Double

World of Light

The Under ~ The Hive

Kicking the Hornet's Nest

Word Count: 1,164
Level 5 Ganondorf: 28/50
Exp: 2
NEW EXP Balance--- 30/50

The debate between attacking or using stealth was surprisingly short-lived. Seemed a majority of the Seekers were of a similar mind as Ganondorf himself was. That suited him just fine. And while those such as Nadia chose to move ahead with stealth, Ganondorf was of course among those - particularly the royals - who chose simply to attack openly. On the surface of it they would seem rather foolish to charge into a hive and kick over a literal hornet's nest. But when the fighting actually began it became swiftly apparent that the royals were not exactly exaggerating their own abilities.

Ganondorf for his part, started things off by summoning a squad of moblin archers. He instructed them to use their fire arrows to try and pick off drones and other aerial foes so that the Gerudo himself could focus on the more grounded enemies. The Haste from Sectonia was unexpected-but-welcome boon. It allowed Ganondorf's twin great swords to become a speedy whirlwind of death to any of the wasps that came at him. And some did, appearing to wield swords of their own or in some cases spears or a battle flag. In the end it mattered not. Between the speed of Ganondorf's attacks thanks to Haste, and the dark strength that slowly built up in the blades - these bugs were just that: bugs.

"Come on!" the Gerudo bellowed after cutting down an unfortunate sword-wielding wasp, "You could at least make this a challenge for me!" he taunted with great confidence and outright arrogance. And then, as if answering his challenge, a small swarm of five robotic hornets buzzed behind him in a dive bomb attack from above. He whirled around and managed to slice all but two out of the air. But those remaining two latched themselves to Ganondorf's body and exploded. They were small, no larger than humming birds, and so the explosions they produced were not particularly large. But they did manage to knock the King of Evil off his footing for all the briefest of moments. The Gerudo then had to quickly roll over out of the way to avoid being skewered by a long stinger.

"I'll be your opponent, human!" spoke the voice of the robotic hornet that had just tried to dive bomb Ganondorf, "You'll regret interfering in our business, here!"

"We'll see about that." the Gerudo responded with a flourish of his twin great swords.

Blast Hornet was no fool. He knew his wings gave him the greatest advantage and he wasn't about to let that go to waste. The Reploid buzzed his wings and hovered in the air, making sure to stay out of the reach of Ganondorf's swords. He summoned swarms of his hornets to dive bomb Ganondorf with their previous Parasitic Bomb attack. Blast Hornet even mixed things up on occasion and would briefly lock onto the Ganondorf in order for his hornet swarms to home in with greater accuracy. But the Gerudo wasn't fighting by himself. His moblin archers were nearby and more than capable of picking off the smaller hornets, with Ganondorf himself managing to cut down any that avoided fire arrow shots.

But this little stalemate could only last for so long. Ganondorf soon gave a new order to the Moblins, "Forget the small ones! Focus your fire on the one summoning them!" the Moblins were unsure about the wisdom of this tactic change but they dare not question the King of Evil's commands. And so they began to ignore the summoned bees in favor of concentrating their fire on Blast Hornet. He was agile enough to avoid most shots, but still took an occasional arrow regardless. As for Ganondorf, he found himself less able to fend off the exploding bee attacks without the coverage granted to him by his Moblins. At least at first.

When it seemed like Ganondorf was about to be overwhelmed, something buzzed in to provide interference. Bees of differing sizes and shapes. That's when it became clear to Ganondorf. The Hive wasn't quite so unified as it first appeared to be. It seemed the Seekers had unknowingly stepped into a war of sorts between the bees and wasps. Blast Hornet's drones were intercepted by fast-striking Beedrill and Combee who were being commanded by a nearby Vespiquen. And this provided Ganondorf with a much-needed opportunity to turn the tide. And it started with him drinking one of the potions he had received yesterday. The jumping potion to be precise.

With it and the Haste from Sectonia, Ganondorf was able to largely eliminate Blast Hornet's aerial advantage. The Gerudo made a swift and powerful leap that launched him straight at the flying reploid. Rather than attack he hooked his arms around Blast Hornet and used his great strength to fling the reploid down to the ground. Ganondorf came crashing down shortly after and was now in a better position to unload a flurry of slices and slashes from his twin great swords. That finally did some real damage to the reploid. Blast Hornet went to take flight again, but his attention on Ganondorf caused him to not notice the incoming volley of fire arrows from the Moblins. Those kept him stunned momentarily, giving Ganondorf a chance to quickly grab hold of him and slam him back down onto the ground with a Flame Choak.

Blast Hornet's body began to spark with static from the damage he'd been dealt thus far. He tried to unleash a last ditch swarm of hornets on Ganondorf hoping their close proximity would make them impossible to dodge. But once a gain the bees ran interference, this time in the form of a volley of Pin Missiles fired by a trio of Beedrills. Blast Hornet struggled to get airborne but Ganondorf was too quick to seize the opportunity. He lunged forward and delivered a final x-slash of his great swords that cleaved Blast Hornet into exploding pieces. All that remained of him now was a Spirit that Ganondorf quickly scooped up.

With Blast Hornet defeated, Ganondorf found himself surrounded by the helping bees who appeared to be buzzing with gratitude. Ganondorf didn't say anything, not exactly having come here to liberate any oppressed peoples. But he also was not foolish to make enemies of both sides of whatever this conflict was. As such, Ganondorf just offered a silent nod to the bees and then went along his way. he figured they'd probably go look for an enemy elsewhere on their own something. He also figured he should probably regroup with the other Seekers, deciding it was probably unwise to wander too far off in this Hive alone.

World of Light

Suoh ~ Beacon Mental Hospital

@Lugubrious Luka | @DracoLunaris Midna | @Zoey Boey Sakura | @Yankee Pit

Word Count: 542
Level 7 Roxas: 3/70
Exp: 1
NEW EXP Balance--- 4/70

The last person Roxas expected to see was Gemma. He was that guy from the Anistar Gym who had sparred with Sakura. And when he said he thought Sakura wasn't a psychic, Roxas's heart nearly stopped beating. Uh oh, not good. It all came flooding back to him, Roxas's outburst and the fact that he had said Sakura wasn't a psychic. This little bit of awkwardness was indeed his fault. "Oh, uh..." Roxas stammered, trying not to panic, "See, I only thought that Sakura wasn't psychic," Roxas said, hoping this would be a good enough excuse, "but I found out later that I was wrong and she's actually psychic after all. That's, uh, totally my bad. Sorry about that."

After the exchange, Roxas put himself in Luka's group - mostly to avoid continuing the previous conversation with Gemma. Pit joined Luka's group as well, and afterward they set out for what seemed to be a residential wing of the hospital. The hallways were lined with numbered rooms intended for patient's stay in. The area was filled with this bubbly white stuff that Roxas was unable to identify. It kind of looked like wax, but what kind of wax just bubbled and boiled like that? And then Roxas started to notice the humanoid shapes lying in the stuff. He recoiled a bit as a kneejerk reaction, "Ugh, gross. Are those... people?" he wondered aloud. Luka explained that he wasn't sure if these were victims or just creatures waiting to spring to life and attack. Roxas really hoped it was the former. After what happened the day before yesterday with all those people succumbing to the redshift? Roxas had no desire to fight something that had once been a person.

In fact, Roxas tried to avoid getting near the things if he could help it. In one or two instances where he had no choice, he sliced them up with his Keyblades easily enough. But he was pretty unsettled by this place. Between this and the redshift he seriously wondered why anyone would bother living in these parts of the city. If it were him, he'd be doing whatever it took to move and live elsewhere. Roxas shook his head, trying his best to shake off the creeps that this place was giving him.

Eventually the team was faced with a head... tentacle... thing that seemed to be surveying the room like some kind of freaky security camera. Definitely looked like the sort of thing they needed to sneak past. And Pit was the one who asked the obvious question. Roxas didn't speak at first, guessing instead that if such was possible Luka would have suggested it himself. And in that case, well, what to do about this? "Looks like that has to twist itself around in order to see everything in room. Maybe we can watch it for a bit? Might be some kind of pattern we take advantage of." he suggested with a small shrug.

World of Light

The Under ~ The Arboretum

Word Count: 584
Level 5 Ganondorf: 27/50
Exp: 1
NEW EXP Balance--- 28/50

Just as he exited the castle, Ganondorf heard something in his ear. It was Therion's voice, thanks to the linkpearl Ganondorf last night by Primrose. "So they found an entrance? Well, let's get this over with then." he said to himself after he finished listening. He looked around from his current position. Therion said it was the building with a tree growing out of it, and sure enough it wasn't hard to spot. So Ganondorf made his way over in that direction. Therion had also warned everyone to watch out for the vines. Sounded like there was going to be plenty of plant enemies to deal with. Luckily Ganondorf possessed a newly-acquired fire breath power courtesy of Igos du Ikana's spirit. He had a feeling he was about to get a lot of use out of that one.

When the Gerudo was able to get a closer look at the Arboretum, he found that Therion's description didn't quite do it justice. "Tree" didn't even begin to describe what was seemingly growing out of this buildings cracks and seams. The tree part was mostly on the roof, but even the walls were covered vines and other foliage. The main entrance appeared to have some kind of roots or vines protruding from it and preventing anyone from being able to go inside. But Ganondorf was quick to notice some of the open and broken windows and figured that that was how everyone would be getting in. He climbed in through one and dropped down, almost immediately having to quickstep out of the way of an attacking vine. Therion wasn't exaggerating about this.

Ganondorf explored a bit, noting the sheer overgrown nature of the building's interior. Something about this reminded him greatly of the Forest Temple in his own world. He almost half-expected to find the quartet of multicolored Poes appearing at the center of the main chamber. But naturally, they did not appear. It took a bit more looking around before Ganondorf spotted what he thought might have been the way the others reached the lower levels. More vines growing out of a hole, but with a secondary hole that was dug next to it with considerably less vines writhing about. Looked like now was when he was going to get use out of that flame breath. Ganondorf inhaled and then exhaled his Violet Flare down into the hole. The purple flames didn't exactly burn or scorch away any ground or vines, but they did retract from it. That was the chance Ganondorf needed to more or less cleanly drop down into the hole entrance, which he did so.

And it wasn't long before the Seekers encountered obstacles. Ariel drones that looked like mechanical bees or wasps seemed to be buzzing about on patrol. Nadia tried to suggest stealth, but Sectonia was quick to point out that most of their members weren't exactly built for stealth. That unfortunately included Ganondorf himself. And then it was Primose and Kamek who suggested a diversionary tactic. Ganondorf was inclined to agree, "That's the strategy I would go with, personally." he chimed in with a shrug of his shoulders, "And more than enough of us have minions we can summon to perform just such a task." He added with a passing gesture indicating Kamek, Sectonia, and himself.

Disney & Dragons 5e

Action: None | Bonus Action: None

When the commotion finally died and tensions finally began to fall, Shang straightened himself and relaxed... somewhat. One of the men questioned why the red-haired girl started all of this, and her answer was... facepalm-inducing. From Shang's interpretation it essentially boiled down to her having a hunch and deciding to act on it. And while he might have had something to say about that, a different conversation also caught his ear.

This time it was between the lion man and the two "bandits" who turned out to just be peasants. The lion man seemed to think they could just venture out into the jungle and hunt for food. And when the two men rightfully pointed out that they weren't trained hunters, the little girl piped up with a response of her own. This... was also facepalm-inducing. Plus Shang had to fight the urge to notice that it was two young women making such naive-sounding remarks.

"Ahem, excuse me..." Shang finally spoke up, "...do kids your age commonly carry hand-held projectile weapons where you're from?" he asked, hoping he wasn't sounding too patronizing, "Because where I'm from, they don't. And I'm willing to bet that is true for most places. You can't just assume that everyone around you is as skilled or well-armed as you yourself are."

"And, Miss?" He said, now facing the red-haired lass, "What exactly did you find suspicious? Their weapons? I carry a sword myself, does that make me suspicious as well? Well, never mind that I suppose." he turned his gaze to the direction of the original peasant. In all of this he was now realizing that no one had bothered to ask what he thought of all this.

"Please forgive the sudden interruption your meal, sir." Shang said to the man with a polite bow, "But I must admit that I'm curious to know. Have you truly been summoned by your Emperor?"

Disney & Dragons 5e

Oh by the way, Jackie Chan actually voiced Shang in the Mandarin and Cantonese dubs for Mulan. So that meme is doubly hilarious here.

Disney & Dragons 5e

Lion Man with obvious animal instincts for hunting: Just hunt food in the jungle!
Disgruntled Peasants with no powers whatsoever: The Jungle is too dangerous to risk going hunting in!
Girl with a technologically more advanced weapon than what would be found here in addition to literal magic powers: What are you talking about? I got here just fine!
Shang:

World of Light

The Under ~ Holograd Castle

Word Count: 1,006
Level 5 Ganondorf: 25/50
Exp: 2
NEW EXP Balance--- 27/50

A Kingdom of... Termites? Of course, why not? A basement made of flesh, a city of monsters in constant rainfall, why not a Termite Kingdom on top of that? The Seekers almost immediately split up to explore the place more thoroughly and cover more ground and the Gerudo was no exception. The thing that first caught his eye was the castle in the distance and so Ganondorf decided that would be where he would explore first. There didn't seem to be much in the way of sights along the way. Even the castle itself was clearly in ruin when it came closer in view. So most likely nobody was actually inhabiting it. Ganondorf entered its doors without fear. If there was anything waiting inside he was confident it was no match for him.

But he found the Castle in equal ruin on the inside as he had the outside. Not a soul appeared to be inside, living or otherwise. But the one thing Ganondorf did notice was evidence of fighting, a battle that was fought long ago. The evidence of a former battle was even stronger when the Gerudo entered the throne room. The walls and floors were covered in furrows as if from great sword cleaves. Mighty arrows were lodged in places to tightly to be pulled out. Any looters that came through here were apparently unable to free them without breaking the shafts off. Whatever battle took place here, it was not between armies, that much was certain. It had to have been between two monstrously strong individuals in some great and epic duel.

But it was the throne itself that managed to surprise even Ganondorf. It was severed in two and just in front of it was a pair of peculiar Great Swords, crossed and buried blade-first in the ground like some kind of memorial wrapped in ropes with talismans dangling all over. This was enforced by the presence of an epitaph carved in stone nearby. Ganondorf approached and knelt down in order to read the writing carved into the epitaph:

Here lie the ashes of the evil king who brought doom to this once-great city. May the dead rest well knowing that their vengeance came swift and without clemency, may this tyrant's flames give life to my people, may his like never again walk this earth. Let these blades stand as a reminder that those who walk the path of evil will always be brought to justice.

Ganondorf said nothing. Something about that epitaph gave him an odd feeling. Like there was something important staring him right in the face but that he was unable to recognize it. And then there was the swords. Even at a glance he could tell there was something oddly... familiar about them. He knew Gerudo craftsmanship when he saw it, and that was unmistakable in these blades. In a way it almost gave the King of Evil a certain... nostalgic feeling, reminding him of home in the Gerudo Desert. But rather than do anything with the swords, Ganondorf's eyes caught climpse of another curiosity.

It was fixed on the wall in the back of the throne room. Was it a clock? If it was it wasn't like any Ganondorf had ever seen. It's gray and metallic hand appeared to be counting with a trail of blue flame circling behind it. It looked to be the only thing in this castle that was still functioning in any way. Was it important? He had no idea, maybe one of the others could shed some more light. Besides, Ganondorf found himself distracted by looking back at the twin Great Swords yet again. What was it about these weapons? Why did it almost feel like they were calling to him?

Without thinking Ganondorf reached out a hand to grasp one of the weapons. He felt a crackling sting from the talismans, which he now surmised were there to ward off evil. But the ward they provided was weak compared to himself. He pushed through and was able to break the talismans' ward by his own sheer force of strength and will. That left the weapons open to be taken. He grasped them in his hands and pulled. They were embedded tightly, but the strength granted to Ganondorf by the Triforce of Power allowed him to free the weapons with relative ease. He held the weapons in his hands, turned them over and examined them. He even gave them a few swift swings. They lacked the heavy infusion of his other weapons had, and yet... Somehow these just felt more comfortable. He couldn't explain it. Perhaps their Gerudo craftsmanship lent themselves for being dual-wielded better than the other swords. Or perhaps there was just some deeper connection that Ganondorf was unaware of. Either way, just holding these swords gave the King of Evil the distinct feeling that he was just a bit more... whole... than he was previously.

"...Interesting." He finally said to himself. But just as he felt compelled to take the weapons, something also made him feel compelled to leave something behind in their place. He put away the twin swords and instead drew his first sword from its scabbard. It was the one he previously wielded against Galeem before his imprisonment. He turned it upside down and buried it blade first the same spot he had retrieved the twin swords from. He didn't know why he felt compelled to leave it. Maybe he just felt like he didn't need it anymore. He wasn't sure. But now he had a new objective. He needed to go head and regroup with the Seekers and tell them about that clock thing. Maybe Rubick or Kamek would able to properly identify it, being as knowledgeable in magic and enchantments as they were.

World of Light

Sector 06 ~ The City of Glass

@Lugubrious Luka | @DracoLunaris Midna | @Zoey Boey Sakura & Karin

Word Count: 492
Level 7 Roxas: 2/70
Exp: 1
NEW EXP Balance--- 3/70

Roxas didn't say much during the elevator ride back down. This was for a number of a reasons, not the least of which being his frustration over how things ended at the top of the tower. He hoped that opening Kale and Sam's eyes would net them some extra allies, but not so. Seemed to be enough for Sandalphon though, so at least it wasn't a total waste. During the ride back down, Roxas examined the spirit he picked up earlier. The rooster reploid was pretty touch opponent, and just as he had been thinking he decided it would probably serve best as a Striker.

"Well..." he whispered to the Spirit in a low voice, "...Look I know I wasn't exactly your friend. But my friend and I really are trying to fix things. You were pretty strong, and that strength could be a great help to us. Plus if we succeed, I'm sure you'll get to go back home where you belong. So what do you say?" he paused a moment, as if waiting for the Spirit to somehow answer him. It of course, didn't, but it still bound itself to the Keybearer nonetheless.

For Roxas

New Striker spiritbound:
Burn Rooster
A spirit with a proud and rebellious nature, and medium cooldowns. He has a unique passive that empowers his flames if he's hit by ice-type attacks. He can send out a fiery ground flare with a stomp, jump up and perform a dive kick that bounces off walls until he hits the ground, or breathe fire like a short-ranged flamethrower for up to two seconds

Later on he was finally reunited with the other Seekers. Unfortunately there was not going to be any time for celebration. Namely, Luka from Psych-OSF appeared bearing news. He and a few others did some digging and discovered a hospital that may be holding Peach... or at least what was left of her. He had come to get Raz and Sakura in addition to anyone else who wanted to help with that investigation. As much as the Nobody disliked Psych-OSF and Suoh in general... he couldn't turn away.

"I'll go!" Roxas spoke up, suddenly. Given his feelings and behaviors the other day this probably came as a surprise. But he was serious. "I just have to hold your hand right?" He asked Luka. But before the platoon leader could answer, there was a rumble followed by a crashing sound.

”and that is our cue to leave” He heard Midna say nearby.

"She's right, let's go!" Roxas chimed in and he grabbed Luka's hand without waiting for any other confirmation. Here we go again. He thought to himself. Back into Sector 5, like it or not. We have to at least try to save Peach.

Disney & Dragons 5e

<Snipped quote by Double>

Ariel’s trying to protect the peasant!

@Crimson Flame

From a threat that only she was able to successfully perceive. To everyone who failed the check (like me) you are aggressors.

Disney & Dragons 5e

Is Shang really the only one who has any respect for the establishment you people are blindly picking a fight in?