[center][h3]The Qliphoth - the Final Hollow[/h3]
Lvl 14 Ms Fortune (159/140) Lvl 9 Goldlewis (100/90) Lvl 4 [color=ef6069]Grimm[/color] (23/40)
Midna, Junior, Rika & Edward’s [@DracoLunaris] Blazermate, Sectonia & Roland’s [@Archmage MC] Geralt, Zenkichi & Edelgard’s [@MULTI_MEDIA_MAN] Ace Cadet, Pit, Primrose & Therion’s [@Yankee] Juri’s [@Zoey Boey] Roxas, Ganondorf, & Captain Falcon’s [@Double]
[b]Word Count:[/b] 2203 (+3x2)[/center]

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 [url=https://i.imgur.com/65qJCUR.png]polar bears[/url] 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 [url=https://i.imgur.com/x2ldla0.png]elaborate scythe[/url]. 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. [b]”...Great adversity has a beauty - it is the fire that tempers.”[/b] He smacked a closed fist against the ground, then rose to his feet in an instant. Red lemniscates blazed in his eyes. [b]”The flesh is fluid, it can be changed, reshaped, remade!”[/b] 

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. [b]”The abyss returns even the boldest gaze!”[/b]

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. [b][color=olive]”YOU WILL BE SILENT IN MY GRAVE!”[/color][/b]

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. [b][color=olive]”STRIP THE BONES, BEGIN MY FEAST!”[/color][/b] 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. [b][color=olive]”I WILL ASK, AND YOU WILL ANSWER”[/color][/b]

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.

[i]There.[/i] 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!”