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Double
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Weird Tales
Damycles
Lildear18
Half Pint
ZapdosChildish experiments
Bowser Junior, Rika, Roland & ft. Blazermate
Words: 4543 (+5 exp) (+3 rapport for Jr, Rika and Roland for each other)
Bowser Junior, Rika, Roland & ft. Blazermate
Words: 4543 (+5 exp) (+3 rapport for Jr, Rika and Roland for each other)
”Urgh. Guess I’m gonna have to pick up the slack then” Jr complained upon finding out that Sandalphon was going to be bailing out. Not that he exactly blamed her for doing so, she looked like a wreck and healer really was a thankless job, but someone had to do it.
”Maybe she should get some not human in her instead of human? Dragons n boat girls n stuff worked for me, no getting squishy and human and stuff here. Just not that big jerk dragon though I guess” Rika replied. The pair had set up on top of a little outcrop for a sit down and snack, along with Jr’s pokemon (and weird living worm grappling hook), though after the sweet filled fight with the Lilith both of them where finding they didn’t have an appetite for the sweet treats they'd gotten themselves while unsupervised.
”Is this what growing up is like, because it's lame. Stupid jerk. Now i really want to crush her face but noooo, she turned into a book or something”
”Oh yeah” Rika replied, and, having been reminded about that, thought to ask ”who was the guy who did that again?”
”uhhh. I dunno. Just some guy I guess?” Jr replied, not really being able to remember who had fought alongside them and Sandalphon at all now that he thought about it.
”The name is Roland ya squirts.” Roland said in a sarcastic manner, still bloody from the vein ride and a bit from the previous fight, but not as bad as he should be. If anyone could tell, he had shaken himself clean, or at least as close as he could get. While not sharing the rage of a few of the others, most notoriously the big bee, he was getting tired of this place.
”Quite the fight huh? Feels a bit like when I had to take down some abnormalities in their books. A real… puzzle dance fight all things considered.” He said, striking up friendly conversation. ”If I had a nickel every time I’ve had to fight a crazy lady in a blood themed area…” Roland said, pulling out Lilith’s book.
”Not entirely sure what her book will tell us about her, other than the crazy ‘kill kill kill’ stuff.” He then pulled out another book, the previous boss he fought, Killabilly. ”Nor this one, but this one didn’t talk at all.”
The kids were pretty clean all things considered, having been sprayed down by low power bubble beams, and then mostly dry thanks to floating above some hot hot goop. They also exhibited 0 shame at not remembering who Roland was, but they were interested in what he could do.
Rika immediately rattled off a bunch of questions ”How does it work? Can you still do spirit stuff with them? What do they say?” while Jr asked, a touch more practically ”can you do that to ones that are spirits already?” as he tapped away at an armory interface for a moment and used it to summon back the spirit of the towering cyber-skeleton called the Unsigned
”This guy really wanted a shiny rock we found” he explained, loosely, prompting Rika to quietly huff ”and that you then lost” still a little upset about her brother’s accidental burying of said stone under a mountain of rubble.
The prince coughed, actually a little embarrassed about that, but rather than carry on that conversation he instead stuck to the current one by explaining ”He also summoned a buncha skeleton soldier guys, but they were pretty much all pushovers. That Lillith lady was crazy in comparison for sure”
Roland began to answer their questions, this was something he was very accustomed to and he rather enjoyed sharing his knowledge even if it was new to him as well. ”Yes, these books can be used like spirits, but from what I understand, way better. Besides giving an overview of the person and what they might give you, if you burn the book you can choose between one of five items instead of getting only what it gives you. To my knowledge the books don’t expire unlike the spirits, and they probably have a spark of the Light of Creation, or whatever Angela called it, in them as well but I can’t use that.”
Showing the kids the book of Killabilly, Roland handed it to Jr. ”This is who I fought before Lilith. If you want to give it a read.”. A picture of the creature was on the cover. As he flipped through the book, the story of what Killabilly was, how he came to be, and what he wanted as well as his darkest secret. Granted most of this was pretty simple outside of the fact he was made of the souls of the damned coalescing into a building sized zombie.
”Well that’s kinda gross and cool at the same time” Jr commented regarding the creature’s lore, before also noting that ”I guess it also kinda works like that book Kamek got from some crazy mule guy we took down in a freaky prison. An ‘Archangel’ thing that gave me the creeps. Anyway It’d tell you stuff about people a bit like this, which is what made the mule guy crazy coz it said he was from a book and not real or something”
[color=d7d7d7[“I don’t know if this is the same thing. This is a person turned into a book more than something that tells you about things. Since you know, you kinda gotta defeat them to even get a book out of them.”[/color] Roland said. ”Information is very valuable where I’m from, and there was always someone looking for the secrets stored in these books when a guest perished in the library.”
Letting Jr. look over the book, and Rika too if she wanted, Roland eventually took it back. ”Now this doesn’t just tell you about the person, you can get things from them too. Which is probably why this matches so well with these ‘spirits’, they’re effectively the same kind of deal. Wanna see what loot we get from burning this?”
”Burning it?” Jr echoed, before looking up at Rika (who was doing a very careful read of the book with her massive gauntlet hands) with a look that said ‘please please please be done so i can roast it’ which she did not at all understand and so had to be asked that explicitly.
”oooh. Why didn’t you just say that?” she wondered once she had been asked, before tossing Jr who then in turn tossed it onto the ground and spat a fireball at it to set it alight, while imagining in his head that it was a dusty old textbook of Kamek’s about a subject he didn’t care about at all.
Once Jr. did that and the book burned, the ash, reminiscent of spirit ash, blew away and 5 burnt pages were left behind. Each had a picture on it, in order; A Pristine Elvis suit, A Guitar, a Microphone, Underworld Ectoplasm, and a small van. Each page under the picture also had a vague description on what each item did. The suit was just a costume, the Guitar could be used as a mace and made musical sounds when it struck, the Microphone could be used to amplify someone’s voice to do damage, the Underworld Ectoplasm seemed to be some kind of crafting ingredient, and the small van could be tossed to summon a fully human sized van.
”Well… you don’t need to BURN it burn it, you just have to destroy it. But yeah, burning it will destroy it. You can choose an item from one of the pages, but once chosen, the other pages crumble into dust.” Roland said, letting the kid have a pick of the items as he wasn’t really interested in any of them.
After looking over the things, Rika pushed for thought for a moment, raised a (large) finger and pointed ”Wait. Shouldn’t we have used the hat for that?”
”We got an actual entire van out of this! How could that be better? That’s crazy” Jr retorted as he grabbed the mini motor vehicle, holding it his hands like a toy with which he was clearly delighted
”Sure, but here, what if we do both? We could get, I dunno, a golden van or something” Rika replied, already tapping away at an armory inventory screen, scrolling through it till she found the hat of avarice, which she summoned to the rest spot.
”That’d just be slow and soft”
”But it would look way better than that one” Rika replied as she put on the hat, before opening a gauntleted and and making a beckoning gesture as she said ”Now let me destroy that big jerk already”
”Hat?” Roland asked, noticing that Rika mentioned something probably important.
”This one” Rika pointed at the very silly toothed chest hat she’d put on for distinctly non fashion related reasons ”Sectonia found it. It makes spirits give better stuff. Also it hurts to wear so could we do this quick, so be ready to heal me please bro?”
”Yup yup, ready for when you're done sis” Jr replied, picking up his paintbrush and priming to fix Rika up once she’d finished having her head nibbled on by the hat.
”Honestly, that sounds about right.” Roland said with a hint of grim to his voice. Nothing good came without suffering after all. Although at least this just injured you, instead of using all your future luck all at once. He kinda wanted to try the hat out for himself, but it would be best to see it used first.
Handing Rika the book of Lilith, who proceeded to toss it up in the air and blast it with flaming goop, again resulted in 5 pages, each with a different demonic weapon. An Axe, Dagger, Bow, Sword, and Mace. Surprisingly with how much she liked and used candy, there was no candy themed item there. Perhaps if they hadn’t used the helm, one would show up? But either way, these were 5 useful weapons, although the bow less so.
”Urgh, always a pain” the princess complained as she removed the helmet, put it down and got a quick ”Cure!” from her brother for the bite marks. Then she crouched down and took a look at the pages along with junior, but both of them were not particularly interested in actually using even if the thought they looked ”Neat” and ”Cool”
”Want one?”
.
”Yeah. I don’t have an Axe.” Roland said, grabbing the page of the Demonic Axe. In his hands was just that, a demonic axe. The axe seemed to be on fire, although the fire didn’t hurt Roland so it probably lit opponents on fire. It was also hefty, and would do a fair amount of damage.
”Well, thats what the books do. There is probably more, but Angela would have to tell you about that.” Roland said, showing that he had no more books.
”Guess you can’t turn this into one then?” Jr asked, regarding the spirit of the Unsigned, and when the answer came back as no his only response was a shrug and an ”Oh well”
”Who’s Angela anyway?”
”Nope, I can only turn uh… living things? into books, not spirits.” Roland said, scratching his head at the comment, trying to think of why he couldn’t, but it was clear he couldn’t. Maybe something to do with how the library works or something?
”As for Angela, she is my friend from the library. Well, she ran the library and well, made it. No clue where she is, but she knows way more about this than I do. To be honest, she probably knows a lot about the world as it is now? Or not… She tended to be naive about the world but knew a lot of uh… how do I say niche things?” Roland said, giving a bit about Angela, but not really much else as a lot of what he’d say is more her place to say, not his.
”So, what about you two? Got anyone you miss or are looking for?” Roland assumed their parents, but looks could be deceiving.
Both gained a pair of conflicted looking expressions from that, but Jr hesitated to share their deal with someone they had just met Rika had little in the way of social filter and filled him in by saying that ”Papa and Kamek left to go keep Peach safe now that she’s a Consul, but Jr says they always come back from that kinda stuff so no not really. I wasn’t a person before like everyone else so where I’m from doesn’t matter to me. Just where I’m going”
”I… yeah! They’ll be fine” Jr agreed with what was definitely forced confidence, before scratching his chin, thinking about the question properly, and then saying ”I mean I kinda wanna know where the koopalings and the rest of papa’s minions are but, they’re not exactly gonna be strong enough to do” he gestured vaguely around at the massive demon tree they were in and the nightmares it contained ”all this stuff”
”Yeah. Angela can handle herself, but I doubt she’d be up for all of this. I’d say she probably has the other patrons to protect her if needed, but then Binah was in Midgar so…” Roland said, shrugging.
There was one thing Roland wanted to talk about, the reason he came over here. ”So I saw you transform in that last fight. What is it? It’s kind of similar to something in my world I suppose, but not really since you can change back. ”
”Huh? Oh that!” Jr replied, before eagerly showing off the trick like a kid with a favorite toy
”So what you can do is use one of these” he pulled out the cassette player and thumbed but did not pressed a red dotted on it ”to ‘record’ a monster into one of these old ‘tape’ things” which where clearly archaic technology for him ”Then once you’ve done that then you can play it back through some headphones like this:”
The boy, having slipped on the headphones while explaining, hit play on the tape and was suddenly transformed into the royal guard captain Undyne and in her voice declared ”and you can turn into an AWESOME monster! Got all their own moves, n stuff, and best of all getting hurt like this doesn't hurt you at all!”
There was another clock and then the prince had turned back, adding that ”Does kind of mess up the tape though if the monster ‘dies’ though. You gotta rewind them and it takes forever.”
”Doing a recording also takes a while, and you gotta beat up the monster first so that’s why we’ve only really got two good ones. Better the asset something’d be, harder it is to record, which is a pain. Really tricky to pull off when it’s been just us two. Like it woulda been such a risky thing to try vs that big jerk, even if she’d have been a real good one, so I didn’t even consider it” Rika added, being a bit of a downer all things considered
”me neither. Still, the ones we’ve got are pretty good. Shame we haven't worked out this whole fusion thing you can apparently do though, where you can combined two transformations into one big strong one” Jr added, finishing by saying that ”Not really sure how that works with being two people in one monster, but I bet we’d figure it out no sweat” to which Rika gave an ”mmm hmmm” of agreement to that last, saying ”we work together pretty well after all, so it’d be fine I’m sure”
Roland nodded, saying. ”Well, it's a nifty bit of tech. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the Wings eventually made something like that, although with a lot more suffering involved I’m sure. That’s much nicer in comparison.” before asking the obvious question. ”But what ‘IS’ A monster? Just anything not human? Even so, I know a lot of humans that are worse than monsters. That just looks like a human turned into a fish to me. Granted, that looks a lot better than the fish woman I met once. Also, what's stopping you from copying, say, that big bee lady over there? Or the spooky guy in the armor, or the angel boy? Or the robot medic? Or the…” Roland went, stopping himself since this was getting a bit redundant and the semi joke was wearing itself thin considering he knew their names.
”Uhhhhh” Jr replied, having not thought of the implications, while Rika didn’t bother with them and just went with what they knew straight up ”We got it from a kingdom of monsters, like they called themselves that and everything but most of them were just, like, regular people till F tried to get em all to kill us. The people doing the recordings were humans who were living there disguised as monsters, so they weren’t’ gonna record, like, other humans even if they could coz that’d be pointless, so maybe that’s why they didn’t bring it up?”
”Huh. Yeah. I guess maybe they can record whatever? Dunno, haven't tried much” Jr said, getting to the heart of their lack of data before addressing the last point with a question that was ”It’d be kinda be weird to have another Blazermate or Sectonia running around in a fight though, right? I think”
”Another Bazermate would be super useful for the team though, right? Especially with Sandalphon heading back, we’re losing a core part of our military formation” Rika pointed out, slipping into military jargon in a somewhat jarring manner given its contrast both in tone and in vocabulary to her usual childish tones she’d gotten from being around Jr a lot.
”Exactly. Might be something to try later. I don’t think Blazermate would mind, from what I gather, she's a mass produced robot anyway. Probably has something special with her though to come this far and do what she has done.” Roland said, remembering the robot’s mutterings in Midgar about other medabots and such.
”Wait she is? Huh. I just kinda thought she was someone special like everyone else instead of someone like me” Rika said and then added on ”I mean that, like, in the big system-y thing that’ll respawn us if we die I’m no one. Just some peon of the abyssal fleet. The me who is me is someone though, if you see? And this me matters” which got her brother nodding along when he’d been about to object to the negativity in her initial phrasing.
”Well, If you can use those things but they just have a long reload, you could ask her and see if it works? Although I've got a feeling it probably won't work.” Roland said, glancing over to Blazermate.
Speaking of the robot girl, she was moving around, making sure everyone was healed up and ready for what could be the guardian coming up. Unlike her angelic compatriot, she didn’t tire or have any stamina to worry about. Although her healing was single target, not AoE, so she had to go to each person one by one.
Despite Roland’s pessimism, the kids still wanted to test out to see if making a recording would work, and so hurried on over to her, with jr calling out ”Blazermate-Blazermate! Can we try out a thing on you?” before she could zoom away from her latest patient.
Blazermate, being called by Jr, stopped her flight and did a strange maneuver where she orbited around him a bit before landing. ”Whats up? Need a look over?” Blazermate said, sending her healing drone out to do some patch work while Jr had her attention.
”Nah I’m good I did us already” Jr replied, giving his paintbrush a little twirl for emphasis, before saying that ”What we wanna do is try and make a tape recording of you so that we can turn into you and have, like, two of you. Coz your so useful” and then showing her the tape recorder.
”So we can do this” Rika added, before helpfully demonstrating the power of the tapes by flicking in and out of the Beast form ”but with you instead”
”Uuhhh… Hows that work? Do I just stand here or is this a ‘beat up the robot’ sorta deal?” Blazermate said, more worried about the last part. She didn't seem to mind having a clone of herself running around at all.
”I mean, we could…” Jr began to say, but Rika shook her head, saying ”Really don’t wanna risk that with those around” while pointing out at one of the infested clusters. It was distant, but odds were good that the sound of fighting, even one sided fighting, could attract attention which would be not at all something they wanted when their best healer was hurt.
As such, they resolved to just give it a go in general and see what happened. As it turned out, the tape did indeed begin recording, making a distinctive sound that the kids recognised from their last four recordings. Mostly. It sounded far more strained, the common tappe’s wheels practically grinding as it tied and tried to do its work, before it was all too much and it buckled under the pressure, tape snapping in half a dozen places, and the entire cassette cracking under the pressure.
”Awww” entoned disappointedly, before giving an ”eh” and a shrug before extracting and tossing the tape, saying that ”It was working for sure, but looks like your too strong for just a regular tape?”
”Makes sense? We beat up Undyne and the Beast before beating em up, and Blazermates probably higher rank than them with all her fusion powers n stuff?” Rika guessed, though obviously it was somewhat hard to compare a support to two tough frontline fighters.
”Well, I guess that makes sense? I don’t know anyone else who can make people invincible like I can.” Blazermate said. Roland had a different take, inferring how spirits and his books worked, there was probably something similar going on here.
”Or perhaps it's a ‘strength of spirit’ like you said. Like she has a super strong spirit, and these tapes can only ‘record’ spirits of a certain strength. I know that in the library we had books of different power based on the willpower or strength of those that came to the library. ” Roland said, giving his thoughts on what was going on. ”Either way, it seems like that answers my questions about the whole concept.”
”Well, I'm almost done patching people up. Is that all you guys needed or is there something else?” Blazermate said, being more matter of fact than anything as she knew that there was going to be a big fight coming up.
”Think so” Jr began to say, before changing his mind when his eyes happened to land on the robo-medic’s shield. It sported a jaw that could turn undead into stronger undead, but generally didn’t see much use. He, however, had something in his dufflebag that she might find use out of.
”Actually, here, maybe you can use this?” he said, pulling out the spirit of the cyber-skeleton Unsigned they’d failed to book-ify earlier ”He could summon a load of skeleton guys which used shields and guns, I thought that’d maybe work with your bitty shield thing?”
”Yeah, I could try it as a striker I think? I got something that lets me have 2 more which is neat.” Blazermate said, thanking Jr. and trying to make a striker out of the Unsigned. Having some minions could be neat, especially if she can mutate them into weird things like she did the drybones.
”Nice”
”How’s the healing and stuff going? Everyone doing alright?” Rika then asked, glancing up and after where the medi-bot’s drones had gone.
”Uh… fine? People are more tired than hurt now, but I can’t really tell how tired they are, just how healthy they are. And I never get tired so… yeah. ” Blazermate said with an affirmative nod. ”I just hope we’re close to this guardian. We’re a healer down and I don’t know if our luck can hold on people being split up.”
”Yeahhhh we’re gonna have our work cut out for us, woulda been super handy if this had worked out and we had two of you” Jr agreed with a sigh, tapping his paintbrush against his shoulder ”and I dunno about you, but even if there is some weird meat monster healer here, I dun wanna turn into it”
”Probably should head out before they show up again. That big head one seemed smart, bet it's looking right now”
”Yeah” Blazermate and Roland said at the same time, although one with an inflection of ‘jeez, more?’ and the other was tired.