[center][h3]Finders Keepers[/h3]
Lvl 14 Geralt (70/140) and Lvl 9 Goldlewis (69/90)
[b]Word Count:[/b] 4163 (+5)[/center]

To any ordinary man, the burly brute at the other end of the hall would have been a daunting opponent. The silently menacing, faceless Keeper made his size and strength plain to see with no need for words, offering no preamble for the showdown about to take place beyond an old-fashioned declaration of war, the din of metal mallet against uncrackable safe an ancient battle cry. In this man, however, Goldlewis saw a worthy opponent. He couldn’t say why a warrior neither demonic nor infested in origin might be here, or why the Qliphoth’s immense interior housed remnants of Redgraccoon City, but he knew there was no avoiding this fight. And thanks to the floodfested horde down below, the veteran was all warmed up.

Still, Goldlewis knew that pride comes before the fall. He suspected that fighting in cramped underground corridors would prove tricky, preventing him from fighting at his preferred range. If he couldn’t swing around his coffin or bust out his weapons, he’d just have to rely on the shotgauntlets from Jack-5. But with Geralt at his back, more powerful and more in control than in their last shared encounter, the Secretary of Absolute Defense felt rather confident. It was time to see what this masked maniac was made of.

As they drew closer in the hallway, both titans picked up speed until they were barreling toward one another like runaway freight trains. Goldlewis kept his eyes on the Keeper’s giant meat tenderizer, but at the last moment his opponent reached for his belt with his right hand and pulled out a large burlap sack, red with blood and bulbous with shapes that didn’t bear thinking about. As the killer whirled it like a flail, the basement’s sparse lighting glinted off hooks, spikes, and orbitoclasts protruding from the coarse fabric. Luckily, the chain on the veteran’s coffin afforded him a bit more range. Swinging vertically, Goldlewis unleashed a [url=https://i.imgur.com/UrUsO6B.png]forward-down-back Behemoth Typhoon[/url] for speed and range. Coffin met sack with a hefty impact, as well as some sickening crunches from within the sack itself, but if the Behemoth Typhoon clipped the Keeper, he barely seemed to flinch. Instead he brandished his hammer for a follow-up but Goldlewis wasn’t done either. He used his Security Gauge to keep the pain train rolling, his coffin a meteor hammer as it pounded the Keeper’s guard with two more Behemoth Typhoons, the final revolution ending in an [url=https://i.imgur.com/orEUw3J.png]up-forward-down overhead[/url]. Yet somehow, despite all that punishment, the Keeper weathered it all. The moment after the assault ended, he struck back, lunging forward to knock Goldlewis sideways with a disorienting blow from the edge of his hammer, then wallop him against the wall with a mallet smash to the chest.

Geralt kept close to Goldlewis, giving the large man enough room to maneuver with his strange coffin-flail in the rather tight hallways they’d found themselves in. The Keeper looked to be little more than a deranged killer with neck muscles anybody would be jealous of, but Geralt knew better than to judge this book by its bloody cover. Keeping his twinblade at the ready, he cast the Sign of Quen to shield himself as the combatants met, Goldlewis outranging the Keeper but failing to prevent its own attacks once his were finished.

Strange enough, though Geralt didn’t let that slow him down. Immediately after Goldlewis was battered to the side, he lunged forward with the Hydro weapon, applying the Wet status and dealing a similarly negligible amount of damage. He turned, bringing the dual-bladed weapon around for a slash to the body, as the Keeper completely ignored Geralt’s attack and slammed its bloody sack into Geralt’s chest. The Witcher grunted a little from the blow but was similarly unphased, and took a step back to utilize his weapon’s greater range, thrusting the twinblade like a spear and trying to keep its attention. “Takes hits like a proper Fiend.” Geralt sighed.

“Grrah!” Given a moment to recover from his brush with the Keeper’s massive meat tenderizer, Goldlewis took advantage of his foe’s focus on Geralt to charge in for a full-bodied tackle. His opponent might be big, but few men were bigger than Goldlewis Dickinson. With his head down and his arms locked around the maniac’s middle, the veteran pushed him from one side of the hall to the other, and when the Keeper’s back hit the wall the clang of his safe against the bricks left him dazed for just a split second. Goldlewis straightened up to go for his trademark throw, a triple headbutt straight to the safe’s metal door, but the steel didn’t yield and its wire-covered surface left Goldlewis both stunned and scratched in turn. The Keeper pushed him off, then swung his hammer with the railroad spike on the other end forward. With a grunt, Goldlewis managed to clamp his hand around the weapon and stop the spike an inch from his temple, then use his other hand to unleash a point-blank blast from his shotgauntlet. Once again the blow barely registered, but it annoyed the Keeper enough to give up on the hammer blow and just shove Goldlewis back the way he came. He stumbled a few heavy, headlong steps toward Geralt, unable to stop his momentum. The veteran would be hitting the ground in two seconds; the only question was whether or not he inadvertently took the Witcher with him.

Geralt jumped back as Goldlewis stumbled his way, the Keeper following close behind. He jumped over his fallen ally and swung at the monstrous purser, putting his momentum and strength into the blow. He [i]could[/i] be moved, evidently, but it required physical manipulation. Geralt was many things, but a grappler was not one of them. True to the previous hits, the Keeper did not budge, retaliating with a swing of its mallet which forced Geralt to dodge sideways, pressing himself against the wall of the hallway. He quickly lifted his hand to draw the Sign of Igni, a blast of flames exploding out and hitting the Keeper, triggering a Vaporize reaction to further harm their seemingly-invincible foe. 

Just after a loud noise announced the veteran’s inevitable rendezvous with the floor somewhere behind Geralt, the elemental fire and water applied to the Keeper mixed in an explosive burst of steam. By now all the punishment he’d taken surely had to be adding up, but even after all the hits he’d taken so far, the Keeper barely seemed scratched. His brawny frame pushed through the suspense-inducing steam cloud with a heavy shoulder barge, extinguishing the Witcher’s hope. The impact shunted Geralt back into the room he and Goldlewis started in, but his comrade had the good sense to get out of the way as he gained his feet, so that Geralt didn’t tumble over him. The two men shared a look as the Keeper hammered his safe once more, then spread out, glad to be out of the hallway’s cramped confines. “We’re missin’ somethin’,” Goldlewis grumbled. Since his coffin lay in the hallway, he wearily put up his dukes. He’d seen various techniques that could soak a hit or two, but being uninterruptible at all times was beyond the pale. “I’m mighty keen to find out what.”

Faced with two targets, the Keeper chose Geralt, but Goldlewis had something he wanted to try. As his enemy raised his bloody sack, the veteran stepped out into a crouching stance, then rose with a knee strike to the Keeper’s gut. Naturally the bruiser shrugged it off, but Goldlewis canceled his Machine Press into his new Gamma Howl technique, flexing in a hunched-forward stance. This time Goldlewis was the one to absorb a technique, plowing through the gruesome flail in a burst of energy–[url=https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/tekken/images/b/b7/Particle_Barrier.gif/revision/latest?cb=20241030111109&path-prefix=en]Particle Barrier[/url]. The Keeper didn’t flinch either, but the shockwave pushed him back, confused and primed for a follow-up from Geralt.

Geralt had taken the time, now that they were in a larger arena, to draw a more powerful weapon that required a little more room to work with: the Hateful Flesh. As Goldlewis knocked back the Keeper, throwing it off balance and off guard, Geralt leapt forward, crashing the Siderite blade into its body and sending the Keeper reeling. It fell to its knees, and the safe on its head opened, revealing bloody flesh and its disgusting, disfigured visage. “Huh.” The Witcher simply remarked, hefting the Hateful Flesh and crashing it into the Keeper’s face, sending a spray of thick blood flying. “Goldlewis, hit it! Now!” He called, taking a step back to shift Identities. 

[hider=For Geralt] Identity: [b]Molar Boatworks Fixer[/b] - Replaces all equipment with a skintight wetsuit, an armored chestplate, and a harpoon pile bunker capable of light slash or pierce attacks, and an immensely powerful explosive charged attack with extremely short range, which also lowers enemy defenses for about 10 seconds. On his back is a moderately heavy pneumatic tank required to utilize the pile bunker's charged attack.[/hider]

Instead of the LCCB Assistant Manager form with its riot shield and pistol, however, Geralt transformed into something new. Rather than the heavy armor, he was now adorned with a tight black wetsuit, with a single chestplate to protect him. Attached to his arm was a strange device with a harpoon blade, and a heavy tank rested upon his back. “This is new…” He muttered. Goldlewis had grabbed the safe with his left hand and begun to pummel the meat with his right. He glanced back to see the Witcher’s new gear, especially the enormous pile bunker on his arm. That thing looked like it could pierce a cargo ship’s hull, so he figured it ought to ‘fix’ the Keeper just fine. Goldlewis pulled away to give Geralt the chance, his ears covered, and with a guttural cry the Witcher punched the harpoon in and let it rip.

[i]WHAM![/i]

In a burst of murky viscera the safe went flying, parted cleanly from its shoulders. It hurtled down the hall and hit the ground, clanging noisily as it rolled and bounced. The body of the Keeper quickly and unceremoniously faded out, and the battlefield became eerily silent.

Goldlewis let out a heavy sigh. So, their opponent didn’t take real damage until knocked down, but it was open season once they cracked that safe. He wanted to be happy that he and Geralt cracked the case, but the veteran had a sinking feeling. “Y’know, as rough as that was, I reckon it was still too easy.”

As if in reply, a static sound resounded through the hollow. For the second time, reality seemed to shift, overtaken by a sepia tone as movements began to blur and skip. Behind the two Seekers, next to the burst blood vessel they came from, the second safe began to rise. When Goldlewis looked back down the hallway, he saw the first safe doing the same. When the anomaly subsided, the men were faced by two Keepers, one in front and one behind.

Goldlewis shook his head in curt disappointment, then held out his hand. “UMA!” His coffin cracked open, and a long, slender, cosmic arm reached out. Once it grabbed him, it used him as leverage to slide the coffin over, then retreated inside as Goldlewis lifted it up. “Looks like we got ourselves another round, partner.”

The Keepers clanged their hammers against their safes and advanced on the Seekers with wet, plodding steps.

“Had to open your mouth.” Geralt joked, rolling his shoulders. “No point crowding each other out. Just call out if we need a hand, I suppose.” He advised, stepping forward to meet the Keeper that had just emerged. He had little to no experience with the kind of weapon he found himself with in this new Identity, but that explosive attack it had launched just moments ago was hard to pass up against an enemy like this. The only problem he'd have until it was downed was its pitiful range, but that could be worked around with other abilities he had. 

True to form, he unleashed a quick Demon Fang, the energy racing along the ground and ineffectually crashing into the advancing Keeper. As it advanced, Geralt drew the Sign of Yrden in the air, creating its Area Trap to slow the Keeper if it trudged forward mindlessly. 

It did, though the slowing effect was not quite as great as Geralt expected it to be, causing the Witcher to curse quietly and run in, stabbing the pile bunker at the Keeper with a weak attack before stepping back out of the way of a sluggish counter-attack. It had taken a few moments to prime before, and that whistling sound he remembered gave a vague idea that keeping it in that state for long would end poorly. The Keeper paused inside the slowing field, drawing a pair of discs as if from nowhere and throwing them onto the ground, almost in the center of the room. From their shape and the way they settled quite firmly on the ground, Geralt could tell they were not grenades, but what they [i]were[/i] he wasn't quite sure. “Some kind of trap, watch your step.” he called out to Goldlewis. 

At the same time, Goldlewis made the most of the greater distance between himself and the revived first Keeper. With his Security Level at max, he whipped out his Skyfish minigun to rattle off a barrage of fifty-one 7.62×51mm NATO rounds at a low angle. While their damage was negligible, the Keeper couldn’t armor through them at this range, so he assumed a guard posture to block the barrage. Goldlewis could practically see his foe’s RISC building up, ensuring that once he finally did break through the Keeper’s defense, the payoff would be sweet. Unfortunately he couldn’t rinse and repeat this little trick, since the UMA needed time to refill the gun’s ammo and any more salvos from Skyfish would be anemic until it did. As he relinquished the gun into the cryptid’s care, however, Goldlewis had an idea. Even if Geralt was focused on the other Keeper, the veteran wasn’t completely alone in this fight.

“Marduk!” he barked, which manifested an [url=https://i.imgur.com/knnZp48.png]old soldier[/url] with long white hair and an even longer cannon. “Blow ‘em straight to hell!” His striker obeyed in silence, calling in a drone that zipped down the hall to conduct an area bombardment. The Keeper swatted at the drone as it buzzed overhead, only noticing the grenades bouncing around the tight space when they began to detonate. Then he vanished in an uproarious clusterbomb of pure physical force, compounded by the corridor’s confines. The destruction not only demolished the basement walls but took chunks out of the Qliphoth flesh beyond it. By the time the fireworks died down and the smoke started to clear, Goldlewis could see an open area almost as big as the room he and Geralt stood in–as well as the Keeper, still standing amidst all the rubble.

“Tsk.” Made aware of the other Keeper’s traps by Geralt despite his ringing ears, Goldlewis decided to leave the area and take the fight to his opponent before he could back into a concertina bomb. He shouldered his coffin and marched forward once more, but not before firing off Kamael’s Circle of Life to soften his Keeper up.

Geralt watched the traps that the Keeper had thrown down for another moment, before following Goldlewis's lead and putting some distance between himself and them. The Keeper wasn't bothered by that at all, still trudging on silently, so Geralt kept it between him and the traps, while making some room transform again. 

This time, he chose the Ardor Blossom Identity. While the extra size wasn't necessarily ideal in these cramped quarters, he needed a big hit to put this thing in a more vulnerable state. Other than the Molar Boatworks Fixer Identity he'd just unlocked, he was somewhat lacking in that front compared to the others. His Strikers were also more on the side of harassment or dealing many lighter hits, with the exception of the Judicator, itself more of a supporting summon than a damage-dealer. 

Geralt didn't have much difficulty running circles around the Keeper, flinging fireballs every second or so to keep it burning and slowly charging his larger attack. After a few cycles of dodging around mallet and bludgeon swipes, the Keeper seemed to grow agitated, and it turned its gaze on Goldlewis, much to the Witcher's consternation. 

“Oh no you don't.” He growled as the undaunted butcher turned its back on him, charging into it and slashing its back with his claws, only to receive a backhanded swing of the bloody sack to the arm as the Keeper continued forward. 

Another fireball proved the final blow necessary to charge Ground Shaker, and Geralt stomped the floor to unleash the barrage of dark energy explosions. The hallway had already been blown open by Goldlewis's Striker, but the Keeper had no room to escape, the explosions softening it up further. Returning to his original state, Geralt tore free the Hateful Flesh again and charged, slamming it into his Keeper and finally getting its attention again. 

In the meantime, Goldlewis had been fighting with uncharacteristic patience, finally lending a little credence to his title ‘Secretary of Absolute Defense's. The extra footwork he'd picked up from his Jack-8 fusion helped him play the distance game with the pirate Keeper, peppering him with weaker body shots to keep his RISC topped up until a bigger blow from his coffin could crank it higher. This was a battle of attrition, and busting through the Keeper’s guard without succumbing to his wounds was the veteran’s win condition. His foe fought with ruthless aggression, pausing only to throw down concertina bombs and restrict the field of play.

So focused was Goldlewis that he did not notice the second keeper poised to sucker punch him until Geralt’s Ground Shaker rocked the hollow. It not only forced the second Keeper’s hand, but also demolished much of what remained of the swallowed building. Rubble and ruin rained down around Seekers and Keepers alike. Forcing Goldlewis to take cover beneath his Wall of Light. It took a few moments for the collapse to stop and the dust to begin to clear, revealing a cavernous Qliphoth hollow piled high with debris. With no protection against the limestone downpour, the Keepers had been pounded. They clambered from the wreckage dazedly, dogged to the last.

Goldlewis glanced at Geralt to make sure the Witcher was okay. “Still kickin’ there, hoss? Good!” He allowed himself a smirk as he lifted his coffin. “Let's kick some ass.”

Geralt nodded, brushing off some dust and debris. He'd sheltered beneath a Quen bubble shield, safe from the worst of the collapse. The Keepers had to be on the verge of falling, so Geralt kept up the offensive, hurling the blade forward to slash at the Keeper he'd been fighting. It took the blow head-on without so much as a grunt, and Geralt retracted the weapon to parry a hammer blow as it reached him and attacked. He couldn't stop the follow-up swing from the bloodied sack flail that crashed into his torso, but Geralt got his own hit in with a heavy slash to the Keeper's arm before he stepped back to make some room. 

The Keeper abandoned the slow, menacing pace it had maintained for much of the fight, lowering its shoulder and rushing in for a tackle. Not held back by heavy riot gear or a pneumatic tank, though, Geralt was quick to dodge the charge and capitalized on the opening, slamming the Hateful Flesh onto its back with a hearty overhead swing, finally downing this Keeper again. He used the time to transform back into the Molar Boatworks Identity, and circled around to the Keeper's front, priming the pile bunker. Staring down into the open safe, Geralt sighed. Just another monster. He thrust the weapon forward into the vulnerable flesh, and with a rush of air as the mechanism activated, the harpoon crashed into the Keeper's vulnerable flesh, piercing it and dealing massive damage. To seal the deal, Geralt cast Igni and focused the flames into a concentrated jet of fire, scorching the safe and the flesh inside until it melted and bubbled. As the flames abated, the Keeper slumped to the floor, dissolving into ash. Geralt scooped the remaining Spirit up and turned to watch Goldlewis defeating his own foe.

After one final staredown with the dial on his own Keeper’s safe, Goldlewis broke out into a run. He thundered forward a half-dozen steps, and his opponent responded in kind, his bloodlust undiminished. With the demolition of the consumed cellar, though, Goldlewis could do something new: take to the air. He used a fallen slab as a springboard to leap a solid six feet into the air, then airdashed off an orange glyph of magic. Having never fought an aerial opponent before, the Keeper stopped short to steel himself, but he could never have anticipated what happened next. The veteran’s momentum carried him forward with a Behemoth Typhoon that clanged loudly off the Keeper’s safe, but his coffin didn’t stop there; it whirled around and slammed down again, and again. In a ridiculous display of power, Goldlewis used his fully-stocked Security Levels to launch three Behemoth Typhoons back to back, each impact bouncing him back up off his target. Blocking made no difference, and after the third crushing blow the Keeper dropped to his knees. His safe burst open in a spray of gunk, and the next second Goldlewis touched back down.

He cracked his neck to one side, then the other. Then he seized his coffin, muscles and neck-veins bulging. “DOWN THEEEEEEEEE!” With plenty of time to spare, he put everything he had into his mighty [url=https://i.imgur.com/q2ya1jG.png]coffin uppercut[/url] “SYSTEEEEEEEEEEEEEM!” The immense impact launched the Keeper up into the air, and from inside the coffin three Thunderbird drones whirred forth to chase down and blow up on the butcher mid-air. The ensuing explosion lit up the hollow, and only soot rained down with the spirit.

“...Huuuuuh!” As his coffin fell Goldlewis doubled over, breathing heavily. “Gah-lee. Mighta gone overboard there. That sumbitch was sure askin’ for it, though. Tougher’n a two-dollar steak.” He shook his head, then straightened up and smoothed back his pompadour. “Those headbutts still got me woozy. Not my brightest idea…guess that ain’t what they mean when they say ‘use your head’.”

“Perhaps not.” The Witcher agreed, shaking his head. “Must’ve taken it by surprise, at least. Still, that’s dealt with now. Let’s find a way out of here.”

Before the two could move on, though, Geralt’s vision darkened as the world around him seemed to slow to a crawl. Before him appeared a trio of ethereal cards, each with an image and words upon them. Geralt found that he couldn’t quite pull his attention from them, and read the descriptions of each, eventually reaching towards the one with a broken shield on it. With his proclivity for using Quen, it’d be a major upgrade to his capabilities in combat.

At the same time, Goldlewis received a choice as well. Though initially alarmed by the change in his surroundings and the bizarre manifestation before him, he managed to keep his cool. Once convinced he wasn’t under attack, he read over the cards before him. [i]Volcanic Flourish…Battle Nature…Hypereutectoid???[/i] If these blessings were meant to be taken, he supposed that he’d have to choose. As tempting as the more selfish options were, the last one reminded him that he hadn’t been taking advantage of the shielding capabilities he received from Hank. If doing so would strengthen himself and his allies as well, he’d be incentivized to start.

[hider=For Geralt][b]Thunder Screen[/b]- when your shield, stance, or armor breaks, all enemies within 12m are blasted with lightning[/hider]

[hider=For Goldlewis][b]Interstellar Construct: Hypereutectoid[/b] - when providing shields to an ally, increase their DMG and yours by by 20%, stacking up to 5 times, lasting for 10 seconds[/hider]

Once the Seekers chose, everything returned to normal–or as normal as things could be within the Qliphoth, anyway. With the inexplicable rewards over with, it was definitely time to move on. Returning to his natural form, Geralt made his way down the hallway they’d destroyed, searching for another vein through which to escape. With the walls of the hollow now exposed they quickly found a suitable and accessible bloodstream. After another moment to compose themselves, the two forced their way in and were borne upward through the Qliphoth once more.