Susie summons her business suit, a large drill shaped mech. Her business suit is equipped with various weapons and abilities from crushing things with its drill tip bottom, spinning its arms around like a buzzsaw as it dashes around, firing missiles, and having these all enhanced with whatever element Susie has on her blaster. However it is a large mech, so Susie loses a lot of agility and mobility for harder hitting attacks and heavier armor.
Alucarth Words: 1002
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As the group went down the river to get to their destination, Blazermate, having a better view of the area than most, noticed something she thought was cool. Zooming down to the others, she said. "Hey guys, I see a ghost ship! But like, the fun type, not the creepy maw type." Blazermate then pointed at the stranded ship of Cortez, which was stuck on some rocks and unable to move. Seeing as they were all well rested and this didn't look nearly as bad as anything they saw in the ocean of terror, a tiny side adventure couldn't hurt, right?
Gesturing to the others, Blazermate flew to the deck of the ghost ship and was immediately greeted by a spooky ghost voice telling her to leave with a Spaniard accent. Blazermate, having her entire gaggle of friends nearby, ignored this with a bit of wonder in her eyes. This was a kind of adventure she was into, where it didn't seem super serious, but was still awesome. The ship itself was fairly small, consisting of only a couple rooms before reaching what was an insane amount of treasure just sitting there which visibly disappointed Blazermate, hoping for a bigger ship. Although before Blazermate could do anything, a giant skull appeared, dropping the creepy voice and putting on a more pireate-y voice.
"I'm not a bloody creepy ghost, I'm the mighty pirate Cortez! And you will not..." Cortez began, as if he had been waiting for some action for some time. He was quickly cut off by Blazermate though, snapping out of her disappointment and saying. "Oh wow, a REAL ghost ship! A REAL ghost pirate! Thats Awesome! And your a fun ghost too! Not that creepy butcher guy who was making meat pies out of children or that fish guy who looked like what you'd get if you aged a pickle in the summer sun then dropped it in..."
This interruption threw Cortez off his groove for a moment, with him showing a visible face of disgust when Blazermate mentioned the cannibal chef from the Maw. "What kind of monster would eat children like that?" But after saying that he recovered and began to boom. "And you, miss, you've come for my treasure haven't you?" Blazermate, looking at Cortez who seemed like he was about to defend his horde said. "Uh buddy, I'm a robot. I don't have use for any of that! I just came here to say Hi." Blazermate said, half lying. She would like that treasure, seeing it as a way to get a lot of neat items and powerups, but she saw clearly that this guy was territorial when it came to his treasure like a real pirate. Plus it was hard to tell she was lying by looking at her face, having an immaculate poker face due to being a robot.
Cortez paused for a bit and looked over Blazermate with a ghostly eye before saying. "Aye, you are a thing lass, not a person. If you were here to greet the great dread pirate Cortez amigo, then where is your tribute?" Even saying that, Cortez looked a little disappointed. Blazermate then scratched her head before asking. "Uh... Maybe we could get your boat out of the rocks here if you can help us with ocean stuff later down the line?" Blazermate said. This caught Cortez's attention, in more than one way. "'We'?" Cortez asked, and if almost on que, Susie came into the room giving Cortez a bow and a wave. Unlike Blazermate, Susie looked at his treasure for a moment before thinking to herself. Blazermate seeing this, said. "Yeah, we got a lot of people that can help you with stuff if you can help us with moving around the ocean. We kinda did a lot of ocean stuff, but I'm sure there is more out there..."
Cortez looked between the two ladies, the blue lady looking at him in wonder, while the pink one seemed to be eyeing him but with a look all too familiar to him. Susie than said. "Hello, I'm Susie..." Susie began to say, with Blazemate, having forgotten her manners, cut off her talk about being the executive of Haltmann works saying. "Oh yeah, I'm Blazermate, nice to meet you!" Susie, not missing a beat or even paying Blazermate's interruption any mind continued. "I'm sure Haltmann Works could improve your ship in the process. Perhaps aake it fly? For a nominal fee, of course." Cortez thought to himself. Neither girl seemed to be making a grab or even trying to sneak away any of his treasure, and while the pink one was looking at him with greed in her eyes, she was at least curtious enough to offer him something that he never thought of, although he wasn't sure how she would even do that. The blue one though offered him something he really wanted, and for almost nothing! "You do know who I am amigo? I am Cortez, the dread pirate who has terrorized the seven seas! At least until I got stranded here." Blazermate then cut him off saying. "Oh thats not a problem. If you'll help, thats fine. Just be careful around the Shipgirls, they have some big ladies that might be an issue. Or Abyss ladies? They're ship girls but..." Blazermate then started to mumble a bit confused, saying things Cortez had no clue about. But he then laughed, saying. "If you can get me out of this accursed sea and back onto the open oceans, aye I'll agree to that."
Blazermate clapped her hands, saying. "Cool! Just stay away from ship girls, and uh... little girls in general. There is this little girl on the ocean that eats ships." Blazermate then grabbed Susie and left the ship, Blazermate excited, while Susie silently protested after seeing all that money. She'd have to come back and sell this pirate some gear for sure, when she could.
Unsurprisingly the pair that had come to confront Sectonia didn't recognize her sovereignty right away. While one of them was about to make quite a horrible mistake, his pal managed to calm him down, being the more rational of the pair. Although that rational one was the one that looked like they were from that organization, so only time would tell what this meant. Although that time came soon, as he used the same dark portal trick to teleport up to the top of the clock tower and come at, mostly, Sectonia's level.
He then said something interesting that Sectonia wasn't sure even he realized, he gave out a lot of his own information about the organization. While he had a serious look about him, which was greatly diminished thanks to his anime boy aesthetic, his forthrightness was refreshing. So much so that Sectonia laughed a queenly laugh before saying. "I don't know anything about a bald man or a man in white hair, unless you would count the dice man we fought as bald." Sectonia looked Roxas up and down for a bit, shrugged, and continued. "It seems you know more about them than we do. Or perhaps you know their past, but not what they currently do now? Well, either way, I'm sure an exchange of information would be beneficial to both parties."
It was around this time the Scout tried his best to diffuse the situation, probably not familiar with this type of chat. Sure the situation was tense, but Sectonia wasn't too worried after what Roxas had just told her.
Whether she knew it or not, the insect had also revealed some nuggets of information to Roxas. The way she phrased her initial demand. That Roxas come with them to be questioned. That suggested that there was someone higher up that she reported to. And it honestly sounded like Roxas was going to learn more from them. But still, he continued to play along with the conversation, "'Dice man', huh?" he rubbed his chin in thought. That was definitely unlike anyone he previously knew, which meant the Organization had itself a new roster, or at least a partially new one anyway, "Sounds like they managed to trick some new people into doing their dirty work." he said thoughtfully.
But unfortunately, Roxas had no way of knowing for sure if the two he had in mind were actually involved or not. But who else could it be behind the scenes? They were the only people he could think of who would have any desire to continue the Organization's mission. If that was even still the primary mission at all, "Take it from me: Whatever the Organization claims they're doing, I'd bet my coat that it's a lie. It's how they operate. Claim they're working toward one goal in order to convince people to join them, but in reality have their sights set on a different goal entirely."
Roxas took a breath and rubbed his temples in thought. He hadn't thought too much about where Axel and Xion had gone to. He was worried about them, sure, but at same time knew they were capable of handling themselves. But if the Organization had been rebuilt? That changed things. Suddenly Roxas was questioning whether they were involved in his friends' disappearance. All the more reason to hunt them down and get answers from them, "No offense, but it's pretty obvious you're with some larger group." he finally said to the insect, "And it sounds like you've already had encounters with the Organization. So if it's alright, I'd like to join you. I have my own reasons for fighting them, but clearly our goals are aligned."
Sectonia laughed again. This one was quite straightfoward. If he had any kind of combat capabilities, he'd make an excellent minion! "Very well. It wont be long until we head back." Sectonia then continued the convresation, affirming that she'd take Roxas with them back to HQ. "Unfortunately we don't even know what the goal of this 'organization' is, we just know they exist and are helping a much larger enemy. In addition to the dice man, there were reports of a man with a camera that froze time. ring any bells?"
"Camera? No, sorry." said Roxas, shaking his head, "Must be another new guy. Tell me, have you ever encountered any silver-and-white creatures when dealing with the Organization? Or maybe black creatures with dark red emblems on them shaped like hearts?" if this new Organization was managing to operate without using Heartless or Nobodies, then that would definitely be a surprise to Roxas. Still, even if they weren't using them openly, there was still always the possibility they were holding them back for whatever reason, "And one last thing: Have you ever seen one of these?" he held out his hand, and summoned the black Keyblade named Oblivion, "Has anyone you know ever seen or mentioned anything about it?"
Sectonia shook her head at Roxas' first question about the minions of the organization. "I haven't seen them use any of those. No one has, they use more... varied... minions." Sectonia said. Roxas then summoned a keyblade, something Sectonia had seen before, which she said. "Ah, those key swords that that suspicious Master of Masters talked about. They don't look like they could do much in the way of damage I'd say." Sectonia said, giving an offhand comment at how she wondered how those could be 'bladed' weapons when they acted more like clubs. Still, her casual mention of the Master of Masters was something she was looking for a reply for, as Roxas was dressed in the same outfit.
"The who?" asked Roxas, utterly perplexed. He had never heard of anyone called the Master of Masters before. And he was pretty certain that none of his old friends had, either. Maybe this was just some alias being used by Xehanort? But why would he do that? Still, he kept himself composed regardless, "I've never heard of anyone going by that title before. But it does at least confirm that the Organization's plans involve Keyblades. So it doesn't sound like much has actually changed in that regard." The Keyblade vanished from his hand in the same exact way it had appeared, "I should give you a fair warning, though. There's a lot of people out there who would do anything to get their hands on the Keyblade. Plus they tend to attract the creatures I described earlier. If you do let me join you, it could end up attracting more trouble to your group."
While a bit of a shame, Sectonia wasn't all that surprised Roxas hadn't heard of the MoM. "Well, if you do see him at HQ, you'll see why I asked you about him. You two share the same fashion sense." Roxas then went on, explaining that him joining could be a bit of a risk as his weapon attracted enemies to him, to which Sectonia laughed at. "Oh, that isn't a worry. We have fought much, much worse than whatever comes after you. I can guarantee that." With that being said, Sectonia opened her wings a bit more and said. "So, if you are going to be my minion from here on out, what is your name? I am Queen Sectonia."
"I'd very much like to meet this Master of Masters, and I have a feeling he might share the sentiment when he learns that we're both wielders of the Keyblade." whoever this Master was, Roxas had decided to he had to find a way to meet him. It sounded like he knew a lot about what was going on, and could definitely give Roxas some much needed straight answers, "And I don't really know about being a minion, but my name is Roxas."
Seeing as the two came to an agreement, Sectonia offered a ride back down to the ground for Roxas and the Scout so they could regroup with red. Once back down on the ground level, Sectonia said. "Seeing as you live here, care to give us the tour? Beauty salons or magic shops are what I am interested in, although fine dining wouldn't be amiss either."
"Finally. Perhaps we can get something done then." Sectonia said as the moogle completed its surveillance of the area and reported that they had, indeed found the closest station out of all of them. However, it being a large metroplex and Sectonia being the royal visage she was, it was bound she'd attract attention. She wasn't much one for hiding unless it was absolutely necessary as it was, so this didn't bother her. What did bother her though was the person who was confronting her.
"Hmm... I wasn't expecting this... " Sectonia said, looking at Roxas and less at his companion. It was around this time the Scout had used his grapple gun to get up and confront the two, his deep yet high pitched voice defending Sectonia, or at least making it clear she was with him. A good minion, defending her queen like that. But Sectonia had a few other ideas other than avoiding conflict. "You, Your coming with us. We have questions for you about your organization." Sectonia said, not drawing a weapon but pointing at Roxas just the same. "At least you have a decent looking face. The last of your order had a dice for a head."
Even saying that, there was something else about this Roxas character that was... familiar... but she couldn't put her finger on it. Still, she would prefer to handle this situation without causing a scene. She knew these cloaked people weren't pushovers and while she had gained a lot of power recently, she did know these people had been holding back when they fought for some reason. Although if she could somehow get this one under her control with her striker, that would be the best, but that was plan B.
Level 10 Blazermate - (99/100) - 1 stored level up Level 2 Susie - (18/20) Alucarth Words: Less than 750
"So, its about time to get going then? I'm fine with constant fights, but..." Blazermate said as they had gotten word the Moogle had found what they were looking forward to, yellow team's job having been completed successfully. Still, she wasn't so sure about how the rest of the team was doing. Susie still hadn't been able to summon this 'business suit' she had been talking about, while Rika was still incredibly green. And there wasn't much when it came to powerups for everyone that weren't temporary from the item room. Speaking of which, Blazermate, having no need for the super large bean she had gotten, gave the bean to whoever would be interested in it. It took a bit to find someone interested, but eventually she found someone. And that someone would become ungodly powerful once they ate this bean, much to the annoyance of everyone around him.
Wario had no qualms about eating a strange food that could or couldn't be a powerup. And for him, it was most certanly a powerup. Seeing as one of his strongest attacks was his farts, an item that let him unleash an earth shattering fart on demand was right up his alley. How did Blazermate figure out what this did? Well, Wario was more than happy to test the item and thats what happened. At least Alucarth was made to withstand stuff like that...
Meanwhile Susie waited until the meeting was complete, fiddling with her PDA like usual when she lacked interest in what was going on. So apparently they had to cross a body of water to get to their new destination. When everyone got back together, the groups were lead to the docks, where Rika showed her green-ness again as she summoned a giant ship girl for Bowser who was very much not for rowing in the square wooden boats. Blazermate herself would just fly, and Susie could only sigh as she pulled out her transporter to fly alongside Blazermate, not wanting to deal with the savage boats either.
Blazermate looked to Rika who had managed to injure herself after summoning her ship girl and only sighed as she helped Kamek in healing her. "Yeah, I can heal you, but don't take unnecessary damage in combat. I only have so much healing to spread around." Blazermate said, lazily floating above Rika and healing her with her healing beam.
This next area, the next stop on the line was... Well there was a reason Sectonia cast her castle in endless moonlight instead of endless twilight. "The sun in such a spot is painful to the eyes." Sectonia said, meaning in more ways than one. Still, this place was a thriving metropolis that kept itself very clean and proper from the look of things, which is a huge step up from everywhere before Sectonia had seen in settings like this. Although the overcast of perpetual orange did the town no favors.
Glancing at the eternal sunset again, Sectonia counted the hours from when they woke up and what the time was in the previous zone they were in with how long the train ride was, and came to the conclusion that this sun was magically created, or controlled. This got her interested, or at least interested to send out some antillions to get the lay of the town. Considering there were other creatures such as walking turtles and mushrooms, she figured they wouldn't cause much trouble.
With that done, she looked for a good high point as it was, of course, up to her to get the lay of the land with that moogle creature. Thankfully it didn't take too long to find the tallest building, a large clocktower. "Lets hope this area isn't as hostile as the last one." With that being said to her allies, she made her way to the clock tower. She summoned the moogle when she had found a good spot, a seemingly well worn section of the clock tower.
"Here is the other stop." Sectonia said curtly to the Moogle, glancing around much like the Moogle to get the lay of the land and see if there would be anything that would be of interest to her.
Level 10 Blazermate - (98/100) - 1 stored level up Level 2 Susie - (17/20) Alucarth Words: Less than 750
Susie still observed the fight going on, waiting for the big koopa to do something. She wasn't going to get involved unless she needed to, especially without her business suit. Blazermate meanwhile helped Kamek heal up all the injured guards and got a fair amount of medaforce for her work. The intruders, people that Dante, the main defender, seemed to know. Blazermate had no idea how Dante knew this person, but either way, it seemed they were fighting pretty seriously. Blazermate did remember Dante was not an easy person to fight, but a little bit of help couldn't hurt.
Although this soon wasn't needed as Dante had wrapped up the fighting as Blazermate was going to buff him. So much for that idea. "Aw man. oh well." Blazermate said. Susie, seeing the situation was over and dealt with, went back to fiddling with her market sales on her PDA.
Sectonia was pretty happy with that new power of hers. Considering it manipulated more exotic magic itself, she was very sure it asn't from that flower dragon thing she had recently absorbed. Speaking of which, seeing as only a couple enemies could reach her where she was and the one that did leap for her was knocked out of the sky by some of the locals, Sectonia decided to try her other new spirit's power and rained down solar beams to attempt to clear a path back to the train for her land bound allies. Although while they were laser beams, they weren't as great at clearing space as her other attacks, and after trying a few solar blasts, she decided to just clear the way with her large Rings of Light, which covered far more space. Even if they were occasionally a bit random now as they were duplicated in triplicate.
Sectonia gave her allies air support in this way, although considering the ranged weapons of the enemies below and her royal size, it wasn't really difficult to hit the queen bee while she was in the air raining down spells. Although after the first few hits Sectonia put up her Chaos Heart shield which deflected quite a bit of gunfire that went her way. Even so, Sectonia was on a timer as more and more enemies focused on her instead of her allies, and she had to start blinking around and towards the station as her allies managed to approach it.
"So... lets make our way to the next stop. This place has quite the stinging pest problem." Sectonia said when they were all at the station and out of danger from the hordes.
Having completed their matches, Susie and Blazermate were spending their time relaxing more than anything. The two robot ladies were chatting about their old worlds before having come to the WoL as Nadia and the others were running about doing who knows what. "So, you kind of look like a really fancy medabot. All round and everything. Most medabots don't have that look." Blazermate said as the two girls were sitting at a table watching everyone else do their thing. "You keep calling artificial people medabots. Is that your word for 'robots'?" Susie asked, sipping on a coffee cup she bought. "Well, no. I know what robots are, but medabots are way more advanced than robots. I mean, it even looks like you have arm parts, a head part, and leg parts! Although no medal slot, but... well your not a medabot, but you look like one!" Blazermate said, a bit incredulous as this hasn't been the first time she had been asked that question. Susie putting down her cup to think for a moment trying to decipher what Blazermate had said. Looking the medabot over, she got an idea of what she meant. After all, that shield arm did not even match Blazermate's color scheme at all, and it was clearly her arm and not just being worn.
"I see. Well, if you mean by 'parts' things that you can swap around, no, I can't do that. That does explain your look though." Susie said, following with "Like some science experiment gone wrong." under her breath. Not missing a beat after saying that though, Susie continued. "Like that shield for example, that looks bolted on. I could see interchangeable parts being an interesting Haltmann robotics product. Would you care to show me how they work?"
Much to Susies surprise, Blazermate obliged. Not even needing to turn herself off or go into some kind of 'modeling' chamber, Blazermate pulled out a screwdriver and twisted a few screws and popped out a few tabs and her shield arm fell off into two distinct parts, her tinpet arm showing. "See, like this. Your a smart girl, I'm sure you could figure out how to put it back on." Blazermate said, offering her tinpet arm and her disassembled shield to Susie. Blazermate felt like she could easily take on Susie even with one less part, so she was ready to attack her if it came to that.
Of course it didn't, and Susie quickly found out the trick to taking parts off of and putting parts back onto Blazermate. She did notice there was something 'missing' with Blazermate's shield arm when she put it back on the second time, having disassembled it out of curiosity. At first Susie thought she lost a piece, but Blazermate assured her it was fine as it always snapped on like that, before explaining that this arm had always been a bit glitchy since she got it. "See? A simple yet powerful system." Blazermate didn't mention that in her world most medabots were essentially toys for grade schoolers, so they were made as simple as possible to assemble. Knowing that fact would make ANY of her new friends look at the medabot in quite the different light after all.
"Hm... Well I don't know everything, but yes, I see a new Haltmann line of robotics. A consumer model. Although the overhead might be a bit..." Susie said, muttering to herself after Blazermate had reassured her she was fine. Having shown Susie something, Blazermate then asked her a question. "So your artificial like me right? Why are you drinking and eating food? Thats really weird."
Susie giggled at that comment, sipping more coffee in an almost 'are you jealous' fashion before saying. "I'm just that advanced. I don't need them, but the world would be boring if you couldn't taste ice cream." This still confused blazermate to no end, but she just went with it in the end. Susie did look like a super fancy medabot from the future or something, so future parts were just weird like that then.
The two girls chatted a bit more before an idea struck Blazermate. "Hey... We have been going around beating Galeem's champions and all that, but you know... If things are going to just scale up as we go we should get new parts... Or I guess powers, upgrades, all that sorta thing... You know what I mean. We should go and actually look for good ones for a time before we go fight more champions. Just finding what we do on the way has worked so far, but there has to be like, super good stuff just sitting around off the beaten path that could make us all super strong and make this champion busting thing way easier. " Blazermate mused. Bowser had been fine with eating any spirit that came his way, but there had to be a better way to find super good ones. Finding stuff that worked for Blazermate were really rare.
Susie agreed with this plan, but at the same time wondered how they would even go about that. She had been keeping an eye on her PDA on her sales on the Grand Exchange, trying to turn more profits so that she could buy any high tech stuff that came her way in a shop, but she had found stuff like that was rare. Watching Susie doodle with her PDA, Blazermate asked what she was doing, and as Susie explained her idea, Blazermate did something Susie didn't expect, and scoff at the executive.
"You shouldn't just look for tech. There is magic stuff too that might work just as well. I've seen it. Heck, I think these little pins I have are magic." Blazermate said, gesturing to three little badges she had on her chest. "Like imagine stickers or something that makes you stronger, tankier, or gives you superpowers. Things like that exist here and you can't limit yourself to just technology, even if its good."
Susie had to take a bit to calm down and think as to what Blazermate was saying, before asking the Medabot. "And you know this from experience?" with Blazermate nodding, continuing. "Yeah. I also found this ghost like 'powerup' or so I think it was called. It did nothing to me visually on the outside, but now I can summon exploding homing ghosts. A really cool power that takes no part slots? Yes please!" What Blazermate was saying did make sense to Susie, perhaps she had been a bit too quick to ignore things like that, but she'd need to see more things like that in action. She wasn't going to adopt 'savage' items without them being worth it.
Sectonia has awakened to the offensive powers of the chaos heart. This allows her to control and manipulate Void energy and rip a hole in space-time/reality. This ability needs some time to charge and grows in power and size the longer its charged up to a point. When unleashed, the spacial rip is nearly instantaneous and the damage bypasses most defenses. Afterwords, the area is left as a white void for awhile.
Location: Haven Word Count: Less than 750
It took the Moogle some time to figure out exactly where they were, time that Sectonia really didn't have anything to do but wait for the creature to get its information gathered. After a bit, the Moogle came back and gave Sectonia a new plan. "I do question using these trains as a 'portal nexus'. Collecting the currency needed to buy a pass for everyone might become cumbersome." Sectonia said as the Moogle informed her that they were close, but that she should check out the other stations.
During this time, the creatures on the forest floor began to attack those in one of the towers. Seeing that their allies were udner attack, the Antillions did what they were ordered, shooting lightning orbs at the incoming attackers or hitting them with their clubs if they got close. Of course antillions weren't the tankiest of things, so there was only so much they could do as they helped the others fight. Midway through the fight though, Sectonia joined, Red deciding to attack one of the bigger targets in the fight.
Now, Sectonia could tell there was something a bit different about her when she got to this area, and the time she had gotten to hereslf to think about it while she waited for the moogle had her sort of figure out what was going on. As Sectonia hovered above the battle, mostly unnoticed by those on the ground, she decided to try to use this new power of hers. Charging up the power for a fairly decent amount of time, at least for something in combat, Sectonia looked at the largest group of enemies that were swarming her allies and unleashed the spell in a wide area.
Instantly everyone that was looking at the area that Sectonia had 'detonated' could see space and reality shatter as if it was glass. While her allies were unaffected by the damage, they too were still subject to the visual distortions that occurred. At first, things were just a black and purple swirling void that had shattered through reality. There was a clear definition where this ability had hit, with the edges looking like fractured glass. Those inside the swirling cloud could see nothing but darkness. A few moments later though, the cloud cleared, but what was left of the area was a white void lacking of shading, with vague outlines showing where objects were. Enemies that had survived and Sectonia's allies looked normal though.
This area would eventually return to normal, but those that took damage from this were either disintegrated or heavily damaged. Thanks to her control of magic, she could at least make it so her allies weren't damaged. This also gave her allies some breathing room and signified her return in quite a flamboyant fashion. "Everyone, apparently the plan is to map out every stop, so back on the train we go, apparently." Sectonia said.
Level 9 Sectonia (holding 3 level up) - (1/90) Level up! Location: The Metro > Haven Word Count: Less than 750
Sectonia lucked out. While the buildings taken over by nature could do with some work, overall she found a nice, beautiful nature area awaiting her at the end of the mint line. It was somewhat funny how out of every trio, Sectonia's group was the richest. That Scout really knew how to grab those pons, almost if the allure of money was too enticing for him to stop gathering them after awhile. Sectonia's excuse was her antillions weren't really given an exact amount to collect. They just kept collecting and collecting wherever they could find them until they were finally taken out by some of the cats. But by then they had collected more than enough. Sectonia wondered if these things could be used elsewhere? But now wasn't the time for that.
Having joined them after doing his own mission, Red suggested that everyone keep a low profile in this place, at least as low as they could. Stealth wasn't really Sectonia's thing, with her saying. "What Queen of beauty would hide her presence? These things don't look too bad." Sectonia said, pointing to a Glyphid Grunt which the Scout seemed to recognize right away and throwing a void globule at it, causing it to dissolve into black goo and leave its spirit behind.
Still, this area was fairly enemy filled, so summoning a moogle here probably wasn't the best idea. "I will fly up to the top of that tree to summon the moogle. I will leave some antillions behind to help you all while I am away." Saying that, Sectonia summoned a bunch of green electric antillions and told them to protect the others while she made her way up to the top of the tree, being the only one with flight and thus the one who could make it there the easiest.
Seeing how massive the tree was, it did take Sectonia a bit of time to get up there, but once she was up there, she could look over the whole area. Much of it was like she saw from the ground, a bunch of trees everywhere having taken over urban ruins. She couldn't see the various creatures below though, being too high up. But this height did give her a good time to summon the Moogle, who appeared in a cloud of smoke when summoned.
"You called me, kupo?" The moogle said, with Sectonia replying by pointing at the area they were in. "We came off of Mint line and appeared here. The plan was to catalog where each line went." She then pointed down to the derelect station they had come from, with the moogle nodding along getting a look over the area.
Meanwhile Sectonia's antillions were doing what they were told, and helped the others on the ground with their lightning bolts whenever appropriate.
“So, you and me huh?” Rika said as she wandered over to meet up with Blazermate before pausing for a moment and then asking, “So, uh, do you have any idea how this works?”
[color=0072bc]”Uh, vaguely.”/color] Blazermate said, gesturing for Rika to follow her. As they moved through Alcamoth Blazermate said what she thought it was at least. ”So what we do is we go to this battle arena place and choose an arena, and we robattle. We can go as hard as we want as we’ll just be healed up afterwards and there is no risk of death or serious injury. But only inside the arena. If someone gets knocked out of the arena, the person left standing wins. Don’t attack people outside of the arenas for obvious reasons.” Blazermate continued, trying to remember where the arena area was.
It took the two ladies a bit of time to make it there, but they were more middle of the pack. They could see a few fights going on in some observation windows, where the arenas looked very flat, but colorful and interesting locales. Very different from robattles that was for sure. ”So. Any idea where you wanna go?” Blazermate said, asking Rika to choose one of the arches that had various symbols over them.
“Hmmmmmmm how abouuuuuut, that one” Rika, having perhaps little frame of reference for these symbols out of anyone present, pointed at a wild west looking one and explained her choice simply as “It’s of a hat”
Unfortunately the stage did not turn out to be a hat, and was instead a sandy western town that someone had decided to run two minecart tracks through before spicing the place up with the odd tnt barrel. The place’s name, painted onto a sign hung above the active railway like certainly was appropriate: Danger Gulch
“Huh, it's like a place that’s just all beach? Weird” Rika said as she stepped away from her starting spot in front of the greed painted building and gave the sand an experimental kick. “You ever been to somewhere like this?” she called over casually to her opponent who had spawned in under the awning of the red painted telegraph building
”Yeah, it's some kind of thing out of a western. It's a canyon in some desert or something? Anyway, let's get started then!” Blazermate said, giving a flex at Rika before summoning her Striker who began to make his buildings before charging Rika with ubersaw attachment in one hand, but her shield out in front in an attempt to both close the distance and possibly shield bash Rika.
“Lets” Rike replied, closing her eyes briefly, snuffing out the blue flame wafting out if them only for that fire to flare out a dozen times hotter when she reopened them, the cable tuning to a great streak of fire that trailed behind her when she moved
Strength: Kai Flagship Upgrades: Rika gains a full suit of upgrades to push her ship class to its full potential, increasing her armor and vitality a fair margin but mainly massively raising her evasion, the ship girl becoming quite the artful dodger.
Strength: Brute Strength (Brachydios): Despite being built with a pair of massive gauntlets, Rika was not designed for close combat. This little number fixes that problem by imbuing her with Wyvernian strength and battle prowess of the mighty Brachydios, making her quite the slugger.
Power: Triple Torpedo Mistress (herself, Pacific princess and Mikuma): Rika’s gauntlets can store and deploy a number of forearm sized high speed torpedoes from the undersides of her gauntlets, which shoot through the water, delivering a hefty explosive payload to close range targets. On land these are obviously less useful, though having a source of on demand high explosives does have its advantages if she gets clever about it.
Power: All Out Assault (Mikuma): on every 8th’s shot from her main (8inch) gun her shot is enhanced into being a shower of 5 triple shots fired in a spread pattern
“I’ve been wanting to try out these upgrades i got last night after all”
True to her word, the ship girl didn’t just start up with her tried and true strategy of overwhelming firepower, but instead raced forwards to meet the bot with a here-for unseen burst of speed, right gauntlet wound back in preparation for a massive punch while she held her other, bayoneted, gauntlet over her chest defensively, moving it to intercept the incoming saw.
Blazermate took her challenge somewhat head on. She still rushed at Rika until she got close, at which point she used her agility to jump over Rika, tilting her shield to use Rika’s blow for more lift if needed. When she did her little flip over Rika, she slashed with her ready Ubersaw. All the while the Engineer had managed to make his level 1 sentry, which began to shoot Rika from the direction where Blazermate was, the shipgirl now sandwiched between both an automated turret, and a medabot.
“Ow” went Rika as the blade slashed over her shoulder, followed by “Ow, ow, ow” as the turret started pinging her hull until she dodged to the side and out into the street. An invisible field popped up around her, gripping the bullets as they came in and slowing them enough that the ship girl didn’t take any more than the first three shots. She turned her right side main gun and one of her turrets in the direction of the stationary target and fried off a battery of 6 ship shells in its vague direction while turning her head after blazermate and actively targeting her with the other turret and her rapidfire cannon, the Brachydios headed rifle roaring as it fired shot after shot in quick succession.
Rika’s ship shells didn’t need to hit too close to home to destroy the level 1 sentry. Seeing the random deviation projectiles come at him, the engineer hid behind his dispenser using it as a wall. This managed to save him from being damaged from Rika’s attack, but he was forced to rebuild both of his buildings. Blazermate meanwhile used her shield to start to block the rapid fire machine gun fire, much like a medabot would do against other medabots with SMGs or assault rifles. Rika’s bullets were a bit bigger though than the standard medabot rounds, which even with Blazermate healing herself and her shield couldn’t keep up with Rika’s damage output. But this built Blazermate’s Medaforce, and when her shield started to show some wear and tear, she took off into the air to dodge Rika’s shots as she healed herself back up. With her vantage point over the battlefield, Blazermate saw one of those red cracks that summoned a ghost around where the engineer was rebuilding his buildings, and kept that in mind.
“Alright both barrels for you, you ahhhh!” Rika cried out as she was interrupted from turning all her firepower at Blazermate now that the sentry was (temporarily) dealt with by the fact that no one had taught her about the dangers of standing in the middle of the road. Or in this case on a minecart track, the rightful user of which came whizzing up the central road and then careaning into the shipgirl upon whom it had snuck up on by virtue of all the racket she had been making.
The little cart smacked into her hips, causing her to topple ass backwards into it, at which point it kept rolling, more slowly now, towards stage right “Nooo I don’t want to go this way!” Rika yelled, before pushing herself upright enough to push herself out right next to the undertakers.
“I’m ok!” she informed her opponent as if the bot hadn't been responsible for her bullet and stab wounds. This didn't stop her from hopping floatlly up onto the roof of the undertakers either, and then shifting to use its sign as cover as she trained her guns on the engineer's sentry spot and raining down hell on him again while she looked out for Blazermate
The engineer took cover where he could from the ship fire, at least having the knowhow to hide although he took some damage from the splash of Rika’s fire. Blazermate meanwhile had been healing herself above Rika and managed to build some Overheal in the process, although still not enough for her shield or any of her abilities yet, even though she was close. As Rika was looking at the engineer, Blazermate looped around behind Rika, and using her shield as a battering ram, she swooped down to knock Rika off her perch and do some damage.
“Oof!” went the ship as she was knocked over her cover and fell down to the ground, smashing into a (thankfully empty) coffin that broke her fall a bit but left her with a butt full of splinters.She started up at the sky for a moment, a touch dazed, then shook her head and used her hullblades to jump herself back onto her feet before setting of at a run and then trying to jump first up onto the yellow building’s awning and then going higher, aiming for the bridge that crossed the street.
Blazermate having swooped back into the sky, moved to where her striker was as Rika repositioned to heal the damage he had taken so that he wouldn’t go down to her next volley and gain some more medaforce and shield in the process. With him all patched up, Blazermate zoomed back into the sky, healing herself and looking for Rika. At least finding Rika wouldn’t be too difficult thanks to Blazermate’s scan ability putting a glowing mark on her.
She wasn't exactly trying to hide either, the ship girl leaping up beside the horse repair sign, then atop the green flop haus’s roof and finally atop its rooftop water tank for maximum height. Of course she wasn't going to ever beat the flying blazermate when it came to altitude, but from here she had a good view of the whole stage from which to bring her guns to bare. And bring them to bear she did, finally training all 4 sets of guns she had and letting loose a barrage that almost blew her off the roof from the recoil.
”She acts like a God Emperor medabot! But without the heat seeking missiles or lasers…” Blazermate said Rika unloading on her in the sky, trying to shoot her out of it. Seeing this as a problem, Blazermate did aerial evasion moves to try to land on the ground in some cover. Her descent didn’t go too well as planned though as Rika managed to shoot her as she was landing, Blazermate being blasted away but thankfully into cover. Cover that wouldn’t last too long as Rika seemed to be having fun destroying all the buildings and walls and everything, so Blazermate did what healing she could to herself behind cover. She then made a flight to that crack in the ground she had seen earlier when she figured she could, the engineer having moved to a different spot on the battlefield to set up, and summoned the ghost that zoomed aggressively at Rika to explode in her face.
“Oh no you don’t” Rika shouted at the ghost as she hopped backwards off of her perch, slow field procking and delaying the ghost just enough that when it served after her it slammed right into the water tank. Rika’s self congratulatory cheer was swiftly ended when the ghost did as ghosts did and phased right through the barrel. Then it headbutter her descending foot while its body was still inside the barrel, scorching Rika’s lower leg. Her cry of pain was swiftly rended into a blub as the rest of the spook bomb had blasted the water tank to bits, showering Rika with water and splinters to add insult to injury.
“Bleh, waterlogged, so not good” she complained after the torrent was over, shaking her arms futilely for a moment before her combat focus kicked back in. The drenched shipgirl limped around the ruins of her ruined firing platform, aimed and then pulled the trigger on her main gun, only to immediately lose control as all out assault procked, the resulting five bursts of triple shots being sprayed widely across the town as she was literally floored by the unexpected recoil. Windows were smashed, awnics collapsed, and then a strey shell hit a loitering tnt barrel and there went the telegraph office up in smoke.
When it finally ended, about 3 rapidfire heartbeats after it started, Rika was laying flat on her back in a pool of rapidly evaporating water on top of the only unscared building in the town telling herself “Guuuuuuuuess I need to start counting my shots”
Blazermate couldn’t help but feel bad for the shipgirl. All that firepower but no discipline or knowhow to use it. Sort of like your standard God Emperor, ah, she was becoming more and more like one of those every moment Blazermate fought her. Still that didn’t make the shipgirl any less dangerous. Still with her being distracted by that ghost which did far, FAR more damage than Blazermate expected, both to Rika and the town (in part thanks to Rika blowing up a vast majority of the arena.) Blazermate was able to get enough charge for her projectile shield. With that charged, Blazermate started flying right at Rika to use it to zap the shipgirl and do loads of damage for once, waiting to deploy it when she got in range or Rika opened fire again.. So far it felt like Rika did more damage to herself than Blazermate did, and Blazermate kinda wanted to end the battle soon to save the shipgirl from more embarrassment.
“Oook?” Rika said, unsure as to why Blazer was coming at her without her blade out, but she expected a trap. So, while opening up with her 2 rigging turrets, she laid her own, hammering the building with her gauntlets to leave big splats of green goo, before giving 'em a spittoon and hopping back, leaving the front of the building priming to blow.
Blazermate seeing Rika leave her cover, decided to veer up and away before coming back down on her. Seeing as Rika acted just like a god emperor, although inexperienced, Blazermate wasn’t going to fall for the mine legs, not again anyway. You only make that mistake once. Although she did know of a medabot that made it many, many times, but that's besides the point. When she made her way to Rika, Rika’s little turrets started shooting at her. Now this was a smart move, well, it would’ve been, if Blazermate didn’t swoop down on her with her projectile shield, trying to zap her with it.
“Uh oh” Rika worried as Blazer simply waited out her goo bombs, which blasted apart the front of the top of her building with little gain, and then came in again now that the bomb spot was gone, deploying a shield that blocked her side turret suppressing fire, and which she was pretty clearly trying to ram her with. With the stage edge behind her there wasn't really anywhere Rika could go “Uh uh” except “Up!”
The ship girl hopped, cranking her gauntlet’s antigrav to the max to make her jump much floatier, before turning all of her guns down and blasting the building she had been on and using the recoil to launch herself up and over the shield at surprising speed with an accompanying whoop of delight from the flying boat.
Blazermate wasn’t expecting Rika to explosive jump with her guns like that, so while Blazermate had her shield deployed, Rika dodged it for the moment fairly well with the smaller scrap of the destroyed building being vaporized and forcing Blazermate to dodge the larger chunks that her shield didn’t vaporize. Although sadly for Rika, once Blazermate got back out of the wreckage Rika had caused, she was right back to trying to zap Rika with her shield, Rika noticing wherever Blazermate pointed her healing arm is where her big blue energy shield went.
Rika performed a stumble of a landing behind Blazer, turned back to face her, and was immediately presented with the same problem she had just escaped “So does that thing ever run out?” she asked, before blasting herself backwards and landing on her butt in the ruins of the telegraph office.
”At this rate you will be doing more damage to you than I do!” Blazermate said, her shield protecting her from Rika’s blastback as she used the same thing to try to escape Blazermate and her shield of ouch. A good thing too, as Rika has seen what this shield can do when it sits on something for too long. And with Rika evading it, the shield was starting to flicker. Seeing that, Blazermate still approached, but with her arm shield out seeing her energy shield starting to blink out of existence. All this while the engineer had managed to set up a fully functioning nest in the block over, sipping beer in his chair as his work was done for the moment and nothing was bothering him.
“Hey what’s that beeping sound?” Rika asked in response to this, curiosity getting the better of her as she followed the sound during a running retreat, punched open a door (guanteleted hands meant no opening them) and then being immediately blown back into the street by a hail of minigun fire.
Blazermate just wobbled in the air when she heard and saw what Rika had just done. ”OK, this girl REALLY needs a mentor. If this wasn’t practice she would’ve gotten herself probably killed.” Blazermate then zoomed above Rika as she retreated from the level 3 sentry and its gunfire and rockets and said. ”Don’t go TOWARDS beeping things! Those usually mean danger! It could’ve been a bomb you know!” Blazermate was clearly flabbergasted at the naivety of this girl.
“Why would you make a bomb beep? Or that gun beep? Doesn't that give them away?” Rika asked as she hauled herself up unsteadily of the dirt, her’retreat having beenmore of stumbling and then rolling away while the massive knockback of the sentry blew her away. Her wet clothes were a patchwork of holes and her skin a quilt of bruises, blood and oil, but she wasn’t going to lie down and give up.
“Ah this hurts” the ship girl whined
“Ok, but, hmm, how do I deal with that… oh. Its a static position, so of course all I need to do is” she squared up her guns, but rather than fire flicked to switches that caused a pair of torpedoes to drop down from beneath the gauntlets. And on to the sand. Where they just sat, uselessly whirring their propellers.
“...”
Rike looked down at the pair of bombs, very offended by their uselessness, and then just started shooting at Blazermate again with everything she had.
Blazermate could only look at Rika with a look of sadness in her eyes as the poor girl seemed to have almost no combat experience vs anything that wasn’t right in front of her and charged her head on. Something that Blazermate would need to fix at some point. But now was not that point as Rika, having dumbstruck Blazermate and herself with her torpedo shot, turned around and shot at Blazermate with all of her guns, catching the medabot off guard. Blazermate took quite a bit of damage from this attack, but used another ability of her suffering shield to let out a loud sonic screech to both escape Rika and stun her.
The shipgirl stumbled back trying and failing to protect her ears with her hands due to them being stuck in her gauntlets, which Blazermate used to get distance and cover to heal herself. Her uber was almost ready, but she also had her Medaforce beam. Although, seeing the engineer’s nest gave her an idea…. What would happen if she teleported on top of Rika? This area seemed to be safe, at least according to Mewtwo, so nothing bad should happen besides Rika flying off into the sunset, and the round being over… Yeah Blazermate figured she’d try that.
Rika meanwhile shook her head to recover. Then started to take a step forwards only for the beeping to remind her that doing so would put her in gun range again. “That really is silly” she said, and then thought about what to do about that, getting mad at her useless torpedoes again for a moment before having an idea.
She reached down, grabbed the two torpedoes with the jaws of her gauntlets, and then circled round the side of the building so it wouldn’t see her approaching. Though not exactly sneaky, Blaze was busy prepping her own plan, so the ship girl had free right to sneak up next to the door she had kicked in, and then proceeded to lay them down in the doorway and use a length of splintered wood to set them rolling over the floor and towards the sentry. After she heard the klonk of them hitting the wood she backed up a bit, and then blindfired her rapidfire gauntlet through the door, slowfield giving her just enough time to get her shots off before she got gunned/rocketed down, and setting off the torpedoes which exploded with the force of multiple grenades each, vaporizing the sentry and most of the room along with it.
Blazermate meanwhile had her full uber charge ready, and zoomed up behind Rika as she had just finished destroying the engineer’s sentry. Grabbing Rika from behind, Blazermate pushed her into the rest of the engineer’s nest. While she did manage to destroy the sentry, that wasn’t Blazermate’s goal as a pair of teleporters was not too far away. Since the engineer had no destination to set them up with, he just put them right next to each other in an attempt to get all of his buildings all built. Rika tried her best to retaliate and protest at Blazermate carrying her at the shining platforms, but Blazermate popped ubercharge the moment Rika did anything, and the shipgirl found herself helpless at the invincible medabot carrying her over to the teleporters.
Once they got there, Blazermate flew up and dropped Rika on top of one, flying down as she fell to take the other teleporter as Rika landed on the first one. The shipgirl had almost no time to react as Blazermate teleported and even if she managed to get a foot off the other teleporter, Blazermate appeared where Rika was, sending the shipgirl flying straight up through the roof into the stratosphere and ending the combat.
Game!
With that done, both parties appeared in a lobby, having a small bit of battle damage, but not nearly as much as they should’ve had going at each other like that. [color=0072bc]”OK so, we need to really get you combat ready. [”/color] was the first thing Blazermate said, healing Rika and herself up as she gestured for them both to leave for the next people. ”If I was more deceptive instead of being evasive, it wouldn’t end well for you. And trust me, there are a lot of deceptive medabots out there. Also we gotta work on your weaponry, while they worked in the sea, I don’t think we’ll be going back there at any point anytime soon so we need to get you some ground weapons. Maybe when we go to “japan” we might find a God Emperor medabot. Those parts would feel right at home to you.” Blazermate said.
“Deceptive? What do you mean by that?” Rika asked first, trying to focus on learning rather than getting dejected in response to this barrage of criticism.
”Uh, well… Like the sentry. If ya hear beeping, try to be cautious around it. Yeah sometimes it doesn’t make sense for bombs or guns to beep, but they do, and yeah.” Blazermate said. ”Also I suggest practicing with your guns and how much recoil they do. I saw you getting hurt a lot by your own thing than me. The explosive jumping was a good idea though, although did that hurt?”
“Ooook?” Rika replied, not really sure why they beeped, but filed it away for later anyway “Oh and that? Well, if I’m too close yeah, but mainly it's the stuff shooting out of the barrels that gave the lift. I guess if i could tough out the bombs too I could use those for extra hight? But, yeah, mainly it's pushing me back while I’m making myself all floaty that did it. Dunno why that happens, but it does so I thought why not use that, you know?”
”Well, make sure you figure out your recoil and all of that. Good to see you learned something though. Maybe the others will have some advice for you.” Blazermte said as she led Rika back to the main atrium.
Level 9 Sectonia (holding 3 level up) - (0/90) Level up! Location: The Metro Word Count: Less than 750
Sectonia's antilions weren't the smartest of minions to say the least. Outside of doing what their queen demanded of them, their problem solving skills weren't the best. One thing they did have though was teamwork, as they all followed their queens orders as best as they could. Their orders were to collect Pons, which when they did, materialized in Sectonia's hands as they were her magical summons. Sectonia herself staying near the Kiosk and reading whatever material she found interesting or useful, admittedly not a lot here but there were a few pamphlets and the like.
The antillions went on a bit of an adventure themselves, noting that whenever they touched the green orbs, a chime was heard and they disappeared, but not into their hands. They figured out quickly that whatever they touched was gathered by their queen, which helped a lot. Now the pons on the ground were scarce, this was soon found out by the antilions as they went around the town. Seeing as they were currency, the cats that were around the metro probably stripped the streets clean, although the antillions had no way of knowing that. Seeing as there were more pons though as they rose up in the metro. Although they couldn't fly, they did know how to stack themselves up like a tower and help each other climb up and up much like their namesakes. Their jumps weren't very high nor was their ability to move around nearly as good as the others in the metro, but their ability to spread out and collect pons when they reached a pon filled area was unmatched.
There were a few cats who, doing the same thing the antillions were doing, decided to attack what they assumed were money laiden simple bugs. Those cats soon found themselves sliding off the catwalks and rooftops when they tried attacking the antilions, most of them frozen in blocks of ice as they kept sliding across the streets of the metro. A few others just ran while on fire, not expecting a bug to have a flamethrower. The antilions took no joy or pride in warding off the bandit cats, but they did collect the pons left behind and continued their task.
Sectonia meanwhile was deciding on which line to go on. Mint sounded refreshing in its name, although she didn't know any of the destinations, she didn't know any of the others so just from the name she figured why not. And with the rate her antilions seemed to be collecting pons, she might have enough extra for anyone who didn't collect enough, or maybe to spend on other things that were around. Sectonia wondered how the others were coming along.
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