“They're alive!” Rayne elated with relife, before being very confused about what went on afterwards with the sticking of the piece of paper to the confused woman’s face. There wasn’t time to ask, however, as apparently there were intruders downstairs doing.
She did however, take a moment to at least give her name to Yoshika-chan with a quick little “Hello, I’m Rayne” and a tip of her hat using the hand she wasn’t using to support Sanae.
Speaking of Sanae, and well, everyone she was with actually, turned out that downstairs were yet more people from her world, which led her to offer one simple guesstimation, which was that “Guess the goddess who kidnapped us all had a preference for it?”
wordcount: 3,111 (+4) Bowser Jr: Level 14 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(215/140) Rika: Level 10 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(134/100) Location: The Dead Zone
Under the Unsigned’s command, his undead troops spilled into the tomb the koopa kids had drilled into, very much intending to make it into the kids own tomb. Unfortunately for them, said kids had other plans, starting with putting these boneheads to rest.
Bonenoids with shields went first, forming a shield wall beneath the entrance to the tomb, while their rifle wielding compatriots lined up behind it, using the shoulders of the shield bearers as supports for their long guns.
It was quite the impressive little formation, which was, before it could be put to any kind of use, blown apart by Rikas white whale as it breached out of the ground, having taken a bit longer to get up than the flying kids. Its massive double jawed mouth snapped shut, swallowing several boneoids like a swarm of krill, before it slammed down atop several more, and smashed yet another pile with a flick of its anchor tipped tail.
A second later, Jr and Rika both charged the remaining bonenoids on either side of the whale, gauntlets and clown car boxing arms plumbing the skeletons, smashing them apart in a series of swift and brutal punches.
”Now give me back my gem-” Rika called up at the Unsigned amidst the hashes of his minions, only to see the tail of his cloak swishing away as he abandoned the entrance to the tomb
”Hey, get back here!” Rika demanded, tapping her feather fall rune to launch up to the entrance, only to yelp and drop back down when a barrage of machinegun fire came flying her way in response to her attempted chase.
A few moments later, Rika and Jr (standing/hovering on the back of the whale) both took a much more cautious peek outside of the tomb to find out what was out there. As it turned out, it seemed to be the remains of a mausoleum. Other tombs lay scattered around, some half buried in the tree’s walls, others shattered apart either by the act of being risen up out of the depths, or by the Unsigned’s excavating of them.
As for how it had been excavating, well, that seemed to be via combination of stick grenades tossed by grenadires and the raw lifting power of supersoldiers
The final new undead they could see where a number of skeleton riding sidecar sporting moterbikes which were patrolling around the still intact brick pathways of the mausoleum, and who had been the source of the gunfire that had driven Rika to dive back down into cover.
Naturally, there were also bonenoids to spare out there too, all of them taking similar degrees of strategic cover as their fellows inside the tomb had attempted. Concerningly, the Unsighned was in the process of producing more of these grunts, holding open its cloak till a dozen more had popped out, before doing an odd little head shoogaling dance for a few seconds, seemingly to recharge in the process, and then summoning a dozen more.
”Yeesh, that’s a lot of bone heads”
”and he’s making even more. So we have to stop him soon”
”With a plan”
”A quick plan”
Observations made, they ducked back down out of sight before they could lose their heads and, swift as they could, formulated exactly that.
A few moments later, a sheet of metal with a pair of eye slits was put up into the doorway. Rounds immediately pinged off of this, but the shooters were then distracted when Rika’s white whale came bursting out of the ground next to the shooters, though it sadly missed a shark attack level strike this time due to the lack of vision of the target.
It was distraction enough however, and so as bullets began slamming into the poor beast’s blubber, the rest of their plan burst into action. Literally.
Another part of the wall to their tomb exploded (outwards this time) as Jr’s clown car drilled through it, and then hit the path outside, go kart wheels deploying and engine revving as he burned rubber towards the enemy defensive position.
Rifles pivoted back to try and take them down, only for Rika’s giant wasp queen of a striker to finish her incantation from behind the metal face protector they’d popped in the doorway. Her titanic sword slammed tip first into the ground, prompting a 25 meter squared area of the ground beneath the bonenoids to reach up in the shape of hundreds of hands and to then drag them back into it, reburying the undead creatures.
Most of them, anyway. The supersoldiers and the Unsigned himself managed to wrestle free from the earth, but the chaff were by and large simply gone. Unfortunately, the Unsigned began immediately replacing them, declaring this merely a “minor setback” as the troops that had not been reburied fought to cover their creator from the incoming clowncar.
And the whale, which Jr healed to full hp using a manaless cast of Benediction, taking it from close to dead right back up to to a massive distraction in the blink of an eye. It promptly lunged at the closest supersolider, big enough to swallow even those whole, while trading cannon for machiengun fire with the rest.
With the footsoldiers being respawned, and the super soldiers busy with the whale, motorcycle skeletons were the bulk of the force of undeath still in the fight. With their patrolling beyond the barricades, and high powered motor vehicles, they had avoided the fate of the footsloggers more or less entirely.
”Alright bring it! Battle mode time!” Jr challenged the botany bikers as he and they started racing towards each other, only to then have to immediately duck when the bikes’ sidegunners opened up, sending a blaze of gunfire his way, though it was fortunately incredibly inaccurate due to the bad roads and bad driving.
In response, his own side gunner opened fire, Dazzle the Brionne blowing a trio of water bubbles and batting them out over the clown car’s windscreen. One slapped into the side of a bike, knocking it over, another knocked a skeleton gunners head off, and a third hit the road infront of a bike, fowling its traction as it drove over it and sending it careening off the road island into a tomb.
He then however barked in pain as a bullet clipped his tail, prompting the mon to hunker down for fear of further damage. Still, thanks to his mon thinning out specifically the gunners, they were close enough that Jr could execute his plan:
In the air above him, the titanic mechanical fist of Blodia appeared and then slammed forward into the pack of bikers, clearing a path through them, into which the prince wizzed. Then, he unleashed the spell he’d been challenging, a blast of holy magic ripping through the pack of bone bikers, either wrecking them alright, or stunning them when they were moving at high speed which had predictable results, causing a pileup behind him.
The prince cackled with glee at this carnage, only to ”Ach!” as rifle rounds started flying his way, the Unsigned having gotten another round of bonenoid out, and who was now in the midst of his head shaking recharge dance once more.
The prince swerved and dodged as best he could, shots pining off the clown car’s hull. The volley of stick grenades tossed by the grenadiers however was far more of an issue, the explosives littering the road leading towards the new sheildwall, fuses fizzing.
”Uh oh, up up up!” Jr cried out in alarm as he bunnyhopped the car into the air, deployed the propeller, and tried to fly up and over the bombs, only for them to detonate while he was above them. The blast sent him flying far higher up into the air with a ”Wawawawaaaaa!” followed by a thunk and shower of dust as he slammed into the ceiling.
”Owww”
Below, the Unsigned finished his latest recharge and took in the battlefield situation.
Whale: almost torn apart.
Turtle in ridiculous vehicle: Taking shots to the undercarriage
Girl overlanded with gizmos: …
“Where-” he began to ask, only for a quartet of black globules to slam into him from above, dark magic pulsing through his frame.
”Give it back!” Rika shouted from the high ground she’d gotten to via platforming from tomb to tomb, relying on all the carnage to get into a spot where the Unsighned’s shield totting bonenoids would be no help in covering him.
“You will pay for-” he began to say, only to receive a hail of gunfire to the face for good measure and command “-take her down!” before retreating towards one of the tombs he’d previously cracked open.
”Get back here!” she shouted at him, bullet jumping from atop thumb for a burst of speed, flaring her maneuvering thrusters for even more speed, and then launching her grapple at the retreating Unsighned and starting to reel herself in towards him.
Her Black Lance appeared in her hand, and she started charging up a vault breaker, looking set to impale the foe in one swift blow, only for a supersoldier to grab the grapple cable and wrench it free from its master’s body, it and its kindred having just in that moment successfully put down the whale.
Its reward for this loyal service was receiving the blow that had been meant for its master, Rika blasting forwards, black lance punching through its armor at the place its belly button would have been. It did not have one of those, however, nor any organs to perforate, and so even while impaled it attempted to bring up its double barreled machine gun to fill her full of holes.
She summoned Maria the dark knight to chop at the weapon arm twice, taking it off, but not actually taking down the soldier fully. So she instead wrenched him around, and put him in the way of the others, blocking machinegun fire with his body and the shield that was the twin of the lance she still had stabbed through him.
This didn’t help her from being shot in the back by the bonenoids however, rifle rounds pinging into her spartan energy shield, the skeletons fortunately going for her protected center of mass instead of limb shots. The grenades that got tossed at her feet, however, were a bit more of a problem.
She got back control of the gauntlet that had vault breakered just in time, however, letting go of the lance and shield combo, and tapping her feather fall rune to go flying upwards. Both weapons then shifted to the lighter helbard form and teleported into her back just in time to avoid being annihilated by the grenades. The supersoldier was not so lucky, being vaporized on the spot by the friendly fire.
That left several more however, and up in the air, Rika was a bit of a sitting duck. It was fortunate for her, then, that her brother had just managed to free himself from the cave ceiling, cured himself of confusion, and then came swooping in to the rescue. He swept under her, prompting her to grab the back of the car with her gauntlet, and then deployed a massive wrecking ball that smashed into one of the super soldiers, shattering every bone in its body.
The rest raised their guns to fire up at the kids, but Dazzle, who had worked up his nerve again, offered fire support via water bubbles knocking their aim askew, letting Rika make a safe leap down among them. The little lady then squared off against the towering power armored skeletons, fists flying, delivering denting blows to break their armor that buffed her attack speed on the third strike.
She stayed mobile, ducking dodging and weaving, disarming skeletons, using them as cover for gunfire coming from the others, and then when her strikers came of cooldown used them both, the queen and knight of blood’s massive/empowered blades cleaving the armored skeletons in half despite their armor.
By the time Jr had banked back around, she’d taken most of them apart, but in that time, the rest of the bonenoids had rallied/been reinforced by fresh bones popping out of the tomb the Unsigned had retreated into.
Not at all pleased with the pouring of bones out of the pit, Jr demanded ”You quit that!” and then, because obviously the Unsighned wasn’t going to do it just because he was asked, set about actually putting a stop to it. Mainly by slamming a wrecking ball into the already unstable ‘excavated’ tomb, demolishing it entirely and sending its ceiling crashing down atop the Unsigned inside.
That certainly put a stop to any more skelly spawning, though the ones outside did not crumble, or anything of the sort, so presumably their master still lived.
So they set about making sure they where dealt with before he came back
Blodia’s summoned fist crunched one of the remaining super soliders into powder right away, while Jr deployed a flamethrower equipped tank wheel as a more nimble wrecking ball, smashing it into the bonenoid shield wall, the flamers on it whirling and causing grenades to cook off, the grenadiers in the regiment blowing the rest of it apart in the process.
Rika meanwhile kept systematically taking apart super soldiers in a way that was very reminiscent of a certain pint sized boxer, and once they were through, lobbed a torpedo at the remaining bonenoids, blasting them to pieces.
Dazzle, finally, had a field day watergunning skeletons, the bludgeoning blasts blowing them apart ever so satisfyingly.
By the time that the Unsigned managed to claw himself out of the rubble, then, his forces were all gone, and he came skull to helmet with Rika who demanded he ”Give it back” one last time
“Ah. Certainly. Let me just-” he said while reaching down into the rubble he was still half buried in, before quick drawing his revolver and blasting her in the head again with a cry of “never!”.
It promptly bounced off her shield again.
”Then perish” she told him, echoing his own words, before grabbing the gun wielding arm in one hand, snapping it off at the wrist, before unloading her own point blank firepower into his skull, which included, after a clever catch and twirl, the Unsighned’s own oversized revolver that fit rather perfectly in her massive gauntlet hands.
Then the world went dark, and, like the others, for their victory, the pair were offered a choice of boons
Tidal Dash when a dash / bullet jump concludes, release a burst of water that damages and knocks foes away Experience: the Torment of Alienation increases the chance of causing effects/statuses/ailments by 16% Bullet Light each shot will consume 1 additional spare ammo, and +25% lucky shot chance. Recover consumed spare ammo when triggering a lucky shot
The ship girl was one of the few who had any idea what was going on, and that was due to her papa having told them about how he’d run into this exact situation back in Limsa Lominscuttle Town. Based on that tale, she hazarded a guess that the watery boon would come from the same person, and she was indeed correct.
Unfortunately she didn’t get exactly what she wanted with the resulting ‘meeting’
”Where is papa!” she demanded to know, hoping that being that had blessed him might still have a link from which she could get a leed. Unfortunately, it seemed like whatever connection this involved was one way, as the god soldiered on with his spiel regardless of her questioning: “Look how much you’ve grown, little minnow, sailing free from your father’s wake! I’m glad to see that the currents of fate still brought you here to me regardless, because no ship should ever be parted from the sea for so long. Fortunately for you I, Poseidon, god of oceans far and wide, now stand at your side! Metaphorically of course”
And then he was gone
Fixed Gain decreases the damage you take by 10%. Also restores a little magic whenever damage is taken Dharma Rain when overhealing, increase max HP by 24% for 10 seconds Field Support while moving, grant 15% weapon damage for yourself and teammates within 15m
Just like his sister, Jr had also been told the tale of this place, though unlike her he didn’t have a secondary motive for picking any of the boons, and so sat, wracking his brains, for maybe a bit too long. He had all the time in the world, of course, but the latter two boons really confronted him with what he was supposed to be, hitter or healer, which made all that time he spent thinking it through just… agonizing.
Eventually he cried out with a ”Gahhhh I don’t care any more just let me outa here!”, closed his eyes, waved his finger back and forth, and jabbed randomly at one of the two options.
For him there was no god or divine being come to comment on his choice, and instead simply the sound of a magazine clunking home before he was kicked out of his long overdue stay with hew new weapon boosting aura.
Then they were back and had the start of a rapid fire conversation that had just gone down before Rika remembered what this had all been about and asked ”Wait… where’s the treasure?!”
The pair looked down at the spirit of the Unsighned and the pile of rubble he was sat upon that Jr had created by dropping a tomb on top of him, prompting the prince to give an embarrassed ”uhhhhhhhh” before declaring ”I’m gonna go get the cool spirits” and then hurrying off while Rika cried out in alarm and started digging through the rubble by hand.
Or rather by gauntlet.
Even with her oversized mitts this was not fast, at all, and by the time Jr had piled up the useful spirits (the super soldiers, the Unsigned, and a pile of biker and grenadier skeletons), teleported it all to the armory, and then also banged out some of the dents in his clown car with a spanner, she still hadn’t found it.
And then they were all out of time
A roar of floodfested echoed through the chamber, coming from all sides, prompting Jr to more or less koopa handle his sister into the clown car and to once again go drilling through the ceiling to escape, the pair bickered about if jr’s destructive solution to getting the unsigned out of the tomb had been worth it or not as they went.
Lvl 14 Ms Fortune (117/140) and Lvl 9 Midna (202/100) Word Count: 4599 (+5 exp)
At the sound of a somewhat familiar voice, the ever-impulsive Nadia risked a quick glance back. The multi-armed and armored figure she saw, silhouetted against the hollow’s blazing walls, belonged to someone she’d seen a few times since returning to the Avenger, but not much beyond that. Throughout all their adventures so far, the cat burglar and the Twilight Princess just so happened to have never trodden the same path. One had sailed the Deep Blue Seaside and delved into the depths of the Under, while the other had journeyed across the Sandswept Sky and surveyed the breadth of Midgar’s cityscape. Still, she’d caught a glimpse or two of Midna’s myriad magics and various summons (minus the invisible Beast Legion, of course) and knew that this princess could handle herself. When confronted by her comrade’s question, however, Nadia couldn’t help but wonder how her counterpart managed to mistake her for a cat monster four times her size. “Midna?”
Speaking of the Successor, a moment’s distraction was all she needed. With claws that blazed like boiling lava, the Successor leaped toward the two with bestial ferocity. “Whoa!” Nadia hopped backward, rolling up into a ball just in time to avoid a scathing slash that left a trail of flame in its wake. Given what looked like an opening, Nadia double jumped with a forward somersault, unfolding to deliver a double claw slash. The Successor recovered with deceptive speed, however, and dodged away with a backflip of her own. Nadia landed empty-handed and spotted the Successor wheeling around for a double lash with tails like flaming whips, and this time the catgirl chose aggression. She used Charge to shoot forward and through her opponent’s fiery spin as a bolt of lightning, but when she rematerialized Nadia dropped to one knee. “‘Ohm’ my gosh,” she groaned, her hand on the seared flesh of her midriff. She’d forgotten that Charge didn’t make her intangible, so she’d ended up trading with her foe. The Successor looked no worse for wear, which was annoying, but at least Nadia’s extraction of the Oceanid meant that she didn’t eat an explosive Vaporize reaction too. Now the Successor stood between the two Seekers, and having lost track of Nadia, her attention lay on Midna.
Said princess presently had a hand held protectively over her eyes, or rather over the blindfold which she somehow saw through. Despite this, she also held the fire drinking mace to her chest, electricity arcing across it with increasing intensity, and a rather battered looking tree spear in front of her defensively, but not aimed specifically at anything in particular, its tip roaming in a generally warding fashion. She had been cursing wordlessly as the lightshow went off, and now that there was a brief repose, proceeded to command the thin air to ”Hit the big one!”
In response a ripple in the air moved, and then from nowhere a pair of canine claw mark trails appeared, scything through the air, as something unseen leapt forward to deliver a pair of slashes at the Successor.
While her invisible minion attacked, Midna herself backed off, still in a defensive pose, portals opening around her that started to dump sand out onto the floor for some reason. Her spear was however now pointed in the direction of the foe, following the feeling of an unseen chain tugging at the golden wrist guard she wore on a single one of her forearms.
The Successor’s attempt to bat aside Midna’s defensive spearpoint came to a halt when unseen fangs clamped down on a limb, provoking a reflexive twist away. When the beast failed to find the foe responsible, however, her molten gaze snapped back to the Twilight Princess, especially the bright blue legion core rippling and rattling within the Legatus unit on Midna’s arm. Though she didn’t understand the nature of Midna’s bestial partner at all, the Successor was clearly smart enough to identify her as the source of this invisible force. With a snarl, the Successor reached around with her right hand to seize the handle of a fiery longsword from her back. She swung it in a wide arc to knock the Treespear askew, then heaved forward on three legs for a huge overhead chop.
Fortunately, the blow to the spear was plenty to alert the princess to the fact she was under attack, and her darknut arose before her to block the blow during the time it took the Successor to wheel its blade around and wind up for the second strike.
“Forget about me?” In the brief moment that the Successor’s attention had been elsewhere, Nadia had summoned the Oceanid to bring to life a Hydro Mimic, this time a copycat of Nadia herself. “You’re just ass-king for it!” The two ferals attacked their foe’s flank at once, both with a double Cat Scratch claw slash. While the clone finished with a dropkick aimed at the side of the Successor’s knee, Nadia targeted the hip joint with an El Gato axe kick. The Successor replied by stowing her sword and planting that arm for a kick of her own. Her foot caught Nadia in the gut and launched her back, but her head popped off and into the grasp of the copycat. “Dunk me!” she ordered, and without further ado the mimic jumped up, passing the head beneath one leg on order to slam the head down on the Successor’s own.
By then, though, the Successor was already on the move. Nadia’s head bounced off the cat-beast’s back and the copycat took a Vaporize-inducing tail lash as the Successor leaped toward the wall behind Midna. She clung to the burning Qliphoth flesh long enough to hurl a handful of explosive stars down at Midna (which the darknut caught on its barrier) then sprang off the wall for a flying pounce onto Nadia’s headless body. Fiery claws lanced into her chest as the Successor pinned her down, eliciting a pained gasp from her detached head. Her own claws sank into the Successor’s arm, but it did not relent. “What are you, some kinda ninja tabby?” Nadia rolled her head over and began to skitter back to her body, her ears used as legs. “You’re about ‘tabi’ real sorry!”
The beast legion beat her to it, the otherworldly entity leaping forwards, a single overhead claw slash swiping through the air towards the Successor. Then, using this assisted aim, the princess thrust the mace forward and sent a stream of lighting arching forwards towards the foe as well. All the while dumping more and more sand into the arena.
While the Beast Legion didn’t deal much damage, it did guide Midna’s hand as she blasted out electricity, a splash of yellow amidst the raging sea of orange. The powerful shock prompted the Successor to recoil, wrenching her claws loose from Nadia’s ribcage as she backed away. She definitely felt that. With a spray of blood from her neck, Nadia’s head launched itself into her grasp. She placed it back on her shoulders, her other hand pressed against the cauterized wounds until she could pull the Ripening Heart from her pouch. By that time the Successor had already fired off a trio of heat-seeking embers at Midna, so Nadia was forced to backdash twice before she could take a second to heal.
“Yeesh. Talk about a claws for concern.” When the Successor drew her sword and slashed, Nadia dove over it, rolled, and rose with one leg transformed into a white tiger’s to deliver a spinning kick to the Successor’s middle. “Hah, just ribbin’ ya!” She used Charge just in time to blitz through her target and avoid an angry slash, then turned to deal out two quick cuts of her own with Battery. “Watts good!” Having already forgotten that behind the Successor wasn’t the safest place to be, Nadia took a fiery double tail lash the next second. “Gah, dangit!”
”Keep on it, I’m almost done!” Midna called out from behind her darknut’s fractured barrier, ensuring her beast legion kept up the pressure with its attempts to claw and slash at the Successor. As for what she was almost done with, with a wave of her mace like a conductor's baton, the sand she had been emptying around her now began to stream into the air. A chorus like a siren’s song filled the air as the black sand began to sweep forth, not towards the foe, but instead towards the outskirts of the arena.
To quench the flames, and smother the light.
“Are you Mid-nuts?” Nadia yelled back, any more attempts at humor cut off by the claw slashes against her block. While the Beast Legion continued to harry her attacker, its damage output without neither cooperation nor input from its partner was little more than an annoyance, so the Successor more or less ignored the invisible dog to focus on her fellow feline. When a handful of explosive stars flew her way Nadia backflipped away, only to see the Successor’s sword cleaving toward her the moment she landed. The cat burglar did the limbo, bending back just far enough to avoid the burning blade, though it was a near enough miss that she could feel its heat on her skin. She carried her momentum in a handstand, then pivoted upside-down with her legs extended to smack the Successor in the face with two hyper-extended kicks. The Successor stowed her sword and whipped around in another fiery tail lash, prompting Nadia to spring off her hands into the air.
“Saber the moment!” She yelled, propelled downward by gushing blood in a Feral Edge, her own tail wielded as a blade. Her divebomb slammed into the Successor’s back, but her tail wasn’t as sharp as it used to be. It struck a glancing blow, but in the brief moment that she knelt atop the Successor, Nadia grabbed at the monster’s weapon. Fueled by adrenaline, both of her brain cells immediately tried for a pun, but all she could say was “Pommel horse!?” before the Successor seized her by one leg and flung her off. The sword flew from Nadia’s grasp as she hurtled into the wall, which drove the breath from her lungs but at least didn’t impale her on any branches. She winced, teeth gritted, and opened one eye to see fiery embers sailing her way. With the steady loss of light throughout the smoldering hollow, the Successor’s flames blazed all the brighter.
And then, as the last secondary light source was snuffed out, the sand that had been swirling wildly around turned inwards toward the last light in the room. It swept across the flying embers coming Nadia’s way, growing denser and denser, grains grinding against grains, static electricity rumbling like thunder, and then the concentrated sand storm slammed into the Successor from all sides.
”You’re in my domain now, so choke on it!” Midna demanded, as the light was smothered, and the room plunged into shadow.
Briefly.
Black lighting flared within the sands as the charge built up from its flight around the room discharged all at once into the target of the princess’ ire.
A pained yowl resounded through the room as the electric flash dispersed, the air thick with coarse static and the smell of ozone. Nadia slid to the ground relatively unscathed, glad that she couldn't be electro-charged anymore. The sand did cause a Grounded reaction that cut into her accuracy, but the feral couldn't see much of anything in this gritty tempest to begin with. Not until a second light flared up, not lightning, but flame. Intense light and smothering heat radiated from the Successor as she hissed with her back arched, crystalizing the sand flurries around her. Phase two had begun.
Right away the Successor exploded in a plume of fire. By the time the dwindling sandstorm coalesced to smother the flames, it wasn't just the blaze that had disappeared–so had the Successor herself. Nadia instinctively kept her back to the wall while she peered through the sandy shadows, but the Successor didn't go for her. Instead the beast burst back into existence right behind Midna, encircled in flames as she launched her vicious sneak attack.
The princess cursed ”You sneaky Poe!” and didn’t even turn to look at the eruption of flames behind her and her darknut.
It dropped down into a portal, while she yanked on her astral chain to start reeling herself towards her Beast Legion (which was located where the successor had been) making a blind dodge to try and avoid whatever was coming.
It was something, but it wasn’t enough.
Just before the chain went taut, blazing claws raked across the princess’s back. Her armor mitigated the damage somewhat, but the red-hot blades bled through. Luckily the Beast Legion yanked her out in time to avoid the Successor’s follow-up, but after firing off more heat-seeking embers the kindled beast gave chase.
Of course, now that she could see again Nadia charged in from the opposite direction. To cover for Midna and try to take some control over the battle, she called upon the Harbor Demon. The enormous Abyssal appeared with her ordinance platform behind her, and even on her knees the pale, horned woman loomed over the Successor of the Claw, who stopped short in surprise. “Hah! That finally gives you ‘paws’?” Nadia grinned. When her striker took action with a trio of giant hand slams, her power demonstrated with a direct hit from the first, it was the Successor’s turn to dodge. The feral took the opportunity to jump, swing from the ordinance platform’s crane, and drop onto the Successor with a double stomp from her Mantreads.
Seething from the impacts, the monster struck back, but Nadia was feeling herself. She promptly wasted a bar of Tension with a mistimed attempt at a Blue Monday counter, got bowled over by a counterhit claw swipe, and then just did it again. This time Nadia’s knee struck the Successor in the face, cracking her helmet. Unfortunately she wasn't anywhere near strong enough to throw the Successor, but she could wrap herself around the beast’s throat, her muscle fibers coiled like a boa constrictor. “You’re neck-st’!” She called to Midna.
”I’m what?” the princess called back, the finer parts of the pun falling on deaf ears. Regardless of her ability to appreciate Nadia’s wordplay, she played her part well enough, the princess charging back into the fray, various fire resistance items having dulled the searing strike to her spine.
She did so atop an invisible steed, which looked rather silly, but the beast legion was fast. It also made for an excellent launchpad. The princess planted two feet on its back and then used flowmotion to leap off of it towards the foe for added speed, before driving a dragon clawed kick into the Sucessor’s cracked mask. Rather than stop there, she tried to use its face as a springboard to launch herself up and over Nadia’s neck grapple so she could slam a shadow hand slap down onto its back
From her current position, Nadia got a front row seat for her comrade’s sick-ass dragon kick. “That was clawesome!” She held tight against the Successor’s attempts to pry her off as Midna vaulted overhead for a hand slam that flattened the Successor against the ground, her limbs splayed out in all directions. Stunned, the beast couldn't stop the feral squeezing tighter, her hisses and snarls soon turned to gasps and chokes. Her tails lashed around, still ablaze, but as the Successor struggled to rise it became clear that she could no longer defend herself against Midna. It was up to the Twilight Princess to bring this fight to an end.
”Oh no you don’t” the princess told the tails, making to grab them with her shadow hand, and managing on the third try. Then she flicked the obsidian mace she’d been using for extra fire resistance into the air, and then jabbed it into the Successor's back and started channeling electricity directly through it into the downed foe, demanding that it ”now stay down”
The hollow lit up with color once more as lightning poured into the Successor’s body, as well as Nadia, who yowled and quickly released her hold around the beast’s neck. “Meeee-OWCH!” Thanks to Midna’s efforts, though, the job was done. With a shrill wail the Successor went stiff, then limp, leaking flame like blood. Rather than disintegrate into ash, however, her body began to burn, going up in flames in a matter of moments. Nadia watched, puzzled, until amidst the cinders she spied a form taking shape. It was a young Chinese woman, clad in a sleeveless black top and camouflage military fatigues, complete with a green beret atop short brown hair.
“...Huh?” With no sign of the Successor (including its spirit, much to Nadia’s chagrin) the feral approached tentatively. The army girl seemed to be breathing, quite a bit banged up and bruised but not fatally injured. Nadia crouched down next to her, then after a moment produced the Ripened Heart from her pouch. She looked up at Midna, her confusion and curiosity plain to see, as well as the question of whether or not they should heal the woman that has been their foe.
”Oh so that’s why it had those large-” Midna began, before biting her own tongue to abort that line of conversation, and instead guessing ”Probably got turned into a beast by something? Happens to some light worlders if they end up in my realm” and then weighing in on the kill or cure question with ”Guess we’ll see if her mind was also gone or she just wanted to kill us for sport.”
”That thing heal or should I-?” asked, regarding the Ripened Heart, before she completed her sentence by forming a friend heart.
“Yeah,” Nadia replied, both to Midna’s musing and her question. She reached down, rolled the soldier over as gently as possible, then pressed the relic to her chest. Though it didn't provide an instant heal, it boosted her regeneration so much that it took her only a few seconds to recover. When she stirred, but didn’t awaken, Nadia reached down and shook her by the shoulder. “Hey? Hey!” Her tone was not gentle, but urgent. There was no telling what might show up the longer the Seekers stayed here, after all. “You okay? Hey! Up and at ‘em!”
The soldier’s eyes opened suddenly. She stared at Nadia, who gave an encouraging grin, then Midna, assessing the situation with a surprisingly level head. Even when she looked around and beheld the burnt-out hollow, still unmistakably alien in appearance, her breathing only got a bit heavier. “Where am I? What happened?”
Nadia pursed her lips, considering what to share. “A place called the Qliphoth. It’s this giant, awful tree, full of demons and freaky flesh monsters. Sorry to say.” She offered a sympathetic smile. “I’m Ms Fortune, and this is Midna. What’s your name?”
“Misfortune? How fitting.” Though the woman was clearly trying to keep it together, the news hadn’t exactly reassured her. She sat up slowly, listening for any sign of the danger Nadia alluded to. “Emily. Emily Su. Do you know a way out?”
Nadia grimaced. “Sorta? Trust me when I saw we don’t wanna be here any more than you. But before we can leave, we’ve gotta hunt down the head honcho around here. And I ain’t kitten when I say it might actually be worse outside.” She sighed with a shake of her head. “It’s a crappy place to wind up. But we’re the heroes here, so if you stick with us, we’ll do our best to keep ya safe. Can you fight?”
Emily gave a stiff nod. The news did not thrill her, but what choice did she have? “Yes. My blood code is Scathach–I can fight with fire.”
“You don’t say…” Nadia muttered, while Minda joked that ”Yes I saw that”
“And I’m good with a sword.” Emily looked down at her belt, then grimaced. “If only I had one.”
”That we might be able to fix. Maybe. Hang on, maybe we’ll be lucky and someone added one to the armory since I last looked” Midna said, as she flicked out a gesture and summoned the new Armory access system Edward had set up. She pivoted it so Emily could see, very briefly filled her in, and then filtered the item selection to the desired type. As a result it ended up displaying one garudo greatsword that resulted in a displeased sound from behind her helmet, and then she visibly leaned in a little upon spotting the Nightsky Ripper.
”Why did no one tell me there was something so perfect?” she asked rhetorically, her tone ever so enamored with the blade, before pausing, suppressing a sigh, and saying ”I assume that curved one would be best for you? Only other light sword we have is technically a very big knife”
At that moment Nadia, who’d left while Midna rummaged through Edward’s Armory, returned with something in tow. It was a narrow, single-edged saber with the handguard extended up the back, and while the Twilight Princess might not have technically seen it, Nadia had gotten so close to its business end that she wasn’t about to forget it. “Hey, Emily! What about this?”
The girl blinked at it, her facing lighting up. “That’s my sword! The Blazing Claw. Did…did I drop it somewhere?”
Nadia forked over the blade. “Uh…I dunno! Just sworda figured it’d suitcha. Y’know?” She looked over her shoulder, her ears perking up. “We’d probably better get a move on before those freaks show up. They’re hardly parasites for sore eyes.” The feral peered around, searching the smoldering darkness for a way out of the chamber.
As she did, suddenly, for both of them, the world suddenly went dark and they were given a choice.
Night Bloom - grants a hex, charged by casting magic, that automatically raises the last susceptible slain enemy (once charged) to fight as an ally for 12 seconds Regression Inequality of Annihilation - damage taken by the you and your active summons is evenly distributed among you and your active summons Exploding Corpses - enemies you kill explode with fire, but this doesn't hurt you. This overwrites enemies own death explosions
”You know what? I’ll take the break after miss sunshine” Midna said to the air, her still stinging eyes welcoming the dark. That feeling of relief was enough to stop her freaking out by whatever this was and to take in her options, for which she had words.
For the third it was, quite simply ”I’ve had enough of being blinded, thanks. Not taking a chance on you”
For the second it was ”Tch they’re supposed to get hurt for me” Minda said, despite having often prioritized her minions' continued existence over keeping herself unharmed, and ironically seeing the way this boon worked in exactly the opposite way round others might which itself was telling. She also completely glossed over the potential of using the normally untouchable Beast Legion as a damage sink.
Thus leaving the first which was fitting statistically because ”I could always do with more meat shields” and then also, as it turned out, because of where it came from.
As her hand touched the boon, the darkness became filled with light, but rather than blindingly hot it was soothingly cool, and it took but a breath for Midna’s eyes to adapt and see the source, and it was one that took that very breath away again.
“Good evening to you, sunset” spoke the goddess who’s blessing she had chosen “I am Selene, eye of night, and I am glad my gaze soothes your weary eyes. Though daylight, storms and horrors stand between you and my moon, I have come to you regardless, to grant you this boon such that you might reach your twilight once again, little princess, and then raise your own gaze to meet mine in the coolness of night”
And then just like that, she was gone, along with the darkness, and time resumed.
She blinked once, and then tapped the menu option her finger had been hovering over, summoning the Nightsky Ripper to her hand.
”Fitting” she called it, before pressing it to her chest in a salute as she said ”thank you Selene” with more than just a hint of reverence in those words, before sheathing the new blade into the twilight realm.
At the same time, Nadia received a choice of her own.
Lightning Reflexes - dodging at the last second causes a lightning bolt to strike your attacker 12 Monkeys and Angry Men - when dealing follow-up damage to an enemy, increase follow-up attack damage by 4% for a maximum of 24 stacks until the combo ends Bloody Bandage - when using a defensive ability, your next attack applies Bleed for 10 seconds, increasing the attacker’s damage taken
When darkness closed in around her, however, the rather tense feral acted on her first impulse: to attack the first thing she saw. “Nyahh!” The instant the cards manifested before her, she hyperextended her arm in a spearfinger jab straight through the one in the middle, causing it to dissolve into motes of light that flowed into her while the other two disappeared. Once her arm snapped back she shook the glowing particles away like gnats, looking this way and that as she tried to parse what happened. “The hell was that? I got jumped by…posters or somethin’, I dunno.” A little worried by the lack of apparent effect, Nadia patted herself down, then blinked at Midna, a baffled smile on her face. “You clock whatever that was?”
Midna tilted her head to the side slightly and made a small sound of confusion, which wasn’t exactly reassuring, only for her to ask ”Did a goddess not talk to you after you picked a blessing from the … posters?” confirming that yes, she had seen that, but also that there seemed to be more to it.
After a moment, Nadia shook her head. “I thought…I heard people laughing? Maybe?” When she saw Emily looking at her like she was crazy, the feral changed gears, laughing it off. “Psh, whatever. C’mon, let’s get a move on before any creepy crawlies show up.”
”Oh. Urgh. Yes those” Minda groaned, having apparently somehow managed to put the horrors no doubt actively seeking them right this moment out of her head, before agreeing ”Let’s keep on moving”
wordcount: 3,163 (+4) Bowser Jr: Level 14 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(211/140) Rika: Level 10 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(130/100) Midna: level 9 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (197/100) Edward Portsmith: Level 4 ///////////////////////////////// (8/40) Location: The Dead Zone
The cannons roared and roared again and again with the ceaseless stamina of machines, but the rest of the seekers were still all too mortal. Though they raged against the waves of reanimated undead with fearless determination, slowly, gradually, the tide rose, and their barriers against it faltered.
The first was quiet, a little click, as Edward’s rifle’s well of medicine/poison ran dry. A few moments later, and there was a fizzle, followed by a high pitched whine of complaint from Jr as his wells of mana ran dry. While the latter would return in time, and their primary healer was still carrying her weight, but two sources of healing coming to an end put added pressure on those taking all the hits right when things were starting to ramp up.
Rather than squad of infested people and the odd ancient, whatever intelligence was commanding the flood-festion saw fit to send out things less disposable than masses of reanimated corpses, one of which turned out to be, of all things, a due of monowheel Choppers, their hulking brute pilots and own machinery both overrun with the mixed infestation. Despite the meat gumming up their works, the heavy vehicles had the force of a battering ram at their backs, and a host of nasty prow spikes with which to sharply apply it.
Alongside them charged a whole pack of chargers like hunting hounds. Together the mass of them all looking to barrel right past the front line in order to crash into the back lines.
An armored warrior moved to intercept them, who was then joined by another who rose up out of a portal to bar the way. The latter raised its round shield, which at the last moment unfurled a great rectangular barrier of energy, against which one of the choppers crashed, sending the darknut blocking its way grinding backwards, armored boots scraping against the fleshy floor.
Beside her minion, Midna reached out with her shadow hand, slamming its open plam into the front wheel of the other Chopper, fingers wrapping around and holding the great front wheel back.
”You're not getting past!” Minda shouted at the meat machine confidently, despite the pant of breath she let out right after. She’d been brawling for she wasn’t sure how long, right in the front lines, with no breaks, and she hadn’t exactly been the athletic type before all her fusions.
She was not going to let herself be the first one to crack under pressure however. Even as she held back the chopper, she raised her arms and struck at the chargers that flooded around it, lance skewering one, while her fan flicked to slash a clawing limb before it could strike her, the resulting wind gust blowing it back as well. Her shield guarded her other side, but she then had to haul it to her front as a pir of cannons on the front of the chopper whined in protest and then unleashed a pair of bolts at her, which slammed into the icy tower shield. Doing so opened her up at the flank, where another charger took the opportunity to swipe at her.
Armor and elevation atop her Beast Legion steed made the damage minimal, but they weren't going to stop. So she hauled the chopper to the side, and had her legion burst forwards along its flank, claws coming out as it pounced, slashing the infested pilot, and then clambering on top of the vehicle’s stalling wheel.
”Come on, come get me” she taunted the chargers, stabbing her lance down at one trying to clamber up, and then shadow hand punching another down. It was a good spot to survive the horde from, even with the chopper still trying to move under her without its infested pilot.
Unfortunately, being up above the masses of meat also put her at risk from the enemy’s limited but still dangerous fire support, that came in the form of barrages of spikes from ranged forms.
Fortunately she had her own, and though she got needled lightly from a burst of fire, the offending flood revised a counter battery of cannon fire a moment later. Focused on those shooters however let another form slip through, and though it was a similar size to the supportive and descriptive ancients, the flood Tank Form was a pure melee beast. It smashed against her darknut’s already damaged energy barrier, with all its bulk, causing it to waver, and then with a slam of a club-like arm brought it down entirely.
Chargers and the chopper surged forwards, the bike crashing into the actual shield of the darknut, which reacted by parrying it to the side, letting the vehicle slip past even as the tank form smashed into the armored undead’s other side, denting armor and cracking bone.
Tapping into her dwindling supply of mana, the princess opened a portal, enlarged her wolfos , and sent it pouncing out. The towering beast bit into the shoulder of the tank form before hauling it to the side away from the darknut. Rather than follow up the attack however, it staggered back, retching at the mouthful of infested flesh it had just gotten.
”come on come come- Cura!” Jr managed to get out up above from the ranged perimeter, cleansing the beast of its imminent assimilation into the flood, but it was a close thing, the boy very much in a position where he was expending his mana as soon as he had enough. He certainly didn’t have any left to deal with the chopper and chargers presently storming up the hill towards them.
His pokemon made a valiant effort to stymie the swarm, but their reserves of mana and PP were also running low, and so they could only ship away at it with twin pairs of psybeams (Mimi having copped Peeka’s move) which wasn’t a stab move for either of them. So it was up to his sister to deal with the problem.
With the red baron drones floating next to her gauntlets she stepped into the way of the incoming foes. She pulled back and then whipped out a punch at the thin air, and with her fingers extended forwards rather than curled, prompting for three of the sword tipped drones to go lancing forwards in response to the action.
The three of the blades all stabbed into a charger’s front in a rather inefficient amount of overkill, after which she whipped the other hand around in a cat scratch like motion, sending three more blades swooping around, her fingers spread in such a way that they stabbed into the flank of one charger each. Then she pulled both hands back, wrenching the blades out of the foes and summoning them back to her side, before thrusting both hands forwards and sending them all at the Chopper.
Metal stood a better chance than meat however, and the blades mostly glanced off of the front bulk of the alien vehicle, drone blades ending up either embedded in the ground or wobbling in the air, all far from where they should be in relation to her commanding fingers.
”Wait… what do I do when they do that?!” Rika exclaimed in a half panic, this kind of balancing blow having not come up in her practice with them, the ship girl wrestling to regain control before giving up and just counter charging the motor vehicle, taking a pair of energy bolts it shot at her with her personal shield.
She didn’t do this alone however, as there came an unexpected call of ”Sortieing! from Edward of all people, the dreadnought abandoning the commanding sniping position leaping into the air with a few flaps and then gliding down into the fight.
Born by wing and gravity he whipped past the landbound shipgirl, over the top of the chopper’s front wheel, and then as he passed the driver, delivered a slash with a machete to sever its head from its body.
Despite this decapitation strike, the infestation still had enough control over the chopper to keep charging blindly forwards. But it was very much blindly, which gave Rika plenty of space to pivot her body, maneuvering thruster to the side of it, then pivot again while charging up a vaultbreaker. With a wordless warcry she launched forwards and delivered the magically empowered punch into the side of the machine, striking with enough force to knock it off of its one wheel and sending it crashing down onto its side.
It crushed out a few chargers in the process, leaving rather few remaining. Some charged up to die to Sectonia’s firepower, while jr got his pokemon, Peeka and Mimi, to dash forwards to help cover, shadowy claws and dazzling gleams dealing with chargers as Rika got control of the red baron drones again.
Down at the bottom of the hill, Edward’s wings spread wide as he slowed his rapid descent, landing right before the melee surrounding Minda’s position. His machete slashed again near as soon as he’d done so, striking a circling charger, loading the flintlock it was bonded to in the process which he unleashed upon the tank form flood, the round whipping past the armored form of the princess’ darknut.
The heavy round knocked the flood off balance, leaving the darknut an opening to cleave into it.
Edward had little time to focus on that fight however, bringing up the hunk of metal and crystal that was his enchanted buckler to block a charger’s claw swipe, before retaliating with a quick chop. Without the momentum of the descent however, the machete was hardly an effective weapon unfortunately, merely wounding the monster a second time, and giving it time to scored a retaliatory slash in response.
Embarrassing as it was, this mere minion forced him to take a step back, though he regained the momentum of the fight by smashing it in the face with the buckler. Or, not the face, he saw, as it reared up to swipe again. Merley where a collection of eyes where, while the face of the person it had once been hung limply under its body. Thinning quickly, he rammed the buckler fully into the beast, straining as he held it up and it clawed at his armor, before he delivered a stab to the under hanging head, scoring a critical strike that took it down at last.
Far too many blows for a single infested. The second pair of slashes had reloaded the flintlock however, which let him cap another infested before it could come at him, but even with getting the weapon pari’s gimmky combo down, this was hardly an optimal palace for him to be. Thus rather than wade into the fighting more, he focused on why he was here, which was to call out for ”MIDNA!” because the princess was far to deaf to hear anything shouted from further off with the din of battle going on.
The princess didn’t respond at first, as she was a bit too busy grabbing the piloting part of the Chopper with a shadow hand, and then hauling it over her head to send it crashing down on top of the tank form. Then she pulled herself to it, squeezed what she was fairly certain was the accelerator, and proceeded to grind the flood to dust beneath the massive monowheel.
It was only once this was done that she glanced to and fro, seeking more enemies, and upon spotting Edward, yelled back ”What are you doing here?!”
”We need to make a push for the enemy leader!” he called out, hoping to make use of her to lead cavalry charge out to strike down the flood command form whose arrival had prompted his downward flight, only for Sandalphon to chime in via the link she had with Midna with a different plan. Namely to retreat deeper into enemy territory.
Edward would not say he agreed, it was only putting off the problem that he thought best dealt with here and now, right up until one of the floating carriers started unloading infested directly on top of them a moment or so later. Which was something of an issue beyond the obvious, given they needed to get to a wall to follow through with the escape plan, and there where foes being dumped between them and it.
Midna saw this as well, or, mainly, the primary issue in her mind which was getting Edward himself out, which she resolved by grabbing him with her shadow hand and then hurling him into the air while yelling ”Fly cucco fly!”
After steadying his undesired flight with his wings, Edward took one glance back at the princess wrestling the infested chopper pilot out of the vehicles seat and then commanding the vehicle to charge forwards through the floodfested swarm before he locked his eyes forwards in-order to focus on dodging falling foes. Falling foes and one somewhat overloaded clown car (not that he knew that was what it was) that was carrying Rika, Jr, and Jr’s pokemon up towards the ceiling rather than towards one of the walls.
He caught the words ”because that’s gross!” as he swooshed on by, before once again having to rapidly decelerate, this time to avoid crashing full on into a wall. His machete came up, struck into the wall, and then his weight pulled it down, slashing a gushing wound that he just barely managed to flap up into against the outpouring of viscera in-order to enter the stream.
A few moments later, he cut himself out of the blood stream again, splashing to the floor, once more a bedraggled pigeon of a man.
And the heat of battle had just started to dry those out too.
He hauled himself up, raising machete and buckler defensively, but found no immediate threats, just a monolith of black stone sitting in the middle of a room filled with large chunks of rubble that looked in places like cavern walls. There was also some sort of energy barrier surrounding the room, one which he assumed was projected by the monolith, but which did not seem to be an active threat as of this moment.
That was, for him, very good, because his cannons had been left behind down below, too heavy to ride the currents even if he could have gotten them in. Even as he scanned the rooms, they fell silent down below him, connection to his mana cores severed as they were beaten down by the swarm.
Which meant that the floodfestion would no doubt come a hunting for them soon enough. Still, Edward was a commander and mage alone without army or power for his sourcery so, with this moment of respite, his first action was to hunker down defensively behind some of the rubble and to begin to see to the power part of the problem so he could use it to rebuild his forces. Thusly when other help did arrive, it found Edward crouched down behind a rock, one hand manipulating a magic circle before him that had several copper wires plugged into it, the other controlling a second circle that was in the process of sending the empty bio-rifle back to the avenger.
Somewhere else Minda (after grabbing the tank form flood’s spirit, crashing the chopper first through the infested swarm and then into a wall) had no such luxury of downtime. Instead she stepped out of flames, holding a fire drinking mace as the flames merely lightly singed her thanks to it and her other passive items, and into a catfight. There was a slight problem however, and that was that she could barely see and hear anything over the glare of the fire and roar of the flames, which made telling one cat from another rather difficult.
”Miss…. Fortune, is that you?”
It really did not help that the two didn’t really know each other that well either.
In yet another room, there came a grinding sound, followed by Jr’s clown car bursting up into a chamber of some kind, having drilled there with one of its arms. Rika’s rear mounted firefly lamp lit it up, revealing it to be some kind of man made structure. It hosted stone columns, withering creeper vines on the walls, numerous standing sarcophagi, some kind of spinning symbol emblazoned wheel and, at the center atop a plinth, a beach ball sized glittering crystal in the classic shape, this one a solar yellow.
Naturally, both children cared far more about this than any archaeological value of the tomb, and instead went straight for the gem, Rika hopping out of the clown car in-order to snatch it up first, before holding it aloft so they could both take a look at it.
”Hey, I think Kamek has one of these, right?” Jr speculated, to which Rika nodded. It did seem similar to the alien green crystal the royal mage had on his possession.
Before they could discuss that any further however, there came an explosion which blew a hole in the wall of the temple about halfway up, briefly revealing a chamber beyond filled with other such structures haphazardly piled together. Then a the man tall figure of metal, bone and cloth peered down at them through the hole in the wall his Bonenoid minions had just blasted for him.
“Ah, I thought I heard sound coming from in here” the towering figure said as it lazily fanned the resulting dust cloud with a skeletal hand, in response to which Rika raised her free hand, waved back and called out”Hello! Who are you?”
“My name is Unsigned, and you have something I have been seeking for quite some time” the figure replied, before pointing a finger at the jewel in her hand and demanding she “give me the power stone”
”Huh?” Rika replied, cocking her head to confusion for a moment, before clutching the jewel to her chest and responding passionately that ”No, it's my treasure!”
”Yeah! Finders keepers, losers weepers!” her brother jeered, and then blew a raspberry up at Unsigned for good measure.
“I see” the undead being responded evenly, before just as evenly adding “then perish” as he quick drew the oversized revolver and fired it directly at Rika’s head.
The shot bounced off Rika’s spartan shield, but the hit was enough to prompt the stone to fly out of her hand at unnatural speed, launching straight up towards Unsigned, who snatched it out of the air with glee.
”Hey! You give that back!” Rika demanded, not particularly phased by the shot that could have been lethal without her sci-fi protections it seemed, though her brother certainly was.
“I don’t think I shall” the Unsigned responded before with a wave of his revolver at them dismissively and commanding his “Bonenoids” to “deal with the children”, sending his minions pouring in through the gap in the wall to do battle with the siblings while he raised and admired the power stone while the carnage commenced below.
wordcount: 1,573 (+3) Bowser Jr: Level 14 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(207/140) Rika: Level 10 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(126/100) Midna: level 9 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (193/100) Edward Portsmith: Level 4 ///////////////////////////////// (4/40) Location: The Dead Zone
Despite acting to distract the Quad BT, the princess managed to be one of if not the first to clear its goop zone. This was because, once she and her Legion started getting to the buildings rising and sinking in the slime, she decided to skip ahead, slipping into the shadows and then simply hopping from one spot of shelter to another, the entire world her twilight domain thanks to the clouds above.
This ended once she got to the end of course, and zombie building filled tar gave way to blasted empty wasteland, because the tree that was just beyond it hardly made for good cover. Great chunks of it sloughing off and crashing down to splatter on anything unfortunate enough to be beneath them saw to that.
So she herself saw to dealing with that.
She whipped a cloak off her back, which expanded larger and larger till it formed a protective dome of magic, providing thirty seconds of safety against the rain of water and flesh alike. Just in time, too, as a moment later Edward came crashing out of the top floor of one of the skyscrapers that was still in the process of rising (having landed in it when it was lower), shield flaring in the rain, and Quad BT leaping full on out of the top of the structure after him, like a cat pouncing after a pigeon.
Despite how that battle of prey and predator often went, however, the Dreadnaught narrowly managed to swoop out of the way of the beast, which went splashing down into the muck below (unharmed of course) while he glided down to safety within the Giant’s shroud, boots digging furrows in the growing dying soil as he killed his momentum.
Raw speed had ment both of them had gotten out of the mess mostly unscathed, particularly because they’d mainly suffered aging to replaceable scales and wings, but that didn’t mean they were done being involved in it. Minda shadow hopped back in, a phantom in the walls calling out and flickering in and out of the shadows to distract the Quad BT, while Edward summoned and sent out disposable copper golems marching into the jaws of the beast to get torn apart by it, the magic-constructs leaving nothing behind to be eaten.
The troop kids arrived last of all, their land swimming whale steed with its Goldlewis’ provided rainshield making it effortless to avoid the environment hazards, and yet also making them a big target for the Quad BT, resulting in lots of cat and mousing to keep ahead of the beast. Not to mention it being most obstructed by the buildings due to having to go around them.
The conclusion to that almost ended in tragedy, but instead ended with Jr cheering ”Way to go! That was so cool!” when Goldlewis got clear from the danger he’d already bailed them out of in an incredibly dramatic faction.
Rika meanwhile was, while also pleased everyone was good, just a little upset about her whale biting the dust. That one had lasted quite a while after all, even if it was entirely replaceable, though doing so would be a (literal) pain.
With the shroud above timing out, and the threat of flesh and flood returning, there was certainly a need for that unfortunately, and so from the soil there burst a fresh whale, forged from a sacrifice of blood from the princess. Fortunately, with magic back on the menu, so to was access to the Avenger’s armory, and so with a retrieved paintbrush acting as a catalyst for his magic, her brother swiftly saw to her wounds while the new whale’s guns and fireball breath started to hammer the wall of the tower along with the others.
Edward needed a little prep to start helping, but when it came to breaching walls of dark towers, he did have the perfect tool for the job, after a bit of chanting at least: ”From the forge comes thunderous justice. Magic bound in steel by mortal hands and directed against those who would use the same to claim to be gods. Hear the people’s roar against false divinity, and watch as it breaks their monsters, breaks their walls and breaks their spirits till all worlds have had their darkness burned away, and the guns at last can fall silent”
Power: Magelock Cannon (tier 3 unit): Magitech engineering’s solution to building a maglock too big for someone to carry, which is to turn the weapon into a self propelled gun. This large cannon fires not cannon balls, but instead magical rounds that, upon impact, denote in such a way as to create a linear shockwave three soldiers wide that will pulse forwards, potentially devastating six entire ranks of enemy soldiers should they be so tightly packed. It is also capable of moving, anchoring itself (which takes 5 seconds), aiming, firing and reloading (over 5 seconds) entirely independent of a crew due to being a magical construct.
Defensively, it sports typical construct stats: highly reinforced vs physical ranged, decent armor vs physical melee, very little resistance vs magic, and a weakness to electric attacks.
”It’s wording could do with some amendments, I was quite irrational angry when I wrote this, but I am still more than happy with the results” he said, as the three full sized cannons he’d just forged from thin air stabbed spikes into the ground to stabilize themselves, before promptly drowning out everything else as a triple barrage of magi-tech firepower went crashing into the tower’s walls.
This was much to the displeasure of the baby strapped to his chest, the Dreadnought having not really had time or know-how to help sooth poor baby Mario. So he stepped away from the guns, which were able to keep blasting away every 5 seconds without his input, and set about passing off the problem to someone else.
To be fair though, it would be very much for the best.
”Miss Sandalphon, are you able to evacuate the infants from the field with the teleportation skill you just used? The magic linking to the armory would be rather detrimental to their health unfortunately, so you are, I believe, our best shot at getting them out of harm's way” he enquired as they worked at breaching the tower.
While others hammered at the walls, Minda, who had had plenty of fun messing with the BT and didn’t have much frustration to work out, instead geared up in preparation for a fight, and then made sure to be one of the first into the breach, doing so with stamina and mana to spare.
Shield in one hand, lance in another, a razor sharp fan in a third, and riding atop her Beast Legion, she charged forwards to meet the defenders that would surely be rallying to the tower’s defence, and instead ran right into a warzone consisting of undead meat monsters battling insectile demons.
”Just like in the dreams” Minda laughed as she was struck by deja vu for situations just like this from her half remembered time as a warlady of the deadzone.
Naturally, both sides were displeased with a third one entering the battle, but only the floodfested had the numbers to really pivot and come try and take a bite out of them. So Midna made sure to strike first, careening forwards towards their lines before her Beast legion leapt, claws slashing down onto a infested charger, using it as a stepping stone to leap again and let Minda deliver a lance strike straight through the skull of an ancient healer that she’d identified as the source of some kind of buffing aura that died alongside it.
She and her beast then landed among the horde, but she didn’t seem concerned.
”Alright, who’s next? All of you? Suit yourselves!”
She flicked the fan, using it as a casting implement, summoning four spectral Poes who then began swirling around her bodies ghosting through her foes, stealing the life from the masses while and granting it to their mistress she started to snuff out the foes lives more directly. Her shadow hand crashed down, her minions arose as titans to annihilate swaths of the sickness, all the while lance and fan struck down more powerful foes and her shield, armor and untouchable steed kept her, at least somewhat, safe from harm.
Behind her, Rika, Jr and Edward all took a more supportive role in the form of ranged bombardment.
Maglock cannons sang out every five seconds, launched over the heads of the melee fighters towards packs of infested charging towards them, blasting them apart before they could even take part in the battle, while Edaward himself did his best to snipe priority targets with the Therian Viral Rifle, or to heal allies using either it or his feather staff striker.
Rika’s whale did most of her blasting, while the princess focusing on saving ammunition for latter fights by sending out shocker swarms from her hangers to zap their foes, or, when they got closer, lashing out with the Red Baron flying blades, delivering slashing claw strikes or skewering stabs barrages from within the safety of Sectonia’s aoe doom field. Finally, she also found another use for her Vespikan Ichor Queen striker, which could stab its giant blade into the ground to cause large patches of the tree’s biological floors to reach up, trying to grab the reanimated corpses in order to drag them back into the ground where they belonged.
Jr had Peeka and Mimi do his blasting for him, electroballs and plasma bolts peppering the enemy, while he first focused on setting up defenses, painting flaming goop and scattering iron marbles around their firing position. Once that was set up, he switched to providing healing support, throwing out Cures and Esuras to help heal and cleanse the melee fighters whenever they took hits or debuffs.
“Um, ok?” Rayne replied to the, well, vague clarification of the pair’s previous relationship, not really knowing what to make of it. That confusion didn’t last long, however, because Rayne’s own expression swiftly came to match Sanae’s own of distaste and frustration, because now that her deception was done Qing'e proved herself to be a rather abrasive individual personality wise.
She was 100% in agreement with Sanae’s assessment that Qing'e’s helpfulness/heroics were less than altruistic in their motivation. Still it was hard to deny that they could do with all the help they could get at this point. After all: “So we haven't even actually dealt with the problem? Whatever necromancer put that ghost here still has control of it, and could just… do things like this again? Thats, well, not good at all”
As for Qing'e’s guess that she would be curious what a ‘Senkai’ was, she was, but Qing'e was a bit off base “I’m not really a mage, I don’t study magic, I just use it to help people” she explained vaguely, as she held out a hand, and the fading energy of the illusion suddenly swirled into it, coalescing into a card with nine crimson butterflies on it. A memento of their battle with the powerful ghost, because even if she hadn’t taken it down herself, the battle had certainly left an impression.
Butterfly Swarm: Several dozen crimson butterflies burst out from Rayne, which then flutter towards foes in order to collide with them, detonating in little bursts of flame when they do.
She slotted the card into her deck, before saying that “But if this ‘Senkai’ can help Sanea recover, then I’m all for it”
And with that, they had a consensus, which meant going through the borehole tunnel Qing'e had made to take them from the basement to a graveyard. It was such a stereotypical a location for a necormancer’s base of operations that Ranye didn’t even question why Qing'e would bring them to one.
She was also, to be fair, a little more focused on the dead body in front of them, or at least that’s what the collapsed undead being looked like to her, than any of the specifics of why they were here. As such, when the question of if they should get ready to fight came up, Rayne’s own was “Are there any more of your people in there? Maybe we're still in time to save them!”
wordcount: 1,531 (+3) Bowser Jr: Level 14 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(204/140) Rika: Level 10 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(123/100) Midna: level 9 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (190/100) Edward Portsmith: Level 3 /////////////////////// (31/30) Location: The Dead Zone
It looked like, from Jr and Rika’s perspective, that the seekers had hardly made any progress at all since they and the Witch had run off to have their own little side adventure. True, according to Rika, they had been fighting, but then so had they and that was with only three of them. Thus Jr was feeling pretty smug, mainly due to ignoring the difference in danger of opponents each group had faced, and their own prowess not being hampered by fighting indoors without need for a magic suppression field. Or how they had a solution to the rain that didn’t involve crippling their magic, and which kept them dry to boot thanks to the Witch. Or how they’d been incredibly lucky to not stumble into BTs while running blind.
Sadly for him, he didn’t get a chance as any communication made at a sneaky level for the circumstance was made impossible when a very stressed Baby Mario suddenly burst into tears while the man who’s chest he was strapped onto looked rather out of his depth as to how to handle this. An attempt was certainly made to try and calm the child despite this, the man one handing a rifle he was carrying so he could press an empathetic palm to the glass, while also wrapping his wings around his front to try and block out any stressful stimulation, but it was too little too late.
Getting yelled at by Goldlews didn’t exactly help, nor did Jr jumping on his heels with a ”Yeah! Shut up Mario!” and Midna to just nail the coffin lid of their doom shut by shouting ”Yelling at a baby isn’t helping!” even louder than everyone else was already yelling.
Rika added her own bit to the mess as well, but as her contribution was trying to gun down the invisible intangible BTs already on their way it hardly mattered other than to draw even more towards her and her brother.
”Uh oh” was Jr’s somewhat subdued response to their crisis, while Rika’s was to give up on shooting, grab her brother in one gauntlet, duck out from under the zombie carried rain shield. She pressed him to her chest, hopped into the air, hopped a second time in the air, and finally pressed a thumb to the featherfall rune, and launched them both high up into the air.
It got them out of immediate danger, but wasn’t an abandonment like what Grimm committed, and so all it really did was give the pair an aerial view of the chaos that erupted below them, while they sank slowly, inevitable, towards it.
At the epicenter of the mess, Midna and Edward were both immediately bogged down by the tar, heavy armor rapidly sinking despite family flapped wings and sorcery stuttering and failing to form under the suppression field, and the failure only spread out from there.
A few seconds later, and Rika touched down in it, Jr perched atop her shoulders. She didn’t sink into it like the others of course, she floated, but the invisible hands tried to drag her down nonetheless.
”No! No! I won’t! I can’t! Get off me you, you, you whoresons!” she shouted at them as she struggled, the threat of being sunk triggering an instinctual fear in the shipgirl. Hard. Maneuvering thrusters flared while tar churned around her feet as she tried to sail forwards, but it seemed to be no use till Jr called out for her to ”Toss me!”
She didn’t question this, she thought maybe at least he could get free, and so did so, grabbing her brother by the shell and launching him forwards, skipping him like a stone out of the tar field and out into the rain beyond the magic suppression field. The recoil from the move undid any progress she had made against the pull however, and though she fourth on, she was quite sure she was done.
At least her Brother would remember her.
Rather than flee, the boy yelled ”Grapple me!” back at her. She hesitated for a moment, because surely that would drag him right back, but when he anchored himself to the ground with an iron spear (that immediately began rusting), she understood his plan. Her hook lashed out, caught his shell, and he grabbed it, pulling, heaving, only for the spear to break a moment or three later, and for him to start to get pulled back in.
He wasn’t, however. Instead a titan of steel appeared behind him, silhouetted in the rain, the machine’s red paint splotching while metal endured the passing of time without care. The striker Blodia grasped its summoner in a colossal hand, and the length of Rika’s grapple at the same time, and hauled, hurling the prince even further away from the tar, and dragging Rika fully clear in the same motion.
In the end, however, it didn’t really matter, other than saving some stamina for what was to come.
Nearby, Midna and Edward, who had not had that luxury, pulled themselves to their feet, bodies having been dragged out of the initial pit, only for their failures having triggered the rise of a great feline beast, and the warping of all of the terrain into tar fields. It also brought an end to the field keeping them safe from the rain, but, at the same time, it also brought back their magic and ended the need for stealth.
The beast was out in the open for all to see, it knew where they were, and there would be no hiding from it.
”I’m-” Edward began to say, but whatever words, apology or otherwise, were cut off by Minda demanding that their top priority should be to ”get those babies out of here! Now!”
She physically shoved him away, and then hauled herself up onto her own invisible untouchable creature that would now work without magic suppressing it. The Beast Legion cared not for the rain that simply fell through it, nor for these other-other worldly BTs who’s broken realm of origin its kind would consider far inferior to its own.
It still cared somewhat for the tar flooded ground, but only somewhat, letting it sprint forwards, not away from the Quad BT, but straight at it.
”Come on, I’m here, come and eat me you oversized kitten!” the foolish princess riding atop it shouted at it, charging her spear and then blasting lighting at the BT to no effect other than to be loud and flashy and even more attention catching.
In response, one of the Quad BT’s claws started to glow, and it then leapt towards her in a feline-like pounce, claw reading forwards to cleave her in twain. Minda, in response, flow motion leapt off of her mount and to the side, splashing down into the tar as the BT crashed down where she’d been, and her Legion simply phased through its attack. The BT’s tail proceed to glow, with which it tried to deliver a side swipe at the downed princess, but she yanked on her astral chain, and pulled herself back over to the Legion again, out of the way of the strike.
”That's the best you got! You lot were scarier when we couldn’t see you” she shouted at it, slapping her spear against a rock in another taunt.
She wasn’t the only one running back into the area instead of away. Rika did the same, grabbing and hurling a golden spinner from her rigging and out into the rain. There, in the burst of light, it summoned an entirely unbeached whale that crashed into the tar, sank even further than it should have, and then against all logic started floating as if the ground itself was water to it. Then it began swimming, only somewhat impeded by the layer of tar up top, creating a moving spot of dry land for at least a few riders to escape the mire upon the back of.
”All aboard!” Jr announced as sailed in after his sister, naturally not leaving her to do this on her own, a rusting umbrella of iron held over head to stave off the issue of him having punctured his raincoat with his shell spikes, and willing and able to provide more. A temporary solution, certainly, but better than nothing.
As for the others, well, Rika’s energy shield failed eventually, only to be replaced by her own spartan energy shield, and then below that the woman was covered in armor from head to toe, steel and stranger metals all happily aging away without much concern.
It was those who were exposed that would have issues. Minda was also armored... Except for her draconic tail and pointy ears, the concern for which caused her to break off her taunting of the BT as her shield looked close to break. She had a solution to the rain, but it wouldn't work in tandem to fighting, because she was not able to dodge at the same time as holding her shadow hand up over her head as her own umbrella, as it made her far too unwieldy.
”Can someone else keep it busy?” she called out from atop her steed, making to join up with the Koopa Kid Konvoy as they sailed for solid ground.
Edward, finally, had the biggest exposure issue, as his back bore a pair of massive wings and he didn’t have a helmet either. Still, as the shield persisted, and a little bit beyond that, so too did his wings' ability to carry him forwards. True, it was only at the speed of a dove… but even with the rain, both they and he were still capable of breaking the decayed matropolisi’s inner city speed limits going in a straight line at a dead sprint.
If he’d be in any state stamina-wise to survive whatever was to be found at the base of the tree in the exhausted state he’d arrive in, that remained to be seen. If he had time and space to set down over there, and time to read his Tomes, then he’d send copper golems back to assist them, either to act as fodder for the Quad BT, or distractions for the Gazers, the ability for him to simply disband the squads at will removing any threat of them being caught or devoured.
Assuming he could calm down baby Mario first that was
“Oh, ok?” Rayne replied to the news that Sanae often got ‘over zealous’ which she didn’t really understand. Maybe, given that they’d both happily dived head first into the mess they had had to be divinely bailed out of, this should have been telling.,
This wasn’t exactly the moment for introspection however.
Instead the Knight Witch focused on making sure she supported Sanae’s weight with all her might, which was, due to her short stature, not exactly a lot. Still, her levitation would add to it, and she needed to use it to get up to a useful supporting height anyway.
As such she floated upwards with one of Sanae’s arms slung around her shoulders and held lightly by the wrist, while her own arm went around the woman’s back to further help hold her up. She then did her best to act as a support/armrests while the priestess completed her conversation with her goddess, before said goddess focused on Qing'e with some familiarity.
“Wait. Is she from your world as well?” Rayne asked Sanae in place of the goddess, due to the latter having vanished right after giving the woman she was talking about a combination of warning and threat, before calling over to her “hey, are you alright?” because no matter what the situation, or what trickery might have gone, she was still glad that Qing'e was alive. She was also concerned that she might not be as unharmed as she appeared. For all she knew she might just be enduring the same sickness Sanae was suffering better, and that is before she thought about whatever fate she’d survived might have done to her.
”I’ll admit, I’m hardly a Rogue Lord, nor particularly in tune with nature or shadows, so my experience with skulking around so close to our foes is not exactly extensive” Edward was forced to admit quietly in response to Edelgard’s more politely delivering of Juri’s crass objection to the vocal component of his plan of how to warn people of threats. He gave Sandalphon a nod of agreement to her own breakdown of the issues and then held back a sigh when Goldlewis drove it home.
”Worry not, commander. The core of your plan is solid. I myself am unused to such maneuvering as well.” Edelgard consoled Edward, giving the man a nod. ”As long as we are careful, things ought to be alright.
”Seems like everyone has to get a word in, your lucky it stopped there” Minda joked a touch louder than necessary, making light of the minor humiliation, before suggesting ”still, no reason to not stick to the other part, so let’s get that set up at least?” prompting Edward to nod, and then to swiftly seize one half of the front of the formation he’d outlined in a display of shrewd/petty political maneuvering.
As such, they were some of the first to come upon the precipice of the crater, eyes scanning silently along the amount of its circumference they could see, and get a good impression of exactly how big the explosion really had been.
”It was one thing to be blinded by this place’s demise, but this… it's all gone. All of the places from my dreams, wiped away” Midna said first in a loud whisper, before deciding ”good riddance”
”Perhaps” Edward replied quietly and with deliberate succinctness, only for Minda to tilt her head and ask ”What was that?” again with an unsuitable level of volume for the situation.
Edelgard grimaced at Midna’s volume, looking over to the Twilight Princess. “Midna, I must implore you to better coach your volume. It is liable to result in our detection.” She cautioned quietly, gesturing around them. ”In this place, we are in danger merely having a conversation.”
”You’ll-” the princess began to respond, quite possibly about to ask them to speak up, but caught herself before getting through any more of the sentence. Instead she simply nodded, before turning her gaze down at the way forwards- and then immediately starting to say ”So how-” before cutting herself off again with a grunt of annoyance.
Edward glanced at Edelgard, his face one briefly showing concern for this development, before he tried to get back to business. He pointed at her, or rather her armor, then at the way forward, before pointing his hand, palm raised up, to her in question.
Edelgard simply nodded, not entirely sure what the man was getting at, but surmising that he was questioning whether she was okay to continue in her armor. She mimed taking it off slowly, and then putting it back on very slowly, her mouth a semi-contrite line. It wasn’t ideal, but unless they wanted to put her armor back on before getting into any fights, it was a necessary evil.
She instead made a circle with her finger, then pointed forward. There was no time for debate, now was the time for action.
”Y-” came Midna’s bitten off comment (from the sound of the little grunt of pain that ended it had been quite literally ended via bite) to this attempt at improvised hand signals. Meanwhile Edward didn’t look quite sure how they’d gotten there, but gave an affirming nod to the one for haste.
There was, for the armored leaders, really only one logical path after all, though it was hardly an ideal one. It was to the rocks with them, Edward shifting to leading the way at just about the same time Goldlewis signaled for much the same. The resulting formation, at least, did not need to be discussed as the two BB carriers fanned out across the rocks as much as was possible with the limits of the field emitter.
The Dreadnaught did not exactly set the swiftest pace, which given that he had an infant in a glass chamber strapped to his chest was hardly surprising. Especially so when one early slip was rectified only by a flap of wet SFE suppressed wings, looking very much like a drowned pigeon in that moment, after which he immediately slowed his advance even further.
Edelgard’s own descent was carefully measured, each step taken slowly to avoid losing her footing. However, as she made her way down, her boot dislodged a small rock, which ominously rolled down the hill, making small noises every time it hit another rock and bounced further down. Waiting with a wince to see what happened, Edelgard breathed a sigh of relief when nothing came of the minor misstep, and continued down in peace.
Midna meanwhile brought up the rear, the princess resorting to stabbing her tree spear into cracks between the stones, regardless of the damage that might do to the weapon, to compensate for the fact that she had even less grip on the surface than everyone else. Her draconic tail swayed back and forth behind her as she did so, adding at least some balance to her rather unstable act.
Fingers cold and muddy from being used to navigate, Edward and Midna’s shared fashion choice of fingerless gloves resulting in both of them making futile attempts to warm and dry their digits after the climb that felt like it had taken an age.
They set off again soon after, only for Edelgard to take a tumble and give them their first look at what being hunted by a BT looked like. Edward and Minda would have helped the stumbling women, had Midna not been unable to stop herself from cursing ”Goddesses” at the sight of the incident, drawing their attention to her and Edward’s location.
They at least did not have to contend with getting up, and so both backed smoothly away from the site of her exclamation, before Geralt’s rock tossing drew their hunter’s attention away as well.
Both approached Edelgard after things had died down, Edward offering, under a raised wing’s shelter from the rain, a small hand towel from a pouch at his waist. They had to wait till the two BBs stopped their hunting around the rock spot anyway, so they had a moment for her to get some of the ‘egg’ off her actual face.
Edelgard graciously accepted the offered towel, wiping as much mud off her face and hands as she could, returning it soaked and soiled with an apologetic smile (it sadly proved more or less unsalvageable given the current conditions, and was silently and fusslessly disposed off as a result). As they set off again, Edelgard kept a more careful eye out for loose rocks and tripping hazards, though she had to go just a bit slower to do so. The frustration was evident on her face, though she did a commendable job at keeping a lid on it.
Edward and Midna both did a commendable job of not unduly commenting on the incident, though by the muffled sounds coming from behind Midna’s mask it seemed like doing so was very much a battle she was actively fighting, tooth vs tongue. As such, they eventually made it to the crevasse without further incident (beyond a close call with Goldlewis), and were forced to contend with the options at their disposal: crashed aircraft which Edward kept stealing glances at, vs crossing down into or over the wide obstacle. Secotnia provided a method of the latter, while Midna provided a warning of what to expect based on past memories of the burning pits of the dead zone, which contained, quite simply: ”Demons”
”I am…reluctant…” Edelgard admitted, choosing her words carefully, before gesturing around her and to the others. If they went into the ruins, they risked alerting BTs to their presence and starting a chase in the midst of a battle. Perhaps Edward and Midna could manage it, but Edelgard was too great a liability in that regard. It was only through Geralt’s timely assistance that she was so easily able to escape before. Instead, Edelgard gestured to the rest of the group, clearly not wanting to separate from them.
This got nods of understanding from the other two, and so they decided to stick with the generator. That did, however, involve crossing over a magical rain slicked crystal platform. Also, someone needed to make sure that they weren't going to be running straight into BTs doing this, and so Edward went ahead of the field generator itself to do just that, stepping onto it first, wings spread wide and with careful steps to avoid slipping.
Minda followed suit, although she took the opposite approach. When crystal and decrease friction met with slippery results upon an initial test step, she backed up two more, took a run up, and then slid across the crustal as if it were an ice sheet, before stabbing her spear into the ground on the opposite side to halt her momentum
Edelgard, in her armor, grimaced at the rain-slicked platform that she was expected to jump upon and across, and took a slow, deep breath with her eyes closed. She was not enjoying this, for just about every conceivable reason. Rather than the devil-may-care approach Midna took, Edelgard was very cautious and calculated in her approach, using only just enough strength to land on the platform, so that she would not have much momentum to carry her across it. She did, however, still possess momentum, and it took a moment for Edelgard to regain her footing on the crystal platform before she settled in. ”What a miserable affair…” she mumbled.
It was when their SFE carrier himself started to make the crossing that things got problematic, and the Demons Midna had mentioned made their appearance, with one large disembodied head floating up to assault them. In response to this Edward drew his new pistol and fired off a shot at it, but the flintlock proved to have terrible accuracy, the bullet lancing off at an angle despite his dead-on aim.
It then also refused to fire a second shot.
”You have to hit things with the sword to reload it” Minda informed him when he asked why, something he described as ”Absurd”
Ultimately, Ace himself handled the threat expertly with his own gunfire, but it was only the first of several more to come.
A few more of the round demons where ascending, as where a compliment of magic spitting Gargoyles who climbed and fluttered up the sides of the crevasse, and a screaming swarm of lost souls which prompted a warning of ”Those burning ones explode!” from Midna due to them sticking out particularly in her dreams it seemed. ”Of course they do!” Snarked Edelgard, Aymr summoned into her hand, ready to do battle as the gargoyles approached.
The number of enemies wasn’t actually that intimidating, they’d faced far larger hordes of foes in skyworld after all, but with their magic suppressed and their gear light, it still possessed a threat.
Particularly if one of the supposedly lost souls were to detonate the crystal while others were crossing it.
For Edelgard, the threat posed by the gargoyles was not one she could casually ignore. No, because of course these demons attacked with magic, rather than with tooth and claw like the demonic beasts of her world. Even her shield could not truly protect her from the green projectiles they threw, and Edelgard found herself relying heavily on the others to defeat their foes, as her own magic, weak on its own, was suppressed heavily, as a Gargoyle just about shrugging off a Fire spell showed. This did, however, mean that unless the Gargoyles approached her directly, she could not harm them very much at all.
The Lost Souls, on the other hand, seemed to explode with a more mundane force, and her shield and armor were more than capable of staving off the brunt of those blasts. They also were easily repelled with a single blow from Aymr, launching backwards from the impact and exploding harmlessly away from her. ”Please tell me none of those things have heard us!” she cried out to Edward as she watched a Lost Soul explode after a swing and a hit.
”The Odradek is calm” Edward called back from where he was taking cover, more or less hiding from the fight, tapping away at a stuttering armory access circle. To be fair to him, the man did have a baby strapped to his chest, even if that baby looked like it very much wanted to get in on the action, Baby Mario sporting the most determined look an infant was capable of doing while his hands were balled into fists.
Midna meanwhile had ducked out of the fight entirely at first, or, rather, had ducked out of the SFE field, only to then duck back into it once she was done casting unsuppressed magic, returning holding a pair of square, snub nosed auto pistols, one in each hand. With her spear left embedded in the ground, she stepped into the role of dps to Edelgard’s tank, peppering their foes with small arms fire.
Somewhat ineffective it might be said, the woman’s shots often flew of course for faults that were entirely her own, and by the string of curses and insults along the lines of ”Stay still and die you overgrown Keese!” she was very much aware of this shortcoming.
The best ranged support they provided as a team came rather late, as Edward finally acquired a suitable weapon via slow armory uplink. He then propped the long barreled sickly green highlighted Therian Viral Rifle between two rocks on the crevasse’s’ edge, keeping his charge and the delicate equipment attached to the BB firmly behind his cover while he started returning fire. Rather than thunderous retorts, the futuristic weapon elicited a combination of surging electrical hum and a woosh of air as it spat syringes of horrible viral toxins at the demons, toxin which seemed not to care about their victim’s otherworldly nature one bit as they left gangrenous itching wounds on the targets.
Edward was, notably, not using the inbuilt digital scope to fire it due to unfamiliarity with anything beyond iron sights, somewhat hampering his accuracy, though weakened casts of his Designate Target spell helped both him and Minda’s in finding their mark.
The rifle's healing alt-fire also went entirely unused.
”Also why I didn’t use that one!” Midna called out in comment as they got a close look at one of the rotting demons when it came at them with bladed arms, only for her to kick that particular specimen back into the pit. Edwad simply described it as ”very goblin-esque” in a tone of grudging respect for the advanced form of blight based warfare.
Much of the pressure from the ranged attackers off her now, Edelgard was free to batter Lost Souls to her heart’s content, though she’d have preferred not to be fighting on this strange crystal platform at the moment. When one came close, she simply lashed out with Aymr, and in due time, the tide of demons began to abate, though Edelgard found herself rather heavily wounded due to all of the magic attacks that came her way. Her coat was also somewhat damaged, with burn marks leaving access to her armor. ”Damn it. I will need to be careful not to come into contact with the rain directly, it seems.” Her armor would provide one final line of defense if her personal shield ran out, but that wouldn’t last nearly as long as the coat itself would have, and would have the nasty side effect of compromising her defense. ”We should continue now before more come.” Edelgard warned, panting a bit as she used a Heal spell on herself to relieve herself of some of the damage, though it was, again, much less effective than normal.
Edward provided some magical healing of his, or rather of a feather staff striker’s, own as well, but it too was suppressed, seemingly even more than Edlegard’s own.
”Well, you tried” Minda commented with a shrug, before stepping away to go ditch her pistols outside of the SFE field. However Edward was not done, saying ”Give me a moment an perhaps-” as he crouched down and started to inspect the construction of the weapon he was holding, flicking a switch which seemed to swap the partially drained viral chamber for a second still mostly full one of a much more pleasantly green fluid.
”I suppose that will do it” he concluded, reluctantly, before informing her that ”If I shoot you now it will, supposedly, heal you”
Edelgard looked at Edward with great skepticism, before turning her gaze onto the strange weapon he was wielding. ”If this does not work, I assure you, commander, that we will be having words. Do what you will with that.” She replied, giving Edward the choice.
The man looked as if he was about to say something, then thought the better of it. Instead he raised the rifle once more, and fired the shot at the largest of Edelgard’s remaining injuries. There was an electrical hum and woosh once more, and once again a green payload splattered against the weapon’s target. Rather than sicken and rot, however, it produced a warm, soothing tingle across the burns as it smoothed them away.
The feeling and healing ended quickly, though somewhat unfortunately the goop itself did not go anywhere when it did, instead simply graying as it became inert and needing to be wiped off.
”I thouuuuuught you said you should never do that” Minda teased, causing Edward to start just a fraction at how she’d crept back up on him at least.
”And I’d prefer not to do so ever again, though I am now somewhat stuck carrying this about” Edward replied, referring to the lengthy returning process that the SFE or rain would both make monumentally more difficult to pull off.
Having wiped the goop from the viral rifle off after the healing ended, Edelgard was left feeling more than a little unclean. Between the rain, the mud, the hits she’d taken, and the healing slime, she was already ready to be done with this day. Still, they’d crossed the ravine and were finally ready to move on. She looked forward to the omnipresent form of the Qliphoth and nodded. ”Well, shall we?”
Plates and cutlery were not set neatly away as the kids and the Witch bailed on the mess hall and headed for the Armory. Most of Jr’s minions accompanied them, with Peeka the flutter mane floating along above them, and Mimi the mimikyu sat on his shoulder (Dazzle would only slow them down and so was stored in his ball). As a result it was the stubby legged koopa prince doing the slowing, or more accurately occasionally scampering to keep up with the two taller humanoids. Well, only somewhat taller in Rika’s case, she’d lost a fair bit of height thanks to one of her fusions.
As they walked, Rika tried to engage in some light conversation ”Soooo, um, oh! What is it you do that not having magic won’t let you do?”
“Can’t you tell? I’m a Witch.” Even in other worlds, where science had grown dominant, people must have heard the age-old tale of the wicked sorceress. Beware the woman who becomes too wise, who becomes too strange. If she grows powerful beyond her station, it may be that she consorts with unholy powers. A false accusation more often than not, but in her case it was quite an apt description.
“What the uneducated call magic, I call thaumaturgy. And with it, I can do just about anything I please.” Burn things, freeze things, zap things with electricity—what more could a young lady need? “If what they’re saying about this place is true, though, I’ll have to get creative. Weapons never really were my strong suit, but I suppose I’ll try anything once.” This Rika seemed to know where she was going, and so the Witch stuck by her, though not without a curious glance at some of the Seeker’s more mismatched and exotic features. Was she part machine, or was all that mess around her hips just part of the elaborate outfit?
”Oh? No, I couldn't tell” Rika replied without a hint of embarrassment or shame at this ignorance ”I’ve never met a witch before, or got told what those are. I don’t think they had any at sea. Or the Abyssal Fleet didn’t care enough to distinguish between different kinds of magic - or, uh, ‘thaumaturgy’ - users. Probably that one. They didn’t teach their cannon fodder much at all”
”Couldn't tell either. You don’t have the hat” Jr poked his head into their conversation to add, before clarifying to his confused sister that the hat in questions hat he was referencing ”Pointy, wide brim, like that one Kamek’s got but black usually”
”Oh” Rika replied, before saying ”I don’t think there were any more pointy hats, but there was an ice-y wand of some kind? For after the magic suppress-y stuff is done“ to the Witch in another attempt to be helpful.
“Hmm.” The Witch looked idly thoughtful. “I used to wear a lot of hats. Helmets, circlets, crowns… Perhaps I ought to dress up more, now that I’m in such high company.” Whether or not she meant that part seriously was hard to tell. She sounded a little sarcastic, but then she nearly always did with that flat tone of hers.
All the same, Arika’s mention of a potential treasure drew immediate and obvious interest from the young sorceress. “A wand? There’s little I’d like more. If I lend you a hand, would you give it to me?” They’d probably give her a gun just to help with the upcoming trials, but a powerful magical object would be another story. The Witch understood how relationships worked: you gave someone a thing they wanted, and they’d give you something in return. So what do you want, lost sailor girl?
“Your Abyssal Fleet? Are they still afloat?” Her look was one of pity, but it was hard not to see the mocking twist to it. “They didn’t value you very well, did they? Or else you’d never have deserted them.” She leaned in eerily close, lowering her voice as she did. “Help me gather treasures, and grow powerful, and I’ll sink them all for you. You can even listen to their screams while I do it.”
Rika leaned back just a little, more confused than unnerved by this sinister closeness, and then of all things was apologetic when she said ”Oh. Thanks? But they’re mostly gone. Some of the others sank their leaders and the rest are mostly lost without them” before adding ”I… Probably should have done something about that, helped them or something, but didn’t really know what… so I just… didn’t” with little in the way of disguising the emotion in her voice, a mix of embarrassment, failure and genuinely feeling lost.
Then she shook her head and the feelings were put away as she tried to pivot away, only to run right back aground and dredge them up another set of raw hurt ”Um. Anyway. Wand’s in the armory so it's more or less free for anyone to take. But I can keep an eye out for magic-y stuff if that helps you help take down Galeem if you want? You don’t need to make it scream or anything, I just don’t want to go back to the fleet when I die”
”You're not going to die” Jr insisted from behind them, but Rika seemed more or less resigned to the fact that ”I mean I will. Eventually. Something'll get me and then Galeem’d bring a me who isn’t me back as part of the fleet and I’ll never be the me I am now ever again. And I hate that”
How disappointing. The Witch would have loved to try and ruin that fleet herself, all the more if there’d been a juicy reward waiting for her at the end. Now it seemed like she’d get her prize without a fight, and as convenient as that was, it just didn’t feel as satisfying.
Perhaps she’d perk up again once she had a chance to kill something with it? Her eyes drifted off into space for a moment, seemingly no longer focused on Rika—only to suddenly swing back when the conversation turned in an interesting direction. Death? The Witch knew plenty about that. It wasn’t a topic she often got to talk about in polite company, but this girl had gone and brought it up all by herself.
And the sorceress, like a shadow, was at her side again. “Life is fleeting. Everything dies, and we’d be fools to pretend otherwise.” A pointed glance at Junior accompanied that last part, before her almost doting attention returned itself to Rika. “It’s not death that you fear, though. Only what comes after. A you who isn’t you, your soul twisted back into a shape you’d thought long abandoned. Poor, poor thing!” She might have grinned at the end there, and even felt sorely tempted to do so. Just this once, though, she exercised restraint.
“But you shouldn’t go along quietly. I wouldn’t.” People feared and reviled necromancers, but for what? Perhaps it was only their terror of death itself, spilling over onto all those who danced with it. “Who’s to say a soul can’t stick around after dying? I’ve seen it done. Some of the dead even chose to enter my service.” She raised an eyebrow, and extended one pale hand towards the girl. “If you’re going to die anyway, you may as well come and work for me. Under my guidance, you won’t end up anything like you were before.”
”It can? I mean the fleet was resurrecting people, but it really messed the ones they used it up. All jumbled up bits instead of looking like me and you. Plus Kamek tried to copy that power but it never seemed to work. The spell needed the body and the spirit and with the body going all ashy here it was basically impossible to stop it from blowing away or getting, like, messy with other dust or ash or something” Rika replied with somewhat casual frustration at this having not worked.
”Yeah I didn’t even try to learn that stuff when I got that spirit off of him. Keeping people alive in the first place with this cat’s magic is way easier than that mess” the cat tail sporting Jr added in, hurrying to catch up, before asking the Witch ”also do you mean like, ghosts, when you talked about people sticking around? Coz I mean that’s what these two are” and then pointing at both of his ghost type pokemon.
”But I think they got taken here rather than died here? They were Galeeming after all” he added, before adding unsurely ”if that’s even how ghost type pokemon work?” prompting Rika to shrug and give him a ‘why are you asking me?’ look before getting back to the point
”Anyway, um, yeah. Dying is like, I've done it before. A lot. At least I remember it in dreams how it was like to be thrown to my death over and over like some peon. So I do not want to go back to that, and the way to do that is punching Galeem in its stupid face” she flexed her hands and balled them into fists, the gauntlets on her back doing the same while staring off into the distance, before turning a smile to the Witch ”So if you can, pick me back up so I can have a second run a it that’d be great!” probably not entirely aware of what that might involve getting herself into.
“A ghost would only be a hassle. I was thinking of a spectre: much more reliable.” There were so many wonderful types of undead: spirits, skeletons, zombies, phantasms, wraiths, Gemlings, Liches, the Pocked… And yet she’d never encountered anything quite like those pets the not-dragon had with him. For a short moment she fell silent, examining them with clear curiosity as she considered the benefits and risks of trying to dissect one of them.
But such investigations could come in their own time. “Don’t worry, Rika: I’ll make sure your death doesn’t go to waste. I might not have the power yet, but soon…” Oh, if only they knew the heights she’d once reached! Her current paltry handful of spells was nothing compared to the godlike arsenal she’d once wielded. On the other hand, she was growing again, and this visit to the armory would be yet another step in regaining her true strength.
“...Soon I’ll grow strong enough to cut that god’s heart out and eat it.”
On that delightful note, here was the armory. The Witch vaguely remembered the map of the airship, but ahead of her now lay a chamber she’d never physically explored before, one so filled with treasures she could practically smell them. Almost in a trance, she stepped forward and took in the Avenger’s hoard, murmuring words of appraisal that no one but her could hear.
”Weren't we going to the spirit chamber first?” Jr asked as the Witch became enthralled with the armory’s eclectic contents, to which Rika replied that ”I didn’t want to keep her waiting. She seemed so excited and helpful” very much misreading the situation.
They decided to have a look as well, noting that the armory had gained few new objects, including, of all things, dozens of spirits of various bandits.
”Wow, someone’s been busy- and also kinda lazy given they just dumped these here” Jr commented as he picked up and examined a bottle containing a noteless fading spirit ”like, what, are they expecting someone else to crush hundreds of spirits for them?”
”With that hat on and everything. Its ouchy even with you healing me up while using it” Rika agreed, before adding that ”still it is kinda fun to find out what you get”
The Witch carefully perused the objects on display, picking up and examining several before tossing them back with a sigh. “Too. Much. Clutter.” The quality wasn’t great either—most of the items here were far from their full potential. She’d need to get in here and do some serious crafting later, but for now she sequestered just a few small pieces: health and mana flasks, the ice wand Rika had mentioned earlier, and a horned circlet that she daintily set upon her head.
“...And this must be the snake gun.” With unhesitating precision, she seized it from among the myriad firearms and turned it over in her hands. “Hmm.” She’d never used a firearm before, but this one seemed as though it’d be quite useful indeed, albeit perhaps not in the way its maker had intended. Nothing like a bit of synergy to really make things fun.
Health Potion x 2 Mana Potion x 2 Dagon A rare twin-headed ice wand that boosts the power of ice spells and has a 50% base chance to inflict Frozen if used as a melee weapon, although its melee damage is fairly low and it loses extra durability when used that way. Snake Shotgun A shotgun with recoil and other stats comparable to a sawed-off. When its trigger is pulled it shoots three green snakes at once. The snakes are alive and can be killed but don't have spirits. After being shot they single-mindedly pursue the nearest living thing they can smell in order to bite them. The bites are venomous, causing pain and paralysis that builds up over multiple bites. The snakes can and will attack both allies and the shooter if they're too close. The trigger can be pulled ten times for a grand total of thirty snakes before the shotgun is useless. Ammo pickups do not replenish the weapon. Loki’s Horns: A removable horned headband. When the wearer shoots/throws/otherwise uses a projectile, there is a 25% base chance that three copies of that projectile fly out in different directions: 90 degrees to the left and right of the original direction, and the opposite of the original direction.
She let it dangle from one hand in a profoundly unsafe manner as she wandered back over to Junior and Rika. “They don’t seem very strong…” She examined the spirits with a frown. “Still, we might get lucky. Why don’t you try first?”
”Well we’ll need to get the hat to do that. Which maybe should just be up here anyway?” Rika replied, before asking ”Do you, um, know how to use one of those” as she took in the way the Witch was holding her new gun.
”Yeah that is not how you… Ok we go down to the spirit chamber with some” Jr suggested, not even needing to get talked into ‘stealing’ from the public storage apparently, while adding on that ”and while we do that, we can give you some tips on how to, you know, not shoot yourself with snakes. Or us. Or any of the thing’s that’ll be stopping us from being turned into old people down in the rain”
“I don’t know,” the Witch answered, as she stared absentmindedly down the barrel. “I like surprises. Besides, the Inter-knot made it sound easy enough.” Pursing her lips, she raised the shotgun and aimed it with both arms outstretched, like she was holding a pistol. Just squeeze the trigger, and out came the snakes, wasn’t that it? She’d have happily demonstrated right there and then, were it not for the weapon’s unfortunately limited ammunition.
”ah, um, yeah not like that, you'll hit yourself in the face if you don't drop it. Here, let me just-” Rika said, before stepping in close to try and physically adjust the firing pose:
”this hand up here, not there, then pull it all back like this to brace this bit against your upper arm here and then pull it all up like this so you can aim down the sights and that's how you should be doing it with a bigger gun”
The Witch’s skin was cool to the touch, her bones tangible underneath. All the same, she played along nicely enough, offering no resistance at all to Rika’s adjustments. Her blue eyes narrowed as she squinted down the barrel, perhaps picturing some unfortunate creature about to receive a faceful of writhing serpents.
“…I see. It feels more comfortable this way.” Her finger waggled uncomfortably close to the trigger, only to pull away just a blink before disaster.
”oh and that goes here, so you don’t accidentally pull the trigger when something hits you” Rika helpful added, going so far as to move this threatening finger so it was outside the trigger guard. Only then did she step back, taking the aura of heat that had been like standing at a comfortable distance from a roaring fire with her, and looking quite pleased with herself. The girl, whatever she was inside, ran hot.
”Ok, yeah, that’s better” jr said, having left his sister to do these adjustments, and having gathered up an armful of spirit bottles ”Now let's get down to the chamber and crack these”
The Witch’s gaze followed after Rika, the expression beneath it unreadable. Then, a moment later, the sorceress slowly nodded. Lowering her shotgun and tucking it at least a little more safely under one arm, she gathered a few bandit spirits of her own and followed behind the young Not-dragon.
There were a few more safety tips as they traveled down to the spirit chamber, but overall that talk and trip passed mostly without incident till they arrived at their destination.
Within the chamber sat various machines to do with fusion, naturally, as well as, rather out of place, the awful looking chest with teeth that could for some reason be worn as a hat. Rika put down the helmet she had been carrying under her arm down, and then picked up the stupid hat and popped it on her head, making a little inhale of pain as she did so as the delightful artifacted started, for a lack of a better word, nibbling at her.
She waved an outstretched hand, into which Jr put the spirits one at a time, the ship girl crushing them almost at once and then putting the resulting item down on a table. Then as soon as she was done, she pulled off the hat, and her brother raised the oversized paint brush he carried around and cast ”Cure!” washing away the cuts and grazes the hat had inflicted in a burst of pure white magic.
Rika let out a little breath of relief, and then leaned over the spoils as she asked ”So what did we get?”
Items obtained: Copper Reeve x882 Triangular coins of little individual value. It takes 500 to equal 1 silver reeve Leather Boots x4 Basic outdoors footwear, made from tanned hide Leather Jerkin x2 Tanned hide made into clothing that can scarcely be called armor, as it's better for the cold than stopping attacks Bandit Hood x5 (assorted colors) Dusty and frayed cloth that's good for keeping the sun off one's face and the sand from one's eyes Rope Coil x3 Wound fibers with respectable tensile strength, used for connection and restriction Iron Knife x7 Standard make and material, but even a weapon as basic as this has the power to take the life. Also useful as an all-purpose tool
”Yeesh. Who were these guys?” Jr complained, to which Rika replied that ”Must have been a load of peons” as she poked the pile of copper coins with a disappointed expression on her face, before asking the Witch ”think you’ll have better luck?” not at all sounding confident that she would
The Witch’s best efforts yielded only a similar pile of junk, but that was no matter. She was rather used to having to sift through heaps of trash to find a single treasure, and at the very least some of the items here would help fill out her tattered clothing. In the meantime, while the other two had been trying their luck, she’d kept herself busy tweaking and fiddling with her gear from the armory, adjusting each item so she could slot in the tiny gemstones she used for her spells. While she couldn’t change the properties of an object outright (at least, not with the resources currently on hand), her skilled hands and subtle enhancements would help bring each one a little closer to what she needed.
Health Potion x 2: Now slowly refill themselves as the Witch kills enemies (average of 5% per kill). Mana Potion x 2: Now slowly refill themselves as the Witch kills enemies (average of 5% per kill). Dagon: Additional melee attack effect - guaranteed Chill/slow on hit. Snake Shotgun: Now has significantly reduced recoil. Loki’s Horns: When the additional projectile effect is triggered, it now spawns two projectiles at 45-degree angles to the original and one directly behind.
Much better. She settled the horns back on her head, tucked away her new wand, and lastly slid the shotgun into an improvised leather holster she’d put together out of the bandit junk. With this, and a fresh pair of boots, she felt about as ready as she reasonably could be for the chaos to come.
She was certainly having a better time of it than the two kids, who foolishly did not see the inherent value in a free pair of boots. So up in rarity their gambling went instead.
”We got those two better spirits from yesterday to go through though, so we’ve gotta get something good out of all this, right?” Junior said as he pulled two jars out of his duffle bag. This resulted first in Rika perking up, and then looking a little resigned about having to go back into head-chewing town.
But go back into it she did, in order to crush the spirits of a very large crab with some sort of wheeled machine stuck to its back and a… smiling sausage man?
The first item resulted in an entire chest materializing in the girl’s hand, which thudded to the ground, clicking open with a puff of cold air, and revealing cut upon cut of fresh flesh.
A coldbox full of succulent crab meat: a few dozen portions at least
The second exploded into a shower of green bits of paper that burst upwards out of the girl’s grip, and then rained down over all of them.
”What was-” Rika began to ask as she pulled off the hat, before looking up at the shower and identifying it as ”-Oh. Money? Guess that works”
1000$ (in various small bills)
What followed was the pair of kids scrambling to catch/pick up all the paper bills and stuffing them into various boots in order to stop them laying around all loose, after which they inspected the chest’s contents. The conclusion to said contents was quite simple: ”Guess it’ll be seafood for dinner again then”
Which meant they were going to have to go through yet another detour, this time lugging the chest of fish meat back to the mess hall where they’d started this whole little outing in, before finally hauling the greed hat and crucible to the armory where they dropped off all the junk/treasure they weren't keeping a hold of.
While they were at this, Jr asked the Witch ”So what’s with the crystals and whatever it was you were doing with your new stuff?”
The Witch paused from her dumping of excess bandit loot to hold up a tiny blue gemstone, partly nested within an elaborate crescent of gold. “Virtue gems; nightmare crushed down into pretty little pieces of rock. Mementos from a journey I finished long ago.” Briefly enraptured by her own demonstration, she turned the jewel so that it caught the light, shining a brilliant azure. “The Eternals thought that implanting these in their flesh would let them live forever. And they were right, after a sense… But I think they’re better used as tools. Conduits for my mana, giving it form and clarity.” She turned the gem slightly, and Rika would see that the gold upon it was sculpted to resemble a comet of raging fire—a fireball gem.
The Witch wasted little time in slotting it back into its place along the stem of her wand. “Now it obeys me, just as the fire obeys it. And in time, its cousins will answer to me too.”
”Neat” Rika declared this simply, the way she leaned in to take a close look at the sparkly gem far better conveying her interest, before inquiring, as simply ”and what kind of journey was that?”
In response, the woman only chuckled ominously to herself. “The kind with a sorry start and a beautiful ending. Perhaps one day I’ll tell you… But I’m not much of a storyteller.” She picked up the rest of her things, and promptly set off. “Anyhow, we’ve got more pressing things to worry about right now.” This second journey of hers hadn’t started all that well either, but she had a feeling things were soon about to get much more fun.
Eventually, after much running around from room to room, the Witch and the kids arrived at the vehicle bay again, just in time to hear the twin announcements, the latter of which resulted in Jr throwing up his hands and complaining ”Wait we could have just done half of that now!? Urrrgh” before also scowling at Edward for taking specifically Baby Mario out of the assorted BBs.
”I mean, we kinda gotta get ready to go so it’d have been a whole rush. Plus that was fun,” Rika replied, before she first sat down on the floor, and then reached behind her and started to fiddle with the straps attaching her gauntlets to her back.
”Urh, right, yeah hang on” her brother said to her, before stomping around behind her and helping her out with that, before also assisting her in strapping the gauntlets onto her forearms, leaving the giant pile of weird sword machines strapped back there.
A few moments later, and the ship girl stood back up, forearms now contained with a pair of oversized equivalents that she nonetheless lifted with ease. With two fingers she picked up her helmet and placed it on her head, before tapping a strip of cloth to herself, and instantly gaining a set of full plate armor. Around her hips, the twin sets of guns and two clawed limbs flexed and shifted before returning to a passive state as Rika briefly tested all her gear’s systems. Finally, a spear with a vertebrae themed halberd tip on one end and a double barreled gun on the other teleported onto her back, held there by a long strap.
”Alright, I’m good to go!” she declared, setting her eyes on the dwindling pile of rain survival gear. In contrast to this armoring up, her brother was down to just his clothes and a duffle bag, his minions stored in their pokeballs, his paint brush in the armory. He also said that ”I’ma leave the car, it’ll just turn into a bathtub anyway” to Rika without any extra context for the Witch to go off of.
Looking at Rika now, the Witch had to admit she still had a lot of catching up to do in terms of equipment. Still, she’d come a long way from the scraps she’d relied on back in Meridi-at-Han… Without any trepidation, or indeed any feelings at all, she quietly donned a raincoat and shield pack. “...Yes,” she murmured to herself, almost too quietly for the others to hear. “That was fun.” Putting together a viable kit from a set of wildly varied items reminded her of the old times, of Wraeclast, perhaps the closest place she’d ever had to a home. True, nearly everything on that poisoned continent had been trying to kill her, but it had also been the making of her, the experience that transformed her from an odd young girl into an unstoppable force of destruction.
Perhaps this Dead Zone would be much the same.
Into a smaller ship they filed, crammed together like prisoners whilst that irritating angel babbled on about the challenges ahead. Poor sleep? Nightmares? Thoughts of her own death? The Witch outright smirked at Sandalphon’s warnings, a list of so-called symptoms that more or less described her everyday life. She was no stranger to nightmares, and certainly did not fear them. She’d learned long ago to embrace the darkness, to let it inside and accept it as part of herself. If the fine hairs on the back of her neck now stood on end, it was out of anticipation, the desire to see for herself a land so poisonous and foul. She wondered: would she and it get along?
The Pelican touched down and the seekers filed out in short order into the land of rain and mud, water pouring endlessly down from the heavens atop of them, slicking the ground and pounding against the plastic raincoats.
Jr’s already had holes in the back, so it wasn’t helping him much, prompting him to immediately complain that ”They blew this place up and wiped out all the gross monsters and yet it's still the worst! Stupid Dead Zone” before kicking a clump of mud
”I mean it's not the Maw-” Rika replied, causing both to shudder, and put an end to end complaining on their end. Not that they really had any right to complain, as they had both found puddles to stand, somehow, on top of, rather than putting up with sinking into the mud like everyone else was.
The Witch trudged up beside them, staring out at the dull and rain-soaked landscape. “How do I keep ending up in such lovely places?” Her tone dripped with sarcasm, accompanied by far more literal droplets splashing off the rim of her hood. The terrain didn’t look like much to the untrained eye, but she could feel the fear and malice seething just beneath the surface, a vast hostility without direction nor intent.
“The dead are restless here. I can almost hear them.” Her voice was calm, but her breathing had intensified a little. “If I only had time to study it, I could master this land… Ah, well.” The group was setting off, and she knew better to tarry behind. Step by steady step, she began to pick her way across the land, keeping one eye always on the BB carriers and their strange twitching machines.
For whatever reason, her two new hangers on followed along with her, though at the very least they did offer a bit of help. The main manner of this came from Rika, who deployed a pair of little hovering drones (still bearing their pretty freaky abyssal designs) which went and hovered over the leading BB carriers, allowing a much better, constant, eye and ear on them than trying to glance over/through the group could give.
Which was convenient for the 2 short kids, that was for sure, as well as for anyone else near them in the group who overheard her say that ”If they spot something, I’ll know right away thanks to those, so we can focus on not sinking in the mud”
wintersoldier
Snowdrops
LG
Lord Zee
Timemaster
Damycles
Izurich
Villamvihar
FunnierPrez
