Though Nadia helped set a casual and chipper tone at first, the Seekers’ upward journey through the Qliphoth on foot quickly became a challenge unto itself, demanding a not-insignificant amount of tension. Still, with such a large group and so many helping hands around, the team could deal with any setbacks that arose and ran into no true roadblocks. When valves contracted between the demon tree’s organic caves to block the interlopers’ way, it took only a few moments -or a few volunteers going off on their own- to locate and strike the nerve clusters that would make the fleshy doors relax again. When a passageway opened up into a hollow with tricky terrain suspended above explosive acid, toothy spikes, or explosive systems, the more agile and aerial Seekers could be trusted to find or make a way. And when parasitic monsters wriggled out of the floodfested woodwork, or gangs of demons arose to defend their territory, the threat was soon dealt with.

After a little over twenty minutes, a narrow tunnel with a treacherously steep grade opened up into what looked like a crossroads. About a half-dozen tunnels opened up into various directions, with no indicator of which route the Seekers ought to take. The impromptu race between Pit, Roxas, and Nadia -who was always up for a little fun and games- came to an end in that intersection, the three participants so neck-and-neck as they burst from the mouth of their tunnel that the winner wasn’t immediately apparent. Before any bickering over who took first place could break out, however, their sudden arrival flushed a rabbit from its hole. A carrier form lurched from the cozy ventricle where it had been resting, taking Nadia by surprise for a moment. Once she saw what it was, though, the feral relaxed. These bloated bags had been common sights around the Qliphoth so far, and not particularly threatening ones either. To Nadia, it was almost cute the way they toddled toward the heroes, their only goal in life to get as close as possible before they got killed and spilled the beans. Or popcorn, in this case. This carrier, however, seemed to be toddling away from the intruders rather than toward them. It made a beeline for one of the more unassuming tunnels as fast as its stubby little legs could carry it–which, of course, wasn’t very fast. Nadia whipped out the alien pistols she’d received from Midna like a cowboy at high noon, taking aim at the carrier as it retreated. “I got it!”



Two pulls of the trigger was enough to burst the carrier like a zit and send a handful of chihuahua-sized infection forms flying all over. As the pests rained down a couple dozen feet away Nadia took potshots at them, popping them one or two at a time. To the trigger-happy catgirl it was like shooting fish in a barrel, and with help from both Pit and Roxas, the floodfested spawn would be dealt with in no time. Still, those that found their footing tried to scurry away into the tunnel, forcing Nadia to charge her last shot. With a grin, Nadia closed one eye and stuck out her tongue to line up the shot, only for a black claw to settle on her shoulder.

“Huh?” She peeked down to see the featureless white face of Grimm, rather unsettlingly close, and averted her aim. “Grimm? What’s up?”

The Troupe Master watched the infection form scurry up into the tunnel, passing by several possible hidey-holes as it went. ”It flees for the safety of its brood. We should follow it.”

Goldlewis, who’d arrived just a moment ago, narrowed his eyes at the very particular path that the parasitical nugget had taken. He could see the wisdom in Grimm’s suggestion, but the veteran didn’t trust in luck. “Could be a trap.”

With a snort, Nadia returned her new guns to her belt. “Aw, c’mon. These things are just mindless monsters. No need to be pair-annoyed!”

“I guess...” Goldlewis watched the more intrepid members of the team go after the runaway creep. Since the Dead Zone Guardian was probably the biggest and baddest monster around, the worst-case scenario here was also technically the best case. If the infection form led the Seekers to anything else, they could just squash it and be on their way. Goldlewis shrugged, then followed along with the others.

Before long, the veteran’s intuition began to be proven correct. After only a minute or so, the new tunnel opened up into a large hallway. It was very dark, illuminated only by a crimson light that shone eerily between what looked like two giant doors at the far end.



That abhorrent radiance illuminated almost rocky walls, pitted and scarred, as well as countless still, indecipherable shapes along them. It was unnervingly quiet, and the atmosphere was thick. Goldlewis almost had a heart attack when one of the nearest figures suddenly turned toward him, scarlet eyes aglow, only for him to realize it was Grimm. “Gah! For Pete’s sake, don’t ffff-!” Catching sight of Rika and Junior, he managed to control himself in the nick of time and keep both his voice and profanity down. “-fffffudgin’ do that, ya…gosh darn bug!”

”Ssh,” Grimm whispered, a claw held up to his face. ”They’re listening.”

The hairs on the back of Nadia’s neck stood up, her ears rigid, and she slowly lowered herself to the ground. As she crept through the hallway, toward what looked rather like carved stone steps at the foot of the great doorway, she became more and more sure about what her instincts told her. The shapes along the corridor’s sides weren’t outcrops, nor statues, nor even Qliphoth flora, but monsters. There were flood forms and infested freaks of all shapes and sizes pressed against the walls. Though all but motionless, they couldn’t help but move their eyes, heads, and feelers to slowly track the Seekers’ progress. A chill ran down her spine as Nadia remembered the otherworldly garden beneath Carcass Isle, a procession of abyssal supplicants and bioluminescent plants in the gloom that preceded the beach.

”They’re expecting us,” the Troupe Master rasped.

Nadia slowly rose to her feet, but the floodfested monsters didn’t react. Not even attacking them would prompt a response, she suspected, but she wasn’t too keen to put that to the test. She looked back at the others, then toward the doors at the end of the hall, and sighed. So much for 'mindless monsters', though if anything, this was even creepier. “Guess we’re doin’ this,” she muttered. “Well, I ain’t a-fur-aid. Let’s do this.”

Goldlewis shook his head and stepped forward. “God help us…”

Her cohorts had no choice but to proceed through the corridor. None of the horrors in the darkness reacted until the Seekers reached the stairs at the far end, at which point two juggernauts stepped from the shadows to lay their tentacles against the massive doors. Deep, heavy creaks echoed through the hall, the juggernauts threw open the door, and the wary Seekers stepped through.



The door opened onto a semicircular promontory, about a dozen feet high, that overlooked a wide-open semicircular hollow, its walls a purplish lattice reminiscent of the Great Bole’s and its floor mostly flat. Almost every inch of space, however, was occupied by a floodfested monster, a motionless horde that blanketed the floor. At the center, across a moat of fetid blood, at the base of a huge column that gleamed with spirals of hellish light, lay an enormous mound of undead flesh several stories high. A small portion of its front had been carved to resemble a nightmarish throne, and there sat a broad-shouldered Consul in armor of burnished red.

“They’re here,” a wizened male voice announced. When Goldlewis looked upward, he found a pair of large, disembodied eyes glaring back at him from the air. Narrowed coldly, they sported burgundy irises, and lemniscate-shaped pupils that glowed vivid red. As he watched, the eyes turned and floated back down toward the throne. They positioned themselves next to it, and as they turned another Consul popped out of the ground nearby, this one with a tall helmet. When the voice returned, though, it emanated from the eyes, which suggested to Goldlewis that three Consuls were in play. And not one of them is the Guardian.

“Welcome, esteemed guests,” the aged voice wheezed. “I must apologize for the horde’s lack of hospitality. Once we knew who it was, though, we called them off straight away. After all…” The eyes narrowed slightly, as if the rest of the entity’s face was smiling. “What kind of hero gets killed by mere fodder? Thus, we arranged to bring you here, and even allowed you to rest in our parlor, such as it is. To ensure that each and everyone one of you would reach this burial ground, and be blessed with a true and proper death, hehehehehe!”

At that point, the Consul on the throne gave a bored groan. “Enough foreplay, O. We’ve all waited long enough.” After sipping from his wine glass through his helmet, the Consul raised his hand. “Let’s show them what they came for.”

Immediately, the floodfested horde began to move, but instead of the Seekers, they made a break for the throne. They threw themselves at the fleshy heap like lemmings, and were in an instant unmade, their biomass added to the pile. Noise from the hallways behind the team alerted Nadia with a twitch of her ear, and when she turned she saw the monsters from before pouring outward. She readied herself for battle and slashed at the first wretch to come her way, but even as her claws parted a leg from its body, it did not relent. It flew past her and flopped down into the arena, where it used its arms to drag itself toward the throne. None of the floodfested attacked, in fact; they just wove around or between the Seekers in order to join the stampede of self-annihilation, heedless of any damage that befell them.

As it accumulated biomass, the mound began to grow, upward and outward. Four enormous tentacles took shape, two on either side of the throne, and the eyes watched it all with glee. “Heeheehee! You poor little heroes, thought so highly of by that fool S…I hope you've made your peace. Today, you have the honor of dying at our hands…at the glorious hands of Moebius D, O, and A!”

Just then, a horrific, guttural noise resounded through the final hollow, something between a roar, a scream, and a battle cry. From the mass of diseased flesh a trunk took shape, then a maw. A million voices cried out in terror and pain, and then, all was silent.

”...THIS IS NOT YOUR TOMB, BUT YOU ARE WELCOME IN IT. I HAVE PITY WITHIN ME, AND INFINITE TIME. BUT I ALSO HAVE IMPATIENCE - FOR I AM ALL THINGS! COME! JOIN WITH ME IN TIMELESS CHORUS, AND SING VICTORY EVERLASTING!



As it raised its tentacles, the floating eyes of Moebius O flew upward and outward toward the left side of the arena, while Moebius A paced toward the right, his hands behind his back. “I was much aggrieved to learn that the Orphan was summarily executed whilst both L and I were otherwise engaged,” he intoned in a deep, refined voice. “Here and now, I will remedy my grievous oversight.” When he came to a stop, he snapped his fingers, and three perfect duplicates arose alongside him. “You still foolishly consider yourself an entity separate from the whole. I know better. And I. Will. Show you.”

“Did he say A?” Sandalphon’s voice filtered through the sigil by her allies’ heads. “When I spoke with Dawn, she told of her parents’ encounter with this selfsame Consul, who were forced to ‘choose’ and lost half their party. Please, be wary of A. If you require my aid, please do not hesitate to call me. I will not fail you.”

Goldlewis took a deep breath in through his nose. Just like in Midgar, Moebius was upping the ante by fighting alongside their Guardian, but this time instead of one Consul alongside various local legends, three Consuls -including one from a different region, apparently- were here to snuff the Seekers out. “Got it. Thanks, Halo.” He emptied his lungs, hefted his coffin, and raised his voice. “Big talk, but you bozos are goin’ down just like the rest!” He started his stopwatch with a beep.

Beside him, Grimm stared at his own burning claws, then snuffed out the flames with a clamped fist and turned his eyes on the Gravemind.

Nadia grinned. Using Rosetta’s Roll and Gun, she reloaded her empty handguns, then trained them on the seated Consul. Out of all three Consuls, only D had yet to get a move on. “Better get that ass in gear, bud, ‘cause you’re about to be over-throne!”

The Gravemind’s tentacles slammed the ground, shaking the whole hollow. ”DO NOT BE AFRAID, LITTLE LAMBS. YOU’VE WANDERED FAR AND LONG…BUT IT IS TIME TO WELCOME YOU HOME!”

Jr and Rika mostly stuck to the center of the pack while exploring the maze. Not really because they wanted to, both wanted to go off and explore a bit too, but because Jr was more or less stuck on healer duty, and thus Rika was stuck there right alongside him.

She, at the very least, made that job a bit easier on him, as she made extensive use of the Beast’s tape, flicking into it whenever they got attacked, and biting the life out of the floodfested in it. Literally, as said bites healed her for half the damage she inflicted, and thus meant Jr didn’t need to expand mana to keep her topped up on health after she’d finished trading blows with them.

Eventually the maze came to an end, and they were confronted with the door, the creepy watching floodfested (which Rika used to full heal after it became clear they weren't gonna fight back), and finally the reveal of three Consuls waiting for them in the region’s boss arena.

”Oh come on! That’s not fair! At least fight us one at a time in a boss gauntlet!” Jr threw up his hands to complain about this state of affairs, while Rika wondered why they were standing around letting the Consus say their pieces instead of just shooting them in the face right away.

Before she could action that idea however, their foes made their opening move, summoning all the floodfested from outside into the room to join those inside in the act of turning themselves into a giant pile of meat. The kids started to try and destroy them, but when it became clear that that wasn’t going to happen, they yelled a quick plan and set about making a little addition to the pile..

Junior first tossed his paintbrush to Rika, and then tossed the girl herself, who proceed to slam down explosively into the doorway using her new H3AD-5T boon, briefly clearing it before whipping around with her splattershot and the paintbrush, coating the threshold to the room burning goop. This didn’t stop the floodfested’s suicide run, but it did mean that they got their feet coated in goop and started tracking it across the floor. Under conventional physics, this should have just left a light smear and messed up just the first few ranks of runners, if it weren't for the goop’s ability to generate swoopin status, the jellyfish like blobs who burst into more goop when they died (via being trampled or hurling themselves at floodested).

And so the more they spread the goop across the floor in a trail towards the forming mound, the more goop was produced in turn, and the more goop was produced, the more of the floodfested got covered in it, and the more that got covered in it, the more of the burning goop ended up inside of the resulting towering Gravemind. Rika added more by hopping up into the air and blasting and splashing more goop down ontop of the runners, till they where all past them and had merged themselves, and a whole heaping of goop, into the Guardian they had come here to destroy: the Gravemind

”Let’s see how you like heartburn, you big weirdo!” Jr called over at the distant titan, despite having not had that much to do with the plan to make that happen. He hadn't been idle while his sister did all the work however.

Placing his right arm on his left shoulder, the surface of it bristled, revealing the entire length of it to be covered in a dozen hedgehogs worth of small metal spikes he’d produced after giving up on floodfested murduring. As a finishing touch, he caught his paintbrush as Rika tossed it back to him before quickly running it over the bed of nails, coating the spikes with more burning goop, before selecting his target

”And now you, get down from there and come fight us!” he yelled up at the hovering O, before unleashing all of the shards at once, unleashing a veritable storm of iron spikes, shotgunning them up at the Consul.

Somewhat to his dismay, each and every single one of them failed to hit anything, the hail of spikes impacting the wall behind the Consul. Not a lick of paint left on the eyes despite dozens having passed right through them, nor had they revealed any sort of invisible solid part anywhere close to them.

"Hmph! Did you think it'd be that easy?" the Consul retorted, briefly fixing the boy with a stare of contempt.

Jr recovered quickly from this failure, deducing that ”Ha, you’re not even really here you wuss!” before tauntingly yelling ”What’re you gonna do, huh, just watch us win from up there?”

Rika was about to point out that it would be pretty silly of O to declare he’d be their doom when he couldn’t do anything, only for O to proceed to do something that seemed very silly. But only at first.

Namly, before his eyes, a 2 meter all iron fence was erected behind the koopa kids (and anyone else who’d come to face him down) before yet more was spawned, being built section by section into a square around some of the seekers, literally fencing them in. Then, grumbling and muttering to himself unintelligibly, O started to change the ground beneath them, painting the terrain into a muddy wetland, including pools of deep, dirty water right beneath their feet. Finally several trees sprouted up as well, along with a trough full of vegetables, completing the enclosure they were now fenced inside of.

”I don’t… what?” Rika said, dumbfounded by this unorthodox strategy, thought to be fair she and her brother were mostly unaffected by the wet terrain that had left them simply floating atop one of the pools.

Others would have bigger issues with the terrain modification, naturally, though what did not have any issue with the train were the enclosure’s intended inhabitants, which O proceeded to pop down several of in quick succession, now truly completing his creation.

”Huh, are those deflated Hoppo?” Jr asked, referring to the pink bounce platforms from the Flower Kingdom, having never before seen an actual regular Hippopotamouse before. He then started to ask ”what are those supposed to do?” only to cry out in alarm as one of the most dangerous animals on earth spotted the intruders in their 5 star enclosure and started charging towards them, mouths opening wide to reveal massive sharp teeth backed up by crushing jaws.

Rika promptly shot one, but the bulky beasts that could give many fantastical monsters a run for their money cared little for small arms fire, and were swiftly upon them.

The one Rika had shot promptly went to try and crunch its jaws down on the short girl who had shot it, only for its jaws to find chitinous scales filling its mouth instead of the entire ship girl, as said girl flicked on a tape recording and became the towering centipedal Beast. As the Beast, Rika arched her long neck around and promptly chopped her fangs into the hippo’s flank, biting a chunk out of it that caused the cracks in her armor to regrow as she healed for half the vitality she’d just drained.

Still, it was a tough beast, and so that wasn’t even close enough to take it down, leaving the now grappled Rika open to further attack.

Neither she nor her brother would allow that however.

Strikers where deployed, the Vespid Ichor Queen and the fist of Blodia appearing and delivering a devastating cleaver chop and bone shattering punch respectively with weapons as large as the hippos where, and there was no enduring that.

Jr meanwhile used his borrowed shipgirl floatation ability to sail around the hippo that came for him, painting goop onto its flank, poisoning the beast, while also forming several spears that he proceeded to launch into its side, driving the deadly goop deeper into it. Rika did much the same to the one grabbing her, breathing globules of poison directly into the bleeding wound she’d bitten in its flank.

After cackling at the sight of the cage match of carnage for a few moments, O floated off and promptly topped the absurdity of his opening move by spawning in a barnyard bash ride next to the hippo enclosure. This quint farmyard themed merry-go-round quickly proved itself to be from a not at all reputable carnival ground as it rapidly spun up to speeds far faster than its own maximum tolerances, before launching the vehicles mounted on it outwards as four large projectiles, two of them crashing straight through the fence and into the hippo enclosure.

Spotting this coming, Jr leapt up and, using Roxas’ flowmotion to guide his parkour, planted a foot on the hood of the tractor and used that to leap even higher, getting the height to clear its exhaust to still be above as it the trailer whipped on by below him.

He landed in a puddle with a splash, only for them to come a crash behind him as the tractor barreled into Rika and the hippo that had had her grabbed. Still, both where big and tough, and so both survived the collision, though while Rika rose up the hippo failed to do so, the Beast’s venom sapping the last of the life from it.

The Hippo that had attacked Jr still had some life in it despite its own poisoning, but all that meant that it was ripe for the eating as Rika scuttled through the mud towards it, falling upon it with a series of bites to restore her HP, while Jr held his mana in reserve for anyone without self healing abilities.

Still, while they had dealt with O’s opening gambit there was no indication he’d stop at building just two attractions, ”So how the heck do we stop him from making more if he’s untouchable?!”

“You cannot!” O cut in to declare, before gleefully stating that “I can toy with you however I wish”

Edward ducked back behind one of his 4 deployed Bronze Golems, who’s blades shimmered with both of the enchantments that he had granted to the seekers, as a swarm of pyrobats that had burst from a tunnel they’d been investigating unleashed gouts of flame from their fan like snouts.

Cruising silent as they cut through the defensive aura he was granting, he dropped his guard and popped back round his defence mode holding golems to pop one of the bats with his magelock pistol, but he wasn’t exactly equipped for dealing with arial swarms. Hence him requesting ”Princess Midna, if you please” to the lady he had been traveling alongside and getting the dreadful reply of ”I’ve been wanting to try this” as she retrieved and let rip with a weapon she’d found laying around somewhere



The grotesquely barreled gun sprayed a volley of sickly glowing shots into the swarm, clipping several, missing many, and then much of it promptly bouncing off the wall behind the swarm and back towards both it and them. One of these shots dommed a pyrobat, causing it to briefly emit a radioactive glow before it exploded and took out most of its fellows.

Neither the princess nor the commander saw any of this except for the afterglow, as they were too busy ducking behind a golem again to avoid the ricochets. These, at least, the golems endured just fine.

”You, I’ll be frank, have no idea how to use that thing, do you?” Edward said as he popped back out to pick off a straggler, to which the princess replied ”Not really. But it worked” and also ”Better to see how it works now than against the guardian. Speaking of, you should really stop dithering and just grab something for that other striker slot. Power is power and you can ditch whatever gross thing you take once we get to the avenger again anyway”

”If you insist, then I suppose these will do” he replied, before adding ”and remind me to give you some actual training on firearm usage once we get back to the Avenger as well” and then striding out to retrieve one of the fallen spirits for just such a purpose.



As it turned out, he had been very much out of time, and so Midna’s teasing about ”Really, that?” were put to an end as they gathered up with the rest of the group now that they were on the trail of a retreating floodfested.

In doing so they ended up alongside Primrose and Therion, specifically due to Midna wanting to catch up with the former, and Edward seeing it as tactically sound to position himself and his golems close to people he knew how to work with.

Therion's one visible eye glanced over to note the two of them falling in close by, but otherwise he didn't try and strike up a conversation or anything. The whole climb he'd been perfectly content to hang back and let everyone else do all of the puzzle and fighting work, though he'd kept an eye out for anything that looked out of place... which was easier said than done, considering how strange the Qliphoth's interior was. He'd spoken a little with Primrose as the two of them filled the other in on the trials they'd each faced, but that was it; and as for the dancer she was glad to chat with Midna when the princess approached. Sharing even a few words helped to soften the tension that surrounded everyone.

As it turned out, however, there would be no time for the two of them to have much of a casual conversation, because almost just as they linked up they all stepped into the gateway chamber, and the oppressive air and reveal of the awaiting, motionless, horde within that opened the way rather than attack made it clear that this was it.

This did not stop Midna from leaning and engaging in a whispered conversation about a plan she’d thought up to give them an edge in the coming battle. Likewise Primrose dipped her head towards the shorter woman as they continued on. She whispered back, and from her other side Therion’s feline ears flicked as he overheard their impromptu plan.

As it turned out, they were going to need it, because not only were they up against the guardian, but three whole Consuls as well. Far, far more of a threat than any of them had faced so far, and quite the trial by fire for the newbies, should they survive at all.

”At least the master hand didn’t show up as well” Midna muttered loudly, tempting fate. It really was bad enough as it was, the buffeting of the swarm charging through them giving the Consuls and Guardian all the time they needed to empower and position themselves for the coming battle, while the seekers only had from the word go to do the same.

”D’s a caster, everything he can do he can do from there if he wants!” Midna called to Nadia even as she turned away from the man who had once killed her, and instead to Primrose, who she asked if she’d ”Care for a dance?”

"I would be delighted," the woman replied with a dangerous purr. Entrusting the front line of Seekers with keeping attention away from the dance partners as they set up, Primrose began her performance in earnest. She flowed into the steps of Sealticge's Seduction, twisting and bending as her legs moved and her arms drew sultry lines across her body. As the dance took effect on the Twilight Princess, Primrose extended her arm towards Midna with her hand out, palm up, to invite the next part of the performance.

Having been strumming her lyre in accompaniment, the princess now twirled into her own dance. The claws on her heels withdrew from the ground, and allowed her to move as if she was on ice, or floating on the air. Her tail flowed behind her as she flowed and glided across the ground, pace quickly increasing before she launched herself up into a rapid pirouette to complete the move. Accompanied by a strum along all of the lyre’s chords, the purple energy that had been building around her pulsing out to empower the rest of the party.

This included her darknut, which she had summoned while awaiting her turn to dance. The towering undead knight’s slow steps suddenly quickened as the power took hold, as did those of the 4 bronze golems flanking it, and those of Edward himself. With his buckler raised, he was projecting a hexagonal armor boosting aura around himself, further bolstering the defences of the bulwark of minions who were advancing towards the four Consul As, placing a wall of metal in between them and the dancers, aiming to secure that flank of the battlefield.

Therion's own summon joined the wall, unsurprisingly for those that had fought with him through the Under. Since adopting the rather macabre monster as a striker, the junicorn had been the thief's stalwart crutch in battle. The creature's iron orb came into existence and it rolled forward, its limbs popping out and its thin weapon in hand while its huge horn extended from its forehead.

The thief himself had backed up, muscles tense and stance low with his stinging dagger in his hand. He was deadly serious - because the situation could hardly get any worse for the Seekers. It took, what, ten or more people to take down Consul P and the Under's Guardian individually? They had just over twenty now, and four enemies ahead of them just as strong - if not even stronger. If they were going to survive they needed to be smart about this. Therion let the others take the Consuls' attentions, slipping into the background to get a sense of what their adversaries could do before he even thought about taking a shot at one of them. As he did the junicorn tested the waters for him, firing its lance-like horn at the group of A and his copies to preempt any movement towards the supporters.

The lance pierced one of the Consul’s doppelgangers, lodging in his chest. He flinched a little, but not as much as he should have, and he gave no sound of pain. Something seeped from around the horn it began to slide out, but it wasn’t blood, and what it left behind was no ordinary wound. It looked like something between mulch and ground beef, the eldritch flesh moving of its own volition as it attempted to knit itself back together and preserve the illusion, without much success. All four of him looked over at the Junicorn in eerie unison, then once it disappeared, directly at Therion. It set the thief’s fur to stand on end.

Edward summoned his own strikers as well, the hellbat he had just acquired charging and launching a fireball while using the defence wall as cover, while his feather staff appeared to cast its defensive buff, though not, notably, on the constructs but on the mortals they were protecting, namely himself, Therion, and anyone who happened to join their ‘row’ while approaching Consul A.

All the while Primrose's own performance had continued, the break in her dancing only a scant few seconds long. She and Midna only had so much time before the chaos of battle would make their paired empowerment much more difficult to synchronize, so they had to make this count. Her encore pushed her to move faster, the sparkling gold of her outfit breaking up her twirling red silhouette.

"With the grace of Sealticge," she breathed, this time extending both of her hands towards her dance partner as the dance's effect was bestowed on Midna once more. The princess, having just completed her first set of steps, launched right into the second, the pair entering a pattern that threatened to keep empowering them over and over till something tried to stop them.

Unfortunately, she wouldn’t get the chance. All four copies of A extended an accusatory finger at Midna, and in an instant the Gravemind was stirred to action. With an alarming, otherworldly rumbling noise, it stretched its left-side tentacles into the air, then brought all that dead weight down like toppled redwood trees. The Seekers might be able to evade the tremendous blows if they gave up on their encore performances, but the shockwaves alone were enough to unsteady all but the heartiest heavyweights, and that wasn’t all. On impact, the tentacles sloughed off at least a dozen half-formed monstrosities, blighted and infectious, that would hound the heroes as long as they lived.

Midna hadn’t been expecting the tentacle, but she had been expecting something to try and interrupt them once it became clear what they were doing (namely a barrage of spellcasting from Consul D). Thus, she had an escape plan nice and ready, declaring it was ”Time to go” while grabbing Primorse with two hands (still holding the lyre in the third) before then yanking on her astral chain with the fourth, pulling both ladies off to the side where her Beast Legion had been prowling near Edward and Therion.

They skidded to a halt, and once released Primrose didn't waste any time before conjuring an offensive spell in hand. She and Midna had managed two performances -more than expected but less than they'd hoped- and though the Dragon Dance wouldn't boost her magic, the speed increase would still work in her favor.

"And time to put these empowerments to work," she said, as the newly created monsters found their footing and rushed forward to devour them.

Beside her, Midna sliced her Nightsky ripper and Royal War Fan out of the twilight realm, both blades igniting and coming aglow as Edward’s enchantments took hold of them, before pointing the sword at the floodfested and shouting ”You want to dance too? Then come on, let's see what you’ve got!” at them as together the two ladies prepared to hold the backline of the quartet’s ad hoc formation.

Being one of the healers, Blazermate stayed in the center of the group as they wandered through the maze. At this point she had fully gained all of her charges as she prepared for what would be quite the fight coming up. Sectonia, having used what she could to clean herself of the blood, was quite the angry bee and flew in the front, ready to take out her fury on either the Guardian, or the next boss, whatever showed its face. And that rage was pretty clear to everyone. Roland finally was protecting those in the back, both keeping himself hidden but also making sure nothing snuck up on them.

Once they finally made it to the final chamber and the Guardian, to join the Guardian were three Consuls. Notably the one they were told was the most dangerous, A. Alongside him was D and O, Roland noting D looked like a bloodfiend that was trapped in a book in the library, just older and stronger. The others, well... A giant worm, the aforementioned A, and well, O was a mystery but he'd soon find trying to attack him would be pointless. Roland's floor was determined in this fight, and he got Social Sciences. Probably not the floor he wanted for a big fight like this, but it could be useful if A was as dangerous as was reported.

Sectonia, while aware of the Consuls, was more concerned with dealing with the giant ugly Guardian of the area. Granted, with how her attacks worked and assuming she'd be aggressive while enraged, she'd be causing chaos all about the battlefield eventually. Blazermate knew that she'd make for an explosive start, and wasn't disappointed. While Sectonia didn't start out initially doing some attacks, instead starting by summoning her Antlers in the form of red ones to use fire upon the Flood. This gave Blazermate some time to overheal people before they engaged with their relative fight.

This was before the show began and Sectonia began conjuring her Rings of Light, Void Globules, and her other projectiles. Once Blazermate started to see that, she placed her medibeam on the queen and gave her Kritz, her projectiles now glowing with an electric blue as they soared through the air. Due to the immense size of the Gravemind and the vague homing properties of Sectonia's random projectiles as well as their ability to bounce, it was much more difficult to avoid her attacks for the Guardian. Blazermate additionally debuffed the Gravemind with Disseminate, making any damage it took splash around it. She wasn't sure if this would help, but it couldn't hurt.

Granted once these attacks hit the Guardian, they bounced elsewhere into the battlefield, adding to the chaos that D was causing and a few stray projectiles flying towards O's little shenanigans. Still Kritzed, those projectiles lost none of their potency as they flew across the battlefield until they finally managed to bounce 3 times and dissipated on the 4th hit. Granted Blazermate's Kritz only lasted around 12 seconds, but that would be quite the opening... an opening that would make Sectonia the immediate focus of the Gravemind who didn't like getting sliced by the huge glowing buzzsaw rings.

Said Gravemind retaliated by swiping its tentacles at the bee queen, the queen also being a big target herself. While Sectonia could teleport to dodge the first swipe, the Gravemind was far more intelligent than the bee queen thought, and upon swiping at her again, it corrected its tentacle's arc in mid air and struck her as she reappeared. This did weaken the blow a bit, but it was still a strong hit taking a majority of her overheal away. While angry, she'd also have to be careful as while she was durable, too many hits like that would be bad.

Roland meanwhile decided to engage with D. Being the 'weakest' of the group that he could hit, Roland could use him to get going. Granted, weakest was relative, and D wasn't too concerned with Roland approaching him with his sword out. Many humans have tried, and many have failed. Only a select few had managed to defeat D in the past, but that was then and this is now, and this man's sword looked like a normal sword. Unconcerned, he threw some fireballs at Roland, who tried to use his sword to parry them. He failed though, with the fireballs pushing him back hitting harder than he expected. Having a slow start, he wasn't fast enough to really dodge them yet, but this at least got him to Emotion level 1. With this, a lion's voice said "There’s nothing that can stop us!" as he gained Courage, increasing his strength and defense by 20% as he had many allies around him.

The Consul paused for a moment as the flames from his barrage died out, his fist about an inch from his face as his elbow rested on the arm of his throne, his posture languid. Though decidedly unperturbed by the potential threat before him, he could see magic welling up around his challenger in the wake of his spellcasting. He seemed markedly more powerful than before, but still barely a blip on the vampire's radar. To keep the man and his allies back he raised his other hand like he might a wine glass, and from the floor erupted pillars of roaring flame. Roland used his greatsword to block, and though he managed to defend himself for the most part, the sheer firepower threw him off. D followed up by slamming his palm down, causing a ton of blood to burst from the Gravemind's body behind him and spray down over a wide area in front of him. The pounding visceral rain forced the Fixer back, but in exchange for his burns and painful cuts, Roland gained Emotion Level 2. A maniacal voice announced Rake with "The wisdom to move forward… I want it..!"

Once again, D noted a surge in power, but a mouse could grow ten times as strong and still not equal the might of a lion. At his pleasure the blood storm continued, a test of his challengers' will.

Blazermate meanwhile had to break off of Sectonia once her kritz was over to help those dealing with O. Being able to fly, she could ignore the terrain changes caused by his powers. Well, until a swamp tree sprouted up under her and got her stuck in its branches. It took her a bit to free herself, but robot strength at least let her get free in a reasonable time frame. Flying above the hippo cage, she flew behind it and used her suffering shield to bite its tough behind, infecting it with the zombie plague before she flew above and healed up those trapped by O's shenanigans. And hopefully she'd have a zombie hippo soon!

---

The walk up was annoying but ultimately uneventful. Juri could chop into nerve clusters and even through doors if she wanted too with her new toy. When the Consuls made themselves known, Juri shouldered her new Ghoulsaw, eager to try it out on any of the ugly bastards who got too close. ”Appreciate ya all gettin’ together in one place. Hope next time they send five, save us some walking!” Juri said, seemingly unperturbed by the odds.

When the monsters started gathering up, Juri wasted no time and span into the crowd with her Ghoulsaw. They didn’t fight back, which made it a lot easier to turn them to ash. And with every spin of her body, any flood that slipped past her were pulled right back in and would have to escape all over again.That was thanks to her new power she got in this very tower, and Juri liked it a lot. She imagined it could even be used to extend her combos, not just snatch up anyone outside her kicking range. Juri had a little smile on her face. ”Thanks for the practice, chumps! Think I’m really gettin’ the hang of it, now!” Juri said as she pounced on the last little guy she could, sawing him in half down the middle.

Enough pre-show. Time for the real fight to start. The Gravemind was imposing, and a bead of nervous sweat rolled down Juri’s face. ”Tchuh…you freaks always come up with the stupidest shit to say. D O A. So stupid. Dead On Arrival’s more like it.”

When the fight kicked off, Juri played evasively, strafing around and slowly closing in, watching the various encounters begin to unfold and play out. With her speed, she felt confident she could zip into any one of these fights to blindside some sucker. When the big tentacles came out to blast some of the Seekers, Juri jumped over the resulting shockwave. Monsters spilled out, but Midna and Prim targeted them with their spells. Juri’s eyes flitted from place to place as she scampered atop iron rails and bars. She went under one of the tractors and lept atop the scarecrow atop before leaping across the way. Roland was fighting a guy who looked a lot like…Dracula. D for Dracula? He was currently pushing Roland back with a storm of blood rain. But Juri felt like she could zip in from the side. To facilitate her flank she pumped a bar of drive gauge into it, and positively blitzed across the battlefield with a streak of green light. This would give her next attack plus frames, too! Juri forwent all grace for power, and swung her Ghoulsaw as hard as she could at Dracula.

If he dodged or deflected it she would lodge it downwards into the ground and grind it along towards him to cut into his legs and just force herself past him like a hit and run. ”Watch it!” Juri jeered. Her plan next was to holster the Ghoulsaw for now and fight with her hands and feet, which were much, much faster and capable of combos and EX-moves and defending much more efficiently. But for now, just a big fuck off swing would suffice her entrance.

The arrival at the end of the maze was about as ominous as it could have possibly been. Roxas had been more or less expecting a Consul or two to show up like they had in Midgar. But three? Moebius must have been getting increasingly annoyed with the Seekers’ progress to up the ante like this. To make matters worse, all the monsters in Qliphoth began to gather until they merged into a huge and terrifying worm beast… thing.

It didn’t take long for things to get chaotic. There were four enemies and about twenty or so Seekers all looking to settle things. And the Nobody was no exception to this. The first thing Roxas did was get off as many Tailwinds as he had time for, aiming to prioritize giving speed buffs to some the larger or slower Seekers who needed it most. That meant that the likes of Ganondorf, Edelgard, Goldlewis, and even Sectonia all got a temporary speed buff courtesy of their Keyblade wielding ally. The last person Roxas used Tailwind on was himself, of course. And in the moments it took to do this he could already see different fights begin to unfold.

”My turn!” Roxas said as he sprung into action. He decided to follow after Roland and Juri and target D initially. Once Roland and Juri’s attacks were launched, Roxas seemingly appeared out of thin air to the Consul's left and slashed at him with his ignited StepSword. The nature of the attack let him slip through the blood rain but also consequently isolated him on the inside of the blood moat. He also didn’t count on the Consul also being able to teleport, as D appeared explode into a small swarm of bats as a means to avoid the attack from Roxas before the bats reformed a short distance away. Now he was officially standing.

“Foolish boy!” D mocked as he unfurled his cape and released a volley of spherical fireballs that looked like they could have come from Hell itself. But Roxas was more than quick enough to get himself out of their trajectory and launched himself for another direct attack against the Consul with his Keyblades. Unlike Roland’s sword, D noted something quite different about this boy’s weapons as he pivoted away from their strikes and pushed the lad back again. He could sense the stench of Light in them, and subsequently in the boy himself as well. “You shall find no Light to give you sanctuary in this domain! Have at you!”

Roxas narrowed his eyes. ”We’ll see about that!” He said before launching into another assault on the Consul that went about the same as his previous attempt. Between his StepSword and D’s own proclivity to teleport, the two may as well have been engaging in a battle of vanishing attacks, neither one able to land a direct strike on the other yet. At least until D managed to grab the Keybearer by the collar and proceeded to hurl him away and through the damaging blood rain.

"A waste of time!"

The remainder of the climb was more or less uneventful. Save for the increasingly ominous atmosphere anyway. But when the Seekers had finally reached what had to be the end, they were greeted by what was clearly going to be their toughest challenge yet. Not one, but three of the Consuls stood before them. Well, two of them stood. One of them remained seated on a throne. And to make matters worse, they called on all the monsters in the Qliphoth to come together until they merged into what Ganondorf and Captain Falcon both assumed had to be the Guardian.

”By my count we still outnumber you.” The Captain pointed out, not really expecting the Consuls to be intimidated by numbers alone. He probably wouldn’t have been either. ”Even if you DO have a big ugly monster on your side.” He gestured toward the Gerudo who was standing nearby. ”Besides, we’ve got a ‘monster’ of our own, don’t we, Ganondorf?”

Ganondorf let himself smirk as he focused his glare squarely on the three members of Moebius standing before them. ”Hmph. Indeed.” The warlord summoned his trident to his hand and then a squad of Moblin spearmen to back him up. And the Gerudo was not keen to waste any time. As he went on the move, he felt the benefit of a speed buff from one of his allies (Roxas) but did not get a glimpse at who was responsible for it. Nevertheless, it allowed Ganondorf to charge ahead of his Moblins like a commander leading his infantry into battle. And they were charging for Consul A, or rather, the group of Consul A’s that appeared directly after being engaged by Jr and Rika. And Falcon was sprinting right alongside the Warlord, having evidently chosen to focus on the same enemy.

Ganondorf’s attack came first. The imposing Warlord went crashing into the ranks of Consul A and his reflections, opening with a circular throw of his trident that he hoped would catch them all briefly with its lightning damage. After that he decided to test out one of his newly acquired boons - Mortal Coil. He re-summoned his trident and channeled darkness into it before spear-throwing it at one of the Consul A reflections, hoping to forcibly pull him in like a whaler harpooning his quarry. His Moblins, meanwhile, had chosen to focus their charge on another of the reflections entirely.

The Captain, meanwhile, stuck to what he did best. He picked a single Consul A among the four that were present and zeroed in on them with his own natural sprinting speed. ”Falcon Kick!” He shouted as he blazed along the ground toward his chosen opponent with a fiery sliding kick to serve as his opening move. It was mostly a way for him to close the distance as he immediately followed that up with a flurry of blindingly fast kicks. ”Gen’ei Kyaku!”

Ace knew from the jump that this was going to be rough. For all of them, facing down three Consuls and a Guardian; for himself, in the absolute chaos that was sure to unfold. But he was undaunted, bracing himself for what was about to happen. The arena wasn't large enough that anyone could just choose a target and ignore everyone else, but if he just focused on the task at hand he figured he could get through it. They all could. They'd faced horrible odds before, and if only a handful of the group assembled now could take down Guardians and Consuls then surely all together they'd pull through.

And after spending a miserable morning in the Dead Zone, now that the final challenge was in front of them the Seekers were eager to put an end to this mission. It didn't seem like any of them thought they'd lose here. The Cadet was of the same mind. Almost as soon as the Guardian actually revealed itself, the situation swiftly exploded into battle.

The heroes split off after their chosen adversaries. "Each to their strengths," Ace said, partly to himself, which meant that he would be going after the biggest, ugliest monster there - the Gravemind.

One of the Consuls sat right in front of it, but several allies were already bearing down on the man. Ace left them to it, making a beeline for the monstrosity. When he felt the effect of Midna's Dragon Dances, spread to the rest of the team by a dance of Primrose's own, the hunter steeled himself. But this was different, he realized - it was hard to explain, and even hard for himself to understand, but the buff had a noticeable different feel than the earlier ones that had fallen over the whole group.

He grinned. Faster and stronger without the drawback? He'd definitely take that. "Let's go!"

Ace had stowed the Breechshot in favor of the long sword Yato, and while the Gravemind was pelted with ranged attacks the hunter went after its trunk. He rolled through the shockwave of one of the Gravemind's massive tentacles slamming down, side stepping the blood spray and close quarters combatants closing in to get there - close enough that should someone need his help he could still intervene while fighting.

The sword was flicked upward, carving into the monster's main body. Or what Ace assumed was its main body. This thing was some sort of condensed flesh golem, if he was correct in understanding how it had formed in front of them. It looked as though it could jettison parts of itself out to become individual monsters again, but it had spoken - so it had one consciousness, right? It was hard to tell if cutting pieces off of it would hurt the thing or just diminish its size, but he wouldn't know until he tried. So the hunter sliced at it, putting theories to test.




Once things kicked off, Pit didn't waste any time jumping into the fray. He opened with his specialty - his archery. Light arrows flew, splitting into three and randomly streaking towards D, the cluster of As, and the Gravemind. He jumped up while firing, both for slightly better vantage so that the arrows might not strike anything else before reaching their destinations, and because he recalled the first boon he'd gotten inside the demon tree: that so long as he was airborne, he would be stronger. Quickly he changed strategy, and instead focused most of his fire on the monstrous leader of the floodfested. At least until one massive arm came down, and the angel used that opportunity to change targets again.

He darted toward the arena's center, aiming to make the most of Juri flanking the Consul by getting in close on D's opposite side, thus catching him in a pincer. Unfortunately Pit didn't make it that far. He'd nearly closed the distance, his bow brandished as dual swords, when an unexpected carnival ride came flying his way.

"Wh-?!" Was the only thing he had time to get out before the tractor-shaped steel seat slammed into him. Together with the ride Pit careened halfway across the area. It broke apart when it -and Pit- hit the ground and came to a stop, immediately after which the angel rose to his feet, shoving the broken pieces off of himself. "What gives!"

He saw then the state of the arena's left side. Of course he'd been aware of it transforming while he'd been moving and firing, but now he could see just what it had turned into. A zoo exhibit and an amusement park attraction?! If only there weren't a million other things happening in the battle at the same time, or Pit would have laughed.

"Okay, change of plans!" he declared to himself, taking off again. Roxas had taken up the spot on D's other flank, so this time Pit ran to the crazy side of the fight, putting down a few floodfested with his swords as he crossed the field in the opposite direction they were headed.

Though he joined the opposition against O, he was no more effective against the enigmatic Consul than Rika and Junior were at the moment. He snapped his bow back together, pulling the ethereal string and loosed another round of light arrows. They traced the only visible part of O, curling tightly around the disembodied eyes in different elemental colors. None had any effect or struck anything solid, their energy eventually fizzling out. So it wasn't just that he could phase through physical attacks - was he really not even present in the fight?

Pit came to a stop when he was near Blazermate and the royal siblings, his eyebrows furrowed and his bow raised. "What kind of boss is this guy supposed to be?" he asked of O mockingly. Still, he hoped one of the other Seekers could come up with some ideas that would let them fight the guy for real.

For a moment after the Gravemind’s prophetic cry reverberated through the arena, the twenty-one remaining Seekers stood by in battle-ready formation. Confronted by not one but three Consuls, with A in particular of especially ill repute, and dwarfed by the newly-assembled undead colossus that loomed at the Consuls’ back, they had precious little time to put together a strategy. Still, while some members of the team could be trusted to courageously push forward and take on these serious threats, others could be relied on to enact a speedy opening gambit.

Blazermate started out on overheal duty, of course, but keeping so many allies topped up would be a full-time job by itself, so once the action began her bonus HP would quickly decay. The same couldn’t be said for the support coming from Goldlewis, who hung back alongside Roxas, Midna, and Primrose to buff up the whole team. His buffs came out much faster than the ladies’ Sealticge-spread Dragon Dance, though. With a slam of his coffin he unleashed his Shield Burst, which enshrouded every Seeker in a thin energy barrier atop their health pools that would offer better protection to his flimsier friends than his heartier ones. Thanks to Hypereutectoid, it also gave them a short-lived damage boost. In return Goldlewis gratefully received Tailwind from Roxas. In a fight like this, speed would be everything.

Then it was off to the races. From his aerial vantage point Consul O broke the ice with a barrage of near-instant construction, enclosing and then terraforming a section of the arena with several Seekers inside. Overhead, Sectonia flew forth to unleash her magic and pent-up frustration, with Blazermate at her back to make her rampage one to remember, and Pit joined the fusillade with some light arrows. Therion and Grimm peeled off from the main group to avoid the enemies’ line of fire, while Roland and Nadia charged dead ahead, the former’s stoic frown and the latter’s upbeat smile indelible as their courage propelled them onward.

Tactical as ever, Goldlewis waited just a moment to engage. He quickly observed that Junior and Rika’s could not seem to land any attacks against O’s eyes, so given that plus the nascent hippopotamus exhibit, the veteran veered toward the right–toward Moebius A and his doppelgangers, who stood four abreast with a quietly menacing air about them. Goldlewis knew that there must be a lot more going on with A than met the eye, but the sight of Therion’s Junicorn spearing one of them reinforced his decision. His efforts would be better spent fighting someone he could actually hit. So as Sectonia’s deadly lightshow went off overhead, Goldlewis hustled toward the one-man quartet, keeping his eyes peeled for any interference on the way. Sure enough, the Gravemind took action to put a stop to Midna and Primrose’s buffs, and Goldlewis managed to dive forward just before the amalgamate’s mammoth tentacle slammed down. He landed with a roll and glanced up at the Gravemind, his breathing already heavy, but it had already shifted its focus toward Sectonia, so he set his sights on A once more.

Coffin at the ready, he rose and charged across the last hundred or so feet alongside Falcon and Ganondorf. A and his copies turned their way without acting, which made Goldlewis wary of a trap, but the big man couldn’t afford his foe too much respect just yet. Ganondorf acted first with a throw of his trident that whirled through the whole group, crackling with heavy voltage. Then the Warlord hurtled his weapon forward to impale an unlucky copy and reel him in, just in time to collide with Falcon’s fiery kick.

Goldlewis charged past the scuffle, trusting the Captain to put in the legwork while he went after the other three. Though softened up by the lightning and Moblin arrows, the other copies still weren’t counterattacking. Well, that suited Goldlewis just fine. “Hmph!” He grunted, gripping his coffin with one hand and its chain in the other. “Gimme an inch…!” He wheeled around, his strength and momentum brought to bear in a terrific Behemoth Typhoon. “And I’ll take a mile!” The massive flail smashed through the group. Goldlewis felt as much as he heard the bones breaking and the flesh yielding beneath his weapon’s weight, but even as the huge blow rearranged them, the copies did not falter. They simply stood, eyes dark, limbs bent strangely and cavities caved in, and a note of instinctive horror galvanized Goldlewis into action.

“Rrrrrrragh! Crumble!” He continued his onslaught with two more Behemoth Typhoons, his efforts focused down to just the two nearest copies. The final Typhoon was a mighty overhead, and when it slammed down onto his targets, it reduced them to a pinkish pulp of twisted flesh and armor. Revolted, Goldlewis stepped back, pulling his coffin free from the slurry. “Yuck! Well, whatever they are, at least these things go down easy!” Only then, though, did he notice that the pulp on his coffin was still quivering–still blinking.

He looked back at the last A copy as he pulsed with an uncanny green light. “Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer,” he intoned as Time Heals All knit his bubbling flesh and armor back together, almost perfectly recreating the Consul’s form. At the same time, three more copies sprouted up from the ground. One of the new bodies seemed to fluctuate, however, as if unable to hold itself together, and after a moment it split apart in horrific fashion Two half-heads crowned a mass of pink flesh and beady black eyes that could no longer sustain the illusion. Goldlewis gaped, aghast at the awful sight. “You think to strike me down?” the four chorused, the Imperfect Copy’s voice alarmingly distorted. “Foolish scion…we are the same!”

For a woeful second, the four looked different, appearing as nightmarish masses of eldritch flesh. And in that brief moment, it almost looked to the nearby Seekers as if everything -from the walls to their allies to their very own bodies- were similarly constituted, not themselves as they thought they knew, but what they’d deluded themselves into thinking they weren’t. In an instant the vision passed, but something in Goldlewis and the others had been shaken. Their lungs constricted and their skin crawled as Stress began to mount.

“What in the goddamn hell!?” Goldlewis backdashed on impulse, then dropped his coffin to pull out the Skyfish. After such a horrific vision, a cleansing by fire felt only appropriate. Three of the copies were back to normal, but the imperfect one remained as it was, and the veteran loathed the sight of it, “Shut up and DIE!” he bellowed over the roar of his gun.

In the middle of the arena, Nadia and Roland had their own problems. The feral quickly saw the truth in Midna’s words as D unleashed a barrage of flame from the comfort of his chair. While Roland tried to fend off the fire magic, Nadia focused on evasion. Even if she could suffer Vaporize reactions any more, she wasn’t going to get burned as long as she had anything to say about it. Using Fluffy Soft on her lower half, she wove through the fiery fusillade on digitigrade tiger legs. Her focus was such that she scarcely noticed Sectonia’s magic rebounding off the Gravemind overhead, Roland on the back foot for that matter, or Juri circling around. As D brought down the storm of blood that forced Roland away, Nadia leaped in over the blood moat with only a few fresh crimson streaks sliced into her clothes and skin. “Blood and fire?” she muttered, noting both D’s unusual combination of powers and the fact that she’d been separated from the others by the storm. Faced with D’s nonplussed stare, she flashed him a toothy grin. “To get that blood like that, you must really suck!”

D narrowed his eyes and thrust out his hand. Dozens of bats burst from the shadows within his cape and swarmed Nadia in an instant. For a moment she managed to hold her own with a wild flurry of claw swipes, but the second the feral started blocking it was over for her. The torrent of blockstun pushed her backward and into the blood moat with a splash. Without Massachusetts’ rigging around to buoy her up, she could do little but flounder until the bats subsided.

At that point, Juri rushed in from the side, her already-impressive speed amped way up by her allies. D turned his irate gaze her way, then cast his hand at the incoming assassin dismissively. A second salvo of bats fluttered forth, but Juri’s headlong sprint low-profiled the squeaking vermin as she darted in, her revved-up ghoulsaw practically scraping the ground. With only a second to spare, D flicked his hand upward as if beckoning, and from within his cape a black-furred, red-eyed wolf lunged at Juri. Her sawblade carved it apart in D’s place, but the martial artist followed up just as quickly with a vicious sideswipe at his legs. Edward’s Searing Weapons left the wound ablaze as blood sprayed, adding insult to injury and eliciting an annoyed grunt from D. As Juri rushed along D turned the blood of wolf and Consul alike into a dozen crimson needles that shot after her.

Just as Juri disengaged, Roxas showed up to flank D with a surprise attack. While the Consul possessed a hardy constitution and did not need to fret over every last blow, his ego compelled him to demonstrate that his challengers attacks were futile–especially those from a snot-nosed brat. What followed was a heated but inconclusive exchange as the two evaded one another repeatedly. Though D’s experience and reflexes allowed him to snatch Roxas from the air, the count thought a soak in his blood storm was letting Roxas off lightly, considering that he’d been forced to rise to his feet already..

As Roxas sailed over the blood moat, Nadia burst from it, took aim with her newly-drawn pistols, and opened fire. D summoned another black wolf to hound her, but she dodged the beast with a sideways aerial cartwheel, shooting while upside-down. “Nya ha!” On landing, she twisted around to blast D with both guns at once, then dropped them and blitzed forward with an electric Charge. “Dis-zap-pear!” She appeared right in front of him and lashed out with a Fluffy Soft kick at D’s head, only for him to block with a nonchalantly raised arm. Sparks flew, but his guard barely budged. Still, even if it did no damage, a hit was a hit. Knowing his defense must be lowered, Nadia gritted her teeth and went with plan B. “Careful, I’m armed!” Pivoting away, she hyper-extended her arm like a spear straight for D’s face. Thanks to a lucky proc of Edward’s Sundering Strikes, she pierced his helmet’s armor and left his faceplate in shambles.

D’s reaction was explosive. “You worm!” He lunged forward and seized Nadia by the throat. Only now that he stood could the Seekers see just how tall he was; Nadia’s Mantreads dangled several feet above the floor as she writhed in D’s grasp, and when he squeezed, his nails pierced into her neck. With his vision compromised, D wrenched off his helmet to reveal a face as hard and colorless as stone, with a pointy mustache and beard, and long fangs bared in a scowl. He looked every inch the quintessential Transylvanian villain, and even Nadia knew the archetype.

“You…some kinda vampire?” Nadia garbled as she kicked her legs at him. “So…I guess that’s three Consuls, not two…I forgot to Count Dracula!”

With a thrash, she managed to boot D in the groin. His face tightened. “Witless woman,” he sneered. As he cast his magic, his blood rain dwindled. “Surrender yourself to me!”

Nadia’s eyes rolled back into her head, and D threw her down. She bounced off the ground with a sound more of surprise than pain, then rolled to a stop amidst the last of D’s blood storm. When she rose, though, the feral seemed to be in some sort of trance. “Ohhh…what a dreamboat~” she proclaimed drunkenly, turning around to face her team with her claws sharpened for battle.

Indifferent to the skirmish unfolding at the base of its trunk, the Gravemind centered its attention on Sectonia toward the end of her kritz-fueled chaos. ”PALLBEARER. SHALL I RELIEVE YOU OF YOUR LOAD?” It lifted up its two middle tentacles, fresh branches sprouting near their ends like bony fingers. They swiped through the air like nets trawling the sea to swat, snare, and pierce the queen. After a few moments, it stopped to shake off handfuls of Deimos drones that took to the sky, shrieked like wild owls, and threw themselves toward various targets, prioritizing those in the air. After homing in they’d latch on, constrict, and emit a disruptive bioshock that would deactivate any ongoing abilities or buffs. As its drones filled the air, the Gravemind cackled through its countless bodies. ”MY TOMB RUNNETH OVER!”

The next moment, Grimm’s firebats exploded against it, the three projectiles punctuated by a blast from his Grimmchild. Though the Gravemind lacked eyes, the Troupe Master could feel its heavy gaze upon him, and warped away to avoid a Deimos drone divebomb. By that time Ace had been whaling on the Gravemind’s trunk for a good ten or fifteen seconds, and that kind of punishment couldn’t be sustained indefinitely. The Gravemind arched backward until its head hung over the Cadet, then belted out a torrent of stomach acid followed by a fused mass of corpses to tackle the hunter beneath its heavy weight..

O, meanwhile, was appalled at the Seekers’ reception to his latest exhibit. They not only floated above the muddy water, but shot, bit, and even poisoned his hungry hippos! As the bloat began to dwindle, his eyes widened with disbelief at the heroes biting and shooting them. “My hippos! Do you have ANY IDEA how much those cost!?” He groaned, then narrowed his eyes. “No matter. It’s not just hippos who call the wetlands home!” He did something, but it wasn’t clear what until two Nile Crocodiles burst up from the water. Their huge jaws latched down onto two of the nearest Seekers -those being Bowser Jr, Rika, Blazermate, and Pit- with a bite force of almost four thousand pounds per square inch before the crocs dragged them down into the muck for a brutal death roll.

Of course, O was already busy with his next project. At the start of the battle, some of the less hot-headed Seekers had continued to stand their ground away from the brawls with D and A, trying to figure out the best way to assail the massive Gravemind and elusive O. Edelgard, Geralt, and Zenkichi had evaded the hippo and crocodile exhibit, and were fending off the Gravemind’s Deimos drones, but the Consul planned to tie up those loose ends. He speedily walled off an area around them with thorny hedges, then created a pink-striped observation tower in the center, which also happened to be around the center of the whole battlefield. The carriage rose like a piston, then dropped. Even if those in the area inside managed to avoid getting crushed, they would still be endangered by an omnidirectional blast of shattered blue glass.

After releasing its drones, the Gravemind did not stay idle for long. ”THERE IS NO RESPITE IN MY GRAVE,” its forms chorused. Just after the hippo that Blazermate’s infected arose as a hideous undead monster to fight by the medabot’s side, the Guardian brought down its tentacles three times, one after another. The first massive limb fell across the middle of O’s wetland exhibit, separating it into halves. From its pitted flesh wriggled infection forms that scuttled toward the hippo zombie to bury themselves in its rotten hide and induct it into the Gravemind’s fold; if Blazermate wanted to keep hold of her newest minion, she would need to keep it flood-free. A second later, the next tentacle dropped down amidst Edward, Midna, Primrose, and Therion’s formation, the tremendous impact a much greater danger than the thinning mob of floodfested. Finally, the Gravemind aimed a third infested mass at the gang near the observation tower, its withering attack a surefire way to keep the three on their toes.

Before the Gravemind withdrew that third tentacle, though, Grimm leaped aboard. He scuttled down its putrid length at high speed, his fiery claws carving out handfuls of fused flesh on the way to leave a blazing trail in his wake. As the Guardian burned, so did Grimm, but the accompanying bursts of health offset his fresh wounds, and the Gravemind took notice. ”GRAVEROBBER, COME,” half-melted faces amidst the biomass groaned at the Troupe Master as he approached the Gravemind’s body, no matter how many he sliced apart. ”IN DEATH YOU WILL FIND LIFE.” The tentacle thrashed and Grimm flew through the air. A Deimos drone caught him on the fly, then zapped him. As he struggled, the Gravemind itself wheeled toward him for a massive headbutt, but Grimm escaped in a four-way blast of scarlet flame. He reappeared above the head, landed a corkscrew divekick, then leaped away to begin the game of cat and mouse anew. ”ACCEPT WHAT MUST BE.” the thousand voices rumbled.