn’t until after the Troop had done their assault, when Sectonia summoned a large crystal, that Ganondorf realized that maybe he could do something. So he launched forward into a run where he then vaulted up to the crystal like a makeshift platform and proceeded to launch off of it courtesy of a bullet jump. As quick as he could manage, Ganondorf summoned the Phantom Steed before he could start plummeting back down and rode it forward in a charge toward the Radiance.

The Guardian in question shot back with lasers that Ganondorf was able to avoid by veering toward the side. But when it became clear that he wouldn’t be able to cleanly dodge the next volley of shots, he instead launched himself out of the saddle while simultaneously kicking the horse off to the side so they both would go off in opposite directions to avoid the volley of lances coming their way. Then Ganondorf used a midair jump to correct himself and once again launch toward the Radiance.

He came crashing into her with a Flame Choke. Despite there being no ground to land on, he could still give her a facefull of exploding dark flame regardless. But with her being in her Absolute state, well, frankly they were practically burning each other just being in close contact like this. So Ganondorf knew he had to finish what he was doing, and quickly. The quickest thing he could think to do was to power up a Warlock Punch. Normally this was a very telegraphed attack that could be easy to avoid if an enemy was quick and reflexive enough.

Which is probably why it was a good thing that Ganondorf was still benefiting from the boosts courtesy of the green mages’ spell. The speed boost from it let him charge up the punch in half the time it normally took him. And the attack boost would make it hit extra hard. Ganondorf released his grip on the Radiance and pushed himself off of her slightly so that he could then deliver his haymaker Warlock Punch in all its explosive glory. ”INCREASETH THY SPEED!” He shouted down to the train driver at the top of his lungs.

Magikrab wasn’t sure of what the warlord was planning at first, but increased the train’s throttle anyway. It didn’t take him long to realize that the train was now on a collision course with the Radiance and rammed into her full speed. As for Ganondorf himself, he managed to catch himself onto the saddle of his phantom horse and used it to ride back in the direction of the train. But the horse’s time limit ran out moments later, forcing him to vault from it with a bullet jump to cover the rest of the distance back to the train.

”AIM THY COURSE DOWNWARD!” Ganondorf yelled toward the front of the train, needing to practically scream in order for even his booming voice to carry forward, ”LET THE DARK ABYSS TAKE HER!” He added, clarifying his plan. The Radiance had been doing all those to escape from the darkness that tried to devour her after all. And now that she’d been caught by the ramming train? Why not let the darkness have the meal that was trying to escape from its jowls? As for the warlord himself? He drew his twin Greatswords and began to vault across the top of the train cars toward the locomotive engine where the Absolute Radiance was currently pinned.

”Ready thyselves!” Ganondorf shouted to other Seekers, ”It ends now!” At this point he didn’t care that getting near the Radiance harmed him. Just knowing that he could have the same effect on her made this more than worth it. Once he reached the train’s engine he would be more than happy to deliver a furious string of darkness-powered sword swings at this blasted Guardian.

When the Radiance fell, both Primrose and Therion ceased their chasing and casting. The dancer still held a spell in her hand, and Therion his blades in his, but both of them glanced around at the others and waited for the telltale crumbling of the light being's body. The Orsterrans used the break in the endless onslaught of light to catch their breaths, but once it was clear that the Radiance wasn't dissolving they steeled themselves for battle once more. Neither expected the dreamscape to shake and change, or a bubbling blackness to appear and attempt to take the Guardian for itself. Ultimately it did not succeed - and the Radiance fell up and away until it was but a bright light in the sky.

None wondered for long about their next course of action. Logic didn't really apply, this being a realm of dreams and all, so when a train appeared with the Magikrab heading it, it wasn't as big a shock as it could have been. When he gave the call for an all aboard though, Primrose's mouth curved upward in amusement.

"Is this gonna be a theme?" Therion wondered aloud. He didn't provide any context, just glanced at Primrose, Jesse, and Sectonia who had all fought the desert Guardian together. It seemed this time, at least, they'd be the ones in pursuit.

As everyone piled in (or rather climbed on top), Kamek brought up some information about their foe. With its weakness to the dark confirmed, Primrose knew what to focus on. If it was dark magic they needed, she had that more than covered. Her small, amused smile turned into a smirk as she responded to Sectonia just before the train set off. "Let's."

They set off, the scenery around them becoming blurred as the train hurried to catch up with the Guardian. When it finally did, the group had to suspend their disbelief a little in order to get back into the fight. Everyone with projectiles got started right away, especially after enjoying some buffs from Kamek's clone. Naturally Primrose joined them.

"Dusk, fall!" She conjured her Dirge of Dusk, three whirling spheres of shadow that shot towards the Radiance. If it really was vulnerable to darkness, this spell would hurt - and further weaken its resistance to shadow. After casting she devoted her energy to evasion, getting out of harm's way as best she could while nimbly maneuvering around her allies. The platform they fought on now left much to be desired, but it was all they had. She didn't complain, especially when the largest of their group hopped to the back or disembarked entirely and left more room.

Even before they'd caught up with the Radiance, Therion had decided that he was putting himself purely on support duty. He had a good throwing arm, but didn't even consider trying it out in this situation when they were hurtling through dream space - and Aeber's Reckoning would be a one and done thing. Instead, he'd put his SP to better use.

First he used one of Sectonia's crystal walls to project him while he summoned his Striker. He conjured it in the space between train cars, getting it stuck snuggly so it wouldn't just roll off. Then he patted it and bid it good luck as the crystal crumbled, and it starting to fire its blood red lance at the Radiance, repeating as it grew back until its timer expired. And where Primrose chose to continually user her Moonlight Waltz spell in between dodging, accruing cuts and burns when she had to cast, Therion kept moving nearly non-stop. He equipped his shield for once to help protect him against the raining swords, but while one hand held it the other was conspicuously empty.

"Tag," he said, his voice lost to the wind while he darted around the battlefield and touched some of his teammates with that hand. Primrose, Sectonia, and once they caught back up Junior and Kamek. With his ability to donate his own mana, he could keep the casters doing what they did best - and Periodically his body would glow as he activated Battle Boost while sharing his energy. With them he could try and make it last however long the fight would.

When the train lurched at Ganondorf's command and rammed into the Radiance, it seemed things may not last much longer if it couldn't escape. Primrose used the opportunity to cast a stronger Moonlight Waltz, using her own Boost to empower the spell as it erupted against the pinned Guardian.




As the battle continued, Pit quickly decided that if he was going to stick with the few trying to keep the machine god at bay, the Breaking Palm wasn't the way to do it. It worked well enough against the Singer, or any mobile target, but even though their shots could be powered up just the same as those of any of his other weapons they were not suited for punching through hard metal. An overwhelming amount of shots might slowly chip away at Tycoon, but how long would that take even when accounting for Susie and Zenkichi's attacks? Way too long. The angel would be better served swapping to something that packed more of a punch so that he could better contribute. On that he dove out of the way of one of the Guardian's laser arrays that had resumed its firing, and took a moment to dismiss the Palm and glance at how the rest of the Seekers were faring before he went back on the attack.

Everyone was engaged in the fight, but with Karen's team whittled down to just C and himself the odds were in the Seeker's favor. Even so the arena was still a chaotic tangle, with everything from fist fights to fire fights to exchanges of magic going off all while Tycoon bared down on the two groups vying for the chance to take its spirit. So far Pit had been spared any major damage, and Sandalphon's healing put him right back into perfect condition as the Singer's smoke faded away.

We can do this! Pit thought as he felt the grip of his bow materialize in his hand. With a team like this, how could they lose?

When the markers of Artificial Gravity first appeared on the ground, Pit hardly noticed them. Just before, a light brighter than any of the elemental skills Karen was slinging shone in the arena - one that drew Pit's attention, since from within the light a huge draconic angel-like being had appeared. Of course, Pit didn't have a spare moment to really admire this form Sandalphon had mentioned to him before; not if he didn't want to be struck with a stray projectile or a swipe of Tycoon's arm. Or the magic mortar that was now a more pressing threat, as the indicators on the ground swelled up in size. The distraction, however momentary, had him scrambling to get out of the marked area when he heard the great crackling sound from somewhere above him.

The mortar came down on him with monstrous force, pressing and ripping. But when the particles of the attack dispersed, Pit was still in one piece. He hadn't been able to completely avoid the Artificial Gravity, but it would take a lot more than that to put him down. He looked battered, more worse for wear than he actually felt, but the sparkle of determination in his eyes made it obvious that he wasn't in dire straits.

"Is that all?" he shouted at the Guardian, finally getting back into the fray for real. The Palutena Bow was the perfect balance of offense, defense, and evasive ability - he hammered Tycoon with arrows until he was close enough to start slashing too. It was good timing when Zenkichi gave him a power up, as the angel was in the middle of leaping in with a series of quick spinning cuts. He had no clue what the man had called out when he did it, but it was probably something cool. "What he said!"

Pit back dashed away from a stomp, letting a charged light arrow loose to crash against Tycoon while Roxas began his own light barrage. When the arena began to really shake, from more than just the giant robot moving around it, Pit hopped into the air and used his wings to stay there for a moment while continuing to shoot. A quake? He glanced curiously at the other battles again, noting is long as he couldt was probably C or Karen's doing since Tycoon wasn't acting much differently. Both battles looked ferocious, something that meant they were probably nearing their end. Pit grinned, confident it was the Seekers who would emerge victorious.

He landed and went right back into melee with the machine god, and called a encouraging response to Zenkichi. "Can do!"

Those doing battle with Tycoon gave it all they had, and their efforts were paying off - after enough boss battles Pit could practically sense it, even if it was hard to see. Then he felt something strike his right shoulder. It was painful for sure, but not debilitating for him. Crossfire? He winced but didn't cease his attacking until the second hit. It struck his right wing, and instinctively Pit jerked away and pulled the limb in close, spinning around to see what was going on. Around the Consul there was a bullet storm going on, which was probably where the crossfire had come from. This time he didn't let himself stay distracted for long, instead making use of one of Tycoon's punches to get farther away from the potential projectiles. He redoubled his efforts, slashing up the Guardian's arm and then swapping to shooting when it pulled back. He felt there had to be close, they just needed to push a little more!

When Midna went on defense, the Consul did too. He hopped away, then used Scapegoat again for an extra spurt of backward movement. He glanced up at her huge, inert mech. It had yet to take action, and thanks to the various AoE attacks from both Karen and Tycoon, it was taking a pounding. After a brief moment, he seemed to understand. “Ah, I see. Now that’s a side effect that didn’t come on the bottle.”

Indeed, even as he realized the ploy, the pilotless machine was already sinking back into the twilight realm, the princess unable to sustain the summoning of the sized up titan for more than a few moments.

Though Roland’s ability to rapidly switch weapons impressed him, C felt no need to test their mettle by clashing. Instead he used Steady Aim, gripping his pistol with both hands as he locked onto Midna’s legatus again. With Mephisto’s gasp seeping in through her broken mask, now looked like a good time to try again. His bullet couldn’t hit her Beast Legion, which meant it would pass right through, and if he took out her wolfos that would work, too. This time he fired, canceled his stance into reload, then resumed his stance after reloading one round to fire again. Shooting like this fully optimized his resources, allowing him to keep blasting away at max accuracy and power until his concentration waned.

Aware of this possibility now, however, Midna had made a non reactive plan, and brought up her one lower arms to block her upper one that was holding the legatus. The bullet ripped into the limbs, shattering the entirely replaceable magic, the only cost of which was causing her to drop the gun she’d been holding with them. She struck it with her knee as she kept moving forwards, bouncing it away and into a portal.

A second bullet came in, a second arm was sacrificed, and then her beast legion struck back for her. Not with claws, but by running a lap of the Consul as Midna closed in close enough for it to do so, wrapping the chain he kept trying to break around him.

”Let’s see you get out of this one, you slippery moblin” Midna taunted, before attempting to deliver another igniting axe blow to her foe.

Roland had used Midna’s distraction to fade back into the smoke, using his silent movement to get around and strike once Midna opened up with an axe shot of her own. Roland struck C with his lance, using the extra range to strike even sooner, before swapping to his daggers to rush him down.

For his part, C seemed focused on Midna, and he evidently knew something she didn’t. “Hehe, well, if you ins-!” Then the Astral Chain closed on him with a jerk, cutting him off. The Twilight Princess had no trouble bringing her axe down on his head in a puff of flame, and his rabbit-eared helmet practically exploded into halves to reveal a visage topped by small horns and a mop of gray hair, accompanied by an almost cartoonish bonk. His x-shaped shades (worn beneath the helmet) flew from his face, which turned to one of dismay as his eyes rolled like slot machines, sounds included. Once Roland stabbed him with his lance and dashed in with his daggers, his rolling eyes stopped on two blue symbols.

Immediately an omnidirectional wave of blue energy exploded outward from his position, freeing C and lifting him up into the air with a stylish pose. The Burst did no damage, but it did knock his foes away and floor them. When the Consul landed again, he flicked his hand and made a new pair of shades appear from thin air, which he donned with a grin. “Now we’re cooking!” He drew his gun, but as he twirled it for effect copies of the gun flew out of it and littered the ground around him. When he noticed this, C looked bewildered, lifted his shades to give the pistol a better look. “Wait, what?” Doing so meant that he also noticed the early warning signs of Tycoon’s Artificial Gravity. “Ugh, guess it’s about that time.” Rather than attack, he hurried toward a particular point on the arena, some purpose in mind.

Getting back up from the ground, Roland saw the signs of some big attack coming as well from Tycoon, having had enough of getting shot at by Blazermate’s sentry gun. Well, it was doing something that concerned C, so Roland decided that getting next to and dealing with him would be the best idea. Either to stop his plans, or to be in the same protected area he was in. Plus he could get a few more clashes in on his new… weird form with his sword.

”Wha, where, how?” Minda asked, very confused about everything that had just gone down, as she picked herself and her axe up off the floor alongside her wolves, before glancing over at Tycoon and realizing it was doing … something. Something big.

”That can’t be good” she observed, as she unsummoned her wolfos so she didn’t have to worry about it getting caught in whatever was about to happen. She tossed her ax into the same portal before it closed, before hopping onto the back of her Beast Legion, and then spurred it into sprinting after C.

”I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m going to make it your problem not mine!” she declared as she formed her shadow hand and prepared to slap it down on top of him once she got in close enough.

Seeing Midna mount up, Roland decided to hitch a ride so he could start shooting C with his own gun as they rode towards him, pulling out his own pistols to shoot C with before he got in close to clash swords with him. ”Not the weirdest thing I’ve done…” Roland said, looking at the… whole situation he was in right now.

C slid to a stop and turned on the Seekers as they bore down on him. The sight of Midna on an invisible steed and Roland piggybacking on her shoulders really threw him off. “Pfff, haha!” Of course, the wild shots in his general direction forced him to block, and the two reached him the next second. “Not bad. If this hero business doesn’t work out, you should join the circus.” Suddenly the miniature vortexes all around the arena grew much larger, blanketing almost the entire battlefield. But the spot the Consul parked himself in wasn’t a safe space–it was an intersection point where a whopping four different AoE markers overlapped. C grinned. “‘Cause this is gonna be funny.”

The next moment Tycoon’s Artificial Gravity descended, and the area filled with raging spacetime vortexes. Even the chip damage from blocking them might have been too much for C if he didn’t mitigate chip damage with Faultless Defense. Unfortunately, the others weren’t quite so lucky, including Mephisto. “Well now,” the Consul muttered as the attack subsided. “Guess who just sang his swan song.”

As for Roland, Midna, and her Legion all that reminded them of where they had been was a little crack in the air. A crack that expanded open, and out of which black particles descended, reforming the trio as Midna warped them back down from Arahabaki. As soon as the Legion’s claws hit the steel floor, it continued its charge towards C as if it had never stopped.

Roland hadn’t expected to be pulled through time and space so… violently yet gently to dodge that massive attack, he had gotten ready to try to get into a defensive stance instead much like C. But no, Midna had his back while C had tanked all of that and gotten 4 stacks of Vulnerability Up.

“Huh.” C sounded mildly surprised. He hadn’t really expected that his opponents would get caught in his trap using Artificial Gravity, since that would be a pretty ignoble way to go out, but he’d guessed wrong as to how they’d avoid it. Now, with only a brief delay, the two were on his case again. The sight of Midna riding nothing (not to mention Roland riding her) still amused him, but it also solidified his idea of what her invisible companion was. “You really do have a thing for wolves, eh?” Without any time to prepare, or an invincible reversal to bust loose with, the Consul resigned himself to defense behind a conjured barrier.

”I have a dragon too!” Midna declared as her flygon burst from a portal and lunged forwards to deliver a one two swipe of dragon claw slashes while the princess lightly slowed her beast’s charge so that Roland could dismount and join in the fight. Which Roland did, doing an anime jump off of Midna to clash with C’s conjured barrier in an attempt to shatter it with his twin blades. This clash also leveled up his Emotion level, hitting emotion level 3 and gaining Learning, a puppet’s voice echoing “I’m keen to learn as usual. Would you like to see me learn?” as well as the EGO Aspiration. That EGO was a bit… risky to use.

“A dragonfly, maybe,” C grumbled as Midna called in the cavalry. “But if an apple can be a dragon, it hardly matters.” After that, he got locked down on defense. While no amount of whaling on the magical smiley face would destroy the Consul’s guard, the various attacks still did chip damage, amped up by Vulnerability. By now, C had lost (or spent) enough health that he couldn't just burn through his reserves wildly. “Oh, put a sock in it,” he told the mouthy puppet. This nonstop pressure from his opponents left him without many options. They weren't giving him any space to do much of anything that wouldn't just result in an immediate punish.

“I know I'm one to talk, but this is pretty cheap,” he griped with a wince. “Guess I better turn things up a notch.” While still in blockstun, he performed a Yellow Roman Cancel. The short-range wave interrupted his foes’ attacks and staggered them just enough to leave nobody at advantage or disadvantage. “Time for rock, paper, scissors,” he told the Seekers, flipping out his gun. “Shoot!”

”Agreed” Midna said, having not engaged alongside Roland, but instead held back for a moment to rearm. Now, as man and beast were blasted aside, she hefted her Mutagen Shotgun, and squeezed the trigger in tandem with C, filling the air with enough lead that even she couldn’t miss.

Roland, seeing this mess, jumped out of the way to let the two have a shootout. He didn’t want to be in the middle of a firefight, that was for sure.

The two blasted each other at almost the same time, C slightly faster due to his skill and smaller weapon, but Midna with a lot more force. Her shotgun threw the Consul backward to land on his back and roll over into his stomach. Then he faded out, a copy fading in simultaneously into a standing position above him. “Oof,” he muttered. “These debuffs are a real buzz killer.” He reached up above his head and snatched something out of the air. It seemed to be a little shield-shaped emblem, emblazoned with a black and orange spiral. C ripped it in half, then drew his pistol. “Now where were we?”

[d7d7d7]”How many times do we have to kill this guy?”[/color] Roland said, a bit annoyed with just what this C was doing. There was also the other option; they were fighting an illusion this whole time. Well, he could at least confirm the latter bit, although it was going to hurt a bit. Manifesting the EGO he had gotten, Roland donned Aspiration, looking like he and turned himself inside out with the arena turning into the inside of a chest cavity for 10 seconds thanks to the page wisps. And with that Roland let out a massive burst of energy blasting everything around him in a large AoE with the power of unending craving and aspiration, at the cost of half of his HP. This buffed Midna and any other allies near him for 10 seconds, while doing a massive amount of damage to all enemies hit. C would have a hard time blocking this move.

When Roland transformed, C made a face at the sight of him. “Now you’re just being nasty.”

”What?” was Midna’s first confused reaction to this as she picked herself up from the floor where she’d been knocked down to by being shot, followed by observing that ”well that’s disgusting” as she took the mess they were in and Roland had become for a brief moment.

Still, it was only for a moment before she got moving again. Predicting that C was going to try and block and no-sell whatever this big explosive attack was, she thrust her shadow hand forwards to grab C so she could then hurl him at the gross wall of whatever arena magic or pocket dimension they were in. Then she’d have Flygon land between them and him and give him a bub buzz for good measure.

The sight of a hand reaching out to grasp him prompted a reflexive response from C, but he misestimated what he was dealing with. His attempt to tech Midna’s throw failed, and the tenebrous fingers closed around him. “Oh, come on.” A split second later, he found himself tossed straight at the energy surge’s nightmarish epicenter, too fast for him to recover and block in the air. Roland’s eldritch outburst blew the Consul away, and once he hit the floor he tumbled before skidding to a halt. This time he lay there, groaning. “Ooh, got that one wrong.” When Midna’s Flygon landed next to him, he unceremoniously emptied his pistol into it, which immediately resulted in a handful of cactus needles. Then the gun clicked empty, and he allowed the hand to fall back down. Seemingly defeated, he stared listlessly at the ceiling. “Man. I really do suck at this.”

A moment after Midna tried ”You gave it your best, and that’s all they can ask for?” vaguely hoping they could add him to the list of foes who had booked it. He didn’t deserve to live, in her mind, but she also did not want to learn how many more times he could play the fake body trick, so playing along it was.

Roland himself was recovering from using Aspiration, the page wisps changing the arena back to its normal state. ”Phew, that one is a bit rough…” Roland said. Unlike Midna though, he wasn’t really humoring C, instead being on guard since he knew weirdos like him were up to something at all times. Especially if he had that same ‘moebius’ thing that the previous consul had.

C seemed to ignore Midna as he began to speak, his voice as coarse and conspiratorial as ever. “You know, until humans die, all they have is the process. And if you can’t enjoy the failures along the way, you’re really missing out. So here’s the question. If there was a set path you could follow to reach your final destination, that being death, without ever suffering failure, could you really call that path life?” He grinned as his head lolled to the side. “All that is to say, I’m feeling very fulfilled right now. A happy…accident…”

His body rippled, as if a shadow passed over it. When it faded, it wasn’t the body of the Consul laying there at all, but that of Akira Konoe, which quickly began to dissolve. As Midna and Roland stared at it, someone walked out from between them. “Of course, that begs one other question,” the voice belonged to C, and when he turned to face them, pointing finger guns at them both, he was wearing a devilish grin. “Are you my protagonists?”

Time seemed to freeze for a brief moment as he drew both his pistols, spinning them in his hands as he framed his head. He then pointed them sideways, firing into a magic portal as time resumed. “Deus ex Machina!” A handful of portals manifested around Midna and Roland, and from all directions a fusillade of bullets blasted toward them. More portals would appear to trace their movements, making evasion almost impossible. After a couple seconds a final, much larger portal appeared overhead, and from it hurtled a supersized bullet bigger than an outhouse that plowed through the arena itself.

Roland pulled out his sword and began to parry the bullets fired at him from the various portals. He had to admit that he wasn’t as good as the blue sicko when it came to parrying gunfire. He wasn’t a slouch, and could deflect a fair amount of shots from himself and Midna as the two were near each other, but he couldn’t get them all. And once the big shot came, there was nothing to do but just avoid it entirely. There was no way he was parrying a shell that big. Only the blue sicko and the red mist could deal with something that big without specialized weapons. And even then, the latter did have that cool sword that split entire city blocks.

Midna did her part by, after realizing dodging wasn’t going to work, by opening a portal of her own. Out of it the paw, and only the paw, of her giant mecha-bear rose up, while next to it she summoned her warthog ATV. Putting their backs against these twin walls, they massively reduced the amount of space the portals could open in.fire at them through, letting her pull out and wrap her shadow hand over their heads to block bullets coming from above, while Roland focused on those coming through the remaining gap.

Then when the big bullet came she whipped her shielding shadow hand up, slapping the shot in the side to try and direct it away from the way they chose to try and evade it, while dropping their cover back into the twilight realm.

When the bullet storm ended, and the last few spent casings clattered to the ground, C lowered his guns to get a look at his handiwork over the gunsmoke. Deus Ex Machina was no joke, and he’d definitely dealt some damage, but the two Seekers were still very much alive. “Well damn, looks like you might just be. Only a true protagonist could have that much plot armor.” Holstering his right-hand pistol, he span his left with a flourish. “How about…”

”TIME!”

A disembodied voice echoed across the Consul’s corner of the arena. When he heard it, C’s shoulders drooped, an annoyed look on his face as he scratched his head. “Aw, really? Victory by timer scam? What a rip.” He squeezed off a near-instant shot, aimed at an nonspecific point in the air. It hit something invisible to his opponents and shattered it, leaving a hole like broken glass in the fabric of reality itself. With an exasperated sigh, he put away his other gun and shrugged. “Still, a win’s a win. If I’m being honest, I was hoping you’d win. Really breaks the monotony whenever you guys show up. Let’s do this again sometime, huh?” He grinned. “Who knows, maybe next time you can try beating me for real. Good luck figuring out how, hehe.”

”I… What just happened?” Midna asked, entirely bemused by C’s antics and, entirely unable to maintain any anger at him as a result of it, before deciding simply that ”You know what, I’ll take it.”

C crossed his arms, looking over at Tycoon. Thanks to the efforts of Pit, Roxas, Zenkichi, and Susie, Midgar’s Guardian seemed to be suffering. “Still, I gotta wonder. Do you really know what you’re getting into? The consequences of your actions? There’s no way, right?” He glanced back at Midna and Roland. “If you did, though, heheh. Wouldn’t that be something.”

”You tell me?” Midna replied noncommittally as she took a moment to first catch her breath and then another reform her second pair of arms.

The Consul snickered. If she really expected him to give a straight answer by now, she should learn to temper her expectations. “Nah, go ahead and find out for yourself. And if you can’t get it, maybe that brainy angel lady can fill you in.” Without further ado, C turned to go. He skirted around the perimeter of the battlefield, ducking away from stray shots, as he headed for his parked car. Once he hopped in, the Consul turned as if to say something. Then he lifted up a glass with a grin, swirled it, and took a drink. “Ahh. My favorite.”

”What the hell…” Roland said, utterly confused. Apparently this C was way crazier than he figured, or he could see some weird wing test, or WAS a test or… ”Ok so… hes just…. Leaving? Well, I guess with how his powers work, I guess it makes as much sense as anything hes doing. These weirdos…” Roland said, sighing.

”If it means I don’t have to listen to him throw out a dozen more terms I have never heard of I’m not going to complain” Midna replied as she shook out her newly reformed limbs ”I mean, what is plot armor?”

”It’s a literary term for “your invincible due to plot” but why he was making quotes on writing is… well he is a weirdo.” Roland said, clarifying that for Midna, who supposed that was on brand with whatever C had been on about.