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[img]https://i.imgur.com/ziR5Pse.png[/img][img]https://i.imgur.com/BHScL9w.png[/img] [img]https://i.imgur.com/C7nwoGY.png[/img]
[b][color=FD0000]wordcount:[/color][/b] 1,531 (+3)
[b][color=SpringGreen]Bowser Jr: Level 14 [/color][/b] EXP: [color=SpringGreen]///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color](204/140)
[b][color=Aqua]Rika: Level 10 [/color][/b] EXP: [color=Aqua]///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color](123/100)
[b][color=Aquamarine]Midna: level 9[/color][/b] EXP: [color=Aquamarine]////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color] (190/100)
[b][color=ea590c]Edward Portsmith: Level 3 [/color][/b][color=ea590c]///////////////////////[/color] (31/30) 
[b][color=FD0000]Location:[/color][/b] The Dead Zone
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It looked like, from Jr and Rika’s perspective, that the seekers had hardly made any progress at all since they and the Witch had run off to have their own little side adventure. True, according to Rika, they had been fighting, but then so had they and that was with only three of them. Thus Jr was feeling pretty smug, mainly due to ignoring the difference in danger of opponents each group had faced, and their own prowess not being hampered by fighting indoors without need for a magic suppression field. Or how they had a solution to the rain that didn’t involve crippling their magic, and which kept them dry to boot thanks to the Witch. Or how they’d been incredibly lucky to not stumble into BTs while running blind.

Sadly for him, he didn’t get a chance as any communication made at a sneaky level for the circumstance was made impossible when a very stressed Baby Mario suddenly burst into tears while the man who’s chest he was strapped onto looked rather out of his depth as to how to handle this. An attempt was certainly made to try and calm the child despite this, the man one handing a rifle he was carrying so he could press an empathetic palm to the glass, while also wrapping his wings around his front to try and block out any stressful stimulation, but it was too little too late.

Getting yelled at by Goldlews didn’t exactly help, nor did Jr jumping on his heels with a [color=SpringGreen]”Yeah! Shut up Mario!”[/color] and Midna to just nail the coffin lid of their doom shut by shouting [color=Aquamarine]”Yelling at a baby isn’t helping!”[/color] even louder than everyone else was already yelling.

Rika added her own bit to the mess as well, but as her contribution was trying to gun down the invisible intangible BTs already on their way it hardly mattered other than to draw even more towards her and her brother.

[color=SpringGreen]”Uh oh”[/color] was Jr’s somewhat subdued response to their crisis, while Rika’s was to give up on shooting, grab her brother in one gauntlet, duck out from under the zombie carried rain shield. She pressed him to her chest, hopped into the air, hopped a second time in the air, and finally pressed a thumb to the featherfall rune, and launched them both high up into the air. 

It got them out of immediate danger, but wasn’t an abandonment like what Grimm committed, and so all it really did was give the pair an aerial view of the chaos that erupted below them, while they sank slowly, inevitable, towards it.

At the epicenter of the mess, Midna and Edward were both immediately bogged down by the tar, heavy armor rapidly sinking despite family flapped wings and sorcery stuttering and failing to form under the suppression field, and the failure only spread out from there.

A few seconds later, and Rika touched down in it, Jr perched atop her shoulders. She didn’t sink into it like the others of course, she floated, but the invisible hands tried to drag her down nonetheless. 

[color=Aqua]”No! No! I won’t! I can’t! Get off me you, you, you whoresons!” [/color] she shouted at them as she struggled, the threat of being sunk triggering an instinctual fear in the shipgirl. Hard. Maneuvering thrusters flared while tar churned around her feet as she tried to sail forwards, but it seemed to be no use till Jr called out for her to [color=SpringGreen]”Toss me!”[/color]

She didn’t question this, she thought maybe at least he could get free, and so did so, grabbing her brother by the shell and launching him forwards, skipping him like a stone out of the tar field and out into the rain beyond the magic suppression field. The recoil from the move undid any progress she had made against the pull however, and though she fourth on, she was quite sure she was done.

At least her Brother would remember her. 

Rather than flee, the boy yelled [color=SpringGreen]”Grapple me!”[/color] back at her. She hesitated for a moment, because surely that would drag him right back, but when he anchored himself to the ground with an iron spear (that immediately began rusting), she understood his plan. Her hook lashed out, caught his shell, and he grabbed it, pulling, heaving, only for the spear to break a moment or three later, and for him to start to get pulled back in.

He wasn’t, however. Instead a titan of steel appeared behind him, silhouetted in the rain, the machine’s red paint splotching while metal endured the passing of time without care. The striker [url=https://i.imgur.com/7U4Uydd.png]Blodia[/url] grasped its summoner in a colossal hand, and the length of Rika’s grapple at the same time, and hauled, hurling the prince even further away from the tar, and dragging Rika fully clear in the same motion.

In the end, however, it didn’t really matter, other than saving some stamina for what was to come.

Nearby, Midna and Edward, who had not had that luxury, pulled themselves to their feet, bodies having been dragged out of the initial pit, only for their failures having triggered the rise of a great feline beast, and the warping of all of the terrain into tar fields. It also brought an end to the field keeping them safe from the rain, but, at the same time, it also brought back their magic and ended the need for stealth.

The beast was out in the open for all to see, it knew where they were, and there would be no hiding from it.

[color=ea590c]”I’m-”[/color] Edward began to say, but whatever words, apology or otherwise, were cut off by Minda demanding that their top priority should be to [color=Aquamarine]”get those babies out of here! Now!”[/color]

She physically shoved him away, and then hauled herself up onto her own invisible untouchable creature that would now work without magic suppressing it. The Beast Legion cared not for the rain that simply fell through it, nor for these other-other worldly BTs who’s broken realm of origin its kind would consider far inferior to its own. 

It still cared somewhat for the tar flooded ground, but only somewhat, letting it sprint forwards, not away from the Quad BT, but straight at it.

[color=Aquamarine]”Come on, I’m here, come and eat me you oversized kitten!”[/color] the foolish princess riding atop it shouted at it, charging her spear and then blasting lighting at the BT to no effect other than to be loud and flashy and even more attention catching. 

In response, one of the Quad BT’s claws started to glow, and it then leapt towards her in a feline-like pounce, claw reading forwards to cleave her in twain. Minda, in response, flow motion leapt off of her mount and to the side, splashing down into the tar as the BT crashed down where she’d been, and her Legion simply phased through its attack. The BT’s tail proceed to glow, with which it tried to deliver a side swipe at the downed princess, but she yanked on her astral chain, and pulled herself back over to the Legion again, out of the way of the strike.

[color=Aquamarine]”That's the best you got! You lot were scarier when we couldn’t see you”[/color] she shouted at it, slapping her spear against a rock in another taunt.

She wasn’t the only one running back into the area instead of away. Rika did the same, grabbing and hurling a [url=https://i.imgur.com/FqJd4AV.gif]golden spinner[/url] from her rigging and out into the rain. There, in the burst of light, it summoned an entirely unbeached [url=https://imgur.com/dA43tVS]whale[/url] that crashed into the tar, sank even further than it should have, and then against all logic started floating as if the ground itself was water to it. Then it began swimming, only somewhat impeded by the layer of tar up top, creating a moving spot of dry land for at least a few riders to escape the mire upon the back of.

[color=SpringGreen]”All aboard!”[/color] Jr announced as sailed in after his sister, naturally not leaving her to do this on her own, a rusting umbrella of iron held over head to stave off the issue of him having punctured his raincoat with his shell spikes, and willing and able to provide more. A temporary solution, certainly, but better than nothing. 

As for the others, well, Rika’s energy shield failed eventually, only to be replaced by her own spartan energy shield, and then below that the woman was covered in armor from head to toe, steel and stranger metals all happily aging away without much concern. 

It was those who were exposed that would have issues. Minda was also armored... Except for her draconic tail and pointy ears, the concern for which caused her to break off her taunting of the BT as her shield looked close to break. She had a solution to the rain, but it wouldn't work in tandem to fighting, because she was not able to dodge at the same time as holding her shadow hand up over her head as her own umbrella, as it made her far too unwieldy.

[color=Aquamarine]”Can someone else keep it busy?”[/color] she called out from atop her steed, making to join up with the Koopa Kid Konvoy as they sailed for solid ground.

Edward, finally, had the biggest exposure issue, as his back bore a pair of massive wings and he didn’t have a helmet either. Still, as the shield persisted, and a little bit beyond that, so too did his wings' ability to carry him forwards. True, it was only at the speed of a dove… but even with the rain, both they and he were still capable of breaking the decayed matropolisi’s inner city speed limits going in a straight line at a dead sprint.

If he’d be in any state stamina-wise to survive whatever was to be found at the base of the tree in the exhausted state he’d arrive in, that remained to be seen. If he had time and space to set down over there, and time to read his Tomes, then he’d send copper golems back to assist them, either to act as fodder for the Quad BT, or distractions for the Gazers, the ability for him to simply disband the squads at will removing any threat of them being caught or devoured.

Assuming he could calm down baby Mario first that was