[center]
[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] 3,163 (+4)
[b][color=SpringGreen]Bowser Jr: Level 14 [/color][/b] EXP: [color=SpringGreen]///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color](211/140)
[b][color=Aqua]Rika: Level 10 [/color][/b] EXP: [color=Aqua]///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color](130/100)
[b][color=Aquamarine]Midna: level 9[/color][/b] EXP: [color=Aquamarine]////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color] (197/100)
[b][color=ea590c]Edward Portsmith: Level 4 [/color][/b][color=ea590c]////////[/color]///////////////////////// (8/40)
[b][color=FD0000]Location:[/color][/b] The Dead Zone
[/center]

The cannons roared and roared again and again with the ceaseless stamina of machines, but the rest of the seekers were still all too mortal. Though they raged against the waves of reanimated undead with fearless determination, slowly, gradually, the tide rose, and their barriers against it faltered.

The first was quiet, a little click, as Edward’s rifle’s well of medicine/poison ran dry. A few moments later, and there was a fizzle, followed by a high pitched whine of complaint from Jr as his wells of mana ran dry. While the latter would return in time, and their primary healer was still carrying her weight, but two sources of healing coming to an end put added pressure on those taking all the hits right when things were starting to ramp up.

Rather than squad of infested people and the odd ancient, whatever intelligence was commanding the flood-festion saw fit to send out things less disposable than masses of reanimated corpses, one of which turned out to be, of all things, a due of monowheel [url=https://i.imgur.com/Il4v92t.png]Choppers[/url], their hulking brute pilots and own machinery both overrun with the mixed infestation. Despite the meat gumming up their works, the heavy vehicles had the force of a battering ram at their backs, and a host of nasty prow spikes with which to sharply apply it. 

Alongside them charged a whole pack of [url=https://i.imgur.com/cgWTZ7j.png]chargers[/url] like hunting hounds. Together the mass of them all looking to barrel right past the front line in order to crash into the back lines.

An armored warrior moved to intercept them, who was then joined by another who rose up out of a portal to bar the way. The latter raised its round shield, which at the last moment unfurled a great rectangular barrier of energy, against which one of the choppers crashed, sending the darknut blocking its way grinding backwards, armored boots scraping against the fleshy floor.

Beside her minion, Midna reached out with her shadow hand, slamming its open plam into the front wheel of the other Chopper, fingers wrapping around and holding the great front wheel back.

[color=Aquamarine]”You're not getting past!”[/color] Minda shouted at the meat machine confidently, despite the pant of breath she let out right after. She’d been brawling for she wasn’t sure how long, right in the front lines, with no breaks, and she hadn’t exactly been the athletic type before all her fusions.

She was not going to let herself be the first one to crack under pressure however. Even as she held back the chopper, she raised her arms and struck at the chargers that flooded around it, lance skewering one, while her fan flicked to slash a clawing limb before it could strike her, the resulting wind gust blowing it back as well. Her shield guarded her other side, but she then had to haul it to her front as a pir of cannons on the front of the chopper whined in protest and then unleashed a pair of bolts at her, which slammed into the icy tower shield. Doing so opened her up at the flank, where another charger took the opportunity to swipe at her.

Armor and elevation atop her Beast Legion steed made the damage minimal, but they weren't going to stop. So she hauled the chopper to the side, and had her legion burst forwards along its flank, claws coming out as it pounced, slashing the infested pilot, and then clambering on top of the vehicle’s stalling wheel. 

[color=Aquamarine]”Come on, come get me”[/color] she taunted the chargers, stabbing her lance down at one trying to clamber up, and then shadow hand punching another down. It was a good spot to survive the horde from, even with the chopper still trying to move under her without its infested pilot.

Unfortunately, being up above the masses of meat also put her at risk from the enemy’s limited but still dangerous fire support, that came in the form of barrages of spikes from [url=https://i.imgur.com/P6iO0IQ.png]ranged forms[/url].

Fortunately she had her own, and though she got needled lightly from a burst of fire, the offending flood revised a counter battery of cannon fire a moment later. Focused on those shooters however let another form slip through, and though it was a similar size to the supportive and descriptive ancients, the flood [url=https://i.imgur.com/Fa03fa4.png]Tank Form[/url] was a pure melee beast. It smashed against her darknut’s already damaged energy barrier, with all its bulk, causing it to waver, and then with a slam of a club-like arm brought it down entirely.

Chargers and the chopper surged forwards, the bike crashing into the actual shield of the darknut, which reacted by parrying it to the side, letting the vehicle slip past even as the tank form smashed into the armored undead’s other side, denting armor and cracking bone.

Tapping into her dwindling supply of mana, the princess opened a portal, enlarged her wolfos , and sent it pouncing out. The towering beast bit into the shoulder of the tank form before hauling it to the side away from the darknut. Rather than follow up the attack however, it staggered back, retching at the mouthful of infested flesh it had just gotten.

[color=SpringGreen]”come on come come- Cura!”[/color] Jr managed to get out up above from the ranged perimeter, cleansing the beast of its imminent assimilation into the flood, but it was a close thing, the boy very much in a position where he was expending his mana as soon as he had enough. He certainly didn’t have any left to deal with the chopper and chargers presently storming up the hill towards them.

His pokemon made a valiant effort to stymie the swarm, but their reserves of mana and PP were also running low, and so they could only ship away at it with twin pairs of psybeams (Mimi having copped Peeka’s move) which wasn’t a stab move for either of them. So it was up to his sister to deal with the problem. 

With the red baron drones floating next to her gauntlets she stepped into the way of the incoming foes.  She pulled back and then whipped out a punch at the thin air, and with her fingers extended forwards rather than curled, prompting for three of the sword tipped drones to go lancing forwards in response to the action.

The three of the blades all stabbed into a charger’s front in a rather inefficient amount of overkill, after which she whipped the other hand around in a cat scratch like motion, sending three more blades swooping around, her fingers spread in such a way that they stabbed into the flank of one charger each. Then she pulled both hands back, wrenching the blades out of the foes and summoning them back to her side, before thrusting both hands forwards and sending them all at the Chopper. 

Metal stood a better chance than meat however, and the blades mostly glanced off of the front bulk of the alien vehicle, drone blades ending up either embedded in the ground or wobbling in the air, all far from where they should be in relation to her commanding fingers.

[color=Aqua]”Wait… what do I do when they do that?!”[/color] Rika exclaimed in a half panic, this kind of balancing blow having not come up in her practice with them, the ship girl wrestling to regain control before giving up and just counter charging the motor vehicle, taking a pair of  energy bolts it shot at her with her personal shield.

She didn’t do this alone however, as there came an unexpected call of [color=ea590c]”Sortieing![/color] from Edward of all people, the dreadnought abandoning the commanding sniping position leaping into the air with a few flaps and then gliding down into the fight.

Born by wing and gravity he whipped past the landbound shipgirl, over the top of the chopper’s front wheel, and then as he passed the driver, delivered a slash with a machete to sever its head from its body. 

Despite this decapitation strike, the infestation still had enough control over the chopper to keep charging blindly forwards. But it was very much blindly, which gave Rika plenty of space to pivot her body, maneuvering thruster to the side of it, then pivot again while charging up a vaultbreaker. With a wordless warcry she launched forwards and delivered the magically empowered punch into the side of the machine, striking with enough force to knock it off of its one wheel and sending it crashing down onto its side.

It crushed out a few chargers in the process, leaving rather few remaining. Some charged up to die to Sectonia’s firepower, while jr got his pokemon, Peeka and Mimi, to dash forwards to help cover, shadowy claws and dazzling gleams dealing with chargers as Rika got control of the red baron drones again.

Down at the bottom of the hill, Edward’s wings spread wide as he slowed his rapid descent, landing right before the melee surrounding Minda’s position. His machete slashed again near as soon as he’d done so, striking a circling charger, loading the flintlock it was bonded to in the process which he unleashed upon the tank form flood, the round whipping past the armored form of the princess’ darknut. 

The heavy round knocked the flood off balance, leaving the darknut an opening to cleave into it.

Edward had little time to focus on that fight however, bringing up the hunk of metal and crystal that was his enchanted buckler to block a charger’s claw swipe, before retaliating with a quick chop. Without the momentum of the descent however, the machete was hardly an effective weapon unfortunately, merely wounding the monster a second time, and giving it time to scored a retaliatory slash in response.

Embarrassing as it was, this mere minion forced him to take a step back, though he regained the momentum of the fight by smashing it in the face with the buckler. Or, not the face, he saw, as it reared up to swipe again. Merley where a collection of eyes where, while the face of the person it had once been hung limply under its body. Thinning quickly, he rammed the buckler fully into the beast, straining as he held it up and it clawed at his armor, before he delivered a stab to the under hanging head, scoring a critical strike that took it down at last.

Far too many blows for a single infested. The second pair of slashes had reloaded the flintlock however, which let him cap another infested before it could come at him, but even with getting the weapon pari’s gimmky combo down, this was hardly an optimal palace for him to be. Thus rather than wade into the fighting more, he focused on why he was here, which was to call out for [color=ea590c]”MIDNA!”[/color] because the princess was far to deaf to hear anything shouted from further off with the din of battle going on.

The princess didn’t respond at first, as she was a bit too busy grabbing the piloting part of the Chopper with a shadow hand, and then hauling it over her head to send it crashing down on top of the tank form. Then she pulled herself to it, squeezed what she was fairly certain was the accelerator, and proceeded to grind the flood to dust beneath the massive monowheel.

It was only once this was done that she glanced to and fro, seeking more enemies, and upon spotting Edward, yelled back [color=Aquamarine]”What are you doing here?!”[/color] 

[color=ea590c]”We need to make a push for the enemy leader!”[/color] he called out, hoping to make use of her to lead cavalry charge out to strike down the flood command form whose arrival had prompted his downward flight, only for Sandalphon to chime in via the link she had with Midna with a different plan. Namely to retreat deeper into enemy territory.

Edward would not say he agreed, it was only putting off the problem that he thought best dealt with here and now, right up until one of the floating carriers started unloading infested directly on top of them a moment or so later. Which was something of an issue beyond the obvious, given they needed to get to a wall to follow through with the escape plan, and there where foes being dumped between them and it.

Midna saw this as well, or, mainly, the primary issue in her mind which was getting Edward himself out, which she resolved by grabbing him with her shadow hand and then hurling him into the air while yelling [color=Aquamarine]”Fly cucco fly!”[/color]

After steadying his undesired flight with his wings, Edward took one glance back at the princess wrestling the infested chopper pilot out of the vehicles seat and then commanding the vehicle to charge forwards through the floodfested swarm before he locked his eyes forwards in-order to focus on dodging falling foes. Falling foes and one somewhat overloaded clown car (not that he knew that was what it was) that was carrying Rika, Jr, and Jr’s pokemon up towards the ceiling rather than towards one of the walls.

He caught the words [color=SpringGreen]”because that’s gross!”[/color] as he swooshed on by, before once again having to rapidly decelerate, this time to avoid crashing full on into a wall. His machete came up, struck into the wall, and then his weight pulled it down, slashing a gushing wound that he just barely managed to flap up into against the outpouring of viscera in-order to enter the stream.

A few moments later, he cut himself out of the blood stream again, splashing to the floor, once more a bedraggled pigeon of a man. 

And the heat of battle had just started to dry those out too. 

He hauled himself up, raising machete and buckler defensively, but found no immediate threats, just a monolith of black stone sitting in the middle of a room filled with large chunks of rubble that looked in places like cavern walls. There was also some sort of energy barrier surrounding the room, one which he assumed was projected by the monolith, but which did not seem to be an active threat as of this moment.

That was, for him, very good, because his cannons had been left behind down below, too heavy to ride the currents even if he could have gotten them in. Even as he scanned the rooms, they fell silent down below him, connection to his mana cores severed as they were beaten down by the swarm.

Which meant that the floodfestion would no doubt come a hunting for them soon enough. Still, Edward was a commander and mage alone without army or power for his sourcery so, with this moment of respite, his first action was to hunker down defensively behind some of the rubble and to begin to see to the power part of the problem so he could use it to rebuild his forces. Thusly when other help did arrive, it found Edward crouched down behind a rock, one hand manipulating a magic circle before him that had several copper wires plugged into it, the other controlling a second circle that was in the process of sending the empty bio-rifle back to the avenger.

[hr]

Somewhere else Minda (after grabbing the tank form flood’s spirit, crashing the chopper first through the infested swarm and then into a wall) had no such luxury of downtime. Instead she stepped out of flames, holding a [url=https://imgur.com/ywIKrnz]fire drinking mace[/url] as the flames merely lightly singed her thanks to it and her other passive items, and into a catfight. There was a slight problem however, and that was that she could barely see and hear anything over the glare of the fire and roar of the flames, which made telling one cat from another rather difficult.

[color=Aquamarine]”Miss…. Fortune, is that you?”[/color]

It really did not help that the two didn’t really know each other that well either.

[hr]

In yet another room, there came a grinding sound, followed by Jr’s clown car bursting up into a chamber of some kind, having drilled there with one of its arms. Rika’s rear mounted firefly lamp lit it up, revealing it to be some kind of [url=https://i.imgur.com/9mAnfnc.png]man made structure[/url]. It hosted stone columns, withering creeper vines on the walls, numerous standing sarcophagi, some kind of spinning symbol emblazoned wheel and, at the center atop a plinth, a beach ball sized glittering crystal in the [url=https://cdn.britannica.com/78/170778-131-D35E060F/Reflections-diamond.jpg]classic shape[/url], this one a solar yellow. 

Naturally, both children cared far more about this than any archaeological value of the tomb, and instead went straight for the gem, Rika hopping out of the clown car in-order to snatch it up first, before holding it aloft so they could both take a look at it.

[color=SpringGreen]”Hey, I think Kamek has one of these, right?”[/color] Jr speculated, to which Rika nodded. It did seem similar to the alien green crystal the royal mage had on his possession.

Before they could discuss that any further however, there came an explosion which blew a hole in the wall of the temple about halfway up, briefly revealing a chamber beyond filled with other such structures haphazardly piled together. Then a the man tall [url=https://i.imgur.com/9kVPmbT.png]figure[/url] of metal, bone and cloth peered down at them through the hole in the wall his [url=https://i.imgur.com/EZRgk3D.png]Bonenoid[/url] minions had just blasted for him.

“Ah, I thought I heard sound coming from in here” the towering figure said as it lazily fanned the resulting dust cloud with a skeletal hand, in response to which Rika raised her free hand, waved back and called out[color=Aqua]”Hello! Who are you?”[/color]

“My name is Unsigned, and you have something I have been seeking for quite some time” the figure replied, before pointing a finger at the jewel in her hand and demanding she “give me the power stone”

[color=Aqua]”Huh?”[/color] Rika replied, cocking her head to confusion for a moment, before clutching the jewel to her chest and responding passionately that [color=Aqua]”No, it's my treasure!”[/color]

[color=SpringGreen]”Yeah! Finders keepers, losers weepers!”[/color] her brother jeered, and then blew a raspberry up at Unsigned for good measure. 

“I see” the undead being responded evenly, before just as evenly adding “then perish” as he quick drew the oversized revolver and [url=https://i.imgur.com/U6FpsKq.gif]fired[/url] it directly at Rika’s head.

The shot bounced off Rika’s spartan shield, but the hit was enough to prompt the stone to fly out of her hand at unnatural speed, launching straight up towards Unsigned, who snatched it out of the air with glee. 

[color=Aqua]”Hey! You give that back!”[/color] Rika demanded, not particularly phased by the shot that could have been lethal without her sci-fi protections it seemed, though her brother certainly was.

“I don’t think I shall” the Unsigned responded before with a wave of his revolver at them dismissively and commanding his “Bonenoids” to “deal with the children”, sending his minions pouring in through the gap in the wall to do battle with the siblings while he raised and admired the power stone while the carnage commenced below.