Childe and Cherub II
Word count: 2580 (+3)
Level: 5 - Total EXP: 244/50
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (89/140) (+1 bonus pending)
The pair’s peering upwards and wondering where the end of this race was was interrupted by a flash of light an earth shaking kaboom courtesy of Rika’s explosive catchup method. The Girl in question came into view a few moments later, pining off a sloped ceiling of part of the mines, before being slapped like a volleyball by Minda and then coming sailing down in their direction.
Jr was briefly stuck between two worlds of being amazed by how cool that was and being angry that she had totally stolen their (pit’s) idea before realizing they were in trouble and that they had to ”Dodge!”
The boys moved to dive out of the way of the koopa princess, immediately creating their next problem. With Jr. moving one way and Pit the other, the tether between them pulled taut and stopped both of them in their tracks. Pit scrambled to correct his course, but at that point they only barely avoided the wild projectile that was Rika and Kamek. Their dodge attempt saw them tumbling off of their current platform and back down to one below them. A bit of lost progress, but it could have been worse.
Pit poked his head out over the side to watch the other pair careen farther down. "Think she's gonna do that again? Maybe we should Mimic her instead!" he said, thinking that the same outcome of being bounced around the mine and ultimately falling back down wouldn't befall them. And they wouldn’t even need to use a bucket to get around!
”Maybe? That must have been a massive explosion to fly all the way up here though, I bet she spent ages prepping all that, and is super thirsty as a result” Jr replied, not thinking his sis’s idea was a very good one for all it had cool factor in spades.
Since they didn't want to wait around to see if Rika would make it back up to them, they continued their climb. First step was getting back up to where they'd just fallen from, which didn't take very long. From there the path was practically straight up and down, with footholds so small that a fall was liable to reset their progress yet again. Even so, both of the boys were determined to make a run for first place even with a couple teams still ahead of them.
They moved quickly, almost used to each other's pace by now. Mimi created a path up to the first stone, and from there they leapt together and take hold of the next. They alternated who played the role of anchor first whenever they had to swing, gradually climbing and swinging up higher. They moved to a few more crumbling stone platforms, though the danger of falling from those was still completely mitigated thanks to Mimi. Eventually small wooden platforms were interspersed between the stone, making their trek even easier. The light in the mine was growing brighter, and the temperature colder once more. When they started to see snow and ice here and there, they knew they were about to breach the mines' exit.
"We've gotta be getting close!" Pit said as they ran past a wooden sign that displayed only an arrow pointing diagonally up.
”Finally! Did they have to implement the smell of this place? Because I never want to smell another fish in the world of light again!”
The next section they had to traverse was made up of long tracks for the buckets moving fish. They crossed onto the first one, riding it up until they could jump onto the next rock ledge and continue on a path that would have been a simple straight away save for the empty spaces between rocks where slow moving buckets traveled every now and then. They didn't need to wait for the other elevators to get across these gaps, continuing to rely on the ruby cubes to create their own platforms. They raced forward, stopping only to get the briefest of looks at what was ahead of them before making a short plunge down with a whoop.
Pit took hold of the wall right before another underhang, securing his hold so Jr. could swing up to the next set of boards and then reel him in. Then they bounded up a few more smaller platforms, making short work of this part of the mountain mines. Their drive to win fueled them, but the fun of running what basically amounted to a platforming course was just as strong.
They passed another sign directing them upward and followed it. Now that the elevator tracks were shorter and the ceilings lower, they wouldn't be able to pull off the same trick that had sent them so far up the first section, but the end wasn't that far away. The end of the mines, at least. The next area had a bevy of crumbling rock paths, which was no issue at all for the duo. They raced through it with little issue, their only slip up in trying to avoid the blood slicks that told them they'd followed Therion and Ms. Fortune's path. Once again Pit and Jr. moved in different directions when they noticed the trap, and on the ice it sent them forward spinning. Pit dropped to a knee and stuck the climbing gloves into the icy ground to stop them from sailing off the edge, and after steadying themselves the boys got a move on again.
By the time they bypassed what would be the last elevator (via Mimi making a crude staircase to the next elevated cliff), the light had gotten even brighter and they could feel wind on their skin. There was only one path ahead of them now, one completely covered in sheets of ice.
Pit sucked in a deep breath of the crisp mountain air. Sliding around on ice was a double edged sword. It could be both fun and annoying, and though it sounded like fun right now if it led to a fall he knew that both he and his partner would be frustrated. So he looked at Jr. before they got going.
"Ready?"
”Ready!”
They pushed forward, running, sliding, and then jumping across gaps onto the next frozen stone. And, finally, they emerged from the Fishy Mines into the next leg of the course marked by strong wind.
It seemed that several paths out of the mines merged together here. Ahead of them, a little farther up the course, Bower Jr. and Pit could see Midna, Roxas, and the two feline thieves. Just behind them were Captain Falcon and Roland, who'd made amazing time catching up after their tumble. This meant that... Pit and Jr. were actually pretty close to winning, didn't it?
"We're so close! C'mon, let's beat them up to the top!" Pit exclaimed.
”Yeah, let’s get 'em!”
Things had been going so well for the pair this leg of the race that it really was possible they'd take first place. Or at least second or third! Which, of course, is why right when they moved to get going and claim their place on the podium, disaster struck.
In excitement, Pit had spread his wings wide as he usually did. His third pair of limbs acted as another way to gauge his emotions, moving subconsciously at times. The harsh gust of wind chose that moment to blow, catching in his feathers and making the lightweight into an angelic kite.
"Wha-!?" The rope between the two boys went tight with a cracking noise, which is when they both realized that no, Pit hadn't become a kite, but a parasail.
The force of the wind ripped Pit right from the ground, and the connected Jr. right along with him. And then it deposited them over a gap when it died down, dropping the two boys right back down a mine shaft.
”No no no noooooo!” jr cried out in despair as they got dragged along, flailing for the ground and then having a desperate idea. Iron formed around his hand into the form of a pic-ax. This he hurled towards the wall of the mineshaft, forming links of a chain onto it as it flew and embedded itself in a wall. The chain, then snagged, swinging them towards the wall, and slamming them into it, leaving them dangling from the mineshaft’s wall.
”You, you, you blockhead! You made us lose!” the prince yelled down furiously at Pit, even as Mimi engaged in a more productive action of spawning blocks underneath the prince so he could stand and, potentially, reel in Pit.
Pit's cheeks colored with embarrassment at the same time that his eyebrows knitted together defensively.
"That wasn't my fault!" he argued up at Jr., swiveling in place until he was a little less wrapped up in the rope. "That probably happens to a lot of people! And... and we wouldn't even have gotten this far this fast without me!"
When he was untangled and as steady as he could get while dangling, Pit grabbed onto the rope with the intent to haul himself up. His wings flapped once, indignantly. "Plus we didn't even lose yet! ...I mean, at all. We didn't lose! You're giving up already?!"
Jr’s furious face turned to one of a furrowed brow and then one of determination as he declared ”not on your life!” before starting to haul Pit up the pit to the little platform Mimi had made.
When both of the boys were back on their feet, they could resume the competition. The shaft they'd fallen into wasn't normally meant to be climbed back up, but Jr.'s quick thinking had stopped them from getting too far down it and Mimi's platform-making meant they could just head right back up to where the wind blew over their heads. There had been a time loss but surely they could still make top three.
They got started right away, hopping up onto smaller and more frequent platforms of their own make in order to regain as much ground as they could in the shortest amount of time. Being the baddie he was, it shouldn't have come as a surprise to the koopa prince that his father's sabotage would begin at this crucial moment.
Indeed, it occurred at the worst possible moment of their climbing strategy. Because the cube power only recharged when they were standing on non-cube based ground, jr had been making very precarious platforms out of raw iron that were more or less welded to the wall. They were only a bit of a stop gap, meant to let them hop onto and then off again right away, but it was while they were doing this that the suction began.
”Wow what the heck!” Jr cried out, as their platform wobbled, buckled, and then was ripped away from beneath them.
Lacking any other way to try and stop their latest fall, Pit flailed in an attempt to grab hold of the mine shaft's sides with the climbing gloves. His palms scraped the rock but couldn't keep their grip - since it seemed like they were contending with some kind of cyclone pulling them in!
They ping-ponged against the walls, the platforms below, and each other all while scrambling to get a good enough hold to stop their downward movement.
Jr’s attempts to repeat the grappling trick failed as said grapples were pulled down even faster than them. Worse still was what happened to Mimi, who was unceremoniously pulled from her trainer’s shoulder and went shooting down into the dark without them, leaving them cheating-platformless.
After some time, which was in reality less than ten seconds but sure felt like a lot longer, the hurricane force suction abated. Pit and Jr. landed in a tangled heap on a moving fish bucket, back down in the darker parts of the mine. If there was a saving grace it was that they hadn't fallen all the way down to the bottom, but it was safe to say their chance at placing highly was definitely shot at this point.
Pit shook his head and shimmied out from underneath Jr., glaring down over the side of the platform to see what exactly had happened. Now they could see a giant koopa head below them was responsible for the sudden sabotage.
"Huh? Bowser?!" Pit exclaimed. Then he rolled over to look at Bowser Jr. "It was your dad!"
”What!? No way! He’d never” Jr replied, before peeking down the mineshaft and seeing the very large head of his father, and a tiny little yellow dot on his nose that was probably Mimi (who also seemed to be bonking said nose with her tail stick.
”Dad! What the heck! We were just about to steal the lead!” the prince yelled down at his dad, who initially only managed an ”Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, oops?” in response.
"Aww man..." Pit groaned. They'd been doing so good, and were so close! Even the whole wind thing above hadn't set them back too much. Now they were so far from the summit there was probably no way for them to catch up. It was frustrating, but it was also what they'd all signed up for. Minigames, from what he'd gleaned, were usually like this - with victory snatched away at the last second. The angel sulked for a few seconds, then jumped to his feet. He was definitely going to win the next one, he decided. For this one, though, he gave his partner a helpless shrug.
"What should we do now? Have any schemes to blast us back to the finish line?"
The prince raised a finger, lowered it, raised it, and then snapped them before whipping out his paintbrush and sweeping it across the closest wall several times before stepping back, and revealing an M with two accent marks above it he’d painted on the wall in rainbow ink.
”Ta-da!” the prince intoned, stepping back and gesturing to it. At first it wasn’t clear why he was so pleased with himself. When Pit stepped close to it however, the chaotic colors melted together, and revealed the image of windswept, snow covered cliffs, the exact same ones they had briefly entered before tumbling back down here.
"A painting?" he asked at first, but with the way it looked and sort of "felt," there was no way it was just a regular piece of graffiti. "...oh! A portal? That's a great idea!"
Now they'd be able to get back to where they were in the blink of an eye! We've still got a chance! Pit thought. Then, eager to get back into the running he said, "Let's go through it right now!"
After a slightly rushed countdown the boys jumped together from their platform right into the center of Jr.'s painting. Neither of them doubted that they'd go through and emerge back on the windy mountain top, so it was a shock to both of them when instead they collided with the wall the portal was painted on and fell backward.
Jr for one was absolutely stunned by the impact with the wall. Not because of any jarring, but because of the absolute bamboozle of allowing everything except the portaling bit of the painting to work out, tumbling down without even an attempt at salvaging their third and seemingly final fall. So the boys ended up reuniting with Mimi, their latest plan ending with them landing on the snout of the enlargened Bowser.