Level 11 Sectonia (holding 4 level up) - (86/110)
Location: The Under - Hollow Knight
Word Count: Less than 750
Being a flyer, Sectonia was immune to the ground spikes summoned by Radiance. However the rest of her group wasn't and that was causing a lot of issues with their footing and inability to land a good clean hit on this thing. Meanwhile Sectonia was causing some celestial fireworks n the air as this creature countered her void globules with its own light balls, the energy of light and void evaporating each other in a beautiful implosion. This was interesting though, as this creature seemed to almost ignore hits against it, but it was using attacks to counter her void attacks? Well, that was something!
First things first though, dealing with the spike fields her allies had to deal with. While she couldn't help with the first few, she did notice that there were only two locations of these fields and they coincided where the Radiance was hovering. So Sectonia summoned two golden antlers to not only strike at the moth when she got close, but also act as some protection from the floor of the others. They could take a couple spikes before disappearing with their sheer bulk.
Sectonia meanwhile just continued to throw void globules at the guardian, dodging her vertical lasers and swords with her own teleport. Granted when those attacks were going out, Sectonia couldn't attack and dodge at the same time, she wasn't that nimble. Seeing the balls aiming for the globules did make Sectonia try one thing that was a bit risky. She'd teleport next to the Radiance after the guardian had teleported and threw void globules at it point blank to land some damage. This was during her little lightshow of lasers emanating from her that attacked all the fliers though, so it was very unpleasant to get hit by multiple beams.
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Everyone was puzzled at Nox's new outburst. He went from declaring his intent to take this guardian's time traveling powers for himself, to... bemoaning his plans weren't going to work? Blazermate was thoroughly confused about this, while Roland and Susie had an idea of what happened. Susie could only guess with context clues, while Roland had his second hand experience to guess what happened.
"Sounds like he already time traveled." Susie said, with Roland saying
"So... from what it sounded like... he succeeded, but only reset the cycle back here. Like with Angela." Well, it didn't take long for Nox to despair and leave, seeing his plan as failed, with C replacing him.
"I don't blame the guy. Repeating cycles is not fun and I know I'd probably hang myself around cycle 4 or 5." Roland said, giving a bit of empathy to Nox. But now with C here, and using his powers to transform Mephisto into some strange abomination to get him to fight, well... they still had a job to do. And with Nox not interfering, well... He wouldn't know if this would be a different cycle or not, but it seemed like it.
Getting ready for combat, Susie summoned her business suit and went to deal with Tycoon, her big mech suit strong enough to deal with the large guardian's slaps. Keeping its attention from the other seekers in the process. Roland was about to dash in to deal with Sam, but Roxas concocted a plan and managed to convince Sam to at least leave the fight entirely. Seeing this, Roland gave the boy a thumbs up saying.
"Nice work! 1 down 3 to go."Blazermate was on healing duty as always. With the opposition being down an entire person, and the person she wanted to use her new striker on having left the fight, Blazermate instead saved Armstrong for now and instead summoned her engineer to set his base up and his sentry gun which would plink away at Tycoon as he was the closest. With the battle started, Roland had memories of his time on General Works, or 'keter' as it would eventually be known as. As Midna was dealing with C at the time, Roland moved in to clash sword to bullet with Mephisto, deflecting and taking a shot which halted his rush in. A good thing too, as Mephisto unleashed a cloud of gas or something that obscured the arena and did some light poison damage. Blazermate and Susie were immune to the damage due to being robots, and the engineer's sentry gun seemed to ignore the obscurement entirely. But Roland and the engineer striker itself weren't immune to the poison and started to take some light damage.
Having lost his first clash, Roland's emotion leveled up and he got Lies, a puppet's voice saying "Everyone lies, why are you saying it’s a bad thing?", which caused his attacks to randomly get faster or slower. Hearing Midna seemingly struggling with C, Roland decided to give her a hand as Blazermate found herself helping the group dealing with Karen. She'd give Roland her healing drone however, so she could give Midna and Roland some healing. Roland would join after Midna had just deployed her mecha wolfos, his large two handed sword having been sped up by Lies and allowing him to deflect the shot aimed at Midna before going in to strike at C.
"I could hear you two from over there." Roland said, striking with his large sword.
Intercepting the weak shot meant for Midna removed Roland's element of surprise. Though the fixer moved quickly to strike back, C had more than enough time to holster his pistol and block. By this point Mephisto's fumes had crept back in, and unlike the Twilight Princess, Roland lacked a respirator to take the edge off the caustic haze. Two opponents would be more difficult to deal with, but he wondered if the newcomer was just here to bail Midna out. "Your point being?" The Consul hopped backward, lobbing another curse ball at Roland. While the projectile moved slowly enough to deflect with ease, it applied the curse even on block, creating a murky aura around Roland's body. When C drew his pistol, his reticle moved with uncanny accuracy even without Steady Aim. He fired while running forward three times, locking Roland in blockstun, then jumped toward him, still firing. He came down with a
stomp that failed to hit his foe overhead, but it did bounce the Consul up and behind Roland to land his
jumping dust. The wily blow crossed Roland up, bypassing his defense, and sent him stumbling a few steps with an ache in the back of his head. Of course, that put C directly between both his opponents, but he didn't seem to care. "Things only ever start to exist when there's a reason for them to," he admitted, reloading quickly. "What's yours?"
"Only the crazies monologue mid combat unprompted." Roland said as he blocked the curse ball with his large sword, before reflexively countering the three shots that C followed up with, before drawing his longsword to deal with C's overhead. C's attack chain left him in advantage though, leading to his final hit smacking Roland behind his head and sending him stumbling.
Well, Roland would be lying if he himself wasn't sure how to answer that question. It’s been mostly to survive, but he wasn't going to tell that to his opponent.
"I'm just an everyday fixer doing his job. Fixing being something you don't know much about." Roland said as he swapped to his X Baton to get ready for another clash with C.
His response elicited a tilt of the Consul’s head as he finished reloading. “And just who do you think fixed the game for Nox?”
Roland could only be confused by what Nox said. He clearly didn’t know what a fixer actually was. It wouldn’t stop him from using his X baton as its namesake and smacking it at C, getting blocked as was C’s fighting style, but leveling Roland’s emotion to 2 and causing him to gain Urging, a bolstering monstrous voice saying “Your craving will make the beats faster.” which made Roland faster and increased his HP. After breaking away to pull out a gun of his, Roland understood what C was getting at, sorta.
”Pretty sure it was you. From what I saw at the meeting, you and the other guy were actually running Midgar.” Roland said.
The Consul was faster. With the curse applied to Roland, his aim seemed practically automatic. He fired off a couple bullets to keep his enemy locked down, sneaking a curious glance at Midna on the sidelines, then turned his attention back to Roland. “Then you weren’t paying attention.” After jumping, he airdashed forward, then dropped with a
downward gunshot. He did not cross Roland up, though, and upon landing he went for a throw that flat-out beat the fixer’s block. Considering that C just planted his foot in Roland’s stomach and kicked him down, however, the price he paid for getting opened up could be a lot worse. After that C backdashed in order to focus and regain concentration, though that left him open for a brief moment. “I don’t ‘run’ things. I just wind ‘em up and watch ‘em go.”
”Yeah you're nothing but a meddler” Midna agreed with C as she stepped back into the fray, having had to pause to catch her breath after an attempted distraction. Now she was back in though, and had re-armed. Two of her hands were holding one of the commando’s auto-pistols, the princess not at all confident enough to duel wield them like the man she had stolen them from. The other two she had the Sharpened Volcano Fragment, her enemy-igniting obsidian ax.
Her two wolves darted a head, once again attempting to harry C with tooth and claw, while she advanced, pistol firing pot shots over the heads of her beasts, ax hefted to deliver an overhead cleave once she got close.
Only a smattering of the bullets Midna sprayed out landed, but those that did caught the Consul during his attempt to focus, and they left him wide open for her wolves. They jumped on him, their jaws snapped shut around his limbs as they dragged him to the ground. While their viciousness in tugging C around made it somewhat difficult to aim for vitals, the Twilight Princess was nothing if not determined. She brought down the axe on C’s helmet, a loud crack ringing out as she chopped into it. He slumped down as the twilit wolf and Beast Legion released his now-burning body, but a moment after his back hit the ground, an arm just like his own reached out from beneath his body. Out of nowhere, a new Consul C emerged from the space beneath the fallen one, throwing off the original like a cellar trap door, and his reticle locked onto Midna’s head. “Bang.” He fired, damaging her mask, and as the fresh C stood the other one blipped out like a TV screen.
Minda stumbled back, hand clutching the rebreather mask, eye darting to and fro behind its cracked lens in confusion.
”What the? How? When did he replace himself” she questioned as her wolves moved to put themselves defensively between her and C.
Getting back up from the ground, Roland groaned in a bit of annoyance.
”Why am I not surprised this guy is a distortion. A weird one at that. Even spouts the same nonsense the blue sicko was going on and on about.” Roland said, using his own gun to shoot C before swapping to his lance.
”If he starts talking about hearing a ladies' voice, I'll be convinced he was part of that sicko’s band.” Roland said, switching to his sword to try for another clash.