Dawnrider

World of Light

Level: 6 (5 -> 11/60) | 5 (10 -> 16/50) | 3 (13 -> 19/30)
Location: Land of Adventure - Spiral Mountain -> The End
Word Count: 1896 (+6 EXP | Overdrive!)

Power: Brewing Hat, Beak Bomb, Jet
Item: Red Feathers (-2-3), Trowlon-lon Milk (-0.4)

With the duo’s unceremonious, but official, induction into the ranks of Smash, the brief intermission was over. Proper ceremony and celebration could wait until later. The matter at hand demanded their collective attention, which the Princess called upon for the pre-mission briefing. Her speech served more to inspire than direct, and certainly, it was somewhat inspiring… in the sense that it inspired some confidence in Fox that someone of reasonable competence was taking charge in his (or anyone else’s) absence. Though either of them were preferable to nothing as far as direction, between her and Bowser, he had a clear preference. At Peach’s last line, a corner of his mouth cocked up slightly in a light, satisfied smirk. She may yet have a latent talent for squad leadership if left to foster it, but likelihood of sharing the burden over shouldering it ensured she’d be able to do so comfortably--relatively speaking.

With that, the party proceeded across (or in some cases over) the bridge in managed order, which, in the way of steady traversal, posed no issue for Hat Kid, Fox, or Banjo and Kazooie. For the latter two it almost stood as a reminder of old times… if not for the excess of company, the change in landscape, the difference in objective, and pretty much everything else. This sentiment of alien circumstance carried over well into Grunty’s Lair, the interior not so much as remotely resembling its former self. A finely laid brick corridor took the place of the open, methodically carved out cavern that they remembered from before, ending some ways in at a darkened well frame embedded in the wall--no doubt an entrance into the looming dark that hung over the lair. Upon confirming its safety and simplicity of use the party entered through one at a time.

On the other side they were met with… something not entirely unexpected, but certainly foreign to anyone there. A veritable archipelago of largely barren, pale yellow stone lay suspended within backdrop of infinite darkness in every direction. Fox observed quietly to himself that this was, in fact, NOT the Subspace, though it was conceptually not too far off. Of course, it wasn’t Space proper either, as him and Hat Kid knew too well to be the case (unbeknownst to one another). Despite the evidently ominous nature of this place, the child was less put off by it than most present. As far as she was concerned it was just another pocket dimension to be cleared; pretty standard fare; nothing to be too worried about.

The thought came to her too soon, as a few of their comrades were beset upon by a small number of hitherto unseen wraith-like aberrations, likely native to this dimension. With the sudden increase in their presence, the creatures’ immediate proximity to their accosted allies, and their sporadic teleportation, Fox found some difficulty focusing on any of them long enough to get a clear shot off. Banjo and Kazooie struggled similarly to find an opening amidst the madness to jump in for an assist. Just as well, for one of their allies managed to intuit and call out the secret to the creatures’ behavior so as to prevent further drawing their ire. Hat Kid was spared the danger of looking directly at any of them by her Hat’s waypoint focusing on the center of the central island.

Inevitably, the issue of safe traversal to their target destination came up, regarding those among them who couldn’t fly or jump far enough to at least reach the scattered islets and avoid a perilous fall into the everdark. To that end, Hat Kid, Banjo and Kazooie, and even Fox could probably all make it with mild difficulty using the latter method, but it was for the better that they take a less circuitous route along with the others so as to not lag behind and risk possible delay by more Endermen. Jr, otherwise unwilling to take passengers, would end up hauling a technical stowaway by the propeller of his kart with Hat Kid using it as an attachment point for her Hookshot, hooking onto it as the Koopaling took off flying overhead. In similar fashion, Fox nimbly hopped onto Euden’s back in dragon form, landing lightly in a kneel and keeping a handhold on for the duration of their crossing. Light as the pilot was, he expected (and hoped) the prince wouldn’t mind. Finally, Banjo and Kazooie shot themselves skyward in a streak of red stars that marked Flight for them, and promptly estimated in their heads an inability to cover the full distance to the island without spending precious resources. Between Red Feathers and the Trowlon-lon Milk, they could more easily spare the latter, so Banjo threw down another serving of hard watery swill to triple their launch height and coast the rest of the way over.

At varying rates, by varying methods, everyone made it to the island a little at a time and carefully made their way toward its center. A period of unsettling silence and inactivity that hung in the air like the atmospheric haze around them marked the prelude to the impending conflict, followed by a chorus of Endermen to sound off the arrival of their foe. A pair of purple lights aglow in a starless sky revealed against the dark a great ebonic drake that claimed this dimension as its domain. The beast swooped down to set itself atop the frontmost obsidian spire, making its imposing presence known to the intruders in guttural announcement before entering a ramming dive toward the clustered heroes.

To some end the Ender Dragon’s opening attack succeeded better than expected, knocking aside roughly half of the party that failed to scatter in time. Banjo was bowled straight over underfoot and sent tumbling along the porous stone, Hat Kid contacted with the Dragon’s head while trying to jump over it, and Fox dashed wide of it, but not enough to avoid being struck by a wing end and thrown back-first into one of the spires. By the time they got back to their feet the Dragon was already out of their ranges, so the best they could do at the moment was to spread out, keep mobile, and let the more range capable of their group go to work on it until it circled back.

While staying on the move, Hat Kid tried to analyse the situation to figure out what she could contribute and how, and she noticed something peculiar. Neither Jr’s MOAB balloons nor the Dragon’s corrosive bombardment (both of which they made a point of steering clear of) did any discernible damage to the spires. She began drawing parallels to the previous boss battle in her head. Black Pillars; Black Spires; Both seemingly indestructible; Both bosses so far have been dragons; these are probably just coincidences, and I’m definitely overthinking the wrong aspects of this… Her internal rambling did point to one relevant truth, however: that this boss had a gimmick… and some were already onto it. It was then that she noticed a beam trailing from one of the spired crystals to the Dragon, and another subsequently detonating under the knife of a Striker. She didn’t exactly know why, but this struck her (as well as others, it seemed) as a necessary step to bringing the leviathan down.

“Hey!” she called to the animal duo, pointing to any one of the crystals being besieged by their allies, trusting they would understand from there before Sprinting off to find Jr’s kart and grappling onto it again. She carried her momentum of her upswing through by entering into a vertical wall run up the height of the nearest spire, detaching her hook as she reached the top and pushing off the crystal’s housing cage in a soaring backflip. Her time perception dilated at that exact second just long enough for her to switch hats, donning what appeared to be a conical witch’s cap. She then manifested a full vial of unknown contents--seemingly from nothing--shook it for a second until it activated, looked down to smile and wave at Jr, and hurled the improvised chemical explosive at the crystal, all while passing over the Koopaling. She righted herself on her backfall and hooked onto it once more.

With a proper directive given to them, Banjo and Kazooie immediately saw a way to make themselves useful, even if it had limited uses. Banjo neared one of the spires, chugged another swig of the reddened lightener, and ascended for the crystal that sat atop the structure. His ascent was more graceful, controlled, deliberate than the first time around; closer in manner to an assisted jump. As per the pattern and dynamic, Kazooie took over from there, seizing aerial control when the potion’s effect wore off. Once they were lined up with the crystal, she reared back in anticipation, expending one Red Feather, and tucked her wings as she shot forward in a breakneck kamikaze dive, aiming to shatter the gem on impact. Unlikely as it was to be the case, should one more hit be necessary, she would repeat the attack accordingly. After which, she would need to spend another Feather to stay aloft at their height.

The assault on the spires didn’t go unnoticed by Fox whilst seeking cover between them. His problem was being able to hit them from his poor angle on the ground, as well as having an acid spewing dragon to evade and occupy. The battle was still young, however, and he still had a narrow window to make a move before the drake came back around to make another run. As he made haste for any unassailed tower with a still intact jewel atop it (should there happen to be one), Fox drew sights on any one of the nearby Endermen, intentionally antagonizing the gangly spectre to draw it closer, leaping over whatever reckless attack it threw out, and footstooling off of the unsuspecting creature to propel himself higher. With an additional wall jump, followed by a variant propulsion technique, he quickly boosted to the top of the spire in a jetstream of white smoke. From there he got a good look at the Ender Dragon on its return flight to the island, as well as the coordinated crystal destruction being conducted around him. By this point the Enderman he offended would have teleported up there to meet him. Fox then dove from the tower, air dashed away toward the open, and turned to litter the gem with a rapid volley of lethal red light on his way down. The explosion resulting from its destruction would surely take care of the pursuing Enderman.

He landed closer to the center of the battlefield between the spires in the midst of the Dragon’s impending return, and measured the next action he took against that of the beast. If it bombarded them again, he would stand his ground just long enough to throw out his Reflector to respond, having seen the caustic projectiles once already and evaluated them, based on identical past experience, to be manageable. Otherwise, if it attempted another straightforward physical assault, he would instead disengage and clear himself of its path. From there (in the latter case), he would harry it with prodding blaster fire from below, aiming for its beaming violet eyes that made for the easiest target.

World of Light

feat.

GM

@Lugubrious

Level: 5 (42 -> 52/50) LEVEL UP! ---> 6 (2 -> 5/60) | 4 (37 -> 47/40) LEVEL UP! ---> 5 (7 -> 10/50) | 3 (0 -> 10 -> 13/30)
Location: Land of Adventure - Spiral Mountain
Word Count: 1672 (+3 EXP)

(Level ups pending…)

With the battle safely concluded in full, the Seekers of Light (that’s what they were called, apparently) assembled within the tower for rest and preparation for whatever awaited them within the eldritch veil beyond the hag’s dwelling. Peach, the de facto matriarch of their pack, oversaw Spirit distribution, calling for the attention of anyone interested. This discounted Hat Kid, who had no interest in the spoils herself. Not that it stopped Bowser censoring for her and his son whatever basic age-restricted truth about the world (that they were probably already aware of to some extent) he was afraid of them finding within one of the Spirits. Always such a curious thing… how adults’ minds worked when it came to children, with a level of irony that seemingly eluded them in spite of their good intentions. Sure, bring them along with you, barely supervised, on an unendingly perilous journey wherein they not only witness otherwise innocent conscripts of the Grand Seraph meet bloody, violent, horrifying ends at yours and your allies’ hands, but sometimes aid in them, carry them out themselves, and face the not unlikely possibility of facing such ends themselves. But a few naughty words, skimpy get-ups or suggestive innuendo were somehow too much for them psychologically?

Whatever, she thought in dismissal of the idea in favor of finding something else to occupy her attention with. When consulting her hat and compass for anything of interest or importance, naturally, her hat pinpointed the lair’s entrance at the monument’s mouth across the bridge. Their objective lay that way after all, so of course. But what, if anything, did her Compass Badge have to tell her? If she heard them right, this place was home to the animal pair; Kindred Spirits to her. There was a chance that they had in common exploratory proclivities, thus inviting a theoretically equal possibility that their worlds had in common a need to be explored; things within them to be found. Might she find something worthwhile here, in this part of their world that they were currently in?

Elsewhere in the room, Fox was being tended to by the group’s resident medical mech, a “Blazermate model” she called herself. Her work was spectacularly efficient, erasing every perceivable ounce of injury, pain or exhaustion left over from whatever battle he had just fought within (less than) the time it took to fully anesthetize the average patient for surgery, and she accomplished this with scant effort simply by dosing him with a sustained stream of healing energy. It was almost dumbed down in a sense, but if it got these kinds of results, who was he to argue? As with most things, he didn’t know or need to know precisely how it functioned to understand how useful it was. Sadly, he wasn’t exactly in his right mind to lend it the level of admiration one might say it deserved, for he was still, at present, hopelessly preoccupied with trying to mentally catch himself up on the situation at hand.

“Restored?” he mouthed silently to himself, miming the part of the Princess’s reassuring statement that stood out to him. He went over the few uneducated guesses he could devise in his head as he watched the soft white aura on him die down, largely ignoring the unknown implication of it beyond that of an assumed side effect. “Thank you,” he greeted quietly to the medabot with an appreciative nod before she moved on to her other patients. His attention then turned to the collection and assimilation of Spirits, witness of which raised further questions in his head that he wasn’t yet quite ready to ask. Link, atypically (though occasionally) vocal as he was, beat him to the initial line of questioning, starting with the statuses of the remaining ‘Smashers’.

“I just woke up five minutes ago,” he answered, slightly shaking his head. “Your guess is as good as mine.” Bowser, the first restored among them, was happy to provide a heavily condensed summation of their survival and objective. That confirmed it for him. They really did lose, and he wasn’t lost in some kind of post-mortem dream limbo born of their last thoughts. Though, if this was the new reality, it would be hard to call it ‘preferable’.

While Bowser’s explanation left a lot to be desired in terms of specifics, it covered the subject matter thoroughly enough that he left Peach with very little to add. Still, to be shown up in terms of responsibility by the Koopa of all people was an unappealing prospect, so she clarified what she could. “Galeem is protected by some kind of rainbow barrier. This world has thirteen regions, and all have a powerful opponent we must defeat. In order to get strong enough to do that, we can use the spirits of the fallen. They can be itemized, or bonded with, or absorbed. Absorbing them has the greatest effect, but doing so changes you.” With a wry expression she used her longcoat’s tails to perform a mock curtsy. “See?”

“I think I get the gist,” Fox answered with a nod. Strange as it was to be considered a now universal norm, it wasn’t the first he had seen or heard of this. In his time, he had met other fighters with known assimilative empowerment capabilities. That, however, didn’t inspire in him an immediate enthusiasm to experiment with it himself. ”You can fill me in on the rest later.” He stood up and paced to the tower’s entrance, positioning himself where he could get a view of the Subspace. “If we’ve got another shot at doing this right, we’ll be sure to make it count this time.” He spoke with quiet, assertive confidence. “But however we do it…” He drew the sword he hadn’t been using (unsure of how it came into his possession in the first place) and passed it to Link hilt-first, seeing him as someone who could obviously make better use of it. ”...we need to be ready.”

Meanwhile, after being met with silence on the matter, Banjo shrugged and lowered the Friend Heart, allowing it to deflate and dissipate with his focus drawn elsewhere. A familiar name fell on his and Kazooie’s ears by the monk’s utterance of it.

“L.O.G.?” Banjo pondered aloud, scratching his chin, then his head, in visible ponderance. “Where have I heard that name before?”

“You mean that tube-headed hack from the spin-off, out-of-touch with his own industry and target audience?” Kazooie elaborated in rhetorical inquiry to the monk, just to make sure they were thinking of the same person. Banjo suddenly recalled who they were talking about and shook his head at the Queen’s confirmation of the same, having apparently encountered him herself as well. “Trust us, you won’t want one from him,” Kazooie added at her mention of ‘sequels’ from her. “And for what it’s worth I don’t think he’s canon anyway,” she further assured, implying the possibility that anything he said could potentially be disregarded as inconsequential.

“Eh… it wasn’t all bad,” Banjo interjected apologetically. “I think he at least meant well, for the most part.”

“They always do.”

“Well, you have to give people a chance to learn from their mistakes, Kazooie.”

“Are you sure you can call it that?” she asked with her own implication/accusation to make. “Looks like they kept that hideously designed refrigerator character…”

“Looks like they also snuck you in as a cameo,” he observed, wondering if he was given the same referential treatment.

“True,” she conceded with sudden curiosity. “Question is whether or not I’d want it after playing.”

“We’ll figure that out when we get to it later. Let’s keep an open mind about it until then.”

“Fair enough.”

After a moment spent going off-tangent, they snapped back to the present to address the matter itself.

“W-Wait! You said you met him here?” Banjo asked either of the two who encountered him, wondering how the royal bee did so in the midst of combat. “Where, exactly?”

“Probably squatting in our house, making more bad games.” A wild, lucky guess from Kazooie.

“I don’t remember asking him to house-sit…” he wondered. “In that case, you want to go talk to him; see if he knows anything?” he asked Kazooie.

“Not really, but if it gives us an excuse to check in on things at home…”

“I was thinking the same thing,” he said before making for the exit. “I need to make sure I didn’t leave the stove on again.”

With that, they were off, making the short trek back to their house. Their exit shortly followed that of Hat Kid’s hitherto unnoticed outing to look around the valley for whatever treasures her badge picked up on. The duo weren’t expecting to achieve anything of value to the mission by checking in at home, as the intent was more for a sentimental visit than a productive one. Despite the relative urgency of their objective, (hopefully) none of the leaders, including Fox, expressed any objection to their leave. If there was a time for them to visit home, it would be now. For all they knew, they would not get another chance.

---

A short while later, Hat Kid returned from her brief caper with two gold jigsaw pieces, two armfuls of brimming honeycombs, and the gratitude of a rescued pterodactyl-esque creature. ‘Rescue’ entailed little more than making direct contact, at which point the grateful creature flew off, so why it needed help to begin with was a mystery to her. It seemed like something they could have done at any time. As for the spoils, she couldn’t think of what to do with the puzzle pieces, but found them neat and novel enough to warrant keeping anyway. As for the honey, she got chased by too many bees for it to not get used, and she certainly planned to make good use of it. She would have to take care to keep it free of the giant bee’s notice if it was to last her.

Banjo and Kazooie returned a moment or two after the child to a room of ready adventurers, with their instruments reclaimed (but stowed away), an opened letter in hand, and their spirits lifted. They had been waiting for longer than they could remember for this, and they were hardly alone. It wouldn’t surprise them to be met with a round of applause by their teammates in recognition of it, but with or without it, the fact alone was its own celebration. All that mattered was that they were happy now. They were at peace. They could face anything now.

“Congratulations,” Fox, the Seventh of the Original Eight, offered them with a soft smile and a friendly hand on Banjo’s shoulder. ”You’re one of us now.”

World of Light

feat.

Linkle

@Gentlemanvaultboy

Level: 5 (42 -> 45 (-3) -> 42/50) | 4 (34 -> 37/40) | 2 (17 -> 20/20) LEVEL UP! ---> 3 (0/30) | 7 (40 -> 43/70)
Location: Land of Adventure - Spiral Mountain
Word Count: 3372 (+3 EXP)

(Level up pending…)

Banjo and Kazooie were slow to follow on Geralt’s order after he had detrophyfied them, still reeling from the experience and in need of a second to wake themselves back up. Hat Kid was even slower still, slowly returning to consciousness just as exhausted as when she went out. The animal pair were better able to handle injury--even individually--than the child, therefore able to quickly recollect themselves. They jogged over to the tower entrance with the Kid a few steps behind them, mentally prepared to re-engage, only to find their foe pacified by the green-clad ranger woman of their group. Banjo halted his advance at the first notice of this, exercising equal parts restraint and caution as he observed from a manageable distance (door to bridge).

“I’m guessing we won?” he asked, having come to the obvious conclusion, but wanting to be doubly sure.

“We did?” Linkle called back. There had certainly been sounds of quick and dirty violence, so she popped her head up over the ice wall to be sure, but all she saw when she looked for the people that had taken out Tora were Jak, Gaige-Tron, the giant bug, and the Courier’s pet bug hanging around a pair of spirits that she presumed to be the Other Micheal and the lady with the big crossbow. If they needed any more confirmation of the area's safety, one only had to look up at Bowser bossing everyone around from the tower without a care in the world save for what they might have to face next. Linkle did some quick and simple math, then turned and gave the bear a thumbs up.

Banjo returned Linkle’s gesture with a nod, which told Kazooie she could cease swivelling her head about to watch for danger. Hat Kid sighed with relief at the news, propped herself lazily against the wall, and popped the cork on her half-empty bottle of Lon Lon Milk like the cap of a flask she would have no business carrying to finish the second, and last, serving of it. Had she considered it, and not needed the healing and nutrition as much as she did, the Heroine of Hyrule might have appreciated the familiar flavor. Banjo exited the tower to approach the Hylians and two hunters, but hadn’t cleared the green to the bridge when a swift silhouette passed over them. Fox bounded high above, the contrast of the sun darkening his shape at the crest of his leap before he aggressively descended on Link’s position with a forceful heel aimed for the weakened hero.

Linkle looked up over her shoulder when the shadow fell over them, only having a second to register downward strike. She turned to face the descending foe, standing in front of Link and crossing her arms in front of her to block the blow. In that moment she was able to register who the attacker was, and her confusion over why the flying fox was attacking now was swept away by the sunset red of his eyes. Right, Ryu had had this problem.

The heel threw her back against bridge railing, eliciting a pained groan from Link as she slightly crushed him. “Heart the Fox or he’ll never stop!” She shouted to everyone around her.

Fox pushed off of Linkle’s guard, drawing his sidearm on Link the instant his feet rickety lumber. Balance proved little issue for him, as it seldom did, but his aim shifted about still as he tried to get sights on Link around his stubborn protector. Alas, he could find no opening in the second spent looking, so he instead zipped past the woman in a phantasmic blur, turning with a reverse roundhouse at the end of his dash and ready to follow it with his firearm.

Linkle, luckily, knew what the fox must have been after. Even if he suddenly zipped past her faster than her eye could track she still had a pretty good idea of where he was going to end up. So, not even wasting the time to look, she extended one leg out and spun with a kick that would fly right over Links head and right into anybody standing over him. Both kicks collided at their ends, cancelling them out, but continuing Fox’s rotation. In that moment, the gears of Galeem’s influence turned in his head, occupied by multiple subseries of synaptic responses that amounted to a simple overriding shift in priorities. His mind--absent of his true self--interpreted the retaliatory defense as aggression, and just like that, Linkle was now an enemy in his eyes. He chased his deflected strike with his blaster hand, spinning to face the ranger woman, aimed at her chest, and squeezed off a short, rapid burst of point-blank laser fire.

Linkle yelped as a burst of fire hot agony exploded in her chest. There was no push to it, it just hurt, so she lashed out with her foot to try and kick that dangerous thing out of his hands. The toe of her boot forcibly bumped the pommel of the gun’s grip in a disarming strike that sent Fox’s gun flying in a steep arc that he followed with his eyes. In a single fluid turn, he faced his back to his opponent as he threw out a webster kick to her chin that simultaneously served as a jump to get him over the side of the bridge. He extended both arms out to each side--one to catch his gun, the other to find purchase on the ropes--then slung himself back around, tucked to fit through the gaps, and threw himself feet-first at Linkle. His rebounding strike met Linkle’s torso, knocking her back across some length of the bridge, and with the impact, he followed through into a retreating back tuck and resumed fire--before and after he landed.

Linkle slid back across the bridge, already feeling the hot stings of the fox's cool gun as she did. One in the thigh, another buried in her shoulder, one flying right across her cheek. She rolled backwards, pulling her shield off her back and holding it in front of her to absorb the shots, the lasers leaving smoking holes burned into the woodwork wherever they hit. She didn’t think the shield would last very long at all with the rate he was putting those shots out, but at the very least he wasn’t putting them into Link. She had his undivided attention by this point. Actually, that was probably perfect.

“Somebody?” She called out over the rapid fire PEW PEW PEW of the blaster barrage. “Come on, while I’ve got him on the ropes. Make a friend!” At that moment she felt resistance as a single hard impact met with her shield that threatened to force her back, but little else. Fox rushed the girl down and applied further pressure with a straightforward assault of seven additional kicks to her shield, the last of which had him flipping overhead with the rising adjustment in her guard, drawing the sword he took for the first time with two rotary, vertical follow-up slashes. Before he touched down again, he wreathed himself in flame, slowing his fall to a near stop with what was clearly a preparatory build-up for some kind of attack. Unique to his condition, hints and sparks of multicolor flickered beneath the burning red, further betraying the cause of his rationality deficit. Just as he was about to fire himself forward (at the potential risk of burning down the bridge), he was taken by surprise when he felt himself knocked aside by something that he could tell was heavier than him.

Ignoring the obvious physical threat posed by the cloak of fire, Banjo decided to heed the Hylian girl’s call and threw himself bodily at Fox in a wrapping tackle, taking him out of the air, and both of them (including Kazooie) over the edge of the bridge. There was little he could do in time to direct their fall besides keeping a tight clinch on the suddenly adversarial vulpine to make sure he came with them, and they fell like a weight into the moat, audibly slapping face-first into the water’s surface. This made for the duo’s third, and most painful dip today. They resurfaced a couple of seconds later, Banjo dragging Fox from out to lay him limply onto dry land and giving him a firm slap on the back to help him cough the water from his lungs. He was still alive, if barely, and by all accounts tapped out. He would sooner fall unconscious than get up after anyone else in his current state. Even as he tried sluggishly to lift his gun, Kazooie needed only to wing slap it away from him to render it virtually harmless.

“You okay, Miss?” Banjo called up to the girl in inquiry, gesturing a more interrogative thumbs up this time.

“Uhhhhhhh…” Linkle said, standing up and walking to the edge to look at them. Curiously she took a finger and put it to where the fox had shot her in the chest. It passed through the hole it had burned in her shirt and into the small divot that had been burned into her skin. She flinched and yanked the finger away. “Nothing that Blazermate can’t take care of!” She called back, forming some ice in her right hand and pressing the clump to where one of the shots had grazed along her cheek. “Do you guys know how to make him cool?”

“We got it from here, Fangirl.” Kazooie retorted in confirmation, cracking at Linkle’s established fascination with her world’s heroic legends.

“Yeah…” Banjo quietly said to himself, nodding. “Yeah…” He sat moatside for a prolonged moment longer in contemplation of the ‘make traitors cool’ process, long enough for the lingering silence to wear out its welcome.

“...”

“Well…?”

“Yeah… erm… I… don’t actually know what to do,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his head in slight embarrassment. Though a demonstration took place just moments ago, he had reappeared just in time to miss it.

“Hm…” Kazooie thought aloud, probing her own memory bank in search of a communicable example to work from. “Okay. So, remember when we fought that tree, back in the Dead Zone, and whatshisface threw a heart at Nero?”

“A heart? You mean, like…” He started, wondering if there was some other morbid occurrence in that place that he had somehow missed.

“No,” she preemptively corrected before her partner could enter a fallacious line of inquiry, “It’s much friendlier than that.” If beating a potential ally candidate into submission to be conscripted or liberated passed for ‘friendly’, then she wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

“Ooh. Okay,” he answered with a nod. “So… do we have to find them, or…”

“Just summon them, I think.”

“How do I do that?”

“Try touching yourself… O-on the heart, I mean,” she quickly corrected in a subdued fluster, the occasional innuendo they were once used to getting away with slipping into her dialogue. To test this, Banjo hovered a hand over his heart, where a pink, diffusing glow penetrated his palm on both sides. He pulled his hand away by a few inches to see a soft stream of rose-colored energy follow, and both of them admired it for a moment before he gently beat his chest to manifest a Friend Heart for the first time.

“Like that?” Banjo held the Heart aloft floating above his hand, presenting it before them and smiling as he beheld it.

“Yep. That’s it.”

“Al-right! Guess I’ll just…” By the time he returned his attention to their downed rogue teammate to administer ‘friendlification’, they found that the behatted child had already beat them to it. Fox’s color started returning to him, and with it, his memory…

---

On the cusp of dusk, they--an unprecedented gathering of heroes, villains, and everything in-between--stood at what may as well have been the world’s precipice, between it, and it’s self-appointed new ruler. At the front of all of them… was Fox, with an assemblage of legends at his back, Heaven and its army before them, and him quite literally pointing a gun at the new closest thing he’s ever met to ‘God’. Though he would never admit to knowing it, he was in over his head, but that never stopped him before. This wasn’t exactly a first for him, or a number of those with him. To those for whom it applied, they had been here before, at the very same cliff overlooking the sea, peering out into the horizon at the shining blank spot left in the world by the destruction of the Isle of Ancients that preceded Tabuu’s defeat. Back then it acted as a symbolic beacon of a brighter future to follow. Little did any of them know that the light of new dawn would eventually herald their darkest day. And now, they stood again once more… at Ground Zero...

---

Fox’s eyes, now clear of hostile red, opened on the New World for what seemed like the first time; as if waking from a coma. His most prominent memory rushed back through his head, overlapping with that of most recent events. He weakly pushed himself up and began examining his surroundings, trying as he could to make sense of them while he took the moment to readjust. The next thing he knew, a purple-clad child in a top hat was handing him a steel broadsword that she was obviously too small to wield, the logical conclusion being that it wasn’t hers.

“You dropped this,” she clarified, ironically further confusing him ever so slightly. He eyed the weapon for a moment with an expression of puzzlement before simply accepting it.

“Thanks,” he replied, reclaiming the sword and propping himself against it. The child then strolled over to the next curious item she spotted laying at the moat’s edge: Fox’s blaster. The realization hit him as she started playing with it like it wasn’t a dangerous tool that could cause her serious harm if mishandled, knowing fully well that it could (as she understood with swords). This prompted Fox to check his holster to find it atypically empty. “Hey,” he addressed her once more to get her attention. “That’s mine too,” he calmly beckoned, politely demanding she relinquish to him his own firearm, as she did without a fuss. She already picked one up back at the canyon earlier, so there was no need to rob anyone of theirs. She tossed Fox his pistol back and nonchalantly made her way back up the mountain.

Banjo and Kazooie, meanwhile, were pondering a few choice implications about the situation amongst themselves.

“Huh…” uttered Banjo, slightly dumbfounded by the unexpected interruption.

“Well, that was a little disappointing. I guess we built that up for nothing,” Kazooie complained, having unreasonably felt cheated out of a moment of exaggerated importance.

“At least she saved us some XP…” he added, suddenly sure of how the Heart system worked, and then less so. “So… what should I do with this now?” He thought for a moment about what one influenced party member could mean for the rest of them. “You think there’s anyone else we might have missed?”

“I don’t know, but I’m wondering how we failed to notice until now. We’ve been travelling with it the whole time.”

“Right. I’m just saying... I’d hate to waste this.”

“I don’t think it matters.” Around that time they noticed Fox had returned to consciousness. “Oh, look. He’s awake,” Kazooie noted with little enthusiasm.

“Heyyy, erm…” Banjo started awkwardly, “Sorry about that. Are you okay?”

“About what?” replied Fox, genuinely unsure as to the nature of the apology offered, exhaustion still present in his voice. As he looked around, a slightly better question came to mind for him. “Where are we?”

“We must’ve hit him too hard,” Kazooie mockingly inferred at his expense.

“Home,” Banjo answered. “Well… we’re home. At our home. Everyone else is just passing through.”

“Everyone else?” The very mention piqued Fox’s interest, for he couldn’t help being curious as to who all else was left.

“They’re up there.” he said, pointing to the top of Spiral Mountain. “We should probably be getting back to them now.”

“Yeah…” Fox concurred, and began hauling himself somewhat shakily to his feet.

“Need a hand?” Banjo offered to the clearly injured vulpine.

“Thanks,” he started as he stubbornly stood back up, “but I’ll be fine.” While he wasn’t wrong in that he could make the short trek up on his own, Banjo would have outpaced him just by walking at his present rate.

“Here,” Banjo insisted, throwing a supportive arm around their revived ally’s shoulders. “It’s the least we could do to make up for earlier.” That part still didn’t make much sense to Fox at the moment, but he couldn’t be bothered then to spare the mental energy questioning it. He conceded to the offer to help, resting his own arm around the generous ursine as a voluntary crutch, and they began hiking up the mountain trail at a relaxed pace.

“I’m Banjo, by the way, and my pal here’s Kazooie.” Save for the formal introduction, Fox was already somewhat familiar with the pair. Although he had never met them until now, he still knew them by name and reputation. What’s more is that he remembered the call to action against Galeem not reaching them in time. Not that it would have made much of a difference, he thought.

“My name’s Fox.” He replied.

“Fox, eh? Your parents must’ve had QUITE the imagination,” Kazooie remarked sarcastically about his obvious namesake.

“I wouldn’t know,” he retorted tersely, letting the somber implication of his reply speak for itself. After about a minute they rounded the mountain’s peak, where the others were no doubt waiting.

“Medic!” Kazooie called out, expressing not the sense of urgency that usually went with the command. Banjo immediately sought out Blazermate, for lack of knowing any other healers in their group, and dropped off Fox next to the tower while he went to ask for her help. They found her already at work healing Link, the queen bee, and others. Poor girl was liable to be swamped with requests. “It hurts right here, Doc,” Kazooie began on approach, specifying no part of her despite the emphasis. “Think you could patch me up, please?” Banjo gave her a nudge of reminder for trying to cut in on the waitlist. “Oh, right. And him, too,” she added with a gesture to Fox.

“I know you’re busy, but would you mind taking care of him when you get a chance? He needs it worse than we do,” Banjo clarified, making sure to thank her in advance after putting in his request. Kazooie had a point in that they needed care as well, but they could sooner wait than the three besides them who were hit the hardest. Though, the fact that Kazooie asked nicely did stand out to him, even if her politeness was accidental (and undercut). Before he forgot, he held the Friend Heart he was still carrying aloft in presentation and asked, “Does anybody need one of these? I’d hate for anyone else to go rogue on us,” he declared aloud to anyone who was listening.

While he waited for (or received) medical aid, Fox took stock of those around him. Among them, he only knew four: Bowser, Jr, Peach and Link, and to say that he ‘recognized’ them would be generous, to say the least. Link’s was the only face out of them that remained familiar. The other three had undergone some… changes. Was he having some kind of feverish dream, or was he seeing prospect symptoms of a nightmarish new reality. One thing was for certain, he would have to get acquainted with it, and likely soon. The umbral boundary that lay just beyond drew his eye and reminded him of a past evil that they had once faced. If Bowser’s educated guess at what waited for them ahead proved to be correct, the lair of Banjo and Kazooie’s nemesis wouldn’t at all resemble its former self from when they first set foot in it. Whatever it promised would almost certainly be far worse.

World of Light

@Dawnrider

Tora & Poppi/GM

@Lugubrious

Geralt of Rivia

@MULTI_MEDIA_MAN

Linkle

@Gentlemanvaultboy

Level: 2 (14 -> 17/20) | 6 (54 -> 57/60) | 5 (49 -> 52/50) | 5 (5 -> 8/50) | 7 (42 -> 45 (-5) -> 40/70)
Location: Land of Adventure - Spiral Mountain
Word Count: 2118 (+3 EXP)

Geralt managed to recover from his desperate leap away from Link’s whirling attack, not trusting Quen to manage to block such a flurry of blows. As the Hylian approached, Geralt narrowed his eyes and shifted his stance slightly, ready to parry the incoming blows. Steel rang against steel as Link’s slashes rained down, Geralt expertly diverting the blows as the two danced around, Link being careful to try and keep the Witcher between him and at least one of the other adventurers at any given time. While he could keep Link from hitting him, Geralt was frustrated to realize that the boy wasn’t giving him any real openings.

Making his way around from behind Geralt in rapid steps, Fox came dashing in at Link’s left with a running sweep into a double aerial roundhouse. The boy, despite being preoccupied with another swordsman, was quick on the defense, and out of four hits, only the second from Fox’s tail managed to tag Link. All the same, he now had another foe on each side to deal with yet again. He focused his defense primarily on the Witcher, given blades were immediately deadlier than feet, while balancing offense evenly between the two. The manageable, but stressful trade went on for the better part of a moment until Link decided to do something about it, throwing out a swift, heavy diagonal swing in a semi-spin--a divided modification to his Spin Attack (and down smash)--to each side with the lethal intent to drive his attackers off. Geralt stepped back as Link’s sword spun around him, the attack telegraphed ever so slightly. Once the blade sailed past him, the Witcher stepped in, thrusting his blade towards the Hylian’s center of mass. Having dealt with the same earlier, Fox anticipated the strike from the split-second wind-up and evasively corkscrewed over the attack, then stepped back in to punish the Hylian with a signature backflip kick to his chin.

Link let out a pained grunt as he snapped backward head first through the air, piercing razor steel running the length of his back as he left the ground. Minus the sustained damage, this happened to work out for him better than expected as far as his positioning. He righted himself while airborne, holding his Slate forth commandingly to detonate the cubic bomb he left at his opponents’ feet without their prior noticing. Fox caught sight of the blinking explosive almost a second too late to skip back away from it and flash his Reflector to nullify the damage, but still being launched by the blast force. Geralt, however, was not as lucky, and found himself launched into the wall of the tower, groaning in pain.

In near unison with the first detonation, Link triggered a second below him at just the right distance to harmlessly propel himself higher. At the near peak of his cheated altitude increase he drew his bow once more with the intent to arrow-blitz the remaining half of his opposition as he had done just moments ago. By this time, however, Fox’s shield was down, and they were at level with one another when he started up his illusory dash. In the temporal dilation that was Link’s perception, Fox was the only other one moving at a rate worth considering, rushing through the air straight for the Hylian with a trail of faint blue wind drawing the line behind him. They made contact the instant before Link completed his first draw as Fox bodily rammed into him with a reckless forearm tackle with enough forward momentum to carry them all the way outside through the gaping hole in the tower over the entrance.

The two locked fighters clipped part of the remaining brickwork on their way out, sending them tumbling over the bridge, onto the left guardrope, and bouncing over the side. Link booted Fox overhead while Fox wrested the bow from Link’s grasp--thanks in part to Link releasing it for a handhold on the bridge--blindly flinging it away anywhere into the field as he continued to fall. The air in his lungs audibly, forcibly, painfully vacated them with uncontrolled impact onto a chunk of demolished rubble at ground-level, and he haplessly rolled the rest of the way down the destructed mound until he fell prone in the dirt, raspilly groaning as he tried to recover his breath.

He successfully relieved his enemy of an advantage, but took an unduly hard, potentially costly hit in doing so, even if all it cost him was a bit of time out of his ongoing role in the battle. That much would likely hinge on whether or not the hero followed him down in pursuit or opted to deal with him last. At this point, it hardly mattered. Either way, neither of them could relent until the other fell, for in their wrong minds, greater judgement would not avail them.

Geralt moaned as he shakily stood, watching through half-closed eyes as Fox and Link jumped out of the tower. Rolling his shoulders to make sure he wasn’t too badly hurt, the Witcher ran over to the others that had been turned into trophies and quickly started touching the bases of their trophies, not stopping to check until he had hit the last base. “Come on, they went out the hole in the tower.” Again not stopping to check if he was being followed, Geralt raced out of the tower, looking to find some sign of the two.

The hero of Hyrule pulled himself up onto the bridge, his muscles screaming. He stood and breathed heavily, watching the tower entrance for any sign of his next opponent. He doubted that they would give him time to recover.

Unfortunately for Link, his next opponent didn’t come from the tower. The sound of boots on stone sounded out behind him, three hard footfalls. If he turned it would be just in time to see a girl in a green cloak pitching something pink and glowing right at him. On instinct he raised his right arm to block, only to remember he no longer had a shield. Instead he pivoted, trying to intercept the incoming projectile with his sword.

Linkle growled as the sword hit the friend heart, popping it like a soap bubble, but didn’t stop running. Honestly, what kind of Hylian had that reaction to a heart? With Link’s sword outstretched to parry the heart she took the opportunity to slip inside his guard, bumping his sword arm with her shoulder to push it even further afield and bringing up a knee to strike at his gut in an attempt to knock the breath out of him.

Tired and wounded as he was, Link fell prey to Linkle’s strategy and gasped, almost faltering. He dug deep to clench his teeth and bring his sword around in a rather slow horizontal slash. Linkle ducked under the sluggish blow, bringing her hand up and thumping her chest to make another friend heart as she did. Popping back up she reached out and grabbed Link’s sword arm around the wrist, pressing herself forward to force it against his chest with her whole body while raising the heart like a dagger. “Just take it, they’re good for you!” She shouted, bringing it down toward his face. The pink shape slipped right in, and Linkle ended up palming her hero in the forehead. In the next few seconds she got a front-row viewing as the power of the bizarre heart surged through Link, scrubbing the streaks of ash from his skin and washing the sunset from his eyes. His tense and weary muscles, struggling against Linkle’s grip, finally relaxed, and he gradually went limp. As Link’s struggle ceased and his condition caught up with him, the harrowed look evaporated from his face, and he slipped into unconsciousness in the girl’s arms.

“Ha!” Linkle laughed, then started struggling as the hero went limp. She half carried half dragged him over to the side of the bridge, laying him gingerly against the railing and looking him over. Even through the wounds it was clear that this is the one that had shown up in her dreams. It was sheer luck, or at least skill on his part, that he wasn’t dead. From the look of it her friends had seriously put the boots to him.

She stood up, looking down to where she’d seen the Fox fall when they’d flown out of the tower. He was lying in a painful looking heap, which in this world was a relief. She’d half-expected to see nothing but a spirit down there.

Charging out of the tower, Geralt saw the two Links fighting just long enough to see Linkle force the Friend Heart into the male hero. Letting out a sigh and a nod, Geralt approached the girl. “Linkle. Good work,” He called out. “Now we just have a few more.”

She looked up as The Witcher approached, smiling before an uncomfortable look came over her. She glanced nervously from him, to Link, and back again before asking, “He didn’t kill anyone, did he?”

Geralt shook his head. “No. Just turned the lot of them into trophies, but they should be fine now. I hit the bases.”

She let out a relieved breath before smacking both her cheeks in an effort to psych herself up. “All right!” She said. “The giant looks pinned down from out here, so that just leaves the two that fell off the tower.” She pointed off to the area beside the tower, near the waterfalls. “The last time I saw the crossbow lady she was over there. The other one fell into the water, but they could be anywhere by now.”

“Linky-Linky!” Tora sang as he bounded out of the Tower, with Poppi following behind. Following his partner’s revival he’d stopped to make sure she was okay, and now both appeared to back up their allies against Link. The only hylian they found, however, was one with long, strawberry-blonde hair and matching rabbit ears. As Tora approached the bridge wobbled, so Poppi took to the air just to be safe. Up above, a couple more allies were trading blows with Gough, but the Nopon didn’t see anyone else up there. “Something happen? Where others?”

Reasoning that anyone at the top of the tower would be otherwise engaged, Poppi scanned the ground. She didn’t get far before a black arrow careened into Tora from nowhere, trophifying him and sending him off the bridge in one golden burst. “Masterpon!” Poppi dove after him, leaving the others to deal with the attacker. Judging by the path of the shot, the sniper in question hid somewhere near the riverbank, either by the tree or in the field.

“Poppi!” Linkle shouted as the Blade dived over the side. By the time she heard the splash she’d dived to, sliding up to the railings to take a little cover. She placed her hand down on top of it, her hair flashing blue as ice began to grow up from it to cut Geralt, Link, and her off from the sniper’s line of sight.

Geralt grunted in shock, ducking behind the barrier Linkle produced. “Damn, can’t even get a moment. We’ll have to hunt ‘em down now. I hate it when they hide…” The Witcher grumbled.

Having regained himself in the brief moment following his fall, Fox picked himself back up at a dignified pace that betrayed not his condition and drew sights to the bridge on Link’s last known position. His need for medical attention would neither compel him to seek it as needed, nor deter him from stubbornly resuming battle. For him, the fight wasn’t over yet, but as it turned out, it wasn’t for anyone else either. He had forgotten all about the remaining snipers until an afield black arrow streaked overhead past the tower’s base at the mountain’s peak, prompting him to pivot into cover behind the stone debris. He didn’t have time to get a clear bead on Link beforehand, and by the time he glanced back up, an inexplicably formed wall of ice on the guardropes of the bridge impeded his view. Even if he started from the top of the mound, Fire wouldn’t carry him high enough and was too slow to start, which would leave him vulnerable, so he would have to make his way back up on foot. When he saw the giant atop the tower begin to fall, he took that as his chance to book it for the mountain’s base, Illusion zipping over the moat just out of the giant’s fall path, opposite the fielded sniper’s view, to cover his first rounding up the mountain path.

World of Light

Level: 5 (37 -> 39/50) | 4 (29 -> 31/40) | 2 (9 -> 11/20)
Location: Land of Adventure - Spiral Mountain
Word Count: 970 (+2 EXP)

Fox, Hat Kid, and the duo all three successfully made it onto the mountain, but two of the three had yet to breach the tower that sat atop its peak. A skewed wall run cut the child in midway up the mountainside, whereupon she miscalculated a second run up a taller wall that had her fall one or two of her heights short of the bridge. She would have to make the rest of the way up fairly, just as the developer ’nature’ intended, and keep her eyes up along the way. As she came around the mountain’s front side at the top quarter, the bowwoman above began raining down black arrows aimed for her and the duo on the bottom level directly below.

“WOAH!” she exclaimed in surprise, eyes wide, springing backwards to miss the first arrow by the brim of her hat (were she wearing it at the moment). She skipped back, flipped, jumped from the ledge, tumbled with her midair jump, and dove back to the ledge in a series of nimble, evasive acrobatics, then hopped back to her feet to dodge one more shot and sped off up the mountainside with her Sprint Cap on. Her being a closer target and acting unintentionally as a bullet magnet bought Banjo and Kazooie a slim opening to ascend to the point where she left off, where they then ended up drawing the bulk of the bowwoman’s fire--likely none too happy about failing to tag them the first time around. Though they were looking out for it more, they didn’t match the child’s grace or luck in advancing unscathed… or at all really.

Banjo rolled out of the way of the first couple of shots, managed to spotdodge another, and sidestepped a couple more. Try as they might to escape her line, however, the shooter methodically led her shots to pin down the grounded, less agile ursine, driving him to the edge where he lost his footing. Banjo caught a hold of the ledge with one hand, but as he reached with the other, an additional discouraging shot from Imani forced him to swivel out of its way instead. From their unfavorable position, the two were almost certainly doomed. What saved them (if anything) was Bowser’s spectacular gambit followed by Mimikyu’s retaliation, both of which would provide Banjo an ample window to pull himself back onto solid ground and continue upward. The Koopa King’s move failed, sadly, and his trophy glanced off the side of the tower and over Banjo’s head.

Banjo reflexively (read accidentally) reached to catch the trophy over the cliffside while moving, the weight and momentum causing him to tilt and sway dangerously. Upon regaining his footing, he might have hazarded using the trophy as a shield while carrying it with him, had he not caught it by its base. Reanimating light coalesced around the Koopa’s still form, and in a confused, unsteady panic, Banjo swung the reviving cargo overhead, the weight and loss of balance dragging him into a leaning spin over the ledge. Unsure what else to do with it, he haphazardly let go of the trophy on the upswing to let it fly/fall wherever; to let it be someone else’s problem. With his back to open air, anchored to the cliff by only his toes, he entered an imbalanced state of comical windmill arm flailing in a desperate attempt to recover, with Kazooie rapidly beating her wings trying to assist. Alas, the shock of Tora and Poppi’s forced entry through the tower walls tipped them into freefall.

“Yuh-oh! WOOOOAA-” His familiar throe would be cut off by their second dip in the moat today, happening within moments of each other. All the while, they were left open to any unoccupied snipers that saw fit to capitalize on their momentary vulnerability, provided they could make the shot in spite of the Blade and Driver’s disruptive stunt. Whether or not the duo would still be animate by the time they hit the water would depend largely on that. Assuming their survival, however, they would swim their way back to the crossing where they started before and try again, but this time employing corner cutting Spring Jumps at the back of the mountain (where fewer shooters now were) to bypass the zombie horde that were now slowly scaling it.

Hat Kid skid to a halt at the entrance as she turned sharply to enter seconds behind Fox. He spared a momentary glance around and upward before moving for the central elevator, stopping a step short when the foundations began to tremble. He directed his attention to the source of the disturbance in time to dive out of the way of what burst through the wall. Kid more fell than jumped aside in avoidance, but avoided the crashing drill all the same. It was then that she noticed the Pokemon tagalong for the first time as Mimikyu drifted gently back onto her head.

“OoOoh…” she squeaked with curious delight, eyes aimed to the top of her sockets at the unexpected passenger, and a smile to accompany her gaze. On the other end of the room, Fox rolled to a kneel, instinctively drawing iron sights on the two abrupt entrants before realizing who they were, then lowering his aim. As soon as they regained their bearings, he motioned for Tora and Poppi to move onto the elevator before activating it. The child then scrambled to her feet and lept for the rising platform to catch it on the way up, pulling herself and Mimi up onto it so they wouldn’t miss the first trip and be forced to wait. The entire way up--until reaching a point where Fire could carry him the rest of the way--Fox kept a ready eye out for whoever may see them coming.

World of Light

Level: 5 (35 -> 37/50) | 4 (27 -> 29/40) | 2 (7 -> 9/20)
Location: Land of Adventure - Spiral Mountain
Word Count: 860 (+2 EXP)

Power: Illusion

Banjo and Kazooie’s gambit fell just short of success, but their move was not a complete bust. They survived long enough to get closer, more than once cutting it too close to manage it, and that was the first necessary step to achieving victory in this engagement. As per their fallback plan, they dove for the moat to save themselves rather than committing to a hit that otherwise may have not been worth the price. An Ancient Arrow, hot on the breegull’s tail feathers, was stayed only by a combination of physics and luck as it broke against the water’s surface, its detonation permeating them with a refracted, vibrant hue.

Being submerged in a natural sound dampener did not deprive them notice of the destructive activity going on around them--specifically the rupture of Grunty’s Lair. Banjo walked the moat floor with his hands for two pushes to duck into the cove as rubble fell crashing from the sundered monument, tremoring the earth above them with impact. They waited out for a moment to survey what they could of the action from where they were for long enough to be potentially (if only temporarily) forgotten about by the hunters. They came up under the bridge connecting the mainland to the mountain islet, where they could remain momentarily concealed/covered, to spot something most peculiar to them: a moped, seemingly unmanned, gently coasting downhill in neutral toward the same said bridge--almost as if it was being guided there…

Because it was.

During the chaos of the tower’s sustained bombardment, the Lair being part way leveled, and everything else going on in general, Hat Kid realized she had gone unnoticed, and saw it as her opportunity to get under the tower while hopefully keeping free of notice. She crawled slowly to the edge of the grass next to her scooter, just outside of arm’s reach of it, and as soon as she could confirm that no eyes were on her, she rolled out from the patch to the vehicle’s left side, facing AWAY from the tower. She stayed low to the ground, hanging from the vehicle’s off side with her Skull Cap on to condense her already small profile, attempting to stay out of sight while she softly nudged her scooter into motion by pushing against the ground with her foot (much like taking off on a skateboard). The idea was to provide herself with mobile cover to make her advance whilst ideally dissuading any hostile onlookers from firing on her. This, of course, counted on her movements being careful and calculated enough to give the convincing impression of accidental motion so as to remain inconspicuous.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the valley, Fox took the first opening made available to him by the shooters’ divided attention to pivot out of cover in a low, dead sprint for the mountain. With the first step he took past the outermost of the giant stumps that could shield him, he went from zero to Mach faster than most could blink in a straight, blurry line of translucent blue afterimages with a sudden burst of speed that would get him behind the nearest (normal-sized) tree to the mountain. He took two running steps up the tree, into its canopy, and sped out through it in the exact same manner toward the islet to put himself at the halfway point leading up. He kicked off of the mountain wall at speed, sending himself into a twisting layout for the hanging bridge. He aimed to grab a hold by one of the closer planks, carrying his momentum through to swing under, launch himself overhead, and zoom once more to hit the tower’s entrance at the mountain’s peak where the corkscrew ramp ended.

Undoubtedly, Fox’s approach was characteristically bolder, thus incurring greater risk, but if he made it, he stood to beat everyone else to the tower, as many corners as he cut to get there. Hat Kid wouldn’t be too far behind him. She stepped from her scooter, letting it continue to roll on without her as she deftly bounded over the moat crossing, foot scaling the wall upon contact. With another wall run she would be at the top, so long as she was careful to hug the walls and stay under the line of fire. The duo opted to pace themselves more diligently, in the sense that they wouldn’t be skipping most of the path unless they had to. Banjo pulled them up onto the wooden platform and broke into a hiking jog up the spiral path, keeping as close as he could to the inside as they made their ascent. Circling the mountain by its natural trail allowed them to look outward and get a read on the activity surrounding them as well as above them. And of course, despite their exercise in care, they wouldn’t be slogging their way to the top, and both would take care to keep an eye up and their legs and wings ready for anything they might have to evade--whether it be a shot from on high, or even another ally bombardment (in whatever form that may take).

World of Light

Level: 5 (27 -> 32 -> 35/50) | 4 (19 -> 24 -> 27/40) | 1 (9 -> 14/10) LEVEL UP! ---> 2 (4 -> 7/20)
Location: Land of Adventure - No-man’s Land -> Spiral Mountain
Word Count: 2330 (+3 EXP)

Item: Ray Gun, Iote’s Shield, Bytan Ball (x4), Primid Hat -> Red Feathers (x2), Chicken Thigh, Monster Eye, Trowlon-lon Milk (x1 -> 0.8), -> Steel Sword

(Level up pending…)

Banjo took aim with his spirit-loaded partner at the depleting horde of the Subspace Army, but Kazooie momentarily ‘misfired’, her shot delayed with a hiccup before spitting out a sword tip-first on a straight flight into an unfortunate Primid’s back. The feat was closer to a comically violent circus stunt yielding a meager, incidental result than the work of creative tactic. Banjo winced upon seeing this at the realization of what he accidentally subjected his partner to.

“S-Sorry about that. You alright, Kazooie?”

“*cough, cou-*Yeah… I’m fine,” she replied dryly, but otherwise no worse off; probably needing little more than a drink of water. Banjo put her away to give her a breather, and seeing as the conflict was dying down anyway, there wasn’t much need left for either of them to engage.

The skewered puppet-being spent its last moment staring agonizingly at the blade tip protruding from its chest before Fox came rolling over its back, gripping the sword by its hilt and fluidly drawing it from the dying Primid in a full vertical swing. He added his other sword arm to the draw, slicing both the fell shadow puppet and another approaching one in the same move and finishing them with a reverse stab and forward thrust from an arm each. He examined the Beam Sword as it began to flicker, suggesting that its utility had just about run its course, so he casually threw the broken weapon aside without looking, splitting a random Primid’s head vertically down the middle before the blade’s light faded out completely. With his now empty hand he drew his blaster and let off a few rapid volleys of potshots at the few enemies that remained while Peach spoke. She needn’t tell him twice, as he had been dispatching them with extreme prejudice already. To boot, they had shared past experience in dealing with the Subspace Army, so they both knew what was at stake (perhaps her more than him).

When they were clear of the last of their opposition, Fox holstered his gun and ‘sheathed’ the steel sword at his back as he made his way into the canyon pass at the front of the line, helping the other leaders set the pace. Hat Kid slung her new shield around her back, stowed away her new sidearm (which now put her a step closer to having a real gun [and edge]), hopped aboard her recovered scooter, and followed suit behind the party leaders. The animal duo fell in with the group on foot in short order.

The intrepid party pressed on tirelessly (except Kid, being the only one left with ‘tires’) for close to half an hour through the barren one-way corridor of cliff faces until, eventually, a light at the end of their path came into view. Odd, that, considering what they were heading for; the great, aberrant sphere of darkness contrasted by the luminous end marker. Adding to the disconcerting oddity of their path’s final stretch was the growing presence of fresh Summer greenery, after travelling through miles of bare, sunless wasteland to get where they were going. The group pushed on for just a minute more until they crossed the tunnelled threshold into open daylight, to a sight most familiar to only two of them.

What they came upon left the duo floored. They took all of their first moment after arriving to reassure themselves that they in fact were where they believed themselves to be.

“Banjo? Are we really...?”

“Yep. We’re home, Kazooie.”

Indeed, they were, as hard as it might have been to believe. Sadly, the feeling it left them with wasn’t that of a warm welcome home, but rather one more sinister and foreboding. Perhaps the void’s edge resting just behind Gruntilda’s Lair wasn’t a sight one would exactly consider ‘inviting’. Even still, that wasn’t all that struck them as ‘out of place’...

“A starting area in the land of starting areas. I should be less surprised, but…”

“Let me guess, you’ve got a bad feeling about this?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it the graphical update?”

“Sort of, but no. I mean the place looks better than we left it.” She was referring, of course, to the fact that the terrain had not yet been partially destroyed, as per the events of their second adventure. It was as if time itself saw fit to remake the valley anew. The sole exception seemed to be the bore hole in the mountainside that they arrived from.

“Oh yeah, I noticed that too,” he said, having only just noticed. Gazing back at the lair and their ominous destination that lay just beyond it prompted an obvious thought from him. “So… you think ol’ Winky has anything to do with this?” He asked his partner, referring to their nemesis by her last name in jest.

“If she does, I can’t imagine her doing it alone, or having a lot of input. Handiwork’s too competent for that.”

“Hmm. Makes sense,” Banjo added, cupping his chin and nodding his head. “In any case, I wonder who-” Banjo stopped shy of finishing his thought to direct his attention upward to the movement over the mountain, him and Kazooie shielding their eyes from the sunburst to behold the spectral entity that emerged from it. As one might expect from the literal right hand of the Lord of Light, the Master Hand addressed the heroes in condescending word of ill omen before instantly summoning a stone tower with six marksmen upon it atop Spiral Mountain with but a simple gesture. He then issued the conditions of the challenge he set before them and summarily vanished. On his departing command, the Illuminated* warriors under him took their vantaged positions, marked their chosen targets, and let fly.

Fox, Hat Kid, and the duo were quick to heed Peach’s call to take cover, with Fox being the knowledgeably quickest to do so. Though the Kid, bear and bird didn’t share the same battlefield experience in dealing with long-distance assaults, they knew a gun when they saw one, and they weren’t keen on being openly available targets for them. Especially considering what they were capable of in this special case, of which Euden was made a terrifying example when a beaming black arrow pierced through him and left him inanimately petrified where he fell. The eyes of the platformers went wide at the sight, stirring them on into higher gear to find their way out of sight.

Fox swiftly rounded the nearest corner on the clearing of oversized tree stumps where he hugged the canyon wall with his back, Hat Kid ramped the stream crossing while diving from her scooter into a tall patch of dry, golden grass where she would lay prone, and the duo decided that the quickest route to safety was directly up, Spring Jumping up onto one of the cliffs overhead and scurrying their way behind one among the several rising rock formations where they would take care to keep their heads down. The latter of the three (or technically four) knew the terrain best by default, but the feeling they got was that they wouldn’t easily be able to take advantage of it with a stark distance and firepower disadvantage. They wouldn’t have long to deliberate on their next course of action, so they made a rushed mental reassessment of the situation and their options. The conclusion they came to was that they would have to act boldly if they expected to make any headway in this challenge, and Kazooie had a simple--and possibly bad--idea for how to get started.

She handed Banjo the bottle of redish-pink knockoff from their latest loot roundup and trusted him to know what to do next. He hesitantly examined its contents while he glossed over the label, then pulled the cork and downed the first of five servings. Him turning away with a mild reaction of disgust might have indicated just how pleasant it was. The flavor and consistency were closest to that of rice water… if the ‘rice’ in question was an artificial substitute. The results, however, as far as the intended effect, were much more satisfying--if at first startling.

The ursine turned head over foot with a surprised, helpless yell as he starting rising, but Kazooie was able to catch and stabilize the both of them at the zenith of their concoction assisted ascent, unfurling in a spiral as she emerged in full flight. Though they were already capable of flight, it made sense for them to cheat their height as much as they could without exhausting their precious feather supply, but would spare a couple--or another drink--if they needed the extra boost. On that note, Banjo grabbed and plucked the feathers from the two hats they received and discarded the remains, aimlessly casting aside what they couldn’t use of them.

By this point they were likely to be fired upon by any number of the nested shooters, so they would be doing their best as far as keeping dynamic in their evasive and advancing movements. Thankfully, the ever impatient and headstrong Koopa family were already making their own advances on the tower, which would almost certainly help take some of the heat off of them. They banked, twisted, dipped, climbed, stalled, etcetera in every attempt to stay clear of the trophifying shots that came their way as they tried to close in on the leftmost shooters. Although it would be difficult to manage a successful hit while dodging, Kazooie unloaded their entire collection of Bytan Balls at the heads of their assailants; two for the frontward human bowman, one each for the rifleman and tri-bow wielder on the left. If her aim and their luck held true, the rubberized shots could serve to disrupt enemy fire, possibly striking multiple times/enemies per shot, with some bouncing back into Banjo’s hands to restock--or maybe they just miss and none of that happens. Either way, it was worth every shot they could take to try.

Assuming their chance bought with their distraction, the bear and bird tucked their arms and wings to their sides in order to gain speed--as much as they could short of relearning Beak Bomb--as they closed in on the two shooters head-on. They did their best to line them up to prevent one from shooting past the other as the duo recklessly charged toward both with every intention of knocking them from the tower. For contingency’s sake, they readied themselves for the case that the frontmost shooter acted to get off a point blank shot on them, for which they would swerve around them in a bullet spiral to check their teammate over the ledge. While their gambit was undoubtedly risky, they stood to gain substantially, should they succeed. This, of course, was the best case. The worst case was that they get hit with a statue ray and accomplish nothing whatsoever. Most likely, they would have to take a plunge to clear themselves of the line of fire, whether they took anyone with them or not.

Grounding one shooter over the gambled two would be better than none, but if it came down to it, none would be preferable if it meant staying alive without being imprisoned in one’s own form. In any case, they couldn’t keep up avoiding fire at their going rate, so they would aim for the moat as they fell. Directly below the tower out of the line of sight was as good a place as any to avoid fire from those atop it. The pair knew they could duck into the underwater alcove under the mountain if necessary to buy themselves some time, and they had the collective lung capacity between them to manage. They would/could only wait out long enough for the enemies to momentarily forget about them, however. At which point they would begin their tactful ascent up the mountain and through the tower.

While Fox picked arguably the best spot on ground level for interchangeable cover, where he could exit from any point, he knew he wouldn’t be able to get any closer to their enemy without them first being sufficiently occupied. There was one among them that he could guess at the capabilities of: the blue clad archer that fronted all of them. If he had recognized him, Fox would have remembered him as an ally; a friend perhaps. As they were, now, he saw him only as another foe, no more friend to him than those at his side; the other side; the enemy's. He had his mark, but would have to wait for his opportunity to make a dead rush for the tower’s base, ducking between the trunks for cover if any shot should be aimed for him.

Hat Kid made what could very well have been the riskiest, most impulsive maneuver of them. Her chances were dependent on not being seen entering the grassy plot, and her scooter rolling to a stop just off the trail adjacent to her hiding spot may not have helped those chances. The good thing about it was that she wasn’t readily visible to be picked off, which reduced the odds of her taking a hit. The bad part was that she couldn’t freely, carelessly move through it while any of the hunters were looking, lest she disturb the brush enough for them to notice, so she dared not do so if she fell under immediate suspicion. She would have to keep a vigilant eye out for that at all times to be sure.

From where she lay she had two options for escape: the waterfall’s basin, which could cover and lead her downstream into the moat, or back on her scooter to make a speedy getaway. Her timing for either would have to be as careful and precise as she could make it. She readied herself to don her Sprint Cap at the drop of a hat to make haste for her chosen route.

World of Light

Level: 5 (24 -> 27/50) | 4 (16 -> 19/40) | 1 (3 -> 6 -> 9/10)
Location: Lumbridge, Guild Hall -> Peach’s Castle - Hat Kid’s Ship/Great Ton Pu Inn -> Lumbridge Stockyard -> Land of Adventure; en route to The End
Word Count: 3924 (+3 EXP)

Item: Time Piece (3 -> 1/4/40-56*)

So… now what? Hat Kid had hopped from her barstool, stood to attention and saluted Peach along with Linkle and the Cadet, playing along as she liked to do. Though, she wasn’t one hundred percent clear on what they were all doing. The Princess had a point; there were too many things being discussed at once, and she was hardly paying attention to begin with until it was loudly demanded. No sooner than everyone could focus enough to lay out their tasks more clearly did they begin dispersing to tend to them, which still didn’t leave the child much of her own to do. Mention of teleporting back to the castle, however, stood out to her, for she was due for a return trip.

She patiently idled in wait for the Magikoopa’s return, performing tossing/balancing tricks with her umbrella until he arrived. She didn't wait for anything he had to say after "done" to break her self-pacified composure in a sudden rush for the teleporter. When she reappeared on the other side, she made straight for her waterbound ship, wherein she deposited all but one of her Time Pieces, restoring more of the ship's power and… wow. She knew she had left the place a mess, but having the lights on really put it in perspective for her. She had a lot of work to do here… aaannd a whole lot of nothing else to do with the still young day. Yeah, this seemed like a (near) perfect opportunity to tidy up, since she had the rest of the day until close to dusk to do it.

A short cleaning montage later, everything on the floor (that shouldn’t have been) had been picked up and put away or discarded, the furniture and relic displays rearranged and put back in their proper places, and everything was good as new. Well… good as normal anyway; back to the way she had it before. The engine room still needed repairs she couldn’t afford right now, unopened envelopes were left to pile up and circulate in a whirlwind in the mail room, a PBJ tower taller than her was clumsily stacked on a plate in the kitchen (meaning she purposely either picked it up and reassembled the previous one, or built a new one from scratch with salvaged ingredients). So… yeah, not exactly pristine, but it at least home away from looked and felt more like itself now. The hardest part was periodically rerouting the limited power supply to each room individually to access and tend to them one at a time. Her chores were an otherwise smooth and oddly therapeutic affair. It always felt good to get something accomplished, no matter how basic the task, instead of leaving them to pile up; to focus on something in the moment rather than leaving it to dwell on later.

Her productive time killing exercise concluded, she checked the time and realized she had been at it for… less than an hour?! Man, she was fast! Too fast for her own good. She still had a few hours left before departure, and not nearly enough activity to fill the remaining hours with. She could have gone shopping to restock her overly expensive milk or browse for something else useful, but she had to go and do the honorable thing by splitting the monetary reward from two quests ago. Now she had no money. That’s what she gets for doing the right thing. Well, this was sure to be a boring intermission, but she couldn’t sit and think about it for much longer. Who knew when the wizard would move the teleporter again. Maybe… she could just have the satisfaction of planting a proverbial flag at their rendezvous area and call "first!"

---

Kid rushed through the teleporter back to Lumbridge well ahead of Kamek and made her way to where she last remembered Brother Grimm being parked… only to not find it there. This prompted a quick, hat assisted search for the titanic, already hard to miss vehicle, which she would find at the stackyard ready to depart… along with half a dozen adventurers in waiting. So much for beating everyone there…

Among the gathered was the anthropomorphic vulpine from the meeting, sitting arms crossed with his feet up in the front passenger's seat, patiently waiting to set off. While Fox could competently operate just about any vehicle if given a minute to learn it, he was content to leave the driving to someone else this time. Besides, it was a converted personnel carrier, and he was generally more accustomed to light one-man craft.

The child, having left her scooter in the truck bed, seated herself upon it and calmly watched the sunset for the duration of the intermission. A serene view was a simple pleasure she could never get tired of, and assuming whatever darkness (ironically light-borne) they were due face, it would surely do her nerves (and anyone else’s) some good to set their eyes and minds on anything of beauty the world had to offer; to remind themselves what they were fighting for.

---

What little daylight was left crept through the crack in the curtains at a gentler, more horizontal angle, warmer now in color as the day neared its end. Kazooie woke to it first, having somehow slept through the sound of Brother Grimm’s engine, and leaned in slightly out of her bag space to draw them open. After realizing the time, and that they were about to be late for a mission they missed the meeting for, she attempted to wake her partner, who remained sound asleep snoring away. She tried first with words, then nudging pecks, but Banjo dismissively waved off her prodding and rolled over to face away from the light.

Annoyed by her partner's reluctance, she tugged on the sheets and blanket to relieve the lazy ursine of them, but overextended in her attempt, causing her to fall frantically cawing and flapping to the floor as she failed to stabilize herself. She pulled the sheets with her on the way down, yanking them off of and out from under Banjo hard enough to turn him onto his other side. Alerted, he tried and failed to catch the covers and stop himself from rolling over off of the bed, landing on his backpack (and Kazooie) in such a way that the straps ended up contrivedly slung around his shoulders. He leaned up groaning in protest as to how Kazooie knew about the quest without attending the meeting for it, despite realizing himself that it was what he was being woken up for. She exercised cheater’s brevity in her response, telling him that they could “just read back through it later.” To that, and in general, he conceded and made his way to the stockyard in half a hurry (on his own feet instead of Kazooie’s faster pair).

They arrived just ahead of Peach’s address, behind most of the party that had been trickling in. “Sorry we’re late.” They weren’t. “We, erm… had a lot of stuff to take care of.” Kazooie simply shook her head disappointedly at Banjo’s shamefully obvious fib.

---

Expectedly, the first half of their drive was marked by a period of uninterrupted peace for the intrepid troupe spent taking in the scenic landscape, seemingly untouched anything else. The abundance of plain greenery and pockets of mountain ranges had the bear and bird offhandedly wondering if they wouldn’t stumble into (part of) their home on their way to… wherever it was they were going to conquer and banish some nameless, faceless, nebulous evil that waited for them at what was supposedly one of the edges of the world. Signs for it started to show the farther they went as the lush and verdant gave way to lands most twisted, malicious, and unnatural. It wasn’t until this point that any of the heroes (or villains) had to raise their guard, for no sooner or later than crossing this threshold for environmental transition did its inhabitant monster-kind begin to descend upon them.

Fox and Hat Kid lent what they could to the repulsing efforts with disparately sized laser fire from both of them, with Kid moving about the bed’s perimeter to cover each side as needed, and Fox leaning out to hang from the monster truck’s passenger side doorway for a better angle to pick off any of the smaller enemies that assailed them from the right. Banjo and Kazooie were sadly unable to lend their assistance in providing suppressive fire, but they were bone dry on ammo with which to do so. The most they could do in the moment was keep their eyes up, heads down, balance steady, and grip tight to keep themselves aboard amidst the chaos and turbulence.

When the vehicle came to a halt, all three stopped what they were doing for a second and directed their attention forward at the ravine ahead of them. Euden assured them they would be unable to make it back across short of flying, which left the duo in particular less to worry about. Fox and Kid resumed fire on a few stranglers that were catching up as the prince and Peach deliberated for a word on a potential return method before she put Grimm back in gear. On her word, she stomped the gas pedal to the floor, and everyone else prepared in their own ways to make the jump.

Hat Kid mounted her scooter, which had been riding idle in the back with them the entire time, believing it would better her odds with the impending landing on the other side. Fox, rather than cabbing up for safety, continued to hang from the vehicle’s side in anticipation to bail off after they went airborne. The duo simply did as they were already doing, only tighter, and with considerably greater difficulty.

All four tires left the ground at top speed as the truck soared over the canyon. The sudden backlift on the jump catapulted the child from the truck bed overhead to figure out her own landing wherever she may, but would be able to manage it unharmed thanks to having her own set of tires on a familiar vehicle under her. The duo were tossed from the truck with the bounce of impact, sending Banjo flailing overhead to run two clumsy steps across the roof before going aerial again. Kazooie started flapping to ease them both down, bringing Banjo to a rolling stop that left him momentarily prone. Fox did much of the same, but on purpose, more gracefully, and with fewer steps. He simply lept from the truck just before it hit the ground and landed firmly in front of it after it stopped. He had fallen harder from greater heights before, so it posed no issue for him.

Before the adventurers, between them and the great umbral sphere that marked their destination, masses of dark matter coalesced to form hollow, dead-eyed facsimiles of living things; enemies familiar to less than a handful of the present party: the Subspace Army. In acknowledgement of this, Bowser dictated the obvious to Peach and Fox (conveniently failing to recall the part he played in those past events), but Fox did not verbally return the Koopa King’s address. He kept whatever thoughts he had to himself as he calmly drew his sidearm and held it at his side in preparation for the coming engagement. They couldn’t stop him and his allies before, and that wouldn’t change today. At his silent command, his eyepiece unfolded, whereupon activating, and he went straight to work.

Fox dove clear of the incoming cannon fire, deftly, lightly hitting the ground on his toes seamlessly into a dead sprint for the enemy line whilst rapidly firing on them. He drove the flat of a flying heel into the chest of the nearest Primid before spinning to follow it with the other foot to its chin, surfing the downed shadowling for a few feet deeper into the thick of its kind. With an applied, forceful aerial, the Primid beneath his feet was thrown forward headways at more of its own, and Fox was beset on an impacted pair before their backs could hit the ground, carrying them and himself upward with an ascending flurry of spinning kicks that he followed with a drill drop onto the survivor of them. The next closest foe to him was lifted from its feet with a rising tornado kicked and caught by the chest with a turning mule kick directed into a toss with a front flip to carry it over Fox’s head. Still airborne, he then caught the hapless minion above him with both hands while turning around, throwing it to ground onto another and riddling them with a spray of blaster fire.

Banjo and Kazooie were busy fending off an encirclement of Primids little by little as they encroached on the pair, employing a series of punches, kicks, wing slices, and other less conventional attacks as ceaseless as the enemy onslaught to meet it in kind. A trio of Feyesh swarmed them with tentacles lashing out, the first two of which Banjo narrowly ducked back, but the third he caught a hold of, much to his own detriment. The electrified tendrils sent a surge through him that caused the pained throes of his voice to rattle and his muscles to spasm, preventing him from releasing his regretted grasp. He was lucky to have Kazooie (as always) to lend her beak to the creature’s eye to force it away. Having learned his lesson, Banjo changed his approach to put Kazooie up for damage duty, starting by bounding at the repelled Feyesh with a Rata-Rap. With a second jump, he faced his back to the next one for Kazooie to hit it with the same attack, and with a third jump, he whipped her out of his pack to repeatedly jab at the last one as he fell.

Suddenly, he found himself having to dodge backwards (re-sheathing Kazooie as he did) to avoid being dropped on by a Ticken from out of nowhere. Another like it came charging in from behind its brethren in a bull rush at the duo, knocking the ursine back some ways with force to surprise. He landed skidding on his bare feet, digging them further in as he braced to grapple the armored avian-like on the latter end of its charge. At which point he picked up on it just enough to gain advantageous leverage as he forced it back in a run, intent on ramming the two Ticken into one another. When they collided, the duo drove into them even further with a Beak Barge and a follow through right hook to bust through the frontmost set of armor, forcing a defenceless round yellow bird to vacate its metal husk. This caught the pair off-guard for a second, which was just enough of an opening to cost them a hit of stray grenade fire from a distant Primid. Luckily, they were able to shield themselves behind the other Ticken to mitigate some of the blast damage, but it was still enough for the concussive force to knock them off.

While dispatching an Armight with a leaping step off its downswung blades into a signature backflip kick, Fox saw to the grenadier problem second it made the mistake of firing on him while he was exposed in midair--or at all, for that matter. With a single swift motion, he unclipped and drew forth a hexagonal device from his belt and threw it out in front of him, where it held suspended as it produced a translucent shield of cyan energy to redirect the hostile artillery back toward its source, dealing slight collateral as a bonus. He deactivated and slung the reflector back onto his belt just as quickly as he used it and dropped back down to ground level to re-engage the enemy. Relentless in his assault, his carelessness started to show a little when he got caught in a crowd of Primids passing him to and fro for a moment with their undisciplined strikes, but it was nothing he couldn’t correct just as quickly with a few broken arms, dislocated knees, quick, stunning jabs, chained kicks, and rapid bursts of laser fire for good measure.

He charged bodily into yet another Primid, grabbing it by the shoulder, shoving the muzzle of his blaster into its gut, and shooting repeatedly into--and shortly, through--it as he ran carrying it forward toward a Scope Primid for use as a human shield. The puppet’s thrown carcass slammed into a Sword Primid, knocking it down and clearing the way for Fox to tackle the Scope wielder to the ground with the flat of his flying knee. Stubbornly, the shooter held onto his weapon only to be jerked halfway back to its feet by the vulpine who used the shadowlings own weapon against its kin. He managed to shoot down one or two runners and fliers before being assailed by another sword wielder, prompting him to reflexively block its sword arm with the shaft of the borrowed Super Scope. In the same move, he turned around in such a manner that he was able to manipulatively leverage its arm with the gun’s grips to bring its blade down into the knelt gunner’s clavicle whilst also thrusting the ‘hot’ end of the firearm into the swordsman’s torso. He then released the shot he had charged during the maneuver as he let the weapon go, leaving it at the mercy of recoil to send it rocketing into the head of its already fallen (now overkilled) wielder. As well as respectively knocking and blasting away the gunner and swordsman, the diverting impacts loosed the embedded Beam Sword for Fox to grab twirling from the air and turn around to bisect another charging swordsman with in one heavy swing.

An errant lot of Borboras danced onto the battlefield, positioning themselves at various points to project disrupting howls of repelling wind, possibly intent on blowing the combatants from the cliff. The gusts threw Fox from his feet toward Brother Grimm, where a failed attempt to grab a hold of the door resulted in him having to stab into its side with the blade he just picked up, dragging a hideous gash partway across the truck’s body like a ripped sail. Banjo being heavier meant that he fared better, but was still being made to move despite his on-foot resistance. Kazooie couldn’t hazard emerging from her backpack to try aiding him, lest she be blown loose from it. This forced him to compensate by driving the angelic lance into the ground behind him at an angle to brake himself against. Though his reverse movement ceased, he could move no closer until the horn-headed Sub-borne relented.

Enter Hat Kid, flying in on her scooter to bounce off of one Borboras’ head and hooking another by its ‘snout’ with the handle of her umbrella, resultantly dragging its head around in a circle as she swung and redirecting its still blowing horn at the surrounding horde. This included, of course, other Borbora, creating somewhat of a small chain reaction of disruptive, randomly directed tunnel winds that chaotically ragdolled a modest number of hapless minions that were caught in the miniature maelstrom. When she completed a full lap around the wind thrower's head, sounding off with a sickening crack of its vertebrae, she leapt from her vehicle to let it crash tire- or undercarriage-first on top of whatever unfortunate mooks happened to be in its flight path while she started swiping, homing, diving, and even kicking into any light enemies that were in the air with her. Even minus her stunt, there were already flying foes a plenty for her to keep herself suspended.

Free of the forceful gails that pushed him back, Banjo withdrew the lance from the earth and started charging forward back into the thick of the action, jousting through a gaggle of multiplied Bytans, two Primids and a Ticken (bird and all) before hurling the spear-like implement skyward in an arc to pierce a Feyesh and come down tip-first onto the back of a Trowlon. The serpentine being, pinned beneath a pillar of it skewered comrades that prevented it from ascending as it was supposed to, desperately writhed in a vain struggle to free itself in the two seconds it had to do so before Banjo weightily brought his foot down onto what best resembled the creature’s head. He then fell back on Kazooie for a Spring Jump, boosting him high enough to catch an unsuspecting Armight into a bombing suplex straight down onto what was otherwise the smart end of the lance, ramming the pommel through its helmeted crown and collecting all of the spirits from the grounded polearm in one fell swoop.

After the weapon landed (before Banjo dropped an Armight on it), Kid executed three horizontal, centrifugal swings from its hilt to rebuild and keep her momentum going. She shot from the improvised lache bar feet forward fast enough to take a Primid off its feet, followed by a snap hat switch to a light Burn Knuckle. The lesser minion ended up ran through on an Armight’s sword and subsequently used as a footstool for the child to hurdle over and behind the cephalopodic knight. “Rokkyu!” (Rock you!) she shouted as she threw out an aerial Power Wave, then chasing it with, in order: a Homing Attack, a flurry of spinning umbrella strikes, and a modified heavy Burn ‘Brella that wreathed the parasol in the same empowering flame. “Burn!” (Burn!) she vocalized yet again--with no amount of toughness or intimidation factor in her voice to be taken seriously--as she lunged at the creature to finish it off with a fiery jab. Her feet hit the dirt again for the first time since they first arrived, and she turned, smiling gleefully, to fire a sustained first stage (blue) laser blast into the enemy crowd, imbuing it with Power as well.

Momentarily clear of any threats in her immediate proximity, the child took the moment she had to catch her breath--a need most atypical of her that she suddenly found herself having. She had a fairly good idea as to the reason too. It turns out the overuse of borrowed foreign power exceeding one’s natural limits that they’re as of yet ill-acclimated to is its own kind of counterintuitively taxing, and no amount of arbitrarily fashion-based psychometrics in the world could make up for a noticeable physical disparity in such a case. With this in mind, she now thought the better of over-relying the Power Cap, and decided she was going to have to get slightly more creative if she was going to survive the enemy waves that followed. As a start, she took the Primid and Armight spirits in a hand each to crush them for an additional (if potentially meager) item or weapon. Banjo did much of the same with the armful of spirits he had, but took the method an experimental step further by feeding a fistful of them to Kazooie midway through itemizing, loading her like a gun and ‘chambering’ what t/he/y hoped would be new rounds of viable ammunition. Fox, unaware of this process or its nature, forewent it for simplicity’s sake. After disembarking Brother Grimm for the second time, he quickly flourished the Beam Sword and rushed onward back into the fray, ready to take on anything and everything that met him there.

World of Light

Level: 5 (6 -> 21 -> 24/50) | 4 (13 -> 16/40) | 1 (0 -> 3/10)
Location: Devil’s Casino, Inkwell Isle -> Lumbridge, Guild Hall
Word Count: 2089 (+3 EXP)

Item: Time Piece (4/40-56*)

*(Wasn’t sure/forgot which number we were using…)

Well, that was easy enough. It seemed the dealer might be willing to give her what she wanted, and all she had to do was ask nicely for it. Maybe she should try doing that more often, she considered. A shame the Lumbridge Brigade and an added party of extras had to go and wreck it for her by coming to their rescue. Sure, it was pretty obvious that they were probably going to have to fight him at some point, but she was at least hoping to get her reward out of him early before then; now she had to fight for it, as usual. Kid lept from the edge of the table into formation with the others, brandishing her parasol as she mentally prepared herself to do battle with the gambler and his puppet minions. She took on a more serious, determined expression, her grip tightened on her weapon, and on Gneidxick’s call, their showdown… was cancelled?

It was hard to tell what happened, but it wasn’t an attack… probably. Whatever it was, it was trippy; dizzying even. The result was like that of a miniature tornado spawning in the middle of the room, scattering the casino’s occupants and contents about, and restoring everyone to their normal sizes (if tornadoes did such a thing). Hat Kid came to her senses in time to tilt her hat’s visor out of her eyes and witness Gneidxick depart behind another hooded, cloaked figure through a darkened rift. She could barely catch the latter half of their conversation, but even hearing it all wouldn’t have made any more sense of their situation. If anything, it only raised further questions. It was all rather… confusing to say the least. A little context would go a long way with something like this…

One thing was clear to the child, and it was that she never got her prize. Lame! It’s one thing for the fight to be interrupted and brought to an abrupt anticlimax, but to use that as an excuse to not hand over her rightful reward just seemed too convenient. (Or, more likely, it just didn’t cross his mind at all.) Couldn’t he have at least waited until after fulfilling his end as the dealer to betray them?! Keep up the deception just long enough for her to get what she wanted? It’s not like she hasn’t dealt with exactly that before at-Oooh! That’s what he meant; by ‘letting her “have it.” That made more sense.

It took her long enough to figure out internally that he was never going to reward her (and that ‘betrayal’ would suggest that they were ever on good terms to begin with), and in all likelihood, he wasn’t even aware of what she was after. Given his character, it was probably for the best that she didn’t specify as much. Good news was that she knew where to look and had no one around to stop her. While the Houndmaster--the appointed sheriff of Lumbridge--was busy overextending his jurisdiction by way of an annexation loophole they could literally fit a giant through (as they were trying to do), Hat Kid switched back to her tophat and made her way over to the claw machine, to which both hat and Compass Badge pointed. She wasn’t leaving without getting what she was owed first.

She approached the cabinet, umbrella in hand, and knocked the hilt against the glass until it broke. It was then that she remembered once having a more suitable weapon for such a task, half lamenting its absence (as well as that of most of her things), but able to make do without an issue. Any of it beat playing the (likely rigged) machine fairly

Speaking of her cheating to win, she couldn’t help noticing Mr. Chimes, whom she had subverted and defeated not but a few minutes ago, still lying lifelessly within the toy stash, and briefly considered the absurdity of having been in there with him from her now more dominant perspective. She hoisted the wooden primate up by one of his legs, gave his ragdoll prodding shake to make sure he was still out, and stuck her tongue out at him in an expression of mockery before tossing him limply back into the cabinet. She then dug out what she was really after, the Time Piece, looking upon it triumphantly while she tossed it in her hand before safely tucking it away out of sight.

Meanwhile, Fox promptly began conducting a brief headcount to make sure everyone was well and accounted for, nodding to and politely waving off the Cadet assuringly.

“Is everyone alright?” He asked aloud to no one in particular. Based on the responses (and in a way, the lack thereof), he could make a fairly safe assumption that no one had been seriously hurt, or worse. As unlikely as it was in such a short-lived and uneventful scenario, it was hard to predict anymore just what could go wrong or how quickly, so it did no harm to maintain a habit of routinely or periodically checking on the people at your back. Even if he wasn’t necessarily responsible for them, it wouldn’t do to lose anyone under his watch.

Banjo and Kazooie had been splayed out on the grass lounging in the sun outside of the town’s entrance to relax and decompress after escaping the Dead Zone before being called into the Guild Hall on an emergency. Fresh out of one predicament, and right into another. It didn’t seem as though they would catch a break until the culprit, their prospect foe, had been escorted by an apparent cohort off to who knows where. The events and exchanges that followed left Banjo rubbing his head--both in aching dizziness and confusion.

“Uhh… what just happened?”

“Looks like we just got out of what was supposed to be an epic and memorable boss fight. I was kinda looking forward to it, actually.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll get an honest chance at it later. I don’t think they’d set something like that up without having it in mind,” Banjo conjectured, citing familiar video game narrative structure as precedent. “I still don’t get why that happened though… or what, really…”

“I don’t know, but it probably involves some kind of intricate, layered, convoluted subplot with a bunch of inscrutable, esoteric jargon.”

“Is that a backhanded reference to something I should know?”

“Just making my best guess.”

“That’s a weirdly specific guess…” Banjo looked about and noticed a few people gathered around a craps table to interrogate a miniature cartoon character--one of the attendants being such a character himself. The red one of the two drink-topped characters that elected to stay gave off the unmistakable impression of being from the same setting as the establishment’s runaway manager, complete with bouncy, expressive animation, stylism of a bygone medium, and a voice like it should be (or was?) filtered through a CRT speaker. If the matter held his attention, it was worth paying a little for anyone curious. “Let’s see if they know anything about it,” Banjo suggested as he made his way over to the table.

Though the duo hadn’t their own line of questioning to add to the interrogation, there wasn’t much need for them to. Most of the bases had been covered by the others already, so a simple eavesdrop sufficed for the bear and bird to have any inquiries they would have otherwise had answered. Sadly, the answers they received left much to be desired as far as comprehending any of it.

“Called it,” Kazooie commented upon hearing ‘convoluted’ from someone else; her “guess” confirmed.

“That’s… not a lot to work with… or is it too much?” Banjo was scratching his head at everything he had just heard, somehow expected to make complete sense of it. “Honestly, I’m even more confused now.” One couldn’t blame him. It was a lot to take in all at once, and it could only be assumed that there was a great deal more to come. The mere sampling of exposition here was already making Banjo’s head hurt.

“Maybe we should sleep on it,” the breegull suggested, taking into account their considerably extensive uptime, and that they’d effectively been active through four different provinces (counting the new one they were in) since sunrise. “We’ve been up for a full day at this point.”

“Huh… we have, haven’t we?” the ursine nodded contemplatively. Their adventures were typically over within a day, and they spent the entirety of one running almost non-stop to barely make a dent in this one. Their work was surely cut out for them. “I guess some shut-eye couldn’t hurt. Let’s head back and see about finding us a room.”

And so, the duo headed over to the hole in the roof higher than the roof itself with escape ropes dangling from it. Hat Kid had already sauntered over to the rift next to the Cadet and the two criminals and hookshot herself to the top back into the Guild Hall. She didn’t know or intend it, but given the nature of the exchange between them that she ignored, she was basically showing off and unintentionally rubbing their faces in it. When the Koopa obstruction was cleared, Kazooie sprang the duo upward onto one of the ropes and left it to Banjo to climb the rest of the way. Fox lingered behind most of the rest to make sure everyone else had cleared out of the casino before leaving the Houndmaster and whoever he was in charge of to their duties as he followed suit.

Considering that it was still morning, the child was already feeling pretty good about her accomplishments for the day. She took a seat at the bar (where she was probably considered too young to be allowed), popped the cork on her jar of Lon Lon Milk, drank down the first half, and cutely let out a contented sigh of relief as she delighted in the period of respite she had been granted.

The bear and bird, meanwhile, looked around for whoever they had to talk to about finding lodging for the day. After which came the issue of payment, but didn’t see much issue with that. If they needed funds badly enough, they could simply pawn anywhere between one or all of the four gold rings they got off of an angel earlier.

Fox wasn’t as quick to concern himself with finding a place to sleep, even if he probably should have been. He wasn’t presently in his means to pay for it if anyhow, as the check for the rescue operation in the Dead Zone wasn’t likely to clear in a hurry from… whoever was supposed to be sending it. Besides, he wanted to stick around in case anyone called on him for anything else, or if there was something else that needed to be done in general. He seated himself in an unoccupied booth for a short rest and started thinking back on his day.

The exhausting affairs of the previous and current day started to show on him as he boredly, tiredly laid his head back in the moments of reflective idling. He had some experience with other worlds, even going on missions in some of them, but none before were so collectively awful as those conglomerated in the Dead Zone. Someone must have thought he was fit for the job to have sent him alone into a ruinous hellscape of hostile angels, demons and the undead--all things he had minimal exposure to or knowhow in dealing with. Luckily, he ended up encountering others like him from different walks at the RCPD, and with their combined efforts, they managed to escape with the survivors holed up there.

That was the least surprising part to him, as he’d been down that road once before. Since then, nothing and no one could be considered ‘out of place’ to him anymore; not when seemingly nothing was restricted to any one place. On that note, he suddenly realized he couldn’t remember who sent out the call for that; whether it was a distress call or a blatant suicide mission mass distributed by a third party. They had won the day either way, so he wouldn’t dwell on it too much in either case. Though, that didn’t stop him from trying to better recall the events leading up to it, reaching farther back into his memory for some kind of answer...

How did he end up there anyway?

World of Light

Legendary Leader

Name: Fox McCloud
Game Origin: Star Fox
Appearance: 07
Personality: Brave, assertive, loyal, fearless, dutiful, determined, and with an air of cockiness to match it all, Fox is about what one could expect of an archetypal spacefaring hero. Edified throughout his life from his earliest age of understanding with the conviction to “never give up,” he boasts an indomitable will that drives him ever forward, free of doubt or hesitation. Accordingly, he takes this to somewhat of an extreme, bearing what could conservatively be considered an impulsive streak, as he all but erases the line between boldness and insanity with some of his actions. Action, of course, being what he’s more inclined to, preferring to leave the thinking and planning to others, and as a leader, he would sooner charge headlong into the storm ahead of his allies than command any one of them to take his place, willing to stake his own life before that of anyone else. Some may understandably mistake his method (or lack thereof) for a careless lack of consideration attributable to witlessness, but this is not so. Rather, he simply leans more toward a reliance on his instincts and intuition to guide him, and those who have fought at his back and alongside him can attest to the reliability of his inner judgement. When outside of the battlefield, he is generally casual and amicable in his disposition and straight-spoken in manner, only responding in blunt, aggressive, or hostile fashion when warranted or provoked. Otherwise, he is not the most socially active or engaged individual, even though he is perfectly capable and decently well-adjusted to it. While most might find him approachable and easy to talk to, they may find it harder to truly get closer to him on any personal level. Those who do manage to connect with him--be it as a comrade or a friend--could scarcely ask for one better or more dedicated.

Background: At a young age, Fox McCloud, son of James McCloud and an unnamed mother, showed great talent and promise as a soldier and pilot, and joined the Cornerian Flight Academy as a teenager. Already, he was beginning to look a lot like his father, leader of the original Team Star Fox. One fateful day, Peppy Hare, James’ wingman, returned from a mission on Venom to inform Fox of his father’s fate; that he’d been betrayed by his other wingman and murdered by the exiled mad scientist Andross. Fox subsequently dropped out of the academy and assumed his father’s mantle as leader of a new Team Star Fox, which he formed with his friends Slippy Toad and Falco Lombardi, as well as former member Peppy, who acted as his mentor and adoptive godfather. A couple of years later, they were called upon for their first mission to lead the war effort against Andross and the Venomian forces, during which Fox finally confronted and defeated Andross, successfully ending the Lylat Wars and avenging his father.

Nine years passed, and aside from the occasional smaller mission and a lineup change that followed (with Falco returning and Krystal taking Peppy’s place), Team Star Fox saw a substantial period of inactivity, until war broke out once again when the Cornerian Army was beset by the remnants of Andross’s forces. Star Fox showed up to intervene in the conflict only for it to be shortly brought to an abrupt end with the appearance of an even greater enemy. The Aparoids, an alien species of hive-minded, parasitic-symbiotic, biomechanical insectoids, surfaced to invade the whole of the Lylat System, threatening to assimilate or destroy all life within it, and coming dangerously close to succeeding in their conquest. However, with the combined efforts of Star Fox, the Cornerian Army, and even Star Wolf, Fox and his allies were able to drive the Aparoids back to their homeworld, where they fought and killed the queen at the planet’s core, destroying the planet and ending the threat of the Aparoid menace for good. Fox and his team very nearly suffered unimaginable losses on their mission, but were ultimately able to pull through and prevail in restoring peace to the galaxy.

Three years later, Team Star Fox receded once more into dormancy with their unofficial and indefinite disbandment, but there were still battles that needed to be fought. With no sign or intention of slowing down, Fox took it upon himself to investigate and intervene on a series of mysterious occurrences in the collective World, and found himself caught up in a greater conflict than he could expect to take on alone, which would later come to be known as the Subspace Incident. With a dark army at their disposal, villains and would-be conquerors from their universe orchestrated a number of portal bombings to rend fragments of the world into a realm of limbo and void, known as the Subspace, at the behest of a puppeteered Master Hand. As it turned out, he was being controlled by an even more powerful entity, Tabuu, who had duped the villains into unwitting service to him by proxy, and comes just within reach of achieving his nebulous goal of destructive world domination before ultimately being thwarted in the end. Heroes and villains alike banded together to defeat their greatest foe yet, and from the cliffside overlooking the sea--facing the mark of light where the Isle of Ancients once was--they watched the sun set on the world they saved, hopeful for its future.

Then, years later, they returned to the world's edge with bolstered ranks to combat an unprecedented threat even greater than the last, and one way. Galeem, the Lord of Light, brought forth a Master Army to match them. There, where it all ended before, one way or another, it would end again. Though, their odds were hopelessly unfavorable, they determinedly faced them down and readied themselves for what would undoubtedly prove to be the biggest fight of their lives, with Fox leading them at the front of the line…

...and for the first, and last time... they lost…

Specialty: Offense/Leader
Level: 1
Experience: 0/10
Powers:

• Fire Fox - After a brief charge, Fox propels himself in a chosen direction with a headlong flaming charge attack. Course cannot be altered once activated, but can be aimed omnidirectionally. Capable of damaging throughout the duration of the move with the most being dealt with the initial hit.

Strengths:

• Fearless - Perhaps his greatest weakness as well, Fox isn’t one to back down from any fight or challenge he sees a chance at winning. His experiences and upbringing have shaped him with iron nerves, unshakable tenacity, and an indomitable will that have seen him through a great many ordeals, as they may yet continue to. When faced with suicidal odds, be they overwhelming numbers, transcendent to godlike power, or a realized lack of either on his part, he has never been fearfully deterred by, or willingly submitted to any of them, and if he has his way, he never will.
• Versatile - Legendary fighter pilot, expert martial artist, crackshot, peak athlete; Fox boasts an extensive repertoire of combative prowess. He can proficiently pilot just about anything built for speed, combat, or both, wield any ranged or martial weapon he’s strong enough to use, and competently engage enemies stronger than himself with or without one. Quick of hand, foot, and study, with a learned understanding of every relevant facet of his trade, there’s little in the way of what he can’t somehow translate apply his skillset to, or that he can’t potentially learn and add to it.
• Experienced - Fox has spent effectively half his life bearing the mantle of a heroic mercenary leader, credited with winning no less than two wars in his time; three if counting his role in thwarting the Subspace Army. To add, the boast-worthy accolade of being a life-long Smash veteran (one of the original twelve, no less) speaks greatly to his abilities and competence (and that of his ilk)--enough to say that no odds or opponents are too great for him to take on.

Weaknesses:

• Moderate - In most settings, Fox is often among the LEAST remarkable figures around. There are definite limits to his capabilities and expertise, and general competency can only carry him so far when insurmountably outmatched. His skills, while admirable and plenty, are largely middling, and he possesses no spectacular powers, abilities, or traits to make up for it against the overwhelming opposition he is so often faced with, forcing him to fight uphill to succeed. For everything he’s good at--among the many things--he dominantly excels at none of them, meaning there’s always someone to potentially outclass him in any given category.
• Lightweight - As a tradeoff for exceptional speed and agility, Fox hasn’t much to offer in terms of strength, and even less for durability. His talent for handing out hits is evened out by a critical need to sustain as few as possible on account of his build and relative normality, for it would take but a handful (or fewer) powerful blows to do him in. This makes direct engagement with powerhouses and heavyweights especially dangerous for him.
• Overconfident - Though profoundly fearless with a (debatably) reasonable sense of well-earned self-assurance in his abilities, it’s easy to see that it tends to overrule his judgement sometimes, often resulting in him taking on greater odds and enemies (sometimes alone) than can be considered sane. To boot, he’s not much of a strategist, preferring a bold, aggressive, straightforward approach to combat, which can, has, and does at times lead him to become careless and predictable.

Spirits:

• None.

Kindred Spirits:

• Falco Lombardi (Star Fox) - Ace pilot of Team Star Fox, Fox’s wingman, and one of his closest friends and comrades. While they are (and have been) at times competitive and rivalrous with one another, they are quick to put that aside when it counts to help or bail the other out, as they’ve done their share of countless times over the years. No matter where they are in the world, or how far apart they seem to be, they never fail to have each other’s backs when they most need it, even if it means showing up at the last second to do so (as is so often the case).
• Sly Cooper (Sly Cooper) - Both are mammalian anthropomorphs, and leaders of their respective packs. Both lost their parents to allies turned traitors. Both proudly bear the weight of upholding their family legacies. Both have become legends in their own right because of it. Undeniably, the two share an uncanny degree of connecting commonality that, despite living entire universes apart, utterly unaware of the other’s existence, may yet draw them together.
• Commander Shepard (Mass Effect) - A spacefaring mercenary leader of legendary renown, much like Fox, both of whom have more than once been called upon to save the galaxy from great calamity, and with the earned aid of loyal comrades at command, they succeeded time and again. Little can be doubted about either of them for their near unrivaled ability to rally entire worlds behind them to fight for the greater good of all or their willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice if and when needed, even if only one of them has ever actually had to. If anything is for certain, it’s that the uni- nay, omniverse, couldn’t have enough like them, and now, more than ever, needs as many as it can offer.

Inventory:

• Blaster - Low-powered, semi-automatic laser pistol that sacrifices stopping power for a high rate of fire, allowing for rapid damage buildup. Can be outfitted with additional firing functions.
• Reflector - A portable, handheld g-diffuser shield that envelops the user in a hexagonal barrier that reflects most forms of projectiles and other ranged attacks (as well as some AOE) with slightly multiplied speed and power (x1.5). Does not protect from physical attacks, however, but can be utilized offensively as an electrified repulsor upon activation.
• Comms Headset (Inactive) - Allows wearer to remotely communicate through any established device capable of acting on a two-way frequency. Outfitted with HUD through monocular eyepiece.