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.

---

Juri zipped forward low, her sense of balance impossible as she propelled herself forward like a spider skittering out from the low, dark places of the world.

”Tch!” Juri grit her teeth as instead of carving into the smug prick on the throne, she carved into some kind of wolf instead. ”How scuzzy can ya get?” She growled. Still, the saw buried into the ground and dragged her forward to slash across D’s legs in a spray of blood. And fire, which Juri assumed was because of some wizard on her team, she didn’t care who. Annoyingly, D didn’t seem to mind that much. If Juri had taken that same hit, it wouldn’t have drawn any blood at all because of her ki, but it woulda hurt! Juri jumped backwards and adjusted the strap of her ghoulsaw so it was on her back in one swift evasive motion as blood darts shot after her. She rolled under some and then popped up to her feet to parry the rest as she turned blue, using her foot and hand to deflect the needles.

That dumbass Fortune and that bratty looking Roxas followed up next, to mixed results. At least Roxas had the decency to get flung away! Fortune got snatched, and before Juri could intervene, put under some kind of charm. ”Oh, you gotta be-” Juri scoffed. Then she looked at Dracula. He did look like he was in good shape. Juri frowned and shrugged ambivalently.

Still, Juri intervened eagerly and without hesitation as to the new Fortune problem, trying not to let the catgirl act. ”Oh, Fortune, won’t you just snap out of it!” Juri pleaded sarcastically.

”I don't wanna have to huuurt you~~~!” She sprinted to intervene and Drive Rushed forward, zig-zagging along to try and hit Fortune with a grab.That is, quickly putting her foot on Fortune’s shoulder, forcing her downward into a rising knee that took them both into the air before kicking Fortune in the belly to send her flying away. If that worked, the technique would do a bit of damage but mostly create distance.

”Me and Fortune can have some playtime, just don’t let me see any more of you chumps get got!” Juri barked as the fighting continued.

Jr childishly blew a raspberry up at O as he complained about how much the hippos had cost him, before going ”wait…” as he started to have an idea based off of said comment.

Unfortunately that thought process got interrupted by a 5 meter long alligator lunging up out of the murky water he was floating on.

He was promptly dragged down into the water by the gator, the way his shell spikes stabbed into its mouth flesh being of little consolation as it began death rolling him. What was a consolation was that the nature of the attack, crushing jaws and being rotated to death, meant that his new Stygian Turtle Shell activated almost immediately, giving him three seconds of invincibility, and his sister three extra seconds to save his hide.

Having taken their moment of respite to sharpen her Beast form’s natural armaments, Rika dove in after her brother, her 8 meter long form creating a massive splash as she did so. Over a dozen insectile limbs reached blindly in the murk till they found the beast in the swamp water, and then gripped it tight, stopping the death roll in its tracks. That still left Jr stuck under water, flailing in a blind panic due to an inherited fear of drowning, and the beast wasn’t exactly built to hold its breath either.

Still, at least she knew where the creature was now, and promptly slammed the Beast’s horns into the crocodile, knocking the wind out of it, and getting it to release her brother. Unfortunately it then immediately began to bite at her instead, clamping onto a leg and thrashing about to try and rip it free.

Up above, Jr surfaced and made a mad swim for solid ground, forgetting entirely that he could stand and sail on the water in his panic. Coughing and spluttering on all fours on the marshy ground, the boy tried in vain to get a hold of his racing heart, but there simply was no time. Behind him came splashing as the two massive creatures brawled and bit at each other in the water, yet only one was built for that, and so if he didn’t find a way to help things were not going to go well for his sister.

The prince glanced around for his paintbrush, only to find it floating atop the water, bleeding paint into the swampland, so there’d be no healing Rika from the surface, and with how murky the water was, there was too much risk of hitting her if he just fired harpoons.

He had to get back down there.

He thrust a hand into his bag, put on a set of headphones, steeled himself both figuratively and literally, and then dove back into the water wearing the form of the fish woman Undyne.

Clad in armor, the prince sank fast, and then as he drank in the water in-order to breathe it, almost choked, both on the act and on the thickness of the murk. He endured, pushed forward, spear in hand.

The thrashing in the water intensified, suddenly stilled and then after what could have felt far too long for anyone looking out for the children, both of them burst from the water, both wrenching up water from their battle in the murk

”Urgh, ugh, bleh, I, ug, really don’t like this guy now” Jr complained, as before once again glancing for his staff, and finding the ink bleed had intensified, fouling the water even more.

”I.. Huh… Oh yeah!” he said, completing the thought he’d been having when the crocodile attacked them, which was ”If he’s spending money on this stuff, let’s bleed him dry!”

”Huh? How can we bleed him if we can’t touch him?” Rika asked, briefly switching out of her Beast form to use her grappling hook to retrieve Jr’s paintbrush. The prince accepted this with a nod of thanks, before saying that his idea was ”Simple! We keep breaking all his stuff till he runs out of money!”

”Ohhhh” Rika replied, before getting right to it, promptly singing a fist around and punching the closest tree. Two more strikes broke its bark, boosted her attack speed, and then the fourth smashed clean through it, and sent it tumbling down into the mud, its branches smashing down onto the trough of vegetables in the process.

”Yeah! That’s it” Jr said, having dropped his own cassette-beast form so he could heal Rika, and then joining in on the mess making. With his left hand he swatted his paintbrush around, splattering toxic goop around and poisoning the swamp waters, while his right created iron cans of all things, which he began littering around, both actions together to make a right mess of the place.

”How do you like this, you big jerk!” he yelled up at O, only for one of the consuls' own allies to do way more damage to the enclosure than they were: The Gravemind slammed a tentacle down into the enclosure, wrecking the fences even more, and leaving a great grove in the wet earth that quickly flooded with water as it pulled back.

Thanks to all the speed boost buffs, the kids got out of the way with ease, but the danger didn’t end there, as rushing out of the groove as it flooded came a wave of infector forms, all of them scuttling towards an undead mutant hippo that Blazermate had made. Given that they’d ended up on the other side of the groove from it, the koopa kids were not in danger immediately, but if they got to the hippo, that’d be a problem for sure.

”We gotta stop those!” Jr called out as he formed a flurry of iron knives and began to launch them towards the infected. He mitigated the potential risk of friendly fire by having the knives fly above the infectors, and then pivot 90 degrees in the air to lance down on top of them, showering them with a rain of falling metal.

Rika followed suit with the targeted attack method, launching a shocker swarm from her gauntlet hangers, which buzzed forwards and discharged electricity into the mass of infectors, while also having her scout planes dive down to do strafing runs against them.

As they did this, Jr breifly stabbed his paintbrush down into the mud to free up his other hand, and then blindly grabbed and tossed a pokeball at a fallen tree. The orb bounced once, and then released Peeka, his fluttermane, who he commanded to ”Blast those freaky things!” This prompted her to fire plasma bolts after the infectors, the mon artfully triggering the shot’s splitting ability to have its twin bolts to split apart and hit pairs of targets on either side of her shot, again preventing the risk of said shots flying onward to accidentally hit Blazermate.

It was this set of assets and powers on the field that gave Jr another idea, and so, after the infestor situation was resolved one way or the other, he set this new plan into motion.

”We can’t hit O, but he can still see us, so let’s make trying to even look at us a pain!” he called out in suggestion, before first getting Rika to send up a diversion swarm from her hangers, the electrical fireflies buzzing up to flash and blink in front of O’s eyes in a very annoying accuracy reducing fashion, and then sending Peeka to be a menace to the elderly.

The pokemon drifted up as close as it could to the Consul, and then used Dazzling Gleem in his light of sight, causing a bright pulse of light to flash from her necklace of energy eyes. Whether the offensive fairy light would work to harm O through whatever projection method he was using was debatable, but Jr was quite sure that having a bright light flashed in your face would be annoying. As would having the ghost pokemon subsequently floating around in front of O, pulling faces and “flutter flutter flutter!”-ing as she did so.

”Come on, get mad, and buy stupid expensive stuff in stupid places” Jr quietly urged O, while both he and his sister kept on their toes be ready to deal whatever financial investment the old man made next.

Minda’s blade stabbed deep into a half formed floodfested, before a drill like shockwave of wind followed up the strike a second later, widening the wound and bushing the foe back so that it was ever so easy to pull it back out. With her fan she parried a claw swipe from another, the gust of wind blasting it back to prevent it from simply barrling into her, before she cut it with the cleanly extracted sword, the after shock turning the deep wound into a bisection.

The creatures weren't as durable as those they had encountered on the ground floor of the Qliphoth's interior, likely owing to how quickly they'd formed. They hadn't had a chance to assume more flesh from their master before being sent off to attack. As such they didn't offer much danger individually, and could easily be torn apart. As a group they were more of a problem, but that only meant they had to be taken out as a group. Primrose had focused on her wide range Night Ode, the deadly dark magic striking down swathes of the horde at once. Any that avoided the spells or happened to survive and continue forward she trusted her dance partner to take care of, or the other Seekers that coincidentally ran into them.

With a wave of her hand another pool of shadows formed, bursts of damaging flame interspersed with the darkness as it consumed the floodfested and dwindled them down to near nothing. It wouldn't be much longer until they were gone and the ladies could focus on the greater threats.

Unfortunately for them, before they could quite finish up, A, behind them, unleashed a sinister spell that seemed to turn the world to flesh, and left their hearts beating faster from more than just adrenalin and excretion.

”Goddesses, what was that?” Midna cursed, her lyre playing flattering as the move threw her off balance right as one of the remaining floodfested came for her. Fortunately for her, her legion leapt to her aid, claw strike-like trails appeared in the air as the legion pounced a flood-fested, bringing it down with ease.

Left with a feeling of unease from the vision, Primrose's expression darkened and she cut a hard glance at the Consul and his copies. It had happened so suddenly that she didn't quite know what to make of it - had it been some kind of psychic attack meant to affect their sanity, or had he actually done something to them? The uncertainty was the worst part of it.

Fortunately, the vision was only momentary, and they were back in action within moments, though it had clearly left an impact upon them.

While the boys pushed in and renewed their assault on A, the ladies' next few blows cut down the majority of the remaining floodfested. It was enough for Midna to suggest: ”Let my legion deal with the stranglers” pointing her sword towards the (to most everyone else) blur that now accompanied her everywhere ”and let’s hit A already”.

She had hardly finished speaking when the Gravemind moved once more, its tentacles smacking down first somewhere beyond the crashed carnival ride to (by the sound of crunching metal from over there) devastating effect, before another swung down at the boys behind them. Them, plus Midna's darknut, which the princess mentally called back as soon as she saw the movement rather than wasting precious moments trying to work out where the very slow construct was in relation to the imminent impact point. Its limb came down hard, shaking the arena and unleashing another shockwave where it fell. This time Primrose took it upon herself to get herself and her dance partner out of harm's way. She took hold of one of Midna's forearms and swiftly floated them both into the air so the shockwave didn't topple them, and a moment later they landed once more.

”Alright then, looks like we have bigger flesh to fry” She decided after that little reminder of their true objective, before suggesting ”so how about we hit it hard together?”

Primrose cast her eyes about the battlefield at large. There was A and his copies behind them, D towards the center back, and O... somewhere on the left, hard to spot amidst all of the strangeness he was conjuring. And of course towering over all of them was the Gravemind who was posing a huge hazard. It was that creature which her gaze settled on.

"I take it you already have something in mind?"

She did indeed, and after a quick explanation, they set it into motion.

Primrose performed her Rites of Termination, spinning gracefully before conjuring a large lance shaped strike of dark elemental energy straight down. Before it could hit the ground however, Minda’s shadow hand snatched out and grabbed the lance by the hilt, and then held it between the two women. Primrose took hold of the hilt, hand beside Midna's as her aura flared to life. She pushed her Battle Boost into the weapon, licks of flame fluttering over it but quickly consumed and turned black while at the same time Midna was charging her own dark magic into it, green twilight runes forming over its surface. Its core swelled with pitch black magic, doubling, then tripling the already man sized spear into a massive missile.

Once charged, Primrose let go and the princess reeled it back and hurled the lance across the battlefield at the Gravemind, into which it would embed and then linger, several follow up blasts of fire and magic exploding out of it until the charge was expended. While it lasted, the lance also spread a beneficial effect to most of their allies; their critical hit rate increased.

Unfortunately taking advantage of that might be somewhat tricky for some, as that was when the counter attack began. Situated somewhere between the entrance and the left hand side fight with A meant that while the duo were not under the fairground ride that appeared out of nowhere to crush down upon those beneath it, they were in the blast radius of the glass shattering out of it.

”Where in their names?!” Midna cursed in confusion, having been a bit busy to take notice of what O had been up to, but hardly able to miss this one. In response she reached the shadow hand she had just used to toss the lance, and instead used it as a shield, ducking behind its half curled fingers.

With little in the way of defensive options (and with an aversion to them away) and no spell being cast to trigger the Baldur Shell's protection, Primrose had little choice but to duck behind Midna. Chunks of glass cut into her arm and side as she moved, leaving rows of thin bleeding lines and bits of reflective blue lodged into her skin and dress. As soon as it passed she stepped out again, glaring in O's general direction.

"Someone needs to take care of these nuisances," she said, suggesting that someone should be them.

”Not sure if that thing is even going to work any more” Midna thought out loud, regarding the observation deck currently taking up the center of the arena, its windows shattered, but its structure intact enough that it could, hypothetically, crash down again, prompting her to say ”but I’m going to make sure”

Saying that, she opened a portal, and summoned her darknut once more, its size greatly increased. Then with the short amount of time it had on the field, the titan squared up, picked an angle, and then cleaved into the side of the pillar the deck rose up and down on as if said piller was a tree, and the knight a lumberjack. She also made sure she had it strike it in such a way that it would, if it fell rather than just buckled, simply slam into the wall with the entrance in it where none of the fighting was taking place.

While it did its work, the princess mounted up onto her beast legion, summoned her wolfos in offer of a ride, and then set off around the deck to reach the other side. Primrose took hold of the wolfos but glanced back at the five men fighting A, hoping that they had it in hand before she mounted the borrowed creature and sped off.

Thanks to O's ability to just spawn things out of nowhere, it was one of the few things that got around Blazermate's Scan ability. Mostly because these things didn't exist before hand, then suddenly wham! crocodile twice your size is grabbing your leg and dragging you underwater! There was something Blazermate had for this, and that was using Disruption on the giant croc before it could do anything worse to her, banishing it and freeing her from its grasp as it stood in an inky black sphere banished. Now the other problem... getting out of the water.

Well, this wasn't the ocean, so getting to some sides to climb wasn't too bad, and they were pretty easy to climb. Still, she had a harder time getting out of the water than Jr, since he could float to the top when freed while she had to climb with a heavily damaged leg. The thick water at least made it easier for her to get up, as it added a bit of buoyancy even for her. Meanwhile the crocodile was mad when it finally came out of banishment, but was pre-occupied itself as it had two identical copies of itself biting and pulling it down. And with its build, it really couldn't attack the illusions coming at it from its sides as they bit at it letting Blazermate pull herself out of the water.

Still she didn't get out of that unscathed, first needing to shake herself free of the water, then get back into the air with a crunched leg. "OK, that is NOT fair. Spawning things like that... Ugh. At least I've got stuff to deal with that now." Blazermate said, annoyed. And she'd be showing that off soon as she moved her attention to the zombie hippo and saw the Gravemind do some weird stuff and sending flood spawn after it to control it. Blazermate decided that wouldn't do, and summoned her striker Armstrong, to deal with this.

At this time the illusions despawned and the croc was free. Free to make a bite attempt at the closest thing which was Armstrong. Of course... Nanomachines made that bite completely ineffective and the nile croc soon found itself being a bat for Armstrong as he moved in to swipe at the flood spawn. Blazermate meanwhile zoomed over to the zombie hippo to bite it again, mutating it into a bulbous form that seemed that it could rupture at any moment. While Jr, Rika and Armstrong could clear out the flood, there were just too many of them. So instead Blazermate had an idea looking at the zombie hippo waiting to explode. Although she didn't need to really tell Armstrong what to do, as he charged the zombie hippo and smacked it with a force that caused a vicious explosion, harming the enclosure even more and sending the hippo flying towards D like a rocket. Needless to say the croc didn't survive. Blazermate was back on healing and evasion duty, although once Rika and Jr. were fine, she decided to move over to another area to help.

Roland, seeing that Nadia was occupied with Juri now, decided to move onto and keep dealing with D. With his new buffs, D's projectiles soon wouldn't be pushing him back anymore as Roland clashed with another round of fireballs and instead of being pushed back, just stood and deflected them, although he wasn't able to power through them just yet. With his previous clashes, he gained Emotion level 3, and gained Power of the Past, a womans voice saying "I’ll be the one to take things away this time…", making Roland slow down by 10%, but increasing his strength by 40%. He also gained the EGO Harvest. This increase in strength was what he needed to finally advance on D as his fireballs were now deflected by Roland full out, allowing him to advance.

Well, that was until Roland got close enough to D that he had to start using a stronger projectile. One that Roland wouldn't think would be as strong as it was. D pulled out a wine glass and threw it at Roland, the glass shattering as it hit Roland's hammer and pushing him back quite a bit. Then, swapping to stronger fireballs made of dark inferno, fired these at Roland. Roland could protect himself from these, but he'd find quickly they acted like Binah's pillar if not as strong as it took all his effort to protect himself. This essentially made him stay in place while dealing with them.

In the middle of the frenetic duel, though, an unexpected guest arrived in the form of Armstrong's improvised baseball. An enormous zombified hippopotamus, bulbous and pulsating with rot, hurled through the air in a majestic disaster that was as impossible to look away from as a train wreck. For a moment as Roland's eyes traced its inglorious flight path, it seemed like the bizarre projectile might catch D unawares, but appearances could be deceiving. Just before impact the Consul dissolved into mist, and the hippo's momentum carried it into the throne, exploding both in a burst of nasty acidic gunk. The shockwave seemed to disturb the mist, however, and in an instant D materialized, stumbling forward a few steps as if shoved from behind. He knew that Roland would try to make the most of this, though, and the vampire was far from helpless.

Which Roland did, although probably not in the way D expected. Using Harvest, Roland gained the appearance of a bloody scarecrow with a massive rakes for hands as the area turned into a wheat field for a few moments. This continued with Roland firing a spear of flesh from his chest at D. Although D countered this much like Roland has been dealing with his projectiles; batting it away with his hand extended to be a claw and making the attack fail. Clearly Roland would need a lot more power to deal with D's melee attacks. He still had more emotion levels to go, but this clearly wouldn't be easy.

While this had been going down, Sectonia had been focusing the Gravemind, taking its attention. Sure D had an ability to control it, and the Gravemind was still affecting everyone besides her usually, but she for the most part kept it off the others. Although she wasn't agile enough to keep the Gravemind within her more devastating auras such as her heartstopper aura or tesla aura. Its physical attacks on top of that didn't help matters as while Sectonia was very resistant to magical and energy attacks, physical attacks she didn't get a massive resistance to from her items and that meant she really couldn't take too many of the tentacle swipes from the Gravemind.

Much like what Sectonia did by summoning minions to deal with the Gravemind and the flood, the guardian summoned minions in kind. Many of which unlike Sectonia's minions could fly. Although they were also fairly weak in comparison to hers, they mostly focused their attention on her. it seemed they focused on fliers more than anything, but Sectonia had some things she could do to get rid of these things before they were able to explode upon her such as her death pulse, lightning, and her passive damage auras. But this also meant her damage output while dealing with these things was low. Well, until she got an idea.

Thinking about it, she'd have to be careful and teleport away quickly afterwords as to not be sprayed by the blood spray, but she could teleport behind the Gravemind, hit it with a projectile, then teleport behind it again to confuse it. She'd have to not be predictable as this thing seemed to learn quickly, but that wouldn't be too much of a problem... hopefully. Engaging her plan after the blood spurt stopped from its back, Sectonia dodged the tentacle swipe headed her way using this, teleporting behind the Gravemind and hitting it with a blast of holy beams that got dangerously close to hitting, but still missing D with their spread. She then teleported back to her original spot as the Gravemind swung at her, dodging the blow and raining holy swords upon the creature.

As it started to swing and flail wildly in her direction, Sectonia decided now would be a good time to activate her Chaos Shield. While she could teleport to try to dodge the whirling tentacles, their size and unpredictability made that option a poor choice. Especially since the Gravemind was covering its back with all that flailing. So instead Sectonia used her shield to get in close and pepper it with her more close range attacks to keep the pressure up.

With the Spirits they’d collected crushed, Geralt and Zenkichi joined the group at large trudging onward deeper into the Demon Tree. It wasn’t terribly slow going, with the group’s sheer numbers being more than enough to wipe out the token resistance left to offer by the Qliphoth. Each of the three had their fair share of demons and undead to destroy, though far from enough to constitute more than a minor effort. By the time they found the central area where the Consuls were lying in wait, they’d had more than enough slow going to clear their heads.

”That’s an ominous entrance…” Zenkichi muttered, while Geralt sighed.

“Reminds me of when we found the Orphan. Be ready for a hell of a fight.” He warned.

”So this is it, then? One of Galeem’s Guardians? They’ve certainly put no shortage of barriers between them and us.” Edelgard inquired, hackles raising.

“Unless they’ve just suddenly gotten smarter for…fuck.” Geralt sighed as the doors opened, realizing the other reason that their enemies would suddenly become more organized, with Zenkichi’s shoulders slumping.

”Consul?” He sighed.

“Consul.” Geralt concurred as the Juggernauts pushed open the gargantuan doors, revealing not one, nor two, but three Consuls waiting for them. “Well, Edelgard, you get quite the introduction to the Seekers. Three Consuls and a Guardian. They’ve certainly gotten fed up with us.” He joked, summoning his twin hydroblades before casting Quen, as Zenkichi summoned Ragnell and Edelgard Aymr.

”Then I’ll be sure not to disappoint.” The Empress replied haughtily, raising her shield.

While the three conversed amongst themselves, the floodfested horde made its break for the throne, ignoring every attack sent their way by the Seekers. They coalesced into a truly colossal form, a hideous amalgamation of the flesh of thousands, if not millions, of denizens of the Dead Zone. As Consul A began his monologue, Geralt rolled his eyes. If the Consuls were supposed to protect the Guardians, they’d been doing a pretty terrible job of it until the Orphan and Red Eye were dead.

As the battle broke out, Geralt, Edelgard, and Zenkichi kept close to the center, each considering the fight. Geralt and Zenkichi’s minds were more occupied with O’s true nature, while Edelgard had her focus on the Gravemind. It was too large to contend with in typical fashion, and would require careful strategy to harm without being crushed beneath its sheer mass.

The Consul, on the other hand, was a more tricky situation. They could be elsewhere, projecting their abilities over great distance, or hidden within the same arena and merely using the great eyes as a distraction from their true form.

The others, of course, charged forward and leapt straight into battle, and though Edelgard was loathe to refrain, she held back. Her limited abilities were frustrating, but little was worse than being harmed due to one’s own rustiness, Galeem-induced or no. So, she stayed back even as Juri and Edward rushed onwards, contemplating her strategy. It seemed that mobility would be key here. Thankfully, with the double dragon dance, she could at least move much faster than normal. When she made her move, it would be easier to avoid being crushed.

Zenkichi, for his part, swapped to Restoration Protocol. The group would need the healing, and he could target his buffs to wounded allies, and try to time his use of offensive skills for when he was near others who needed a hand. He watched O’s actions, or more accurately, the actions of the creatures he’d summoned, and frowned. ”I mean, I know they’re actually pretty dangerous, but…hippos?” It didn’t make sense to him. He did catch, however, the Deimos drones that Gravemind had created and was sending their way. ”Incoming!” He cried, swinging Ragnell to fire a beam of energy into the swarm.

Edelgard, for her part, hefted her blazing Aymr and, memories of a forgotten technique returning to her, hurled the false Hero’s Relic into the incoming drones. The axe blazed through the drones, incinerating a few before dissipating and reappearing in Edelgard’s hand. As the drones flew even closer, Geralt stepped forward, drawing the Sign of Aard to destabilize them with a telekinetic blast.

As Zenkichi leapt forward to carve into the flying monsters, O turned his gaze onto the three isolated Seekers, and worked his magic. Hedges sprung up around them, heralding the arrival of the observation tower he had summoned. ”What the-”

“COVER!” Geralt yelled once the observation deck reached the top and began plummeting down. He cast Quen, focusing the Sign into an active bubble, even as Deimos drones crashed into it and tried to break through. Zenkichi, meanwhile, dismissed Ragnell and summoned the greatsword Sandalphon had bought for him, lifting it up to hide behind while Edelgard huddled behind her shield.

When the deck hit the ground, it exploded with a violent crunch, sending glass shards everywhere in the cramped plaza. The Deimos drones were shredded into nothingness, though not before having grabbed Zenkichi and clearing his dragon dance buffs. Geralt’s bubble shield exploded violently, with shards of glass slicing his face, though the magical properties of his bleed amulet kept the cuts from bleeding toobadly. Zenkichi fared somewhat better, the iron slab of a weapon he used for cover having deflected much of the shrapnel. Edelgard lifted her head and let out a sigh of relief, the glass having been completely blocked by her armor and shield.

They were not given any room to breathe, however, before the Gravemind’s tentacle loomed overhead, threatening to crush them if they remained still. The three scrambled away from the edge of the ruined plaza as the tentacle slammed down, leaving behind infection forms and some lingering floodfested. Geralt rolled his eyes and summoned the Judicator to heal his wounds as he rushed in to destroy the chaff that the Guardian had left behind.

Zenkichi and Edelgard took the chance to make a beeline for the edge of the fenced-in area, easily cutting the hedges down with their flaming weapons, Zenkichi’s empowered by Edward’s spell and Edelgard’s her own fiery determination. The iron fence lasted little longer, and the pair called over to Geralt to break free with them. As they escaped back into the arena proper, the trio got a good look at how things had progressed since they were imprisoned. It looked like the Consuls were commanding the most attention, though that wasn’t terribly surprising. While the Guardians were menacing in their own right, the Consuls commanded attention like little other.

“We should try to bring down the Guardian first.” Geralt suggested. “Each Consul can grow stronger and unleash a form known as Moebius,” he explained to Edelgard. “And if they do, especially if several do at once, things will get hairy fast. Take down the Guardian, though, and one of us can use its power to turn the tide. Considering what that thing looks like, it’ll come at a hell of a cost, but whether we kill it first or last, we have no choice. The Guardian will regenerate if left alone, and its Spirit can’t be destroyed or bound as a Striker.”

”I am loathe to imagine what that would transform somebody into.” Edelgard shuddered. Even the Immaculate One was far from as hideous as this creature. As for the battle, she also could see that the armored figures had taken the focus of their allies. ”Then if these Consuls seek to protect the Guardian, let them lay down their lives to do so.” She threatened, running forward with Aymr held high. Geralt rolled his eyes as he followed her, casting Quen again to protect himself, and Zenkichi lagged a bit behind, giving himself a speed boost with Sukukaja and triggering Preservation Protocol to heal up more of the damage he and Geralt had taken. They had to take a small detour around to the side in order to avoid Juri and Nadia’s fight.

As they neared D’s throne, they saw Roland and Roxas fighting to command the vampire’s attention, while Juri pummeled Nadia. Geralt paid it no mind, though he waved the other two onward, joining Roland’s efforts against the Consul to buy time for Zenkichi and Edelgard to get past the throne and attack the Gravemind directly. Quen shimmering around his form, he leapt at D like a bat out of hell, overwhelming the Consul for a brief and shining moment and landing several slashes with his hydro blades, before jumping back to evade a backhand from D. The Consul retaliated with a series of fireballs before Geralt could reposition, and though he dodged the first, the second and third crashed into him, destroying the shield from Quen and knocking him back. This was not without consequence, as a large pulse of lightning radiated from Geralt, hitting both the Consul and Nadia, mind controlled as she was.

As Geralt took D’s attention, Zenkichi and Edelgard rushed past the throne and the fight to reach the Guardian. Primrose and Midna’s lance of dark energy still pulsed within it, and the pair went to work swiftly at hacking into the overgrown flesh monster. Their weapons, enhanced by fire, dealt noticeable damage, but they were soon set upon by more Deimos drones, causing Zenkichi to sigh and break off from carving at the Guardian. ”Be right back.” He advised Edelgard, letting out a howl as he activated Fury, hefting his greatsword and launching into a combo of attacks, blasts of Almighty energy flying from the end of his blade with each swing and into the debuffers.

As the Phantom Thief fought off the nuisance of the drones, Geralt dismissed his hydro weapons and drew Odysseus’s Bow. He fired a pair of arrows D’s way before casting the Sign of Yrden in its Glyph of Warding configuration to ward off the Consul’s retaliatory projectiles. Once the Glyph was active, he returned to firing at D, while keeping himself wary for counter-attacks. He’d seen D’s speed already, and was prepared to summon the Judicator to buy himself a moment to change tactics if he was rushed.

Having wound up near Roland after falling prey to Consul D’s bewitchment, Nadia set her sights on him, ready and willing to test his mettle with her own arsenal of weapons. Luckily for him, Roland’s wealth of supernatural experience -both with brainwashing and other, even worse methods of control- meant that he not only recognized what had happened, but also knew a surefire way to set Nadia straight. If he could just stagger her, that shock to the system should loosen the Consul’s grasp. Of course, by now he knew enough to know that Ms Fortune didn’t go down easy, but there was no problem the Fixer couldn’t solve. With swords aglow from stockpiled power, he charged toward his opponent, and Nadia returned the favor with a headlong sprint on all fours. “Finally,” she exclaimed, her voice somewhat slurred. “Someone I can really fight!”

Only a few seconds into their furious clash, however, Nadia got blindsided from behind. A lithe leg bent her straight into the path of a cruel upward knee strike, followed by an airborne thrust kick that sent the feral tumbling. She came to a stop about twenty feet away, not so far from the iron perimeter of O’s hippo exhibit, then rose with teeth gritted. She hadn’t caught sight of the curmudgeon that sucker punched her, she’d grown so familiar with the feel of those kicks that she could be blindfolded and still know just who to blame. “Hah…haha.” Though very much not herself right now, Nadia still found it in her to give Juri a toothy smile. Her eyes were glazed over with a wine-red haze. “Hahahaha! C’mon then! Let’s play!”

Juri grinned, and then turned that grin onto Roland in a warning fashion for a second before refocusing on Fortune.

Roland looked at Nadia getting intercepted by Juri who seemed to be a bit… too eager to fight the mind controlled cat girl. Uh, hopefully she didn’t go overboard but if she was going to knock some sense back into her ally, well, Roland could focus on D again. With his buffs he was a lot faster and stronger, and he still had more room to grow.

Nadia pulled off her head and rolled it forward like a bowling ball. Then she reached into her pouch and withdrew the Free Lemonade, which she promptly pitched in Juri’s direction. It arced through the air, hurling sour yellow juice everywhere, but long before it hit the ground Nadia’s body seized the initiative. With Charge she bolted across the battlefield, closing the space Juri made in an instant, then instantly launched a Fiber Upper–a truly degenerate move, if Fiber Upper still had its armor.

The double projectile throw had made Juri want to play defensively. Juri knew Fortune had speed and reach of her own, so blitzing around the place might leave herself vulnerable. She strafed at a measured but quick pace, setting a hand on her hip as she eyed the rolling head. As the flask rolled in she widened her stance and prepared to block, only to instead block the wild fiber upper instead.

”Haaaah?” Juri crowed incredulously. Juri went for a big punish. To provide insurance against Fortune’s head or that acidic bottle she started with an armored Drive Impact, going low, planting three out of four limbs, and slamming her foot into Fortune’s chest to crumple her in place and knock the wind out of her with a Punish Counter. She stabbed Fortune’s torso with her elbow and a thrusting chop before spin kicking her away- only for an imploding burst of wind to draw Fortune back in and into Juri’s waiting arms, where she axe kicked Fortune into the ground. The bottle turned out to be more of a damage over time situation, which caused some lemony stings in Juri’s thigh and feet but she disregarded the damage for now.

”You really are drunk!” Juri spat. ”But I’ll happily kick you around if you’re gonna keep bein’ stupid!” Juri said. As if to put this to the test, she raised her foot as if to stomp on Fortune, only to draw backwards incase she exploded upwards with another reversal. This also had the side effect of getting her out of the citrus acid puddle.

Juri’s retreat took her just out of range of Nadia’s flailing, disjointed legs as her body rose with a spinning kickflip. She landed on her feet in the middle of the lemonade puddle, and no sooner had her boots splashed down than her head zoomed forward, propelled by a spurt of blood from its severed neck. It closed the distance fast for a weak low hit, but Nadia herself followed behind it in a sprint on all fours, which happened to be a tactic that Juri knew well. After a few steps of crunching across broken glass, though, feral put an extra twist on the tricky approach by hopping into the air, then airdashing barely even a foot off the ground to fly in for an overhead light kick. Expertly timed, it landed split second after her head made contact. “Paw-don me!”

Juri had planted her hand and feet on the floor like a spider. She deflected Fortune’s head, but her head jerked backwards as she caught the light kick for her trouble. Whatever, she could always focus in and bust out the Drive Parry. ”You don’t even have paws.” Juri said, trying to find a moment to slip in a backhand counter strike.

When her kick connected, Nadia went all-in. She chained the quick opener into a heavy X-scrape Claws, then put that momentum into a somersault axe kick that bounced Juri off the ground. A quick dash forward allowed her to confirm two claw swipes, followed by a Tornado kick to start an Unchain combo. Still new to Angel’s tricky technique, she went for a simple chain: a high Sobat kick, a sweeping Under Blow punch, a revolving high kick, and finally an upward Lariat as the finisher empowered by Fluffy Soft. “NYAH! Keep the chain-ge!”

Her combo lasted only a moment, accelerated and made a little more punishing by the blessings of Aha the Elation. Though the Lariat launched Juri high, the fight was far from over, and she could flip out and recover with neither fighter at advantage. Even without the lingering speed boost from Clockwork Apple, though, Nadia was the type to press her assault regardless of advantage. “Under purr-essure!” With her head not far behind, the feral dashed in to keep the pain train rolling.

Juri landed three-point with a huff. As Fortune swung she shifted backwards and returned fire with a stopsign kick to the chest. Then she span down to send a streak of slicing energy towards that head following suit, using her last Fuha Stock and two bars of Drive Gauge for the extra juice. ”I’ll crush you!” She hopped up with a spin and brought her leg down on Fortune’s unbalanced body like a great hammer, looking to slam Fortune down onto her own head with the ankensatsu.

“Ugh!” Running straight into Juri’s extended leg took the wind from Nadia’s lungs, and the knockback from it left her head wide open for an opportunistic saihasho. That crawling crescent wouldn’t stagger her by hitting her head, but the slap of energy kept her disoriented enough for Juri’s heel drop. “Me-owch!” Nadia grimaced, ears flapping in dismay. While she practically sat on her own head on the way down, the impact informed her just where her noggin had fallen. She grabbed it with one hand while firing the other like a grappling hook behind her. It flew toward the iron fence behind her to latch on so she could snap herself to safety, but the maneuver gave Juri another split second or two to make something happen.

”Haha, nice!” Juri casually lifted her leg as Fortune retreated. In the wake of her foot was a line of black and white energy, indicating Juri refilling her Fuha stocks to continue using empowered moves against her wily opponent. It also gave her a moment for her Drive to recharge some more.

”Finally. Come at me like you wanna kill me, it’s more fun that way.” Juri grinned, her visible eye wide. ”That vampire freak’s done us a real favor, don’tcha think?” Juri beckoned, and began to walk forward, a saunter in her step. Her reactions were on a hair trigger, looking to batter Fortune away, especially if she took the aerial approach.

After hopping to her feet, Nadia held her head by her ears for just a moment, her eyes glassy but filled with hate. “Hah…hahaha!” She gasped, a smile spreading over her face. With one hand she replaced her head on her shoulders, while with the other reached into a belt pouch and withdrew the Bait Launcher. “It would be my purr-leasure!”

Juri liked this side of Fortune.

Foomp. A slab of raw steak arced through the air.

”Seen it!” Juri hissed, recalling their brief, damageless encounter at the Carnival Games where Fortune used the Bait Launcher. She stepped forward to meet the meat and spent an OD Fuhajin to fill the rest of her stock and annihilate the meat projectile in mid air.

Nadia clicked her tongue and used Rosetta’s Roll and Gun to near-instantly reload the Bait Launcher. When she fired again mid-cartwheel, she aimed low, and the steak hit the ground about halfway between the two combatants with a wet plop. Unfortunately for Juri, it didn’t matter where the bait landed–only that she was the closest foe to it. A brolic bengal tiger popped out of nowhere only a half-dozen feet away from Juri. With a bloodcurdling roar it went wild, attacking the martial artist with a barrage of huge swipes from its clawed mitts.

”Annoying-” Juri said, but six feet was better than no feet. With a bit of extra space she focused in and used Drive Parry, a high noise ringing out as she deflected the claws on either side of her with her hands and raised foot. Juri still didn’t like fighting animals, but she went for the counter hit by sinking her elbow into the tigers chest as it raised its upper body. Then she lifted it upwards with a pinwheel kick to launch it over the edge of the nearby enclosure, where it poofed away.

While the relentless tiger bought her a few seconds of time, Nadia quickly traded out her gun for two new items. In one hand she wielded her dagger Athame, and in her other she clutched the Ripened Heart. “It’s time…to cut loose!” Still grinning, she slid the knife along her forearm in one quick motion, not even flinching as her blood poured from the wound. Reacting with her innate Lightning type, the metal blade sparked the Conducted reaction, granting her Multitarget. Electric arrows radiated outward from her body as she pressed the Ripened Heart to her chest and breathed deep, boosting her natural regeneration into overdrive. Then Nadia crouched down in a track-starter stance, transformed her legs into a white tiger’s with Fluffy Soft, and burst forward in an all-out sprint to rush Juri down.

Juri wasn’t sure what half of that stuff was, but she could only guess Fortune was going all out. ”C’mon then!” She taunted, resting her arm on her raised leg and coaxing Fortune forward with an outstretched finger. If Fortune did some vicious strike, as Juri was predicting, Juri would vanish in a split-second blur and reappear a short distance behind Fortune where she backflipped away to put more distance between them, to run out the clock on all these buffs and frustrate Fortune into making a mistake.

She narrowly avoided disaster as Nadia, propelled forward by the twenty-percent speed boost from Fluffy Soft, hopped up to deliver a wild dropkick. Thanks to Multitarget, her legs extended with blasts of electric blood to blast outward in a surprisingly huge cone, but once her target slipped out of harm’s way, the dropkick amounted to little more than a show of force. Nadia’s legs returned to normal as she picked herself up, and after only a brief moment she locked onto her target. Juri flipped away preemptively, and the feral saw her chance to strike. “Gotcha!” She performed a quick somersault to launch an El Gate axe kick that stretched out its furthest extent, aimed not at her airborne opponent but the ground where she would land. On impact another burst of electric blood went off, this one with a five foot radius. Whether it hit or not, Nadia hopped up with her other leg in order to snap down to her extended one. She zoomed in, and upon arrival, slashed her dagger in a glinting arc.

Juri slid backwards, blocking the axe kick and burst of blood. She slipped backwards and away, the dagger cutting across her side with the tip. ”Ah!” Juri stepped backwards. If Fortune kept moving forwards in that moment, Juri would try to slap her across the face with a backhanded jab.

Though inconsequential at first blush, that small slice was all it took to inflict a serious defense debuff on Juri courtesy of Athame’s weapon skill, and Nadia seemed to smell blood. She pivoted around to follow up with a whirling kick, only to be interrupted by a backhand to the face. At around the same time, a wayward magic pulse from Geralt’s Quen gave Fortune a shock from behind.

“Buh!?” In that instant Juri took her turn back, and promptly turned the tides with an OD Tensenrin. A whirling pinwheel kick took Nadia into the sky, and once at the zenith Juri twisted to bring one leg back down on the feral’s head. She hurtled into the ground with a yowl, with her opponent only a split second behind. Nadia had a plan, though, to make her rival think twice about applying pressure–and as with all her best plans, Nadia didn’t give it a second thought. When she sprang off the ground, she did so with one knee lifted to perform her Blue Monday Blockbuster, her eager eyes bright with mischief.

Juri raised her hand and elbow as if to stab down onto Fortune. But she had been saving her Super since this bout started. Fortune wasn’t thinking straight, and the one thing that could clinch the victory in this time pressed moment was for Fortune to do something really, really wild. Which she did. As Fortune lifted her knee, she would not find Juri’s extended arm ripe for countering, but a quick shift as she slid backwards. ”Womp womp,” Juri said, Rushing in to kick Fortune in the side and in the face with a double kick before she could recover.

Time to cash out. She would have to put everything into this to keep Fortune down long enough for her to come around or whatever the hell needed to happen. Juri used the extra advantage from her Rushing punish counter to plant her hand on the ground and kick up into Fortune’s chin, before blitzing around her before she could recover to kick her in the side and in the head again. ”Nighty night!” She drove her elbow into Fortune’s head and then Drive Rush cancelled again, laying on more kicks and strikes before launching Fortune into the air.

She used a Fuha charged projectile to send a ki slice beneath Fortune before she landed to pop her up for a pinwheel kick. Juri’s eye flashed purple as she used her ultimate technique.

”Time to die!” There was an explosive impact as she kicked Fortune high into the air. Somehow, Juri was waiting for her about twenty feet up, having beat her to the apex of the launch, to kick Fortune back down. With a burst of speed, tongue trailing out of the side of her mouth, she beat Fortune back to the ground and kicked upward to practically impale the woman on her foot. She held Fortune aloft, bringing herself to Fortune’s face. She took the moment to gauge Fortune’s mood. Fortunately, some confident, unbothered smile wasn’t waiting for her.

”That felt good, didn’t it?” Juri asked, gently brushing her fingers across Fortune’s cheek. Then she finished the ordeal by using her foot to slam Fortune face first into the ground.

Juri took a few steps backwards, hunching her shoulders and breathing heavily. While she was still doing decently on health, she was completely burnt out with no resources left to speak of. With the debuff Fortune put on her, if Fortune wasn’t knocked out or back to her senses after that beating, Juri would be in real trouble. ”Hah…still…with us?” Juri set a hand on her hip, feigning absolute confidence despite her panting.

When slammed into the ground, Nadia had fallen apart, her pieces lying strewn across the ground. Her Multitarget buff expired, and for a good moment she really did look dead. Of course, the dismembered feral was still very much alive, but it took a second or two longer than usual for her to recover. When her eyes blearily blinked open, they were back to their usual ocean blue. The sounds of allies fighting and undead monstrosities running amok brought her back to reality like smelling salts, but in no state of consciousness did she relish setting eyes on Juri. Half-formed images and memories from her time in D’s thrall hit her like a wave of nausea. “...Ugh.” Rather than ask what happened, she focused on pulling herself together. Whatever had befallen her, she was still alive, and her job wasn’t over yet.

After a moment Nadia got up into a crouch, took a quick look around to make sure she wasn’t in active danger, then used her Ripened Heart. It went dark after doing so, meaning that it would offer no more healing for the time being. Even worse, she recognized the puddle of lemonade nearby, as well as the glass shards around it. “My lemonade?” That magically-refilling pitcher had been a one-of-a-kind relic, and now it lay broken. It was a genuine bummer, and it left Nadia crestfallen. A moment later, though, she shook her head and put on a smile. This loss just meant that finishing this fight would be that much sweeter. “Whatever. Let’s go!” She grabbed Athame and stood up, ready to fight.

Juri had her Ghoulsaw out, but when Fortune’s eyes were back to their normal color, her idea of chopping Fortune up to keep her from reforming would have to remain a fantasy for the sake of the mission. Besides, killing those smug Consuls and that idiotic Gravemind would be the sweetest prize around here. ”Finally,” She said, holstering the weapon. She had also taken the time to sit the battle out to regain her breath.

”I’m bored of kicking your ass, so try not to fall in love again, Fortune.” Juri needled. The catgirl tried to ignore her.

While keeping an ear out for how the allies behind him were doing, Ace focused his offense solely on the Gravemind. Yato felt good in his hands, and he took full advantage of the fact that the Guardian had chosen to turn its own attention on Sectonia and Grimm for the moment. Each stroke of the sword was powerful, able to rend the Gravemind's flesh, and they were only getting stronger. The fervent fang gem that the Cadet had slotted into one of the notches on Yato swiftly built up increased damage the longer the hunter went unchecked on top of its base increase, and Ace's own skill with a longsword meant that he could move through spirit combos swiftly. His blade bit through pounds of the monster's flesh, carving its trunk and the base of its nearest limb. Its skin sagged to fill in gaps, and when it finally had suffered enough to address the hunter below it Ace was prepared.

He backed off slightly when its massive body shifted unlike when it moved to strike out with its tentacles. When it brought its head low, the Cadet thought it might try to eat him - in which case it would be in for a big surprise. He flexed his rigging in preparation, but instead the Gravemind regurgitated a fresh horror. Ace avoided the stomach acid that rain downed, and he raised his sword when the animated ball of corpses hit the ground and rushed at him.

It didn't even look like it had a front or back end, just mashed together bodies with out of place metal plates fused onto it, but it had chosen one side of itself to slam into the Cadet. Ace caught it with the broad side of the blade, raising his other hand to brace the weapon as he forced the thing to come to a halt. He winced, because in his experience these kinds of swords weren't meant to block - but the Yato held up. Ace pushed back against the macabre sphere, flicked the sword onto its sharp side and drew it deep across the monster in one quick, long slice. Though blood sprayed, the creature was dense. It didn't fall that easily.

Hands and arms sprouted from the corpse ball, joining the limbs that already stuck out of it that served as its legs. There were more than a half dozen of them, and when the ball lurched towards Ace again they all extended their fingers to scratch, slap, punch, and snatch at him. At the same time the ball swung its bulk around, going for several body slams if it could just catch the hunter with one to start. For the most part it was unsuccessful; Ace stood his ground and parried its movements, countering when he could. He didn't want this little fight to spill over and interrupt the others after all. He sliced off limbs and pieces of the ball, but it didn't appear to slow down itself either.

The monster hunter narrowed his eyes. He studied it while he fought, and though he didn't find any obvious weak points there were, curiously, those metal plates. They were haphazardly grafted to the corpse ball, and though it was easy to dismiss it as just a byproduct of being some sort of fused golem it was possible they weren't so randomly placed on its body.

Then, he heard something disconcerting from the nearby battle with D. He was still close enough that he could discern the shouting, the taunts, and everything else from the Consul and Seekers nearby - and he'd judged that they were still alright, without the need for him to jump in. He trusted his companions had the situation in hand, at least up until right that moment. Juri's exaggerated pleading might not have turned his head if she had't specifically mentioned Nadia. Ace tore his eyes from the monster in front of him, snapping his gaze to the side to find out what exactly was going on. He saw the two women battling, a flash of confusion on his face as he tried to parse out what happened, and it was then that the corpse ball found its opening and pressed it. The creature used the opportunity to tuck all but its legs back into itself and push against the ground, careening toward the Cadet like a runaway boulder and slamming its full weight into him.

"Ghk-!" At the last moment Ace pushed back against the ball so that he wasn't completely thrown to the ground. The slam had shoved him back closer to the Gravemind, hard enough that he still felt some reverberations through his armor. The corpse ball was already gathering its legs beneath it for another run when he recovered.

"Think you're on a roll?" Ace said. Though when the ball barreled through again he dove out of the way. It continued forward and slammed itself into the Guardian, seemingly doing more damage to itself than the creature that spawned it. Ace was quick to get back in close - he wedged his sword and the blade of one wing of his rigging into the flesh around one of the ball's metal plates, prying the slab off of its body. Its arms reappeared to try and stop this, but the other half of Ace's rigging severed them. "And you can't even handle this?"

It turned out there was a different looking section of its body here, one that looked less like hastily jammed together corpses and more like one fleshy bulb. The Cadet raised his sword, flipping it over in his grip so he could stab it straight down into the core. The corpse ball writhed, bucked the hunter off of it and twisted itself around for round two. At this point though, Ace had its number.

Overhead, while the insect-like Seekers continued their assault, a huge spear made entirely of dark magic slammed into the Gravemind. The impact shuddered across the area, and though it brought a boon with it for the Seekers it also radiated waves of shadow magic while it lingered. "Oh Gog-forsaken–" Ace began to curse when he felt himself tense up at the same time the corpse ball lunged at him once more.

The Cadet grit his teeth and forced himself to move in time to avoid a direct hit. The creature clipped him with another body slam, painful but not anywhere close to debilitating. In return, Ace stepped onto it and hoisted himself on top of it with a leaping slash, where he could easily access the next plate.

By the time reinforcements arrived in the form of Zenkichi and Edelgard, the Cadet had dispatched the corpse ball and taken a small bag of lifepowder from his pouch. He threw the dust into the air where it rapidly spread high and sprinkled down, healing himself every Seeker in the immediate area that were doing battle with D and the Gravemind. It looked like Juri and Nadia's fight was over too, so it was back to going after the Gravemind for the Ace Cadet. First, he called out to those fighting it with him.

"Hey! I don't know if its even possible, but if we could do something about its arms those are the biggest problem right now!" He still thought the Gravemind could most likely regrow its limbs, but the way its tentacles branched into smaller tendrils made him think there was a limit at least. The more energy it had to expend to regeneration was less it could use on attack anyway. With that in mind Ace turned his sword back to the base of its arms. With the Gravemind rather stationary, it would be a good time power up now that the dragon dances were wearing off too. The Cadet pulled in a breath and used Devouring Demon, significantly increasing his power just before he went back on the attack.




No one had any way to touch O, so at the moment all those present in his exhibit area could do was think, prepare, and evade the consequence of the Consul's whims. The next of those were the crocodiles that burst from the water, snatching Junior and Blazermate and dragging them under the surface before the angel could even spin around to try and help. Thankfully neither stayed underwater for very long (though Pit didn't think Blazermate actually needed to breathe), and after that point he was sure that the lot of them could take a couple of crocs.

Pit turned back to O, and the adjacent battles. He saw the observation tower rise up and the Gravemind dislodge a hoard of flying minions, and decided to take on the latter. He still didn't have a way to hurt O, and the building would just break itself - so he sniped drones from the air as they fanned out, too numerous for him to single-handedly take all of them out with his bow though not for lack of trying.

For good measure Pit tried being a little sneaky, targeting the drones but directing a few arrows to swoop at the dismembered eyes while O was seemingly distracted. Of course nothing got through to O, besides anger at his creations being destroyed.

Ugh, how are we even supposed to fight this guy?!

Hmm. With the power he's showing off -remote viewing, summoning buildings, commanding animals, altering the landscape- I wouldn't be surprised if he was some kind of deity. Then again, he mentioned cost so maybe not. Palutena's voice chimed in telepathically in Pit's head, unexpected but not unwelcome. Apparently she'd stayed tuned in since Pit had talked to her during the trek up to the Guardian's room. And if he's a mere mortal, then he must be close by.

So you think he really is around here, just invisible?

I don't think he would be able to do everything he's doing if he wasn't.

What she was saying made a lot of sense. His building ability was pretty precise, so there was no delay between what O was seeing and what he was doing. If he was present, then he could be targeted! That would really put a stop to the Consul. They only had to find him.

Any idea who he is in the first place, Lady Palutena?

...from just a pair of eyeballs? You flatter me, Pit!

Finding O sounded like a plan, but it was immediately clear it was easier said than done. Pit got a higher point of view from which to search by leaping up onto one of the remaining trees in the habitat and scrambling to the top. He looked around wildly, trying to see anything that might be O's real body - or any places he could have concealed himself in. Needless to say it was a monumental task, spotting something like that amid the incredibly chaotic battlefield. Not to mention he couldn't spend all his time just searching when everyone, including himself, were being harried by horrors great and small. A deimos drone had finally managed to sneak up on him, clearing away the buffs the dancers had bestowed before he wriggled free and sliced it in two with a huff. He continued striking down the Gravemind's minions as he scanned the area, light arrows streaking through the sky to put down floodfested on land and in the air.

A shadow passed overhead, making Pit look up as one of the Gravemind's tentacles began rapidly descending on the habitat - and the tree he was in. His eyes widened and he abandoned his perch, leaping from the branches and only just clearing the huge green limb. Pit rolled when he landed, back on his feet in no time.

"Finding his hiding spot is gonna be like finding a needle in a haystack!" he shouted in complaint, evidentially about to undertake a different method from the Koopa siblings in regards to this unconventional battle.

Falcon, Goldlewis and Ganondorf darted around the standoff between the simply standing there As and the defensively postured unliving allied minions, and went to town, tearing doppelgangers apart with relative ease. This did not, unfortunately, give A much pause, as he simply replaced them, and then unleashed horror upon the living. A vision of a world made of flesh, the same flesh, of which they were mere extensions.

For Ganondorf’s part, he focused his initial attacks on the A that he reeled in with Mortal Coil after Falcon’s assault had ended. It wasn’t long before the doppelganger itself was vanquished, and the warlord snarled when it was simply replaced by another one. Clearly they were going to have to identify the ‘correct’ A in order to wear him down. Meanwhile, the Captain didn’t let himself get discouraged. After his opening move, he left that doppelganger for Ganondorf and directed his attacks toward a different doppelganger until it, too, fell. When it became clear that the Consul was able to replace his doppelgangers, Falcon simply assumed they’d have to keep fighting in order to figure out what makes this guy tick.

”urgh, worse than the abyss” Edward complained, clutching his head and notably seeing a bit worse off than everyone else as a result of it, before asking ”what was that?”

”Good question.” Falcon said, his own confusion fairly evident in his tone. Ganondorf said nothing, whether or not this was affecting him or if he was just good at hiding it was unknown.

"A mental attack..." was Therion's guess. He had kept to the back line, letting the others that had joined this side of the conflict go at it in melee while he flicked blades at the various Consul copies.

He didn't like that A had done nothing so far but summon clones and take punishment, especially coupled with Sandalphon's warning. It was setting off some alarm bells in his head - was he setting something up? That vision was surely his doing. Whether there was some condition he had to meet or if he just preferred to go after their minds rather than their bodies, there were no good outcomes the thief could envision. He glanced over his shoulder at the girls, and finding that they had the flood handled well he turned back to the squad of A, narrowed his eyes, and moved up.

While the beings of flesh quailed under the stressful assault, those of metal and bone strode forwards, heedless to the horrors. Midna’s darknut raised its broadsword, large as a man, up high, and then slammed it down onto A himself. What that attack enjoyed in might it lacked in finesse, however, and the copy managed to dodge out of the greatsword’s way. Meanwhile the four towering golems responded to the attack automatically, thrusting spears forwards even as the incantation was initiated, slamming four sword sized speartips into the fresh, and whole doppelgangers.

Faced with the artificial legion, the copies pulled back. ”Cruel machinations spring to life with a singular purpose,” the copies criticized.

Whether that gave them time to recover, or A was simply continuing to be very lax in his offence, was unclear, but Edward for one saw how this fight seemed to be going, and dropped out of defence tactics and shifted into offence. At his order, the golems began attacking proactively rather than reactively, promptly stabbing their targets over and over with their burning, armor sundering, dragon dance empowered blades, unceasing and untiring in their assault.

He meanwhile flicked his magelock pistol around and pumped a round into the one Goldlewis had begun minigunning, the oversized round aimed right at one of the two halves of the foe's head, while his pyrobat was resummoned do douse it in a wave of firebreath.

Between the bullets and the blazing flames the Imperfect Copy sustained enough punishment to seriously damage its aberrant body, but it also witnessed enough to make a woefully informed decision. Before it could be destroyed, its misshapen body extended for It Chooses, lancing Edward just below the collarbone with a fanged, sinuous tentacle. His skin crawled as his blood circulated fell magic, and with veins glowing a loathsome red he reeled, both stunned and marked.

The marked marker collapsed to one knee, and his buckler hand hit the ground for support as his body briefly refused complex commands. His golems still had them however, and continued their tireless assault on the creations of flesh. The creation of bone meanwhile simply stood guard, its mistress presently preoccupied with her own actions to give it more complex instructions.

Therion had chosen to avoid the more unnerving looking one when he moved with the intent to add his own anti-buffs to the situation. When in doubt about what sort of debilitation to use, there was rarely a time when Armor Corrosive was the wrong choice. Therion darted towards the original A, weaving around the heavyweights and jutting his dagger out to cut a harsh line into the Consul at the same time that the defense debuff took effect.

It wasn't difficult to keep track of the 'real' A, if that even mattered at all. For all Therion knew the Consul might be able to do something crazy like shift his consciousness between the mutated clones. Even so, the original remained his target as he ended up on the other side of the man after his attack. His dagger was raised defensively and his tail swished behind as he faced the man down, the Consul situated between him and the darknut.

Even without the defense debuff, a dagger to the torso would have left a grisly wound, so with Armor Corrosive in place Therion’s weapon carved through A’s contemptible flesh with ease. His was no ordinary body, however, and even after such savagery, the Consul remained standing. He lifted his arms into strange positions as he prepared to cast magic, then performed a wrenching motion. Though the thief might brace himself for an arcane attack, he would find himself unharmed. The same couldn’t be said for A’s real target: Edward. Blood burst from within the tactician’s body as if leaping at A’s command, that painful ejection made all the more injurious by the mark from It Chooses. It left Edward bleeding and stressed, yet even then it was only the prelude. Amidst the golems’ assault, the two Perfect Copies also cast Reunion in quick succession, all focused on Edward in an effort to burst the commander down as fast as possible.

”Suffer not the lame horse,” their voices resounded. ”Nor the broken man.

Therion quickly realized what was going on when the retaliation he expected to come was directed at someone else instead. His eyes widened and his fur bristled. If the Consul and his copies were going to target them one by one, the fact that the Seekers with healing abilities were on the other side of the battlefield or otherwise engaged would be a huge problem. "Damn it," he hissed.

With the aim of eliminating one of the copies and slowing their ability to cast, Therion used his Battle Boost and shot forward at the copy he'd already targeted. His dagger sank into the man and cut as he drew it up and out and repeated the process, stabbing at normally vital areas. The A was torn apart more easily than he expected, and when the original went down and the other copies didn't so much as flinch it unfortunately proved that Therion's first instinct was wrong. So if the first copy didn't matter, what did? There was one anomaly among the copies, the only one. It must be that thing, the thief thought.

”Ryuugeki Ken!” Falcon shouted as he tried to get back on the offensive. He’d sprinted to another of the A doppelgangers and opened with a close-range fire blast from his hands. Immediately after that he performed a backflip in order to launch his leg into an upward kick intended to launch the doppelganger into the air, ”Ryuuzanshou!” Falcon cried as he landed back onto the ground with a crouch before launching himself up the doppelganger for a follow up ”Ryuuga!” Falcon’s flurry of blows was enough to dispatch it, but as with the one before it those that remained gave no discernible reaction.

Ganondorf, meanwhile, had chosen to go on the hunt for a different doppelganger. He hurled his trident forward at them before launching forward to snatch it from the air while bringing his free arm in for a clothesline smash. He followed that by attempting an upward sweep that would let him launch into a brief aerial barrage of attacks with the trident as well. In the meantime, his Moblins chose to focus their fire on a third A doppelganger. Unfortunately, neither the Captain nor the Warlord had caught on to the notion of needing to find an Imperfect Copy yet, and were thus still simply trying to eliminate doppelgangers however way they could.

The thief snaked his way around them, letting the two take care of their chosen copies while he made his way toward the imperfect eldritch one that Goldlewis and Edward had been facing. He wasn't sure of his hypothesis but since that monstrosity was the only odd one out, he figured there was a better chance that it was more important somehow. He was ready to be totally wrong for a second time though. At the same time, the veteran’s salvo came to an end and he charged forward to try and take the Imperfect Copy’s attention. “C’mon and hit me!” Goldlewis barked, He sank his fist into the horror’s body with a hefty haymaker, where it stuck as if immersed in glue. Without hesitation he unleashed a blast from his shotgauntlet to free his hand, then took hold of his coffin for a big whack. “I’m right here!”

As they withered or withdrew, the copies seemed to snarl at the three men. ”A setback, but not the end of things!”

Before joining Goldlewis' assault against the copy, Therion took Edward by the collar for the second time that day and dragged him out of the things range in case it morphed again. He doubted it would help with whatever magic they seemed to be using though. Unfortunately with no way to clear the mark he offered instead, "You need me to call Sandalphon?"

The thief’s main response to this was coughing as the man he was dragging regained motor control just in time to prevent himself from drowning in his own blood. While the man was by no means a regular human in terms of durability, he was a back line fighter, and it showed. Still, the man managed to haul himself to his feet, as well as shake his head at the suggestion. Instead, while backing further off from the fight, he waved a hand, brought up the armory screen, and summoned himself a health potion from their (admittedly limited) stocks before downing it. It would keep him in the fight, but it would not stem the bleeding.

Still, it served as a reminder that the two healers were not the only access to recovery they had. The revelation did not seem to please A. ”Patched up, if only to bleed again.”

The team received one more stroke of luck, at least, as the strength of Goldlewis Dickinson proved sufficient to destroy the grotesque doppelganger, with a little help from the golems of course. Its rather sickening demise meant that all four copies had been felled in relatively quick succession, which seemed to the Seekers like a victory until four more burst up from the ground, far too close to the company of heroes for comfort.

”Hmph, well well. He has a weakness after all.” Ganondorf said with a smirk. The victory was short-lived, but enough of a hint that they were on the right track.

”Squirming, contorting, and ever-expanding!” Two of the doppelgangers immediately split apart, revealing their imperfection. Instead of attacking, however, all four transformed with We Are the Same, swelling up with abominable cohesion. Now the perfect and imperfect reflections could no longer be told apart, and as they began to move in an eldritch shuffle, all the Seekers’ stress began to rise.

Before they could get mixed up however, Edward acted, spending one of his 4 mana cells to cast Designate Target upon one of the imperfections. A blood red aura surrounded it, briefly increasing its vulnerability to damage, and also afflicting it with his own mark debuff for 9 seconds, which increased his allies accuracy when targeting it.

He then promptly shot it with his magelock pistol, keen eyes and the mark debuff ensuring that it sailed unerringly towards the skull of the targeted foe. Then he promptly took off at a run to get space between him and the monsters that had marked him for death, flames igniting around him as he hot footed it away.

His golems, a lot less artfully than their creator, also got stuck in. Their long weapons made the mobility of the dancing devils a lot less of an issue as they could simply reach over the heads of the non designated copies to stab the one that stood out amongst the crowd. Given A’s complete lack of interest in attacking them, they paid absolutely 0 attention to their own protection, acting more or less as if the other copies did not exist as they hunted the one Edward wanted dead.

Midna’s Darknut however did not handle the swirling copies well at all, heavy blows hitting naught but the bark of the flesh tree they were dancing over.

Goldlewis was nothing if not a man who followed orders. Once he realized what sort of game was afoot, he followed Edward’s mark to smash the loathsome creature with a mighty swing of his coffin.

With its ruse laid bare by the mark, the not-so-hidden imperfect copy was laid low in moments, leaving only three possible targets left. Still, every second counted when their mere existence steadily gnawed away at the Seekers’ sanity. ”A momentary abatement…”

”So, we’re playing one of those ‘spot the difference’ games?” Captain Falcon said, trying to shake off the stress. ”Except now he’s decided to start cheating. Ha, classic shell game if I’ve ever seen one. Ryuugeki Sen!” He hurled a couple of fire discs from his arms at one of the deformed doppelgangers, then rushed in close with a follow up ”Ryuugeki Ken!”

The Warlord was gritting his teeth. Ganondorf was tough enough to deal with stress like this to an extent. But even the Great King of Evil had his limits, loathe as he was to admit to them. Meanwhile, he noticed that his Moblins were all dispatched, likely unable to handle the stress attacks. Still, the Warlord gripped his trident and charged it with dark energy, seeking to use Mortal Coil in order to forcibly yank one of the abominable doppelgangers into his clutches for a follow up strike.

With three of four copies engaged it stood to reason that Therion would target the last. However, given the mental strain the multiple As were each putting on them, he knew that the sooner they were all put down the better. To that end his speed would serve him a lot better than his strength. Therion zipped over to Ganondorf at the same time that the man reeled in the copy with his three pronged harpoon. As he moved the thief drew a trio of throwing knives from his person and twisted to throw at the copy Captain Falcon was going for. By the time the bounty hunter got to it the blades, with a soft silvery glow to them, were jutting out of it. And once Ganondorf had his own copy in front of him and had struck out at it, Therion was already there to drive his dagger into it.

Thanks to Therion’s assistance in finishing them off, the other Seekers managed to put two out of the three leftover doppelgangers down in mercifully short order. Since one priority target had been dispatched already, there was only one correct answer left, but fortune smiled on the team as the one Ganondorf picked out turned out to be the other Imperfect Reflection. Though sheer chance meant that the Seekers hadn’t dealt with the mental assault optimally, evidenced by the frayed edges of their minds, it could have gone much worse. With the flawed copy’s much-deserved destruction, a sort of psychic feedback brought We Are the Same to an abrupt end, the untouched doppelganger forcefully returned to its original form and left dazed. ”How quickly the tide turns…” he groaned.

Nevertheless, Time Heals All restored it, and after a brief delay three more copies sprang up, their ascent somewhat more laborious than before. ”The blood pumps, the limbs obey!” Again, two of them split apart, but these newest imperfections seemed even less complete than their predecessors. Though Goldlewis had been hoping for a turning point by now, he could only assume that this degradation indicated some sort of progress. He and the others just needed to keep up the pressure.

“I can do this all day!” While the Consul’s replicated, Goldlewis reached into his own bag of tricks and withdrew a Thunderbird from within his coffin. The spiky drone whirred forward like a miniature chopper to explode against one of the imperfect copies, and the veteran followed in his footsteps. He did not approach recklessly, though, and when the monster lashed out with It Chooses, Goldlewis stopped short to block. Unfortunately, mitigating the damage did not diminish the mark or the stun, and in an instant Goldlewis found himself struggling to stand. “Agh, dag…nabbit…!” He reeled as the other horror coiled up its tentacle for It Chooses as well, and the perfect reflections readied their Reunions.

Knowing exactly how much the incoming attack could hurt, Edward had all the golems attempt to stab specifically the reeled back tentacle, aiming to have them cripple or even impale the limb inorder to disrupt the attack. Having fallen back, and being unwilling to fire into the imminent mass of melee fighters with his short ranged pistol, left Edward out of position to directly deal damage himself. As such, instead, the man instead summoned his Pyrobat striker and had it swoop above the brawl in-order unleash a gout of flame from directly on top of one of the imperfect copies, thus reducing the risk of friendly fire.

Since he wouldn't be able to drag a man as large as Goldlewis out of immediate danger, Therion moved with the copper golems to prevent the second imperfect copy from lashing out at the coffin wielding man too. His limbs were tense and a stress headache was well underway, but he fought through it to plunge the stinging dagger into the mutated Consul until it fell.

”All day, huh?” Captain Falcon quipped as he shook off his stress damage and re-entered his fighting stance. ”Well, so can I!” He launched into a sprint toward one of the remaining Imperfect Reflections and flew right into it with a ”Falcon Kick!” That only served as an opener for a litany of follow ups. First a blinding series of kicks in the form a ”Gen’ei Kyaku!” That led into a ”Ryuuzanshou!” That launched the Imperfect up with a backflip kick that Falcon then followed up with one more technique, leaping up to grapple the Reflection and unleash an explosive Raptor Dive to send it hurtling back down. ”Yes!”

Nearby, Ganondorf was similarly regaining his vigor as he used his Mortal Coil to harpoon the last remaining Imperfect Reflection and pulled it into his clutches. ”Die, Moebius!” The Warlord roared as he caught the incoming Reflection and proceeded to treat it to an explosive Flame Choke that slammed the reflection onto the ground at his feet. Then with a wicked laugh the King of Evil leapt straight up into the air with Bullet Jump before he threw his trident straight back down to the ground to skewer the Reflection before the weapon then attracted a blast of summoned lightning just for good measure.

When the fifth abomination fell, the remaining perfect copies shuddered as if stricken. Then all four began to melt, and after a few seconds all that remained of the aberrant quartet were heaps of eldritch flesh on the floor.

In the time it took for Roxas to shake off being thrown through the blood rain, a litany of crazy things happened around him. Nadia was seemingly taken under D’s control and began fighting against Juri. And while that was going on a big zombie hippo of all things came crashing into the scene from some other part of the chaotic battle only for D to become mist and the improvised projectile phased right through him. ”You’ve gotta be kidding me.” The Nobody muttered to himself as he tightened his grip on his Keyblades. He knew just rushing D wasn’t going to get him anywhere, he needed a strategy.

As he pondered one, he saw Roland exchange a few attacks with the Consul before he had a wine thrown in his face that apparently had more power behind it than it looked. He also saw Geralt, Zenkichi, and Edelgard all rush forward to launch a coordinated strike of their own. He chipped in by casting a quick Tailwind on Edelgard to help her move faster in that armor of hers, then he hung back to let the trio do their thing. And from the looks of it, Geralt actually managed to finally overwhelm D enough to land some hits. But he backed off after that and unleashed a lightning attack instead.

”Alright, no more messin’ around!” Roxas said, hyping himself up for what would be his own next attempt to take on the Consul. He surged into a sprint with his Keyblades in hand. When he got closer he hurled them both like swirling boomerangs aimed right for where D was standing. But he wasn’t expecting that attack to hit. He figured D would use mist or a teleport to avoid it. And he was right, the Consul vanished before the Keyblades could hit their mark. But then Roxas himself vanished. The nature of his StepSword teleported him right to his target as they reappeared and came at him from behind with his ignited energy blade. ”Gotcha!”

The only problem for Roxas was that this clever ploy didn't work as well as he hoped. Pillars of hellfire erupted around D's body, catching the Keybearer and knocking him back. Roxas was spry enough to land on his feet, "Ugh, seriously? Waterga!" he used magic and hurled a dense orb of water to go flying into D, hopefully dousing the flames and finally getting some kind of damage on him. After that instant he summoned Poltergeist, who used The Sun Is Not Gentle is cloak him with a litany of buffs that would last for ten seconds - Defense Up, Healing Up, and also Stealth to hopefully give Roxas a means to finally surprise D. On the flipside, Poltergeist also granted him Taunt, which if it worked well enough would goad D into focusing more of his attention on the Nobody, for good or bad.

When confronted by water magic, the Consul shrouded himself with his cape. It splashed harmlessly against his arcane garment, but the steam that rose from the fabric suggested that its affinity for fire magic would be dampened for a time. By the time D dropped his cape, though, he could find neither hide nor hair of his young assailant. Though immune to crowd control, the notion that his opponent might have outwitted him rankled D more than enough, and with Roland nearby, he wasted no time in attempting to prove Roxas wrong. At his bidding a swarm of bats took wing, flapping around him in a bloodthirsty cyclone. "Try what you like," he sneered, preparing another magic spell. "I will not be denied!" He lifted his hand as if dismissing a servant, and a ray of green energy flew upward.

Luckily, Roxas’ Stealth status gave him a moment to watch for D’s incoming move. And unfortunately the cyclone of bats and the ray of green energy weren’t going to let him attack up close. So Roxas opted for a more long-ranged option. Without approaching too closely to the cyclone, Roxas used his Phantom Ruby and summoned a full cluster of Virtual Cubes around the Consul to impede his bats and maybe inflict some touch damage as well. But the Nobody didn't stop there and proceeded to summon Kayano, his second Striker. The Spirit manifested and used her power to summon a powerful geyser of dark water from beneath where Consul D was standing.

In a show of primeval, reptilian savagery, the Nile Crocodiles seized, then pulled both Junior and Blazermate beneath the stagnant water of O’s newly-constructed swamp. While the limited number of predators spared Rika from the creatures’ deadly jaws, she was forced to immerse herself anyway in order to save her brother from a grisly fate in the muck. Confident in his killing machines’ fearsome natural abilities, and in the complete inability of Pit’s light arrows to harm him, O contented himself with watching the Seekers struggle. With the more theatrical persona that he assumed prior the start of the battle long since replaced by a more stoic, taciturn one, he allowed himself only an invisible smirk, but even that evaporated when he saw Junior bob to the dirty water’s surface. He couldn’t guess what happened down there in the murk, but if one of them could break free from his crocodilian deathtrap, their collective odds of survival might be better than O had hoped.

Worse still, Blazermate dragged herself out of the swamp at about the same time, her mangled leg by no means a death sentence. Her uncannily quick return alongside a man that O could only assume was her striker meant that she could defend her zombie hippo from the flood, at least long enough to mutate the blasted thing into a makeshift bomb and send it flying toward D’s throne. O wasn’t terribly concerned about his fellow Consul, but after a quick look over at the Observation Tower confirmed that none of his other targets had been fatally crushed or lacerated, O realized that he needed to redouble his efforts.

Growling beneath his breath, O turned his attention back to his exhibit with new schemes in mind, only to find both Koopa Kids alive and plotting against him. His disembodied eyes widened as he realized that his earlier comment had given the two a vital clue. “Oh, no you don’t!” he snarled as the two started to wreak havoc on his wetlands, only to be taken aback when the Gravemind interceded with a massive tentacle slam. He detested the damage done to his exhibit, of course, but the idea of that overgrown mass butting in his business appalled him even more. “Stay in your lane, parasite!” he barked. O was not distracted for long, but by the time he went to try and counteract the Seekers’ vandalism, he found himself beset by flashy fireflies and a very bothersome Flutter Mane. “Gah!” He spat, squinting. “Out of my way!”

His eyes took flight, rotating around his exhibit until they floated opposite the Gravemind, a good distance from that interfering Pokemon. “Right. Let’s try this again.” As quickly as he could, O began to sell his previous creations. They disappeared in quick succession, accompanied by the repeated ring of a cash register. While damaged stuff sold for a lot less, especially the felled Observation Tower, he still managed to recoup some of his losses. “Waste not, want not.” After that, O started anew. His targets had proved unexpectedly capable around water, but what about ice? A new, larger enclosure with solid concrete walls. Wetlands terrain and Qliphoth floor alike gave way to snow, gray boulders, and huge slabs of ice. Camouflaged cooling machines appeared around the enclosure, and the ambient temperature plummeted. After a moment, three polar bears popped into existence, the enormous and powerful creatures ready to make mincemeat of Pit, Junior, and Rika. If that brat thought he could rely on his paint gimmick in temperatures like these, he’d have another think coming!

O’s next course of action was less immediately obvious. With Zenkichi, Geralt, Edelgard, Primrose, and Midna all gravitating toward other fights, he could not target anyone else without endangering the Gravemind or his fellow Consuls, which he knew would have dire repercussions for himself. As he looked around, though, the sight of an unwary target allowed him to hatch a plan. He just needed to wait for the right moment…

Over at the Gravemind’s base, Consul D had his hands full. After dispatching Ms Fortune, he went toe-to-toe with several Seekers in quick succession. Even with Blazermate’s interference the Consul managed to keep Roland at bay, but Geralt stepped in the moment D pushed the Fixer back. Their furious but brief exchange proved inconclusive, since an unexpected lightning surge interrupted D’s attempt to capitalize on his fire barrage. Rather than rush back in for more, Geralt passed the baton to Roxas, covering him with arrows from Odysseus’s Bow. The cyclone of bats helped throw off the Witcher’s fire support, but between the arrows and the strange virtual cubes conjured by Roxas they wouldn’t last forever. With other Seekers on either side attacking the Gravemind and Roland about to return, things were certainly heating up. He held up his cape to mitigate Kayano’s geyser, then curled his lip. “Fools. You haven’t seen anything yet!”

His double meaning became clear as the sorcerous beam he cast upward bore its foul fruit. His Dominus Hatred descended in seven rays of dark magic, all a vivid and odious green. Two each fell from the sky atop Roland and Roxas, and three for Geralt, each one a mere split second after the last. D snapped his fingers and the rest of his bats flew forth to mob his opponents, weak but persistent, and while they dealt with those nuisances he got to work. First, he summoned two black wolves to stand guard by him and lunge for Roxas should he teleport in again. Then the Consul brought down a rain of meteors to bombard the whole area before him with the three Seekers inside. The fiery fusillade left the ground pitted and burning, each crater filled with boiling blood from his moat. This was D’s dominion, and he would not allow his challengers to forget it.

With his arsenal of pyromancy, hemomancy, summons, and shapeshifting, D quickly proved himself capable of fending off all three at once. His magic could come from just about any angle, while D himself remained frustratingly elusive, never allowing himself to be backed into a corner. He took his fair share of blows, but managed to withstand them, while it took only a couple blows from him to suppress a fighter for a few moments. After about thirty seconds of back-and-forth, though, the arrival of reinforcements prompted D to return to his throne. He scowled at Juri and Ms Fortune, putting together what must have happened to his newest thrall while he’d been otherwise engaged. His retreat gave the boys a chance to regroup, and Nadia slid to a stop between Geralt and Roland with a smile. If D had reached a stalemate with three Seekers, he might be in for a bad time against five. “Why the long face, Consul? Thought I’d be your damsel in D-stress?”

The vampire wrinkled his nose. “More lambs to the slaughter. Shall I rise to the occasion, then?” He lifted up his hand, and red infinity symbols shone in his eyes as an aura of dark magic surrounded him. “Death! Where is your sting!?” At his command, the darkness within his cape seemed to flow out, coalescing in his hand in the shape of an elaborate scythe. D rested it on his shoulder, as the blade ignited, he beckoned the five Seekers toward him. “Come then, ashes! I shall snuff you out for good!”

On the other hand, the five who’d gathered to take on A had achieved some sort of victory. Mounting stress made their heads pound, their skin crawl, and their vision swim as their bodies began to rebel against their circumstances, but with the defeat of five Imperfect Reflections total, the Consul’s replication seemed to come to an end. His amorphous remains lay in heaps on the floor before Ganondorf, Captain Falcon, Therion, Goldlewis, and Edward, long enough for the veteran to recover from his stun, but no longer. The meat abruptly knit itself together into the shape of the Consul, half again as large as before, doubled over and on his knees. ”...Great adversity has a beauty - it is the fire that tempers.” He smacked a closed fist against the ground, then rose to his feet in an instant. Red lemniscates blazed in his eyes. ”The flesh is fluid, it can be changed, reshaped, remade!”

Three concentric rings of Absolute Nothingness, each five feet in across, expanded outward from A for a total of fifteen feet. No matter how the Seekers or their minions tried, they could not enter the Nothingness to attack their target; only A could move -or be moved- into and displace Nothingness, with the ring he just left becoming Nothingness in turn. Before his opponents could quite wrap their heads around the new phenomenon, the armored overlord cast Embrace Futility. In addition to doing a little damage, shuffling his challengers’ positions, and debuffing their damage, it piled on even more stress (+18) as the darkness seemed to close in. ”The abyss returns even the boldest gaze!”

Compared to the Consuls, the colossal Gravemind was getting the worst of it. Those who shirked the struggle against O converged on the easier target instead, and the awesome Twilight Rites of Termination pulled off by Midna and Primrose was their call to arms. Narrowly missing Grimm on the way, the giant dark magic spear impaled the mountain of undead biomass and granted everyone in range extra crit rate. Ace, Grimm, and Sectonia renewed their efforts despite the extra hazards coughed up by the Gravemind. When Edelgard and Zenkichi arrived, they joined the pitched battle with gusto. Primrose and Midna ran in soon after, and together the seven piled on the damage. The alien amalgamate had a literal mountain of HP to chew through, but together the seven could put out a huge amount of damage per second, especially with the Gravemind perpetually on fire thanks to Edward’s enchantment and Grimm’s passive. With Edelgard and Primrose’s flames in the mix as well, whether or not they inflicted damage over time, the Gravemind was enough of an inferno to bathe the whole arena in firelight. A thousand voices seethed as it burned. ”YOU WILL BE SILENT IN MY GRAVE!”

The Gravemind did not suffer such transgressions idly, however. It did its utmost to crush the Seekers with its great tentacles, smashing and slamming around its base. ”STRIP THE BONES, BEGIN MY FEAST!” Floodfested continuously detached from the whole to grapple and injure its foes, while normal-sized limbs sprouted or stretched out from the body to strike back. When attacked, its body would sometimes develop jagged fangs, explosive cysts, or other such defensive measures to make the offenders hurt themselves. An easy target the Gravemind might be, but there was no such thing as a free lunch, and the Seekers would have to fight for every inch of progress carved into the gargantuan corpse. ”I WILL ASK, AND YOU WILL ANSWER”

After seeing what Primrose and Midna managed to pull off together, Sectonia would not be outdone. Leveraging the power of the Radiance, she’d already been quite the thorn in the Gravemind’s side so far, drawing its ire but staying one step ahead with elusive hit-and-run tactics. Once the others joined in, though, she decided to pull off an even bigger show-stopper to demonstrate the Queen of Floralia’s supremacy. Even after a rogue Deimos Drone blindsided her and disrupted her Chaos Shield, she darted in close enough to unleash her Reaper’s Scythe, then warped to safety. Ghostly chains surrounded the Gravemind, and a second and a half later, the scythe descended like a deathly guillotine. The Gravemind howled as one of its four tentacles was severed and fell to the floor, necrotizing much faster than normal. Desperate for catharsis after her horrid time this morning, Sectonia relished the moment.

There. While Sectonia admired her handiwork, O hastened to build off the careful foundations he’d laid. Sectonia would only hear a metallic screech, then turn to see a burgundy roller coaster track assembling itself section by section with impossible speed, the coaster itself not far behind. The track itself zoomed past her, but the coaster slammed into her the next instant, sending the big bug flying. Guided by O, the track snaked back around through the air to intercept Sectonia’s path so that the coaster would smash her once more. Again and again the coaster careened into her, knocked her away, then caught her again, until finally the track arced up in a loop and plowed downward into Sectonia from above. It carried her straight down with it until she slammed into the floor, and when the coaster descended the next moment, the impact was enough to trigger Ace’s Palico Rescue. Sectonia would reappear aboard the Avenger, restored but out of the fight.

O cackled as he sold his twisted coaster, ready to do some more damage. “Ignore me, will you?” he taunted the Seekers. “It’ll be your last mistake!”

”Oh come on, he can just replace the stuff? Lame” Jr complained as O began selling the ruins of his first run of attacks. Still, it gave him a brief free moment to raise his staff up and cast ”Medica!” in-order to produce a pulse of healing to restore his, Pits, and Rika’s Beast form’s health, undoing some of O’s own efforts in the process.

Of course, then he got right on trying to make up for lost time, building tall stone walls around them, freezing the ground beneath them and popping down a trio of very large and irate polar bears at the opposite end of the enclosure.

If O thought that it being cold was going to stop Jr making a mess though, he had another thing coming. Having poisoned a swamp, Jr now set about melting the ice caps, switching his brush from its default ink to the hot and spicy flavor. With sweeps of his brush, the prince laid down a moat of burning ground between them and the bears, saying that they should ”Let em come to us!”

He then called up to Peeka (who’d been left in the dust by O) to ”Ready a Plasma Fission for the middle one” and then to ”Wait.. Wait… fire!”

At her trainer’s command, the floating ghost fired the twin bolts at the center bear right as it started to cross the burning goop. The bolt struck the target, splitting as it did so, causing resulting pair bolts to lash out at a right angle and hit the other bears as they too got stuck in the goop zone, slowing them all by 70% for a brief moment, making sure their paw pads got extra toasty.

Beside him, Rika took that moment to counter charge, over a dozen pointy legs skittering across the ice for a not half bad grip. Enough to get up to speed anyway. Stopping would have been somewhat hard however, which is why she didn’t even bother, ramming horns first into the left side bear.

In the process she slammed it back onto the fire patch, which it very much did not like. With a snarl lunged towards her and off of the goop, clamping them around one of her legs as she tried to get the rest situated on the mix of ice and slush she was now standing on. She cried out with pain as the limb was ripped clean off, only to thrust that open maw towards the bear, catching and snapping off an ear as the bear dodged back from her. Right back onto the flaming goop.

The producer of that fire hazard was having a little trouble meanwhile, because he was a child sized turtle facing town a two full grown men sized bear. A bear that had not cared at all for the iron spikes he’d shot it with. Rather than get trampled, the boy lowered the hand shooting spikes to his tape player and hit play. Then wearing Undyne’s form he thrust her spear forwards, stabbing it into the bear’s side and trying to hold it back.

Unfortunately, they were standing on ice, and metal boots did not give good traction on that at all, causing the prince to slide backwards along it till he was slammed into the stone wall. Built to keep the bears in, it was nice and sturdy, and thus very unpleasant to get flattened against.

Gritting Undyne’s very pointy teeth, Jr endured it, and retaliated, raising an armored hand and giving the bear a right good Wallop to the snout, preventing it from clamping its jaws around his head by knocking the snap of course.

Spotting movement above, jr snapped ”Confusion ray!” at what he hopped was Peeka and, sure enough, from above, a purple ray struck the bear. At first this had no seeming effect, the bear swiping at Jr with a claw and denting Undyne’s armor, but with its second strike it somehow managed to hit its own head, causing it to stumble.

Taking advantage of this, Jr lurched the still embedded spear to the side, pulling the bear off of him and getting out from between it and the stone wall. The bear stumbled to the side, attempted to turn on the prince, and for its efforts received several gashes in its side as the prince hit it with a double slice, and his cyber-ninja stiker Sho hit it with a flurry of his own.

”Plasma!” Jr commanded as he backed up, getting Peeka to hit it with another slowing bolt, giving him just a few extra moments to dodge to the side of the bear’s charge, and score more slashes on its side.

The bear scraped against the wall, only to suddenly as it pushed off of it with a paw and round on Jr with increased speed. Unfortunately for it, it was still confused, causing it to stumble and fall instead of catching the prince, landing hard on its bloodied side.

As it struggled to rise, Jr pulled his spear back, charged power, and then unleashed it in an Undertow attack, causing an anchor of water to smash up beneath the bear. The beast was promptly launched up into the air, before slamming back down right onto a swoopin stu that had formed out of the burning goop, splattering it and the ground with yet more toasty slime.

It raised its head, growled, and then succumbed to the dots and its wounds.

It did so right next to an open mouthed and staring skywards Rika

”What?” Jr asked her, glancing up just in time to see Sectonia finish getting run over in the sky by a roller coaster cart, prompting a bemused ”What…” before what was actually processed what had happened.

”Oh no no no no!” he rambled in a panic, making a run for the wall. His tape was paused, and making use of Roxa’s flow motion the prince leapt up, put a foot to the stone blocking his view of the fallen queen, and then wall-jump off it to get just enough height to see over the wall for just a moment.

It would have been enough time for him to cast his instant full heal on the queen, but instead he saw he was already too late, and only managed to spot the tail end of the queen bee getting carted off by cats, prompting a ”huh?” of confusion before he fell back down. He did so right into Rika’s clasped together palms, with which the princess then immediately launched him skywards again with a team jump.

He landed atop the wall, balanced there with a single cartwheel of his arm, and was joined a moment later by Rika who escaped the enclosure via her grappling hook.

”what happened to Sectonia?” Rika asked as she failed to spot the queen, to which her brother gave the only possible answer which was a slightly bemused ”Cats saved her”

Behind them, much of the enclosure had been splattered with burning ink, mainly due to Rika and her bear’s tumultuous brawl right on top of it. The rest would no doubt soon be smeared over by the swoopin status currently forming from it. Ahead, the vast majority of the seekers were brawling either with the gravemind or with consul D in what looked to be an absolute mess of a fight.

They had arrived just in time to see D barraging Roland, Roxas, and Geralt with all sorts of magic, and to see the state of post 1 vs 1 brawl Nadia and Juri.

Having missed one opportunity to intervene to help save life/lives, the prince did so now. First he raised his staff and cast ”Presence of Mind” upon himself to boost his overall casting speed, and then threw out a ”Cure!” spells for each of the 5 fighters facing down Consul D.

While Jr was doing this, his sister went off to do a lap of the top of the wall, which was at first a little confusing to her brother, at least until bits of it started exploding behind her, the princess expanding her entire supply of torpedoes in order to use them as demolition timed charges. They were only as strong as hand grenades, but the Rika had dropped them down right by the wall, causing the detonations to go off point blank against the outer side of it, which should at least crack them, if it did not shatter them.

Once he got what she was doing, Jr briefly paused casting Cure to call up ”Peeka! Blast the bits she’s blown!” to his Flutter Mane, prompting her to hover back into the enclosure and to start firing plasma bolts at the bits of the wall that where still standing after Rika had torpedoed them.