DracoLunaris

Nerves In Carbonox: A Roll-Your-Own Giant Mecha Roleplay

Rose

There was a joke to be made here that went something along the lines of ‘no grace period except for doing systems checks’ that Rose thought might have gone down alright, but now was hardly the time. The assertion that the Lieutenant had made was, after all, true. Unfortunately they lacked the clarity of a chain of command to make these kinds of snap decisions necessary in this situation properly, nor the exact systems specs of the other mechs and pilots capabilities to make informed decisions about that.

Still, she had one pretty safe bet and that was: “Assertion: I am the fastest and fragilest” and as for what that information meant she was going to do, it was: “Confident: Can sweep the long path for ambushers with time to spare, then get sight on hill once close! Suggestion: come if you can keep up! Reassuring: Can come help if needed!”

The narrow profile of the very light mech, combined with its unorthodox limb configuration, ment that she might very well be able to squeeze it between the trees to hold true to her words (or take a shortcut or two). If that failed, well, she was fast in the air too, and her initial combat vocation as a fighter pilot ment she knew how to be evasive up there as well. Her framewerk was capable of being classed as a fighter craft when it was up in space as well, so she’d not gotten rusty either.

Still, for now, she had a road ahead of her, and the framewerk pilot wasted no time hitting it, racing ahead of anyone who might also be coming that way to act as a forward scout. The motion the tripod performed to do this was a strange undulating gallop, three legs flowing beneath it like water as the chassis was held high in the air, its six tendrils limbs fanned out behind it, training like ribbons.

The speed she traveled at was, in a way, a kind of armor, but mostly stuck on a path like this as she was, that had its limits. Thing’s be better when they hit the hill and she could really duck and weave to throw off shots instead of just going in a predictable direction faster than something her framewerks size really should.

Fortunately she had a pair of other defenses against being ambushed on this road by bush camping Cruxi. First of course was seeing the enemy so she could react to them, and the alien’s third eye roaming this way and that beneath the strobing blindfold had that well in hand as she kept her main pair on the road ahead.

The second was her Stargazer system, which she intended to use to try and deflect any shots coming her way up wards. With none of the larger frameworkz coming this way, she didn’t have to worry about this tactic flicking projectiles right at their heads, though the risk of blowing the top off of a tree was still a concern.

If she could, she’d redirect incoming shots to fly above the direction she was coming from, but she wasn’t picking where she was getting shot from, and so if some of the canopy had to go to keep her alive and the mission on track, then the forest would be getting a bit of light pruning, and that was that.

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

Wordcount: 1,441 (+6)
Bowser Jr: Level 14 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(266/140)
Rika: Level 10 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(182/100)
Location: The Dead Zone

The dome of O’s base that had been cracked by the impact of the pod smashed open, and the duo of royal sprogs smashed through, spooking the rex inside that Juri had simply walked around. It roared at them and began to advance, but was then briefly confused by the pair of intruders vanishing before they even hit the ground. They reappeared a moment later, and proceeded to hit said ground badly, Rika and Jr both sent sprawling, the transition away alone enough to foul up their landing, let alone what had occurred while they were away.

Rika recovered fastest, skipping the process of getting up via clicking on her cassette player, static engulfing her as she took on the 8 meter long form of the Beast, one which cared a lot less about being flat down on its belly than her own did. Still, as she swiftly pushed herself up onto her many feet, she came face to face with the fact that hitting play wasn’t going to be nearly as much of an easy win button as it had against the others animals, mainly because unlike them, the changing 4 meter tall and 13 meter long prehistoric monstrosity was bigger than her.

She swerved her head out of the way of being guillotined by its humongous jaws, only for its clawed foot to crunch down onto the rear of her long body before she could nip in and try and bite it back, eliciting a pained shriek.

The dinosaur swerved around, turning to try and catch her head as Rika tried to round it as well. In so doing whipped its tail towards Jr, but it was so tall that it sailed right over the top of the teary eyed boy head before he hit play and transformed as well.

”Get away from my sister!” he roared with Undyne’s voice, hurling a spear after the dinosaur, only for this to do little to nothing to its thick hide. It retaliated by glancing back and intentionally flicking its tail back towards the prince, forcing him to duck.

It clipped the crest on Undyne’s helm despite this, causing him to stagger and fall to one knee.

”Peeka!”/ he called out, intending to have his minion confuse the foe, only for the command to turn into a scream as the t-rex flowed with the momentum of the tail whip to turn on the prince again, jaws lunging forwards and snapping shut around him.

Jr just barely managed to raise Undyne’s spear such that it stabbed into the roof of the beast’s mouth, with the butt to the tongue. It cleaved through a little flesh till it hit bone, stopping the bite from simply shearing him in half, but fangs still crushed and scythed, cleaving and lacerating Undyne’s form, pinning a hand and leg.

Having been unable to heal this form himself, its already sapped life force began to rapidly drain away from all the wounds, as teeth dug in deeper. Yet, deep in the memory of the spirit it was a recording of, there was a burning feeling that wouldn’t let it die. It was a feeling the prince reached for and stole just a part of, performing a ritual that meant that, when Udnyne’s life came to an end a moment later, instead of breaking, her form seemed to melt and then rapidly reform into that of Undyne the Undying

It bought him maybe five more seconds of life.

Rika pivoted to use them, throwing her bulk at the tyrant king but with her back legs crippled she stumbled on the charge. In the time it took her to recover, the dinosaur crushing her brother completed the 360 spin, and then stamped a clawed foot down into Rika’s front half, just barely missing her head but still pinning her Beast form to the ground, pushing its weight down atop her.

Peeka, instructionless, blasted the towering dino, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough to dissuade the grip it had on the two children.

Colossal fangs pierced armor and magical flesh as the t-rex tried to devour the prince it had grasped in its jaws, as the spear stabbed between its jaws stopped it crushing Jr began to bend and buckle. A hand, trapped between fangs and inches from being severed, reached blindly down towards where a pinned Rika futility scrabbled and clawed at the limb pinning the Beast’s neck to the floor, entirely unable to reach up in turn.

And yet, where bodies were failing them, and the screaming pain drowned out any thought of clever escapes, their souls reached out to, clasped hold of, and drew strength from each other, and, when presented with the possibility of their end, as one heart declared: I REFUSE!

Static surrounded them once more, but rather than the Cassette Beast forms falling away and leaving their true selves in the deadly situations they were pinned, Undyne’s body melted through the grip of the tyrant’s jaws like water, streaming towards that of the Beast, fusing into it and, together, the two of them becoming something entirely new.

Where the Beast’s scrabbling claws had failed, a freshly forged armored fist lashed out into the leg of the beast not holding its body down, toppling the tyrant king. Then, when the pair of beasts then rose to face each other, they found that the children’s now stood the taller of the two.

A few moments later an explosion rocked the dome, and then the body of the t-rex came careening through the spot in the wall that the koopa kids had entered into, stone and dust flying everywhere as it smashed through the weakened structure and crashed to the floor below.

As the dust cleared a towering figure appeared at the hole they had smashed using the ancient beast. It was neither Rika nor Jr, nor was it one of their cassette beasts. Instead it was a six meter (19 foot) tall figure, its body covered in red chitten modeled around their form like plate-mail. A kite shield, positioned such that its point pointed back towards the elbow, and which sported two massive forward protruding horn-like spikes on top was held by the right hand, while the left brandished a two pronged trident of glowing white metal. The head appeared to be wearing a crested helm, one sporting glowing white eyes sat behind the visor slits and a fang like grill over the mouth. That illusion that was broken a moment later when the grill opened wide and revealed itself to be a true maw, one filled with row upon row of t-rex blood slicked shark teeth, and one with which it unleashed a screeching insectile battlecry that resounded throughout the arena.

Having announced its presence, the fusion of Undyne and the Beast that would be known as the Monster leapt from its perch in response to the perfectly in sync will of the two royal siblings, drawing the spiked shield back, beastial energy building and roiling around the not at all defensive armament, and slamming it down on the cripled form of the T-rex. The Berzerk Blast, a move unique to this fusion, careened into the ancient animal’s skull, smashing it downward into the ground, cratering it on impact as the brains within where turned to paste.

The Monster drank of the destruction it had wrought as it stood, having gained yet another stack of melee attack-up from simply delivering its signature move. It joined the 2 sets of buffs the kids had had that had been piled on-top of eachother, which were empowering their attacks to a monstrous degree.

Two sets of Tailwind and four sets of dragon dances were put to use a moments later, as the Monster set its white hot gaze of rage upon A. Then in the blink of an eye it was on him, having closed the distance at a clip far faster than anything that large deserved, delivering a mountain smash via shield bash to lower the Consul’s melee defence.

The (still wounded despite its bloody feast) Monster then comboed this into a thrust of Desperation with its spear, using the weapon to leaver itself back from A faster than a simple step would manage. Then with the resulting space it wound back the spiked shield back in a manner incredibly reminiscent of the children's father, power gathering around it as they did so, a barely contained haze of tooth and claw building and building, just waiting to be unleashed.

A heartbeat later, the Berzerk Blast roared forwards towards A, alongside the Monster’s screamed demand that he, quite simply, “DIE!”

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

wordcount: 1,699 (+6)
Bowser Jr: Level 14 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(260/140)
Rika: Level 10 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(176/100)
Location: The Dead Zone

”Nice one Pit!” Jr called up towards the winged hero once Sandalphon filled them in on what the heck the new building O was building was for, before he and Rika started making a run towards it with a battlecry of ”Now let’s go get that scaredy-jerk!”

They were, unfortunately, rudely interrupted on their way there with a construction that was set up far faster than the animal enclosures the consul had been putting up beforehand. One moment they were scampering towards his base across sudo-fleshy floor, the next they were stepping on sandstone, and giant mechanical scorpions where barrelling towards them.

Rika immediately grabbed her brother with an oversized hand and then with a ”hup” launched herself skywards, leaving the scorpions to bump into each other … only for the crane on the Drop into the Ocean ride that had been built right next to the sandstone structure to swing around towards them.

She tried to double jump to the side, but the wreckingball of a ride still clipped her shoulder, sending her tumbling back down to the ground. She landed hard, losing grip on Jr, who bounced a few times before coming to a stop as well. In a parallel, he lost his grip on his brush, which bounced even further till it bounced out of the arena entirely, back to where they’d been wrecking the polar bear enclosure.

After landing, Rika tried to push herself up with both hands, only for the arm that had been clipped by the crane’s pod to collapse under her, and for her to roll back to the floor with a whined ”owwwww”

Jr had it worse, not even having a moment to try and get to his feet before a scorpion came slamming into him. Rather than be roadkilled however, the impact sent the prince sliding along on his belly, the boy instinctively withdrawing into his shell as he started ping-ponging around the bumper car arena in his koopa shell.

Before Rika had the same run-in/over, the ship girl managed to click her tape player with her good arm, and transform herself into the Beast. A mechanical scorpion rammed into the oversized centipede a moment later, which still crippled limbs and hurt a lot, but she now had limbs to spare, so their injury was far less of a concern. As a bonus, her bulk also brought the bumper car to a halt, giving Rika the space and time she needed to grapple it and slam her horns into the top of it.

The mountain smash strike smashed apart the armor atop the machine apart, exposing its sparking guts into which the princess snapped her jaw, ripping out mechanical innards and swallowing them whole. How exactly this healed her was unclear, but it did, just in time for another car to come careening into her back legs with a crunch, eliciting a shriek of pain.

She scrambled up onto the wreck of the car she’d broken, then had to duck to avoid the Drop in the Ocean pod swinging overhead, giving the car time to back up and escape retaliation.

Jr’s flutermane Peeka had to do the same, bobbing down to avoid being smashed by the brass pod as she tried to catch up with her trainer. A tricky task, as a bumper car slammed into the still shell stuck prince, sending him bouncing away again in a way that looked like it might end up being a perpetual pain till his sister intervened.

Rika, having shed her beast form but still perched on the wrecked car, launched her grappling hook, tagging Jr with its end and reeling him towards herself. With a dexterous flick of the cable, she got him to bounce up, and then placed her good hand in front of her chest to catch him like an incoming oversized baseball.

The impact of the fast moving koopa knocked her clean off of the bumper car wreck, right before the car chasing the prince slammed into it, reducing it to scrap.

”I have you” Rike told her brother reassuringly as she used an aim glid to extend her fall to the ground, and then used her maneuvering thrusters to slow it down, the dash releasing a burst of water that knocked the Drop in the Ocean’s pod off course before it could hit them out of the air.

Her feet lightly touched the ground, and a moment later so did Jr’s, or, rather, Undyne's as the prince swapped to a sturdier form to face down the remaining incoming bumper cars now coming towards them.

”Bolt em Peeka!” Jr yelled at his flutter mane, giving direction to the direction less mon, and prompting her to blast the middle car with a fusion bolt, which then split and hit the other two on either side. The shot briefly slowed all three to a crawl, leaving them monetarily without their most dangerous aspect, and the pair took immediate advantage of that.

One was smashed from below by an anchor of water, flipping it over, while Rika used her good arm to direct half of her red baron drones to fly over and then stab down into the hull of another. It wasn’t quite enough to disable it, but as the car picked up speed again it was smoking, sparking, and lagging behind the untouched car.

That one did not stay untouched for long, as both royals leapt up as it came close, raised spears, and plunged them into the back of its hull. Again, this was not quite enough, but the spears did let the pair stay anchored to the vehicle as it swerved around, and then the other car slammed into it.

Spears were pulled out, intending to be used to end the machines, only for both of them to have to leap aside as the pod swung above once again.

”That’s super annoying” Rika complained, regarding the pod, as she rubbed her hurt arm. Her helbard had blinked to her back so she could do this but was a moment later joined there by her brother, who hopped up and said that she should ”get us up there!” meaning up to the crane trying to wreck them.

She glanced from the 2 damaged scorpion cars, which were in the middle of knocking the third tipped over car onto its wheels again and then up at the swinging pod before agreeing ”alright” and making the leap.

She high-jumped up, and then her featherfall rune launched her skywards, before she double jumped, maneuvering thrusters past the swinging pod (the accompanying blast of water once again knocking it clear) and then grappling up to the top of the rocky spire the crane was attached to.

It lacked any kind of operator's cabin, but there was a little circuit box thing that Jr ran over too and flipped open, but not before calling out ”Peeka! Grab my brush!”

Then he set to work, getting his Rotom phone out, plugging it into something in the box before starting to tap away at something on his device.

As he did so, Rika had to put some of her focus into just holding on to the widely swinging crane that was not happy about them being there, but she still had the time to actually focus on what had been going on in the rest of the battle, which had been a bit tricky when avoiding the bumper cars. As such it was only then that she really noticed the ceiling was gone and that there was an entire moon's worth of tentacles descending towards them.

No one had ever found it necessary to explain to her how a moon was both very big and very far away, so the impact of it descending down was a little lessened, but only somewhat. The resulting sensation was still highly unpleasant to her.

She decided to not point out that this was happening to her brother. Everyone else was getting on with bashing things (though they were different things compared to the last time she’d seen them, the princess having also missed the 2 transformations of the gravemind and A) rather than running for the hills, so it could wait.

That wait ended just a moment later as it turned out as Jr declared ”I got it!” with delight, before gleefully declaring ”Now to wreck this thing!” before sending the crane spinning around, its pod crashing through the remaining scorpion cars in its first rotation, and then smashing into the side of the moonbase in a second.

The prince giggled with glee at the carnage he’d inflicted, before raising a hand up and intending to catch his paintbrush that his pokemon had fetched for him, only to miss the catch and be bonked on the head as he only now saw the infested moon coming down towards them.

Rika didn’t really have any idea what she could say that would help wipe that look of horror off of her brother’s face, and so instead, in a mix of distraction and selfishness, simply asked ”Arm?”

”Huh? What? Oh!” Jr replied, before as he snatched up his brush and cast ”Cure!” on his sister. Being back on task had indeed knocked him out of the stunning psychological impact of the moonfall, and in so doing allowed him to remember ”Oh! I can paint a way out of here if we need it!”

Rika blinked and then nodded. It had been a while since he’d used that magic, but they did have a way out, didn’t they? Till they needed it though, they’d make double time to stay on Sanaplhon’s plan, namely: ”let's get O then”

”Yeah! We’ve broken his stuff, now let’s break him!”

With an escape method assured, her brother hopped back on her shoulders and his pokemon floating alongside them, Rika pushed forward to take them back into the fight. She ran up the crane’s jib, and then with a series of leaps, boosts and a grapples carried them over the gap between it and where Jr had slammed its pod into the moonbase, taking them into wherever the hole they’d punched that in O’s last line of defense led to.

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

wordcount: 1,055 (+4)
Midna: level 10 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (139/110)
Location: The Dead Zone

Midna rose up to the back of her flygon, the pokemon’s accent towards the ceiling aided by the hot air billowing up from the burning Gravemind. It was chased by several large flood swarm forms that had detached from the wounded corpse mass, the mutated predators spitting infectious barbed projectiles after the princess who had stolen a limb from their overlord.

”Get lost you oversized kees!” Midna yelled at them, before having a thought and changing her mind, saying ”Wait, no, on second thought, come here!” and prompting her beast to pivot and dive right back down towards them.

As she did spectral poes swirled out around her along with a ghostly aura as she made use of Shemira’s magic, one that engulfed the swarm forms as she dove into the midst of them. As her magic smothered them, the princess sword flashed, severing the wing of one foe, while her flygon lashed out with draconic claws to rend the face of another asunder.

As they hacked at the oversized bats, Minda strummed her lyre, causing her to unleash retaliatory musical bolts against the swarmers when they slashed at her flygon, retaliations joined by the cactus needles that spiked out from it when either of them were hit. At the same time, her specters slipped through the swarmers, sapping their life from their bones, and granting half of it to their mistress. They also ensured she always had two stacks of Starward Demonhunt, reducing the damage she took.

”Come on! Keep trying! Keep falling!” she cried out as blade and claw reaped a bloody toll, till the last swarmer fell. Once the aerial battle was over, the princess’ flygon was certainly worse for wear, but she herself had actually gained life from fighting these lesser foes.

It was as it ended that Sandalphon’s chime for her to switch targets came in, but before she had a moment to respond, things got worse.

Up on high as she was, Midna was right there by the ceiling as it ripped itself away, and un-engaged as she was, she had all the time in the world to turn her gaze up to it, and see what A had initiated.

”Goddesses. Selene, what have they done to that moon?” she asked the silent heavens, but there was no answer from the distant divine, only the rapidly approaching eldritch horror.

After a moment of heart pumping dread, she ripped her gaze away from the impending doom, and instead set it upon its herald, telling Sandalphon she was ”on it” before diving down towards A.

As she approached, the princess roared ”These ones can claw!” in response to the question of what a nail or finger could do against a hand, as she lept off of her flygon (which then portaled home to lick its wounds), whipped out her shadow hand before her, and extended from its fingertips great purple dragon claws.

With the momentum of her plummet behind them she drove her claws into the pulsing heart attached to A’s back, and then used that grip to pivot her downward momentum into a swing around the feet of the towering figure, slideing across the ground when she touched down on it. As she began that spin she re-summoned her Beast Legion that she had stashed before fleeing skywards, the chimera dropping behind the foe and then having its chain swung halfway around the titan’s feet before Midna was forced to let go of his back.

Rather than speed away from A, she extended a clawed hand and dug it into the ground, causing her body to drift like a motorcycle around A. Sliding like so, she linked up with her beast legion, and in so doing completed their encirclement of him, briefly binding the Mobius in place using the astral chain linking them together.

In that moment, she threw the rest of her mana reserves into summoning a force to humble the bound titan, her Darknut stepping out of a portal behind her, enlarged enough that it towered over A. It had failed to strike him before, but now, faced with a stationary target, it was able to bring the pain.

Its titanic broadsword, already larger than a man before its bearers enlargement, rose up, silver edges of its black blade flashing in the fire and moonlight, and then crashed down upon A, dealing a devastating singular strike to his form.

”Get my point?” Minda taunted as she pushed herself to her feet (having Akira slid herself to a halt) wincing a little as she did so. Though she had transferred much of the momentum of her fall into him, it still hadn’t been a painless landing.

She did much more than wince as a maw opened on the chest of A as, in response to her attack (and inability to retaliate against the darknut itself who had stepped back into the portal it had come out of before he had recovered), A spewed a torrent of blighted fluids at her.

She recoiled in disgust, and then stumbled back to her knee as the horrendous feeling of being eaten alive by a million tiny organisms overwhelmed her for a moment. It primed A to deliver a second retaliation, tendrils lashing out of that same maw, only for claws to lash out from the aether as her beast legion pounced to her defense, deflecting the blow just in time for Midna to recover.

Her night sky ripper flashed up as she stood, cleaving into the tendrils as they attempted to course correct back to her. A windy aftershock knocked it back more, buying enough time for her to leap up, vault off of the back of her beast legion, and slam a Cyclone Kick into A’s face, unleashing a devastating cyclone of wind, and winning her 73% chance to stun him in the process.

The recoil blasted her back again, the princess landing and sliding backwards a bit as she did, before coming to a halt. ”This one’s for you, my captive audience” she told A, as she used her 5 second grace period her stun granted to strum her lyre, blessing her allies in this fight her Rainbow Rondo buff, and leaving the stage clear for them to take their own shots at the Consul before he could act again.

Nerves In Carbonox: A Roll-Your-Own Giant Mecha Roleplay

Understandable. Good luck with your recovery!

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

wordcount: 990 (+4)
Midna: level 10 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (135/110)
Location: The Dead Zone

Minda’s mount skidded to a halt as a wall formed in between her and the trio who’d been distracting O. It wasn’t that much of an obstacle, and she considered simply shadow hand hauling herself over it, but the confident tactical call out of Jr and Pt’s describing their foes as ‘cute little bears’ made her think it was unnecessary. Besides, the Gravemind clearly wanted her attention, given that it detached and sent a flight of Mutalist Ospreys in retaliation for the spear team attack she and Primrose had launched at them.

Pivoting to this incoming threat, she used what little of her mana remained to charge her sword with electricity, which she then thrust out in a beam at them as they approached, only for one to produce a chilly looking frozen bubble shield to block the strike.

Undeterred by the attack, the Osprey then airdropped a small pack of crawlers on the ground, which charged towards her, but the princess was already doing the same. She thrusted her sword forward with the intent to pop the bubble shield, only to find her attack, and then her body, passing right through it and into a chilling aura found within, one that gripped her bones in such a way that it would have slowed her stride had she not been riding an untouchable otherworldly horror.

”Alright, that’s it, you’re mine!” she declared, hopping her legs up onto the back of her beast legion, and then launching herself at the Frozen Mutualist. One clawed hand and two clawed feet grappled the foe, but she found they dug into some sort of protective barrier rather than its own metal/flesh, which protected it from har.

That was fine, she felt, as she started hacking at it with the war-fan, but naturally the other Ospreys weren't going to just let her do that, diving at her and releasing clouds of toxic gas all around their ‘leader’. Her mask and armor protected her against it better than she would have before she started wearing it, but it still bit and stung at her, especially her exposed ears.

As such she let herself fall, and then pulled herself down onto her Beast Legion, which had been slashing away at the crawlers. They tried to swarm her, but crawling as they were, they struggled to strike the mounted princess, who considered them ”Not worth killing” and instead turned her eyes skywards for her prize.

The Frozen Osprey emerged from the toxic clouds above a moment later, at which point she and it immediately launched themselves at each other.

Gas erupted, obscuring vision, and a moment later, the frozen aura vanished… only to appear again. Then, a moment after that, the Frozen Osprey rose into the air out of the cloud and beneath it hung Minda, the princess making the Night Bloom raised flood-fested carry her up into the air and out of its own attack.

”This is mine now!” she taunted the gravemind, before calling out ”Thank you Selene!” to the grander of the boon.

She ditched her sword and fan into a portal as she rose up, freeing up two hands so she could strum her lyre with one, and get a better grip on her temporary ride with the other.

She and it ascended up, a melody following them along as they floated over the people fighting D and the Grave mind, granting them all her Rainbow Rondo boon. That included her ride, which the other Ospreys found out as they rushed her again, covering Minda and her own Osprey with their gas attacks. Said gas constantly gnawing at hem meant they kept on procking the boon she had just given her minion, causing several trios of musical bolts to launch out from the lyre she was strumming, and to crash into them, leaving her and hers the only things to escape from the cloud.

”Music to my-” she began to joke, only to cough and finish more dryly ”ears”

All this gassing left her in need of a fair bit of healing, but she only had 12 seconds with her frosty friend, and she intended to make the best use of it.

Thus she rapidly ascended up towards the Gravemind’s body, the frosty barrier tanking any lesser shots that might get thrown her way. Then, when they got close to her, she had it race forward, the dumping of a toxic cloud over the foe’s head mainly a bonus to the intent of using the speed for evasiveness purposes, before using the momentum generated by its subsequent rapid deceleration to toss herself up and forwards.

Heat and ash from the burning foe buffeted her, spikes formed, hands grasped and jaws opened below her, but she did not intend to touch down upon any of them. Instead, at the top of her arch, she used her astral chain to yank her Beast Legion to her, the creature having followed below and even began to climb the foe in-order to keep up with her flight.

It arrived beneath her just in time for her to land on its back instead of on the back of the Gravemind itself, with the height of its body hopefully keeping her out of easy arms reach. She portal tossed and caught her sun on a stick in-order to further reduce the risk of being cooked alive, while using the mana she’d stocked up by melee fighting the Ospreys to form her shadow hand up above her in preparation of her main attack: crescent moon slashing the Dead End Express out of the twilight realm.

The massive engine of destruction smashed down into the shoulder of one of the Gravemind’s tentacles, blades whirling, wind based aftershocks smashing and slashing as she proceeded to try and finish her severing of the limb, chainsaw style.

As she did this, the Frozen Osprey hovered above her, its frozen shield blocking enemy fire, slowing down any flood-fested that tried to charge her through it. Once it was spent, either due to 12 seconds passing or its bubble bursting under the onslaught, she was bailing, releasing the blade to let it rev itself into a portal and then tossing herself skywards before summoning her twilight Flygon to ride on out of there, ascending on the thermals roaring up from the body of their flaming foe.

Nerves In Carbonox: A Roll-Your-Own Giant Mecha Roleplay

Rose

Rose entered the ladies changing room with just enough time to spare, and proceeded through her changing with regimented efficiency. Casual wear was tossed off, exposing biology that was considerably more alien than it had first appeared when covered in clothing. It also exposed a body worn by time and injury. Ironically the major signifiers of the latter were patches of skin considerably less scarred by the former, where skin grafts had replaced scars and burns.

After that she pulled on a Rosnian made pilot suit, armored plating covering her extremities, while lighter Nanoweave hugged closer to the alien’s hyper-dense muscles, trading increased vulnerability for increased flexibility. Nothing unusual there. What was perhaps unusual was the last items she donned, namely a pair of laser-handguns that she magnetized to her hips. They were unloaded, if the digital ammo counters on the back were to be believed, but the presence of several small cartridge shaped batteries attached to the armor above the handguns indicated that they were not ceremonial in nature in the slightest.

What was not clear from the outside was the multipurpose nature of the weapons. More than a weapon of last resort to prevent, one way or the other, capture by the enemy, they were also to be used as cutting tools to help a pilot escape the wreck of their vehicle, as well as as additional thrusters for navigating zero-G environments.

Thus prepared, the veteran pilot stepped out of the changing room, and headed out to see if this VR setup they had really would feel like the real thing.

---

The first thing Rose did upon entering the virtual cockpit was reach up to and pull down what looked like a blindfold from the ceiling of her cockpit, and slipped it over her third eye. Her ears shivered with discomfort for a moment as the blindfold tightened around her head, the front bulging as it pressed right up against the eye beneath it, before she re-acclimatized to the feeling.

Only then did she fire up the engine using a triangular key, causing patterns then lit up on the front of the blindfold, stylized to look like a symbolic depiction of an even larger eye, one that tracked the movements of the one below. Around her, conventional screens lit up, revealing the forest of greens and browns. That quickly changed, as with an intonation of “Testing, 1, 2, 3” the view switched from optical to RADAR, LADAR, Infrared and then back to optical again, basking the interior briefly in cold and then warm hues.

Ears flicked in please affirmation at this, before she switched to the command channel and said “Concerned warning: if you have an aversion to flashing lights, don’t look at my secondary feed!” cheerful sounding as ever, before testing the different settings of her Multiple Fire Control System once more. The mains screens did not change, but the smaller one inside the blindfold that her third eye was pressed against did, flicking first though each in turn as a test, only for some kind of debug console to pop up, Rose to type in a string of Rosnian glyphs, which caused the flicking between view modes to rapidly increase in speed till it was doing so at epileptic seizure inducing speed.

It should have resulted in a completely incomprehensible blur, and indeed to anyone looking over her figurative shoulder it did, but veteran Rosnain pilots swore that their third eyes were able to enter a zen state where all the feeds blurred together, where they could spot the unseen with ease.

Of course, they then had to work out what feed the independently operating eye had spotted something on, and hope that what it had spotted wasn’t just something that looked a bit too much like the shape of a Homeworld predator, but still, they swore by it, and as one of them, as perhaps one of their exemplars at this point, so too did Rose.

Once her hack was set in place, Rose set about making use of the MFCS’s actual intended functions, opening up the shared communication channel and saying “Informative: sending sensor data gifts to you!” before doing a test of pinging the other framewerks with data packets containing (fortunately non strobing) sets her visual feeds so they could get an example of what those were like to receive, and adapt their own interfaces to handle them accordingly.

Once that was confirmed to be working, she then directly asked Elora “Polite query: Does this help with your maps!” assuming that their two data gathering systems had been configured to work together in preparation for them working together, but making sure to double check.

With the data feeds all set up, she then did a quick test of the other systems.

The Stargazer test was simple for all that it was an incredibly complex device: she made a falling leaf dance to her tune right before her framewerk’s primary sensor.

The actual motion of the mech meanwhile was a slightly more involved process, the Ronsian flexing her fingers, making each of her framewerk’s tendrils flick and squirm to test their dexterity and responsiveness, before doing a few steps to ensure the three legs were all working properly, the limbs tracking off her own 2 and the nerve impulses of a residual tail her kind had.

It was an unorthodox setup by human standards, but was actually a rather mature Rosnain technology. Their low gravity incredibly vertical homeworld had never been very suited for roads, its trees, mountains and cities all reaching far higher into the sky than they did on Earth. As such something that could navigate that difficult terrain had been a much higher priority than it had been on the human homeworld, and the reduced gravity had also reduced the material science requirements needed to make something that would not be at the mercy of the square cube law.

The original designs Senko-San was a distant descendant too had used the brain of a native beast of burden to bypass the need for complex AI, but obviously they were far past such things these days.

Obviously.

The setup had then followed them to the stars, be it as landing legs on shuttles or as vehicles to explore low-G frontier worlds. They had even found use even on Rose’s much higher gravity world, the most ubiquitous use being that of an amphibious craft that worked around and under the floating cities dotting its globe spanning ocean. It was that, she thought, which gave the vessel such a nostalgic feeling, one that reminded her of happier days before she had lost so much.

A pinging sound caused the Rose to blink all three eyes, the woman having been briefly lost in a memory of watching a vast migration of native sea life from within those vessels alongside her lost loves, and returned to the present. A glance at the cause of the noise, a report that all three of her Framewerk’s weapon systems had passed the automated diagnostic tests she’d initiated, firmly anchored her back in it.

With that, all the systems were good to go, and so after reporting as such, there was little to do but hurry up and wait for the mission to begin.

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

wordcount: 1,420 (+6)
Bowser Jr: Level 14 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(254/140)
Rika: Level 10 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(170/100)
Location: The Dead Zone

”Oh come on, he can just replace the stuff? Lame” Jr complained as O began selling the ruins of his first run of attacks. Still, it gave him a brief free moment to raise his staff up and cast ”Medica!” in-order to produce a pulse of healing to restore his, Pits, and Rika’s Beast form’s health, undoing some of O’s own efforts in the process.

Of course, then he got right on trying to make up for lost time, building tall stone walls around them, freezing the ground beneath them and popping down a trio of very large and irate polar bears at the opposite end of the enclosure.

If O thought that it being cold was going to stop Jr making a mess though, he had another thing coming. Having poisoned a swamp, Jr now set about melting the ice caps, switching his brush from its default ink to the hot and spicy flavor. With sweeps of his brush, the prince laid down a moat of burning ground between them and the bears, saying that they should ”Let em come to us!”

He then called up to Peeka (who’d been left in the dust by O) to ”Ready a Plasma Fission for the middle one” and then to ”Wait.. Wait… fire!”

At her trainer’s command, the floating ghost fired the twin bolts at the center bear right as it started to cross the burning goop. The bolt struck the target, splitting as it did so, causing resulting pair bolts to lash out at a right angle and hit the other bears as they too got stuck in the goop zone, slowing them all by 70% for a brief moment, making sure their paw pads got extra toasty.

Beside him, Rika took that moment to counter charge, over a dozen pointy legs skittering across the ice for a not half bad grip. Enough to get up to speed anyway. Stopping would have been somewhat hard however, which is why she didn’t even bother, ramming horns first into the left side bear.

In the process she slammed it back onto the fire patch, which it very much did not like. With a snarl lunged towards her and off of the goop, clamping them around one of her legs as she tried to get the rest situated on the mix of ice and slush she was now standing on. She cried out with pain as the limb was ripped clean off, only to thrust that open maw towards the bear, catching and snapping off an ear as the bear dodged back from her. Right back onto the flaming goop.

The producer of that fire hazard was having a little trouble meanwhile, because he was a child sized turtle facing town a two full grown men sized bear. A bear that had not cared at all for the iron spikes he’d shot it with. Rather than get trampled, the boy lowered the hand shooting spikes to his tape player and hit play. Then wearing Undyne’s form he thrust her spear forwards, stabbing it into the bear’s side and trying to hold it back.

Unfortunately, they were standing on ice, and metal boots did not give good traction on that at all, causing the prince to slide backwards along it till he was slammed into the stone wall. Built to keep the bears in, it was nice and sturdy, and thus very unpleasant to get flattened against.

Gritting Undyne’s very pointy teeth, Jr endured it, and retaliated, raising an armored hand and giving the bear a right good Wallop to the snout, preventing it from clamping its jaws around his head by knocking the snap of course.

Spotting movement above, jr snapped ”Confusion ray!” at what he hopped was Peeka and, sure enough, from above, a purple ray struck the bear. At first this had no seeming effect, the bear swiping at Jr with a claw and denting Undyne’s armor, but with its second strike it somehow managed to hit its own head, causing it to stumble.

Taking advantage of this, Jr lurched the still embedded spear to the side, pulling the bear off of him and getting out from between it and the stone wall. The bear stumbled to the side, attempted to turn on the prince, and for its efforts received several gashes in its side as the prince hit it with a double slice, and his cyber-ninja stiker Sho hit it with a flurry of his own.

”Plasma!” Jr commanded as he backed up, getting Peeka to hit it with another slowing bolt, giving him just a few extra moments to dodge to the side of the bear’s charge, and score more slashes on its side.

The bear scraped against the wall, only to suddenly as it pushed off of it with a paw and round on Jr with increased speed. Unfortunately for it, it was still confused, causing it to stumble and fall instead of catching the prince, landing hard on its bloodied side.

As it struggled to rise, Jr pulled his spear back, charged power, and then unleashed it in an Undertow attack, causing an anchor of water to smash up beneath the bear. The beast was promptly launched up into the air, before slamming back down right onto a swoopin stu that had formed out of the burning goop, splattering it and the ground with yet more toasty slime.

It raised its head, growled, and then succumbed to the dots and its wounds.

It did so right next to an open mouthed and staring skywards Rika

”What?” Jr asked her, glancing up just in time to see Sectonia finish getting run over in the sky by a roller coaster cart, prompting a bemused ”What…” before what was actually processed what had happened.

”Oh no no no no!” he rambled in a panic, making a run for the wall. His tape was paused, and making use of Roxa’s flow motion the prince leapt up, put a foot to the stone blocking his view of the fallen queen, and then wall-jump off it to get just enough height to see over the wall for just a moment.

It would have been enough time for him to cast his instant full heal on the queen, but instead he saw he was already too late, and only managed to spot the tail end of the queen bee getting carted off by cats, prompting a ”huh?” of confusion before he fell back down. He did so right into Rika’s clasped together palms, with which the princess then immediately launched him skywards again with a team jump.

He landed atop the wall, balanced there with a single cartwheel of his arm, and was joined a moment later by Rika who escaped the enclosure via her grappling hook.

”what happened to Sectonia?” Rika asked as she failed to spot the queen, to which her brother gave the only possible answer which was a slightly bemused ”Cats saved her”

Behind them, much of the enclosure had been splattered with burning ink, mainly due to Rika and her bear’s tumultuous brawl right on top of it. The rest would no doubt soon be smeared over by the swoopin status currently forming from it. Ahead, the vast majority of the seekers were brawling either with the gravemind or with consul D in what looked to be an absolute mess of a fight.

They had arrived just in time to see D barraging Roland, Roxas, and Geralt with all sorts of magic, and to see the state of post 1 vs 1 brawl Nadia and Juri.

Having missed one opportunity to intervene to help save life/lives, the prince did so now. First he raised his staff and cast ”Presence of Mind” upon himself to boost his overall casting speed, and then threw out a ”Cure!” spells for each of the 5 fighters facing down Consul D.

While Jr was doing this, his sister went off to do a lap of the top of the wall, which was at first a little confusing to her brother, at least until bits of it started exploding behind her, the princess expanding her entire supply of torpedoes in order to use them as demolition timed charges. They were only as strong as hand grenades, but the Rika had dropped them down right by the wall, causing the detonations to go off point blank against the outer side of it, which should at least crack them, if it did not shatter them.

Once he got what she was doing, Jr briefly paused casting Cure to call up ”Peeka! Blast the bits she’s blown!” to his Flutter Mane, prompting her to hover back into the enclosure and to start firing plasma bolts at the bits of the wall that where still standing after Rika had torpedoed them.

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

wordcount: 1,378 (+6)
Bowser Jr: Level 14 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(248/140)
Rika: Level 10 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(164/100)
Location: The Dead Zone

Jr childishly blew a raspberry up at O as he complained about how much the hippos had cost him, before going ”wait…” as he started to have an idea based off of said comment.

Unfortunately that thought process got interrupted by a 5 meter long alligator lunging up out of the murky water he was floating on.

He was promptly dragged down into the water by the gator, the way his shell spikes stabbed into its mouth flesh being of little consolation as it began death rolling him. What was a consolation was that the nature of the attack, crushing jaws and being rotated to death, meant that his new Stygian Turtle Shell activated almost immediately, giving him three seconds of invincibility, and his sister three extra seconds to save his hide.

Having taken their moment of respite to sharpen her Beast form’s natural armaments, Rika dove in after her brother, her 8 meter long form creating a massive splash as she did so. Over a dozen insectile limbs reached blindly in the murk till they found the beast in the swamp water, and then gripped it tight, stopping the death roll in its tracks. That still left Jr stuck under water, flailing in a blind panic due to an inherited fear of drowning, and the beast wasn’t exactly built to hold its breath either.

Still, at least she knew where the creature was now, and promptly slammed the Beast’s horns into the crocodile, knocking the wind out of it, and getting it to release her brother. Unfortunately it then immediately began to bite at her instead, clamping onto a leg and thrashing about to try and rip it free.

Up above, Jr surfaced and made a mad swim for solid ground, forgetting entirely that he could stand and sail on the water in his panic. Coughing and spluttering on all fours on the marshy ground, the boy tried in vain to get a hold of his racing heart, but there simply was no time. Behind him came splashing as the two massive creatures brawled and bit at each other in the water, yet only one was built for that, and so if he didn’t find a way to help things were not going to go well for his sister.

The prince glanced around for his paintbrush, only to find it floating atop the water, bleeding paint into the swampland, so there’d be no healing Rika from the surface, and with how murky the water was, there was too much risk of hitting her if he just fired harpoons.

He had to get back down there.

He thrust a hand into his bag, put on a set of headphones, steeled himself both figuratively and literally, and then dove back into the water wearing the form of the fish woman Undyne.

Clad in armor, the prince sank fast, and then as he drank in the water in-order to breathe it, almost choked, both on the act and on the thickness of the murk. He endured, pushed forward, spear in hand.

The thrashing in the water intensified, suddenly stilled and then after what could have felt far too long for anyone looking out for the children, both of them burst from the water, both wrenching up water from their battle in the murk

”Urgh, ugh, bleh, I, ug, really don’t like this guy now” Jr complained, as before once again glancing for his staff, and finding the ink bleed had intensified, fouling the water even more.

”I.. Huh… Oh yeah!” he said, completing the thought he’d been having when the crocodile attacked them, which was ”If he’s spending money on this stuff, let’s bleed him dry!”

”Huh? How can we bleed him if we can’t touch him?” Rika asked, briefly switching out of her Beast form to use her grappling hook to retrieve Jr’s paintbrush. The prince accepted this with a nod of thanks, before saying that his idea was ”Simple! We keep breaking all his stuff till he runs out of money!”

”Ohhhh” Rika replied, before getting right to it, promptly singing a fist around and punching the closest tree. Two more strikes broke its bark, boosted her attack speed, and then the fourth smashed clean through it, and sent it tumbling down into the mud, its branches smashing down onto the trough of vegetables in the process.

”Yeah! That’s it” Jr said, having dropped his own cassette-beast form so he could heal Rika, and then joining in on the mess making. With his left hand he swatted his paintbrush around, splattering toxic goop around and poisoning the swamp waters, while his right created iron cans of all things, which he began littering around, both actions together to make a right mess of the place.

”How do you like this, you big jerk!” he yelled up at O, only for one of the consuls' own allies to do way more damage to the enclosure than they were: The Gravemind slammed a tentacle down into the enclosure, wrecking the fences even more, and leaving a great grove in the wet earth that quickly flooded with water as it pulled back.

Thanks to all the speed boost buffs, the kids got out of the way with ease, but the danger didn’t end there, as rushing out of the groove as it flooded came a wave of infector forms, all of them scuttling towards an undead mutant hippo that Blazermate had made. Given that they’d ended up on the other side of the groove from it, the koopa kids were not in danger immediately, but if they got to the hippo, that’d be a problem for sure.

”We gotta stop those!” Jr called out as he formed a flurry of iron knives and began to launch them towards the infected. He mitigated the potential risk of friendly fire by having the knives fly above the infectors, and then pivot 90 degrees in the air to lance down on top of them, showering them with a rain of falling metal.

Rika followed suit with the targeted attack method, launching a shocker swarm from her gauntlet hangers, which buzzed forwards and discharged electricity into the mass of infectors, while also having her scout planes dive down to do strafing runs against them.

As they did this, Jr breifly stabbed his paintbrush down into the mud to free up his other hand, and then blindly grabbed and tossed a pokeball at a fallen tree. The orb bounced once, and then released Peeka, his fluttermane, who he commanded to ”Blast those freaky things!” This prompted her to fire plasma bolts after the infectors, the mon artfully triggering the shot’s splitting ability to have its twin bolts to split apart and hit pairs of targets on either side of her shot, again preventing the risk of said shots flying onward to accidentally hit Blazermate.

It was this set of assets and powers on the field that gave Jr another idea, and so, after the infestor situation was resolved one way or the other, he set this new plan into motion.

”We can’t hit O, but he can still see us, so let’s make trying to even look at us a pain!” he called out in suggestion, before first getting Rika to send up a diversion swarm from her hangers, the electrical fireflies buzzing up to flash and blink in front of O’s eyes in a very annoying accuracy reducing fashion, and then sending Peeka to be a menace to the elderly.

The pokemon drifted up as close as it could to the Consul, and then used Dazzling Gleem in his light of sight, causing a bright pulse of light to flash from her necklace of energy eyes. Whether the offensive fairy light would work to harm O through whatever projection method he was using was debatable, but Jr was quite sure that having a bright light flashed in your face would be annoying. As would having the ghost pokemon subsequently floating around in front of O, pulling faces and “flutter flutter flutter!”-ing as she did so.

”Come on, get mad, and buy stupid expensive stuff in stupid places” Jr quietly urged O, while both he and his sister kept on their toes be ready to deal whatever financial investment the old man made next.

Nerves In Carbonox: A Roll-Your-Own Giant Mecha Roleplay

Rose

Nero wasn’t the only one marveling at the ship the shuttle was approaching, though with the presence of a contingent of engineers onboard that should hardly be surprising. Something interesting that could be gleaned from this, however, was the way that more or less all the Rosnians were set chattering by the sight, marking most of them as engineers. The sound of their chattering would have been described by a 21st century human as sounding exactly like some cheesy b movie alien would make, unaware that the beings before them were very much responsible for that trope due to their ancestor’s abductions and experiments on humans.

At any rate, there was one exception to the nerding out over the vessel, and that was the older lady who saw it as the absurd resource investment that it was, and thought only of how much would have had to be sacrificed to make it possible. An investment and sacrifice she wondered just how long they could endure making.

Still, she didn’t throw a damper on her people’s enthusiasm for the marvel of technology, and especially not that of her daughter’s, Rose’s third eye giving her just the right amount of attention to indicate that yes, she was paying attention, even as most of the technical terms went over her head.

She genuinely wasn't bord or faking attention however, it was always nice to listen to She Who Notices The Little Things In Life And Sets Them Right (who went by Fixi when humans asked) talk about something that excited her, and so she was paying plenty of attention to respond when her daughter said “and to think that She By Whose Hands We Will Forge A New Age Of Wonders has had a hand in it! It is just so amazing! I can’t wait to see her again”

“Neither can I” the woman who was ever so proud of her daughter (who went by Val when humans asked) replied, before telling her other daughter that she was also ever so proud of that “as soon as we’re settled we’ll need to organize time to see her”

As it turned out, such an formality was not necessary, as the pair were ambushed by Val right as they were coming down the ramp (a fairly easy task given that the humans loomed over them all and how she’d had to weave between them all to get to them)

The trio embraced, foreheads touching as part of the hug (which, due to gesture needing them to close their third eyes, was one of great trust and affection) and then broke apart as they began chattering in their native tongue.

“My child! I hadn’t expected to see you here. Do they not have you working?” Rose asked, which got her a negative ear wiggle in response from Val, who then explained “They do, but we got everything sorted for you in advance so I could come greet you. They insisted. It's a human thing to welcome people right when they show up apparently”

“A good human thing then, though it is sad this will be such a short reunion” Rose replied, her third eye having seen both the engineers moving off and the lieutenant preparing to address the Pilots.

Rose pivoted and snapped to attention, ears up and alert, while her daughters stepped behind her. What followed was a very… interesting introduction to the people she’d be working under.

While Ritsu Kaname seemed like very typical human military personnel, she was entirely bemused by the comment about brothels made by the Professor. Rose had been around humans a fair bit, and so she thought she knew a lot more than average about how their body language and the ‘tone’ they used to communicate verbal intent worked than the average Rosnian. Here and now she was, however, entirely stumped and could not tell if this was some kind of joke, an attempt at hazing, or if he was actually flirting with her.

As such she just smiled at him, mouth spreading wide enough to reveal the 2 extra sets of pointed teeth her kind had, while fixing him with a three eyed stare. Smiling was, notably, not a Rosnian thing, and their attempts at it sometimes made humans uncomfortable, especially with the extra teeth. In Rose’s case this was an entirely intentional mixed signal. The way she looked at him with all three eyes (an act normally reserved for threat assessment) meanwhile made it clear, to her daughters at least, that she did nor approve of this man.

Given that she worked around him, Val felt the need to drop in the flimsiest of defenses, quietly saying that he was “He’s a bit eccentric” the last word being a human tongue rather than their own due to a lack of an equivalent term.

Rose would have had words about that later, but she tentatively accepted the explanation with a flick of the ear and dropped the fake smile, while her eye began idly roaming around again, inspecting her fellow pilots, and only periodically flicking over the pair of superiors as they kept speaking.

As such she picked up on the Marques’ subtle gestures, Zane’s wince and heavy breathing, and Elora’s trembling though she received little idea what any of them ment at the instinctual level the third eye was operating at. It also, for some reason, kept looking at Minerva for uncomfortable long stretches of time, as if seeing something it couldn’t quite put its metaphorical finger on.

The sudden change in the professor’s disposition at the end when looking at the white haired woman certainly didn’t help Rose work out what it had been so interested in, but she did mentally file it away for later. Top priority was Elora, because that was the worst case of pre-battle jitters she had ever seen in a human.

Still, while some of the others addressed that directly, adding extra crowding wasn’t going to help at all. Nor was focusing everything on her either, so after reminding her daughters “Don’t stare” she did her best to soothe some fears without, specifically, singling out the person who was gripped the most by them.

Admittedly her style of doing this was, well, somewhat unconventional. Mainly because Ronsian’s lack of natural tone modulation made them sound energetically, bordering on manically, chipper about anything and everything they said, something Rose tended to very much lean into rather than attempt to mitigate.

“Enthusiastic: I’ve heard of these! Will be good to make our mistakes before meeting the enemy!” she began, and then in the exact same enthusiastic tone said “Serious: But if it will feel like the real thing, I’ll treat it that way” before insisting “Confidence: So I, Rose, will be making sure each and everyone of you makes it back alive!”

Val’s ears perked up at that, thinking it might work, while Fixi’s drooped a little.

In her capacity as part of her mother’s pit crew, the younger of Rose’s remaining daughters had heard the woman make and then fail to keep that promise one too many times. As such she knew just how much each failure weighed on her mother and none weight more than the first.

That was, however, exactly why she kept making that promise.