”-and that’s why I said it was like tv static” Bowser concluded, having explained the concept to his young son.
”ooooh, ok, I get it” Jr replied, nodding earnestly, before glancing over at the other two troop members and saying ”Isn’t that cool!”
”hmmm? Oh. yes. very” Kamek lied, clearly distracted by something. What that something was was something Rika cleared up when she was, unlike the old mage, entirely honest about having tuned out the royal’s conversation: ”Sorry what was that? I’ve been kinda distracted by my planes being weird”
”Wow. Rude” Jr harrumphed, looking mighty upset that the shipgirl hadn’t listened to his papa’s words of wisdom
”Eh, it’s fine” Bowser insisted in-order to placate the boy, before asking ”So what’s up with your planes then?”
To answer that, Kamek pointed one out, the scout plane flailing around senselessly in the air as it tried to push past some invisible obstacle.
”Oh huh yeah that is weird” Jr agreed, easily distracted
”Indeed”
”Also neither of the other two got stuck, which is super unfair!” Rika complained, and indeed, if they were to peer into the woods the royals could see the striker and wisps happily ignoring whatever had trapped the plane. Both the planes. The other one was just stuck much deeper in the woods than the one that had first been pointed out.
”I mean, if there’s something invisible there, then I have a way to sort that” Jr said before carefully rolling his clown car forwards on go-kart wheels, heeding his elders’ requests for him to be careful as he cautiously approaching the plane.
While still a fair bit away from the trapped remote control aircraft, the prince pulled out his paintbrush and gave it a few flicks, launching splats of goop forth. The ink-like slime splashed onto and around the plane, and painted into visibility what had been unseen: a massive spider’s web, one who’s strands had been invisible to the naked eye.
The tapestry hung there for a moment, glistening in the mist, before the goop began to rapidly eat through the silk, causing the web to disintegrate, freeing the plane from its grasp. It dropped, caught itself with its thrusters, did a little loop de loop to clear the goop off of it … and then almost immediately flew into another web.
”Well I never… is the entire wood just filled with these webs?” Kamek asked, the magikoopa having carefully followed after Jr’s trail to join up with him.
”Yeah, definitely” Bowser, who had not done as his wise advisor had done, agreed as he tugged an arm to try and free it from an invisible grip. He grunted in frustration, and then opened his maw, flames licking his lips as he prepared to deal with the problem, only for Kamek to interject ”Wait! Sire, careful, we don’t want to risk burning down the woods while we are in them”
The king gave a frustrated sigh, but he nonetheless waited for jr to clear the webbing using splashes of goop. With him free, the plane re-freed, and the mystery solved, the troop wandered back to join Primrose and Rubick and actually addressed the former’s question about what they should be doing, and whether they should look any further.
”This place seems like it’ll be really annoying” Bowser summarized ”Not being able to go 3 steps without getting web stuck on you? No thanks”
”Boring too” Jr added, not appreciating the region’s aesthetic ”I mean, who’d get rid of all the color? Seems real lame to me”
”Reminds me of that whole situation with the black paint, which was just groan worthy” Bowser said, and when asked for more details, declared it not even worth talking about
”Well, anyway, I for one do not particularly want to find out where the spiders who made the webs went” Kamek added after that. Both options of either they were hiding, or that they had been eaten by something even worse, were bad in his mind.
Things seemed pretty conclusive on their front, until Rika coughed awkwardly and then asked ”Could we, uh, maybe go and get my plane before we leave though?” before pointing her bayonet towards the trapped aircraft jerking about in the mist, its luck at having narrowly avoided an unknown number of webs to get all the way out there into the mist having now turned around into a curse.
The answer to that question was obvious for the rest of the Troop, and that was how they ended up heading deeper into the woods, with or without the two heroes.
Jr led the way, splashing the area ahead of them with goop to detect and destroy the webs, which resulted in a path of sorts forming, one made of a layer of magical slime coating the forest floor. Bowser’s boots tramped atop this, while Rika gilded above its surface, and Kamek hovered low at the back, occasionally popping a torch on a passing tree as he went to fully cement the pathway.
As they trekked through the mist, the sound of static grew subtly louder and louder, the intruders being submerged in a sound like frogs being boiled, such that they would not notice consciously how much it had increased in volume till it was too late.
Add to this the subtle sights of things just beyond their vision, and safe to say, they were not having a good time.
”Almost there, almost there, almost there” Jr muttered to himself as they went, all of them getting more and more unnerved until, at last ”We’re here!”
The prince’s goop splashing hit the web holding the second plane, freeing it up and allowing it to hover back over to its owner, the little aircraft snuggly slotting itself away in the unoccupied gauntlet hanger it had deployed from.
”Thanks guys! Now uh, lets go, this place is way to spooky” Rika said, but Jr just had to ask ”Do we need to go find the wisps or-” only to be interrupted by their timely return as they teleported into the midst of the group. Something neither royal would admit being startled by, but which defiantly did.
”Ah good, your back, did you find anything of note” Kamek asked after he’d recovered from the surprise, to which the wisps responded by forming an arrow and pointing off towards the center of the forested cavern. The troop all peered into the mist and vaguely spied the out of place hotel and its neon sign … right before the howl rang out and the massive spider pulled itself atop this newly spotted landmark, and screamed something about a queen at them.
That was about when the forest around them went mad, a wave of skittering sounds rolling out as the hiding spiders revealed themselves at last, with sound if not sight. Their bodies were still invisible in the mist, even if it was now obvious they were out there. Somewhere, and getting closer every second.
An immediate response of panicked blind shooting resulted from this from all but one member of the troop, with Rika opening up with her assault rifle and canons, Bowser with shoulder cannons and a shower of shell spikes joining in, and Jr with his crank operated Mulcher machine gun offering a baseline of noise, all of them firing into the mist at the approaching sound, guns roaring in defiance.
”Stop, stop, you aren't hitting anything!” Kamek called over the din ”We need to fall back!”
His strategy fell on (literally) deaf ears until he physically grabbed Jr and got him to stop, then got the boy to get his father’s attention with ease, while the mage halted the ship girl’s own fire.
”We need to go!” Kamek reasserted after they’d wasted valuable time
”No we don’t, we just need to fight smarter!” Jr retorted, before clarifying that they should ”use attacks that hit lots of stuff!”
”Dad, use those sonic attacks you have!” he commanded, while pulling out a pokeball and deploying his Popplio to ride next to him in his car, ordering his pokemon to attack as well with ”Dazzle, hit everything out there with your icy wind”
They did just that, Bowser deploying his shoulder cannons again, but switching them from shell fire to conal screams of super sonic sound that he could sweep through the mist: sowing confusion amidst the spider hordes without needing to be aimed at any one target. Dazzle meanwhile deployed and popped a string of bubbles, unleashing wide gusts of bitingly cold air that, importantly, also reduced the speed of everything they hit.
”Kamek give us, uh… oh, i know, make more of me! And then we’ll all make a big mess of these woods!” Jr snapped his fingers as he came up with a plan to let them hold their ground
”oh? Ah, yes! At once young master!!” the mage agreed, opening up a series of portal and summon shadow juniors who, along with the original, unleashed a flood of goop all around them using their paint brushes, their ink dissolving away at any nearby webs, and splattering ground and trees in a radius around them with ink which would slow down the spiders if they tried to come at them over land after their silky pathways where gone.
”What about me! Shooting stuff was all I had!” Rika called out, to which jr replied ”then shoot the big one!”
”Oh… duh” Rika responded, and then turned her firepower on the target they could see, the ship girl instinctively angling her guns up just a bit so that her shots would fly in an arc and rain down on the somewhat distant titanic spider, where they might have fallen short had she aimed right at it due to bullet (or rather shell) drop.
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town
”Hey! Did ask specifically how bad it was gonna be, give me some credit” Midna retorted when she was accused of being optimistic about taking on the whole city. It wasn’t like she wanted that to happen after all. That said ”If it's any cold comfort, it is that if a consul is around to brand them as a public enemy, then it's not like we’re alone in that department. With how bad this threefold crisis and internal conflict is, I’ll be amazed if they have much left to spare to send after us if it comes to that. So we’re bugs in the dark, hiding front he boots, but there's way bigger things for the boots to worry about than a bunch of bugs scurrying around this town, and that’s something”
She also took that moment to fill them in on what she could do ”When it comes to gear, I’m good with close combat weapons, have guns but no real training with them, lots of experience riding and some in driving. Then I have some lighting, sand, dragon, shadow, summoning and giant hand magic. Pretty much the works. So I’m pretty versatile, in no small part thanks to all the spirits I’ve fused with”
”But what’s probably the most unique is that I can do this” she waved a hand and summoned a stack of crates out of the twilight realm, the boxes all neatly stacking up in an instant right next to her ”which is to say, I can store objects in the twilight realm, with some pretty big upper limits too. No people though, they turn into beasts, and even animals get warped a bit, though I can also set up portals that can let us travel long distances safely. Once we’re settled, I’ll probably set one up, which would let me link back up with base via a … pretty convoluted rout I admit”
She’d have to jump to the virgin victory just outside Garudo town, then through the metro to twilight town, then through warp graffiti back to smash city, to be exact.
”and I need to be there to bring people with me so it’s somewhat limited in usage, but I could make a trip to get mercenary reinforcements if we need them... Anyway, point is, if you need stuff stashed, I’m your princess” she asserted, before she started tapping each box to banish them crates home again.
”Princess Midna, to be exact” she added, realizing she hadn’t actually introduced herself ”nice to meet you all”
Then, once she’d tidied up, she had a think about all the info they’d gotten, the princess borrowing a chair and lounging in it, legs crossed at the ankles hanging over one arm rest while she folded her hands behind her head and had a ponder about what they should do.
Three big threats, three big forces opposing them, and any one of them or the government themselves could be harboring the guardian. It was interesting to see that the same robots from the desert were also here, but in far greater numbers. Or perhaps they had just skimmed the edge of their territory down there and gotten lucky. Something to inform home base about, she thought.
Still, she left any follow up about that to Geralt, as it was, sort of, now his purview given he was the one who had asked.
So she kept her talk and commentary to the rebel groups, at least initially.
”Can’t say any of those rebels are any more reliable sounding than the one back in the desert” she had to admit, but she did give each their own time, talking as much to herself as she was with the Twins.
”The goals of the first group, this Avalanche, are just irrelevant, seeing as, if we win, then this false tapestry of a world won’t exist anymore in a week or two. So who cares if it harms a planet that soon won’t exit, unless we are close to some kind of breaking point” she said, somewhat unkindly, even if she could see how such a thing would be worth fighting for otherwise. Which was a plus ”Still, as objectives go, saving the planet sounds like a noble one, so I’d guess the people in it might be just and principled, to an extent, so if we remove Galeem’s blinding light from their eyes and point them at the true threat maybe we could co-opt them for our own cause pretty easily”
”Second, the hermits… are just an endemic failure of the government made manifest. I’ve read about this kind of stuff, where the people don’t feel safe, they form their own, inevitably corrupt and crime ridden, militias and gangs to protect themselves. If we free them, they’ll still mostly care about their own communities, which is kinda fair, but basically just makes them not worth pursuing as direct allies” Midna said, basing all this on her royal education rather than any real world experience. The thought of using them to acquire some of that hoarded gear at blackmarket rates did not even cross her mind.
”As for the third, this ‘reunion’? I’d fold them in as part of the Chimeras crisis. A symptom that we need to fight the disease to resolve” Minda said simply. Did she feel bad about these effective plague victims? Yes. But that did not mean they should not be treated as such, even if she imagined the regime was likely far more heavy handed than it needed to be.
The other, smaller groups or individuals were not exactly worth considering seeking out, other than, perhaps, as people who could be attracted into the fold of whatever organization they ended up being a part of.
So, if it came to groups to join, and who’s resources to use, that left the government agencies, which apparently they could likely sign up with without worrying about being arrested the moment they tried. The requirements for becoming members of Psych-OSF and Neuron sounded pretty specific to her, psychic powers and seeing the unseen, so that left just Desperado Enforcement as the easy option.
For them, however, the newly caught up Riden added some more details that shot down that possibility in her mind, namely by shoving them from the ‘helpful’ column into the ‘problem to be dealt with’ column.
”Huh, and I was just about to suggest shacking up with them would be a good idea. Never mind then” she said, and in hindsight, the whole recruiting of those who have nowhere else to go sounded very shady.
”In that case, I have … three suggestions” The princess said after a bit more ruminating, before she stood up and found a suitable location to address the rest of the party.
”First is co-opting Avalanches, if we can find them. We get them onside, and we get access to a well armed force and, hopefully, whatever dirt or information they have on the city, which might let us work out if the regime is hiding anything Guardian shaped” she explained, before jumping straight into the potential downsides that that plan might have ”Course, problem with that is if we get found working with them, or them for us rather, then doing anything with the government gets next to impossible, and even just fighting the crises with them is itself hard, because any time they show up we risk it becoming a three way fight”
”Basically, I think they’d be good long term, once we’re out of the city, but in it, might be more trouble than they are worth. Depends what we can get them to bring to the table” she summarized
”Second is we try and get into Neuron, assuming we can get magic or machines from them that let us see these invisible foes and we aren't barred from joining because we can’t do that on our own. They are fighting the biggest danger, might have some principles, while also having some regime connections. If we’re going to join one of the government groups, I’d go for them” the princess explained, before adding ”Again, if we even can”
”Lastly, and I think this is my preference, we go our own way. Kinda. We make our own mercenary company, we make a name for ourselves by going on the offensive against the robots, because they are the only ones whose origins we actually know and can attack directly at the moment. Plus, some of us have experience fighting them from when we met some of them in the desert south of here. Assuming we can pull something off, we use the clout from that success to get government funding, and maybe muscle in on Desperado’s own funding and importance in the process to try and break that threat as well, or at least weaken them. Maybe absorb some of the other smaller ones if they have any potential or principles while we’re at it. Go from being just a bunch of roaches to an actual force for good in the city”
”Those are my ideas anyway” the princess conclude, before saying ”ok, floors open again, thanks for listening” and returning to her chair to wait and see what people thought, and what other ideas they might have come up with.
Bowser had a right chuckle at Ganondorf’s dramatic cry at the heavens, before saying ”Yeah, well, welcome to the team. Or back to it I guess. Only the pink puffball got away, and then he bailed me out, and since then I’ve been leading the charge against Galeem” to the other king, filling him in on some of the blanks, before ordering Kamek to ”Fill him in on the rest for me”
”Oh, ah, yes sire” the mage nodded and then introduced himself ”Good afternoon, your majesty, I am Kamek: Lord Bowser’s head magikoopa and trusted advisor. ” before doing as he had been commanded and laying out all the other details.
”So, hmm, where to begin…” pausing for a moment to think, before deciding to start with what was on hand ”Well, as you might have guessed, taking down the foe sealed behind that door is part and parcel with taking down this Galeem. Much like the three keeping this door shut, Galeem’s 13 guardians, now 9, stand between us and it.”
”Said guardians are spread all across a ring shaped continent Galeem has made by stapling random bits all other words together. After it annihilated/assimilated them all. Most are not aware of this whole patchwork nature of reality, as Galeem’s influence blinds them to the fact that this world is not where they belong, just as you yourself where. They are also somewhat more aggressive or impulsive, and are compelled to finish any battle they begin” he continued, before forming a friend heart and saying that ”Fortunately, individuals can be freed from that influence using these, bleh, ‘friend hears’ after an intended target has been sufficiently weakened”
The mage then dismissed the heart and pointed at the spirit of Toriel ”As you may have also noticed, those that do die turn to ash, and also leave behind those spirits. These can be crushed to create items, I believe her majesty Sectonia has a hat that improves the output of that, or they can be made into briefly summon-able strikers” he gestured to the side and summoned a Tonberry to demonstrate ”And, finally, they can also be absorbed into the head to gain skills or strengths, and into the body to gain more active abilities, some of which you can see on Lord Bowser here, and which he used against you in battle.Taking in spirits will cause changes to body and mind, but I also have a device, the snaktivator which can limit a change to a specific body part. Well. Mostly. There is still some bleed over as you can again see on his magesty”
”Oh, and, finally, it is not just us. There is another team seeking a guardian in a place known as Midgar, and a whole host of people who work as mercenaries or as civilian support who are doing what they can to secure the lands we have already passed though, and acquire more resources to fuel our quest” Kamek finally said, before glancing at the others and saying ”and I do believe that covers it?”
”Mmmm, I think so” Rika agreed, before adding ”Oh, and I’m Rika by the way, nice to meet you mr king of evil” to introduce herself as well, giving the king a little short bow as she did so.
”And the rest of them are my army of … hey wait a minute where did everyone go?” Bowser asked, glancing around at the now smaller group of people
”I mean, Nadia went off to find that map, and most of the other people missing went after her. But I think that the copy cat wizard and the nice dancer lady who gave us a bunch of stuff went down that way” Jr said, jabbing a thumb down the other exit to the room they were in. The boy then got back to work on his car, which was now covered in little cross shaped patches, doing a few final adjustments before pulling himself inside and firing up the eclectic engine, causing it to hum rather healthily to life. A miracle, considering the beating it had taken
”Yeah, nice, back up and running!” Jr cheered, before informing the group that ”Ok I’m good to go” and then asking his pa specifically, ”So… where to next?”
”Ah, mmm, hmmm” Bowser glanced to and fro the two directions people had already gone, and then took a moment to mull it over ”Well, if Ms. fortune is just going to get a map, then she’s probably be fine because that map guy is probably fine down there, and a bunch of other people went with her sooooo… lets go make sure those two newbies aren't getting in trouble”
He jabbed a finger down the corridor at the end of his little verbalized thinking over and then more specifically commanded ”Koopa Troop lets roll out!”
”On it!””Sure thing papa” ”As you say sire, a wise decision I might add” the other three responded, and then, after any more hold ups, they set off after Primrose and Rubick
What they found at the end of the tunnel was quite bizarre, a forest of towering trees in a cavern so vast its top could not be seen. Or at least that was the impression it gave, but a lot was off about it. Not enough for the Troop to not fall for its mind, though given Rika’s newness to this whole land thing, and the sometimes nonsensical nature of the koopa’s home they did have an excuse for not finding an underground forest to be the strangest thing.
”Huh, weird forest… big too” Jr said, staring up at the tall trees, before thinking for a moment and then asking ”Or did the tunnel somehow make us smaller?”
”I did not particularly notice any magic that might have caused such an effect” Kamek said ”Though there is certainly something wrong with the air here … and the colors seem to be gone? Most concerning”
”Also what is that annoying sound? That really annoying sound?” Rika asked
”Urg, yeah that is the worst … its like that sound you get when the tv loses signal. A kind of static-y one” Bowser said, identifying it.
”When it loses signal? What do you mean Papa? Doesn't it just say ‘no signal’ on it?” Jr asked, making his dad feel old as a result.
”Uh, well, you see jr, back in the day-” Bowser the old began to explain, and while he did, Kamek and Rika decided to see what they could do about the whole obscuring fog thing. The ship girl had Kamek pull out some of the torches she had in her pockets and then the mage plopped them around the entrance to the forest, which conveniently marked it out in case anyone wandered off into the mist. They also made a plan to, if/when they went out there, they’d see about leaving a trail of torches to light the way back.
Then they pulled the same trick they had done in the canyon, with Kamek summoning some of the softly glowing wisps, while Rika deployed her planes. Together, the remote scouts once again fanned out to take a look around to see if they could spot any notable landmarks, the far wall of the cavern, big obvious threats, or anything else that might be of interest, though the fog would likely make that a bit tricky.
Still, any info they could glean would be better than blundering into the mist blind, and while they sat about waiting for the results, it also gave the others time to catch up, if they were going to do so.
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town
As she suppressed the Trumpeter, Sakura let out a sharp bark of a laugh as Blazermate blasted it backwards and away. They passed by it quickly, hopefully leaving it in the dust. Sakura let up the trigger on her machine gun. ”Buh-bye!” She taunted cheerily as they passed the powerful demon.
”Eat my sand!” Midan shouted, almost but not quite replicating the fitting term of phrase, back at the terrible tooter as she proceeded to dump an entire sandstorm behind them in an attempt to make sure it would not be able to get back up and cause a nuisance.
The smile was almost immediately wiped off Sakura’s face as she realized what was coming. The trucks were going to crash. ”Wuh…Midna-san? If you have any magic that can help us not crash, please do it now!” She said. She traversed from the machinegun to the passenger’s seat, sitting down next to Midna and holding on tight to a handle grip on the Warthog’s chassis. Despite everything, she afforded herself enough time to do a double take at Midna’s booster seat.
”I’m cursed, it’s technically a disability aid!” Midna retorted to the glance, as if her keeping her dignity was more of a big deal than the incoming trucks.
Sakura turned bright red and stared even harder at the oncoming trucks. ”S-sorry-!”
Midna’s lack of fear was a combination of bravado and ignorance, but she did have some magic that could help. It was just that most of her magic was a hammer, and so she was going to be treating the trucks as nails.
As the carnage began (carnage that they, at the back of the pack, had an excellent view of before it actually hit them) they hung back. Sakura was quiet, biting her lower lip. Midna weaved their vehicle around tipped over or crashing transport trucks that fell out the back of the pack.
Waiting.
Waiting.
And then the inevitable happened. One of the feral trucks breached through the back of the convoy unscathed, and broke out into the open road, only to spot a new target, the titan of steel blaring its horn at the much smaller machine.
”Alright, bring it!” Midna practically screamed over the sound of engine roaring and metal grinding … as she smashed her warthog’s horn in retaliation, gunned the engine and sent them racing right at the thing. The truck would have risen to this challenge … if it hadn't already been blazing a trail right at them anyway
Sakura flattened herself against the back of seat, limbs braced. If she was funnier, she might have said something like “I said not crash!” but all that came out was a genuine little: ”Nooo!”
Tires screamed as they raced towards each other, and then orange light flared as Midna summoned a massive shadow hand from her helm and then lunged it out of where the driver’s side window would have been if the warthog had had any, before bringing it around in a powerful left hook, while at the same time also swearing to the left.
The massive fist slammed into the side of the truck’s cab, and while it was as near indestructible as they had seen when one had survived an explosion earlier, it was not immune to physics. The cab was slammed to its left (their right), forcing it to turn while the warthog swerved to its left (the truck’s right). Thus, what had been a head on collision became an incredibly close pass, the white painted metal screaming within hair’s breadth of the passenger side of the car as the two machines raced by each other.
Sakura literally felt the vacuum of the truck pull her slightly towards it as it went past, her trailing handband following the wake of the truck. For a moment she thought Midna had accidentally punched the truck right towards her seat! Breathing heavily, her feet braced against the dash, her head sunk in her shoulders and arms spread across the seats of the warthog, Sakura was otherwise still as a statue. In a shocked silence, she slowly reached up and grabbed the seatbelt. She buckled herself in, realizing that none of that bracing would have done any good because she would have just flown right out through the non-existent window! Doubly embarrassed, she held onto the interior handle of the Warthog.
Which was most certainly for the best, because things only got worse from there. The front runner of the feral truck swarm had been seen off, but behind it was, well, almost every single other truck. Said trucks were in the midst of engaging in a massive pile up, and it was all Midna could do to put the shadow hand to work, punching, slapping and woman handling machines out of the way.
Sakura saw it before Midna could- as she shunted a car aside and avoided another, the back end of a tipped wild truck slid towards them like a tail whip. ”Oh, darn it!” Sakura grunted.
Unbuckling her seat belt she put her face on the line and stood up, planting one foot on her seat and the other on the dash. ”Yaaah!” She launched the fireball at the back end of the truck and bounced it upwards with a fiery, dusty explosion. She did it too early, and the container threatened to land on the back of the Warthog. Wrapping one hand around the windshield, she clenched her fist and use her regular ol’ non-shadow hand to punch upward. ”Sha!” Steel dented, the container bounced up for one necessary moment longer before slamming down behind them. Sakura held her wrist and shook her hand as she dropped back into the seat, smiling stupidly.
By a mix of chance and intent, Midna managed to maneuver them into the tailwind of Pit’s truck for the last stretch and from there it wasn't exactly plain sailing, but the corridor he cleared let the two ladies gain ground on the rest of the party and then, after what had felt both like an eternity and a single run together moment of heart-stopping terror, they burst free of the pileup and back onto the open road.
”YATTA! WOOHOO! YEAAH!” Sakura cheered loudly, throwing her weight against her seat several times. She grabbed Midna’s shoulder and shook her around.
”Yeeeesssss ahahahaha we made it!” Midna cheered, pumping a fist, before coughing and insisting on a forcibly reserved tone ”I mean, uh, easy. Piece of cake, had it all under control”
Sakura continued to celebrate wildly. She ended up in a handstand, before falling to rest on the front window frame of the Warthog, her shoulders, head and arm laying where she had just been seated. Fists clenched, she raised them. ”That was incredible, Midna-san!!”
The princess looked a fair bit chuffed by this, but she couldn't take all the credit, replying ”So where you. I mean you punched one. With your human fist. That is ridiculous!” with a tone which made it clear that she ment ridiculously amazing. Sakura just grinned, tilting her head back, shutting her eyes and flexing her arm.
After they were done celebrating, somewhat anyway, Midna would likely be riding the high of their survival for days (or until their next bout of death defying insanity), she glanced behind them at the pile of crashed trucks, and was amazed that they seemed to basically all be intact, only unable to keep going due to being either tipped over, or, in one or two cases, stuck in between other trucks.
”Goddesses, those things are ridiculous as well, kinda wish we had …” Midna was saying, but before she said the wish her mind raced ahead and she had a stupid idea. A really stupid idea. But the adrenaline was still coursing through her veins.
”Sakura take the wheel” she requested with a calm touched by just a hit of madness before she leapt out of her seat, declared, ”be right back” and vanished into a shadow.
Sakura was upside down in her seat. ”Na-auh?” She made a perplexed noise and fumbled from her spot. The Warthog coasted a considerable distance before she leaned over and grabbed the wheel with one hand to steer it. She glanced at the approaching evac helicopter and whipped her head over her shoulder a couple times, but Midna was already out of her line of sight. ”Midna-san!”
The princess, meanwhile, lurked in the shadows of the pile up, quickly scouting around to get a feel for the situation.
By now, it looked like the dust had settled somewhat. Like spooked cattle the wild trucks had tired themselves out, and with the excitement at its end, the pileup was slowly starting to sort themselves out. The marauders flipped themselves onto their tires, wafting steam from rattled radiators as they rolled away to lick their metaphoric wounds. Those that pushed their extreme durability too far, meanwhile, lay where they fell belching smoke. Cursing and bemoaning their incredible misfortune, the battered and bruised but persevering Bridges personnel righted their trucks as well. Once restored by the generous application of emergency med-kits and repair kits, both vehicles and drivers could push through the mess of metal and rubber to totter up the remainder of the ravine slope and cross the bridge that paved the way back to Midgar.
Of course, one of the vehicles present didn’t receive such treatment. The school bus, beaten up and buckled like a soda can, lay on its side toward the back of the wreckage. With a loud hiss its doors opened, and a moment later the G-man who’d been driving it climbed out. As he set foot on the road, Atropos jumped down beside him, and after a moment spent examining his surroundings the unscrupulous agent reached up for his hat. “Let us search the scene for stragglers,” he told the shadow just before he morphed into the rainbow-bodied snake Yurlungur. It wove through the air, the pearlescent white eyes of its two heads searching in tandem as it floated over the pileup, keeping one eye on Atropos as she stalked through the aftermath below.
All that, Midna noted, was going to make this looting attempt a bit more awkward. Still, it was nice to see that the drivers were ok after all that carnage, but them being up and about was kind of a problem. After all, all it took was one of them spotting her and calling out the alarm and the big weirdly tasty looking rainbow snake would be on her. Logic dictated that the one left behind to drive would be the weakest one …. But she decided it best not to leave that to chance. She wouldn’t put it past the not exactly genius demons to leave one of their better fighters behind.
So. Sneaking it was. But how. She didn’t have much time, so the princess used what she had at her disposal and came up with a plan…
The problem was that the trucks were very big, so it was going to be incredibly obvious when one dropped away into the twilight realm. That, and she had to make sure it didn’t have a driver inside when she nabbed it. Well, technically she didn’t have to do that, but while she might be happy to steal from them, she wasn’t callus enough that she’d let one be transformed irrevocably into a beast in the name of this little endeavor.
So. Distractions.
A few moments later, two were set up. First, a (formerly empty) crate Midna had borrowed from the back of a truck tipped over, spilling 1000 individual gold coins out through the convoy, the little disks rolling and bouncing across the tarmac oh so attractively. Second, a high pitched whining, strong only enough to be annoying, swept through the convoy from a far off Vibrava who was attacking from well out of its effective range from atop a random outcropping in the wastelands beyond the roadway.
From its bird’s-eye view above the jumble of vehicular debris, Yurlungur watched the scattered coins spread out noisily, but it found no apparent reasons why. It could have easily been happenstance, but the off chance that someone was attempting to loot said coins from the chaos crossed its mind, as well. The same occurred to Atropos, and unlike the airborne serpent, she wasn’t planning to take chances. She cast Mazionga, manifesting a rain of lightning bolts around the scene to target all enemies, but her widespread magic only struck wild trucks. Yurlungur peered down at her for any sign of her findings, but Atropos shook her head and resumed her search.
Her multicolored comrade, meanwhile, turned its attention to a strange bug away from the scene making an irksome racket. It acutely remembered seeing the Vibrava before while driving, when the creature perched on the back of the truck in front of it to pester its allies with Bug Buzz. Moreover, it recalled it shrugging off the lightning Atropos attempted to punish it with. While the Pokemon wasn’t accomplishing anything from there, Yurlungur knew it to be an enemy. “Thy botheration is at an end.” Rather than cast its own Mazionga, Yurlungur unleashed Megido. A terrific white explosion erupted on the outcropping, consuming it in its entirety in typeless Almighty damage.
Down below, a wild truck -disturbed by Atropos lightning’ suddenly lunged at her like a crocodile. It slammed its front into her, flooring the shadow with a pained cry. Yurlungur turned its attention back to the mayhem and found the leftover wild trucks incensed, ready to fight with what little strength they still possessed. “Let us cut to the chase,” it murmured. After an undulating sky dance it cast Brain Jack, and a mind-numbing wave swept through the area to brainwash its enemies. It worked on about half of the wild trucks, and without hesitation they turned on their former kin. As Atropos pulled back to heal, the Bridges drivers scrambled to get in their own trucks and drive away, for the situation was quickly devolving into chaos again.
Sat upon an entirely different outcrop Midna flicked a finger, opening a portal under the Vibrava as soon as it the big worm started doing something magic looking, and good thing too, because it turned out her guess about the demons not being smart enough to leave their weakest member driving the bus proved right as her pokemon narrowly avoided vaporization. She was incredibly glad the rainbow worm had not joined in on the truck battle, because if it had they’d likely all be dead. Information on its capabilities was likely worth this entire expedition but as for the actual objective, well, her odds were: incredibly slim chance of success, incredibly high likelihood of exploding.
She’d have to teleport into a truck, grab the driver, get out of the truck, touch it, start sending it away, and then also deposit the driver somewhere at a safe velocity before she could bail. Considering that at any point, the snake could just spawn and explode on top of her… ”yeah that’s not happening”
”Drat … well, whatever was in those other crates will have to do” the princess decided, having, while stealing the crate and putting all the gold into it for the part of her plan that didn’t do much other than get a bunch of trucks killed and cost her 1000 gold, just taken everything else in there. Which wasn't much, as it looked like the college town was an export destination rather than an import one. Indeed, as it turned out, all she had gotten out of it were crates. Empty crates. With not a thing inside. But she would not find out about that till later.
For now, Midna left behind the mess she’d caused and shadow hopped back to the warthog right as it pulled up next to the helicopter, the princess pulling herself out from the shadow and apologizing to Sakura ”Sorry about that. Wanted to steal a truck and it did noooooot work”
Sakura had managed to guide the warthog to its destination. As Midna reappeared, she let out a sigh of relief. ”Phew! Midna-san, you made it back.” She stepped out of the Warthog, shutting the door behind her. She grabbed Midna’s forearm and pulled her in for a quick hug and a pat on the back. ”Let’s get the heck outta here already!”
”Oh wow um ok” Midna said, not at all used to this kind of physical affection. It was unbecoming of royalty. It was also kind of nice.
”Sorry to worry you” she apologized, this apology having a lot more heart behind it, while awkwardly returning the hug and back pat before being put down.
”It’s okay! I’m just happy we all made it.” Sakura said, retracting and hopping onto the helicopter. There, she spotted Karin and latched onto her with a hug as well.
Karin pat Sakura on the back and then pushed her away, smiling gently. ”A pleasure to see you well, Miss Sakura.” She said.
”That was crazy!” Sakura exclaimed cheerfully, pulling up her goggles and resting them on her forehead. Her bangs were pushed upwards. ”I was so scared- but man, that was awesome! Those demons never knew what him ‘em! And that uptight guy-
Karin subtly nodded her head towards Benedict, who had since been brought onto the helicopter. Sakura kept talking. ”He wasn’t so tough- if he really wanted to win he shouldn’t have worked with a bunch of rowdy, evil demons.” She said confidently. Karin nodded much less subtly this time, and Sakura spotted Benedict and the unconscious Roxas.
”Oh, hey, he’s here! Welcome, Misteeer…” She trailed off, not knowing his name. She glanced at Geralt. ”…what happened to Roxas?”
Karin shook her head and focused on Midna. ”I wanted to thank you for helping to guide Sakura through all that mess. Next time, I shall have to remove her from her motorcycle by force, lest she get stuck on it for half the fight again.”
Midna had paused briefly to pat the Warthog (and quietly apologize for even considering replacing it with a massive indestructible truck) and then sent it home before floating aboard and ceasing to hold up the whole operation.
”In hindsight, we’re lucky no one else decided to take one. Those things need, I don’t know, stirrups or something if you wanna use them as cavalry mounts” Midna said, before adding ”But she was a big help on the warthog’s turret, so it worked out in the end. Kinda. I don’t think we actually got the trumpet thing”
”That would probably be the first time she has ever used a real gun. Outside of, perhaps a water gun.” Karin said, amused by the thought of Sakura using a machine gun.
”Did you have any more luck up on the trucks? I see everyone made it, but those things were nasty. The way they can just create magic ontop of everyone without even aiming is really unfair. I’m pretty sure it breaks a bunch of arcane laws too” she said. Midna wasn’t the biggest expert on the theoretical side of magic, but she was pretty sure that kind of thing was cheating.
”Indeed, quite troublesome for my allies. But they traded not needing to aim for power, and the Trumpeter’s magic simply failed to work on me for no discernible reason. As for the demon mage I went up against, he was insultingly weak and arrogant. She said dismissively. ”Perhaps if he knew his place, he could have survived by staying in the backline where he belonged. Oh, well.” Karin said.
”Definitely had a better time of it than I did. All those strikers just made me an easy target I think” Midna replied, a little embarrassed to have been shown up, but simultaneously glad that the team had at least one person whose fighting style/powers did well against the demons. She expected that they had not seen the last of their kind ”eugh, don't even want to think about what it would have been like if that worm had gotten out of the bus. Made a whole load of the trucks attack each other which would have been a real piece of work. If we see it again, it should be up there with the trumpet when it comes to things to take down fast”
”Pardon me? Worm? What makes it as dangerous as the Trumpeter? I can’t imagine we’ll be fighting on trucks again anytime soon.” Karin asked. ”...I imagine it is an oversized worm. The monstrous kind that someone might mount on a wall, for example.”
”It was huuuuuuuge, and all the colors of the rainbow and could fly and make all its enemies go insane and fight each other and vaporize stuff with big explosions as well” Minda replied, her tone exactly like someone describing a big fish they totally saw.
”I see.” Karin said, rubbing her chin, one eyebrow raised. ”I think I would have noticed such a thing. When did this happen?”
”Oh, uh, well, when I went back to try and steal a truck …. It didn’t work. But I got some boxes” she said, suddenly a bit embarrassed by the impulsive bit of attempted thievery.
”You…went back?” Karin asked, unimpressed and incredulous. ”For a truck. My goodness, woman, how many vehicles do you need?”
”Well I mean I did lose two so I kinda felt like I needed to make up for that … and it’s also alive? So imagine, for a moment, that I am facing someone … and then I summon a truck and it rams them for me. Think about that” Midna said, trying to explain her impulse decision retroactively.
”I think I’m the only one here that is.” Karin narrowed her eyes. ”Your recklessness endangers not only you, but others around you. If you had gotten into trouble-” Karin pauses and lowers her voice. ”Don’t you think someone like Sakura would dive in after you, no matter what?”
”Geez, lighten up, would you? I can see your glowering from across the room.” Sakura said, skipping over.
”Well, we are in a helicopter, so it’s not a particularly large room.” Karin said, closing her eyes tilting her nose up. Sakura reached up and put her index fingers against Karin’s lips, forcing a smile onto her face. ”What on-” Karin smacked the fingers away, but Sakura rebounded, going to tap Karin’s nose. The heiress grabbed Sakura’s wrist and twisted it, looking to put her in an arm lock, but Sakura countered with a front flip and a jab. Karin deflected it and jabbed back, and it looked like they were about to get into a fist fight. Karin grabbed Sakura’s arm and Sakura pushed against Karin’s face, and the two fighters remained locked in their grapple, their limbs all intertwined with each other.
Midna had been about to retort about how she’d actually been careful, thought things through and backed off when it became clear that the risks were too big, but instead she got to watch in bemusement as Sakura came over and then the two devolved into a childish fight. Minda sat there for a few moments, and then decided this was hilarious, especially the tangled mess they ended up in.
The princess’s laughter, an odd combination of impish giggling and royal haughtiness, chimed through the cramped interior of the helicopter before she asked ”Are you two always like this? Because it's great. Keep it up and never change”
Sakura looked at Midna and grinned. ”Always like what?”
With an indignant flailing of her arms, Karin disentangled. She cleared her throat. ”No.” Was all she said, at a loss for words. Then she brought the back of her hand down, and with a heavy impact Sakura crossed her arms and caught it, knees bending. Slinging her fist back towards Karin, Sakura’s blow was blocked but the blonde slid backwards. Then she threw her arms up. ”Not in a crowded helicopter!” She commanded.
”You sure?” Sakura asked, bouncing from foot to foot.
”You’re incorrigible.”
Sakura glanced at Midna. ”I only know what that word means because I heard her say it a bunch.”
Midna suppressed a snort of a laugh at that.
Karin huffed and switched gears, pointing at Midna. ”Don’t do anything silly like that again! Now I have to train, so do not disturb me.” She went into a corner of the helicopter and went to balance on her fingers.
Sakura set her hands on her hips, at Midna’s side again. An idea occurred to her. ”...Hey, Midna-san, you and me should throw down some time!” She suggested cheerfully.
The princess raised her exposed eyebrow at the confusing combo of being asked to fight in such a cheery voice, but then after a moment seemed to get it. ”Like a spar?” she asked ”We could do that, though preferably not inside a flying metal box”
Sakura bent her knees, clenching her fists. ”Yeah!” She said excitedly. ”I wish we spent more time back at Alcamoth so I could fight everyone. I’d love to test myself against a powerful wizard like you!”
”Do you mind if I asked how you got so strong?” She asked. ”Like- that shadow thing you did. That was crazy. I wouldn’t have been worried at all if I knew you could do that.”
”So some of my magic is me, some of it is spirits, but the hand, that is all thanks to this” the princess said as he pulled off her crested helmet, fully exposing her face to Sakura, including the fully crimson eye (no white or black, just red) that had been hidden beneath it. She popped it down in her lap and explained it
”This is the fused shadow, or one fourth of it anyway. An ancient artifact made by my ancestors’ dark powers, all of it fused into a single artifact that they tried to use to conquer the Sacred Realm and claim the Triforce” she said, and then simplified ”They fought to claim the power of the goddesses, only just barely lost, and this is a fourth of the magic they tried to use to do it. If I had the full thing, there’d be no stopping me. Well. Next to no stopping me. Even when I did manage to assemble the full thing it wasn't enough to … well, that’s a whole other story” she trailed off, realizing she had gotten off topic and not really wanting to talk about her biggest failure. Or her death.
A lot of that went over Sakura’s head, but she got the gist. As Midna trailed off, she set a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ”That’s okay, Midna-san. We all lose sometimes.”
Then Sakura looked at the helmet, tilting her head to the side. ”That is a pretty powerful hat. I guess the trade-off is that you don’t have any, uh, depth perception.” A thought occurred to her, and she gasped. ”If I put it on, would I get to use a shadow hand?” She asked. ”One fourth of the power that almost won!” She said, excited, though if that had come out of someone else’s mouth it might have sounded sarcastic.
”Hey, thanks, but uh, that would not be a good idea. Anyone who doesn't have the training and natural resistance to dark magic I have will, well, get corrupted by it” Midna said, not wanting the charming street fighter to go the way of Darbus the Goron patriarch, who had been transformed into the monstrous Fyrus by only a brief exposure. ”My ancestors were not good people, and they more than deserve to be banished to the Twilight realm” she summarized.
”Oh.” Sakura said, glancing at the helmet, which now seemed much more dangerous than before. ”Well, you seem to be putting it to good use, right? ”
”No safer hands than mine” Midna agreed, as she picked the helm up and popped it back on her head, a perch it rarely if ever left these days.
There might have been more talk, but there was shortly after a distinct lack of breath available, as the view presented to them as the helicopter climbed up and headed towards Midgar took it all away.
Beautiful rosy trees, including one so massive it was a landscape onto itself, where the first things they saw, nature breaching its way out of the sprawling mess of roads that no sane road engineer would ever have planned.
”Wow…” Sakura said, pressing her face against the glass of one of the windows. She stared at the mind boggling city in the distance, but it was the large tree that had her eagerly tapping against the glass. ”Hey, it’s a sakura tree! I’m named after those!” She said excitedly. ”They’re waaay smaller where I’m from, though.”
”A pretty thing to be named after. Fitting too” Midna teased
”Oh, um…thank you?” Sakura smiled sheepishly, rubbing the back of her head. Karin rolled her eyes and wondered if Sakura got this excited every time she saw a cherry tree back home.
Beyond that urban jungle that was their destination, one that boggled Midna’s mind, for a single district of the city surely held more people than all the towns and cities the princess herself had ever set foot in. She had, as a result, only one question: ”What are they growing at Meridian Farms to feed that many people?”
None of the seekers had any answers to that but, hopefully, their new hosts would be the kind of people who knew about that sort of thing, as after an uninterrupted flight and a not so clandestine landing, they met with the leaders of the clear eyed government defectors and were offered the opportunity to ask some questions.
There was a lot of personality in the room, and Sakura found herself a little gobsmacked as the big american man encouraged them to ask a question about any part of the city. The city that was more like a country. Karin, however, was more used to superstructures, and while Midgar’s size was impressive, the entire thing was so packed together it lost all of its splendor. ”An upper half of the city…could the upper class be any less responsible? They may as well walk around with a stickied note on their backs that says ‘Overthrow me’.” She muttered to herself, peering through the windows.
Karin turned and approached Goldlewis. ”Mister Goldlewis.” She began. ”I am Kanzuki Karin. Tell me about how things are run around here. Is it a democracy, monarchy, oligarchy? How is the political climate? I want to know what factions, if any, can be trusted. Or which ones will get in our way. The most powerful faction has the highest chance of harboring the Guardian, is my hypothesis. It’s disappointing that you don’t know anything about the Guardian, considering it is our primary objective…” Karin noted. Though she said it aloud, she mostly meant it for herself. Without her own intelligence network, finding any clue at all would be hard work.
”And of course, as Mister Geralt said, don’t leave anything out you think might be relevant. We’re going to be combing this city over for this Guardian, but we need leads or we’ll never find it. If there’s any other cells of this group within the city, I’d like to know how to contact them as well. ” Karin said.
Sakura tapped her chin. She slowly formulated and asked her question. ”Are there any bad guys around here that need punching…like, right now?” She asked.
”I guess following on from that, kinda, is the question of who does the punching around here, and how do they punch?” Midna asked, deciding she’d pick up the military situation ”We’ve met the city’s covert forces, but what about their army, their town, or I guess, city guards and so on. How big are those forces? How hard is it going to be to just, well, move around in the city under their noses? Where are their bases of power? Their command structure?”
”Perhaps we could disguise ourselves, if there is an abundance of inconspicuous cloaks or something of that nature around here.” Karin commented.
”Sounds like a plan” Midna agreed, before asking ”know where we can get any of those? Or other disguises? If we need em”
”Oh, and are there any, I don’t know, rebel groups and if so, how strong are they? Or you, for that matter? What you all got up your sleeves power wise?” she added, hoping that if there were anti-government forces, they weren't all pawns like the last bunch, before boiling it all down to ”Basically, if things go incredibly badly, and it does come down to a straight up war for the city, how bad is our situation? Because we’ve already had to console sick an entire town on us twice, and if they know we’re here and have the influence to do the same here …” well, she wanted to know just how bad that would be for them.
Kamek and Jr caught up with the others just in time to watch Bower’s jaw fall to the floor at the sound rejection of familiarity from the king of evil.
”Huh? Wait we for sure know that guy, he was in the smash thing” Jr commented as platformed over.
”Perhaps Galeem prevents those in its influence from remembering other meetings of worlds?” Kamek, hovering beside the boy, theorized, before they joined the group. Rita scooted over and quickly filled them in on what had happened while Ganondorf was explaining his sword to their copycatting magus. Then they sat or stood while listening to the Gerudo King’s explanation of how this area was going to work: a classic sealed final dungeon strategy which Bowser would for sure have commented on if he hadn’t spent the entire thing standing there gobsmacked.
So while Jr went back to tinkering with his car and Rika took a seat and fished out a candy to snack on, it fell to Kamek to actually engage with this, and the main thing he did was dispel some arrogance.
”I would not underestimate the Counsel who goes by F. I fought him and just barely survived. He can unleash vast amounts of projectiles, produce vines the size of trains, moves incredibly fast over or through terrain and, worst of all, appears to be able to manipulate either time or space, as on two occasions he translocated me back to a place I had already been, once when trying to catch you, and once when i tried to gain distance between us.” the mage warned, wanting to ensure no one else thought it a good idea to challenge the sun helmeted child one on one.
Finally, they got a bit of a description of the surrounding areas from Ganondorf, although given that he had presumably spent most of if not all of his time in the world of light locked up, he was unsurprisingly a bit light on the details.
And with that, it was getting time to set out. Or should have been, but jr was still tinkering with his car, and Bowser was still suffering from the ego damage the other king had inflicted.
”Hey, um, Bowser, are you ok?” Rika asked, waving a gauntleted hand in front of the king’s face. That got a little reaction and, although not directly, an answer … and the answer was no, no he was not ok.
”THERE IS NO WAY YOU DON’T REMEMBER ME! I’M THE KING OF AWESOME, THE BADDEST OF BAD GUYS, THE ORIGINAL EVIL AND ALSO THE BEST!” Bowser suddenly burst into roaring before quieting down only a little to ask ”You're seriously telling me you don’t remember the whole subspace thing? Working for the hand? Taking on all the heroes, stealing big chunks of reality?” getting more and more frustrated as it became clear that he did not, before he finally launched into ”OR THAT YOU STABBED ME IN THE BACK!?”
”No. I don’t.” said the Gerudo King at the start of Bowser’s tirade, his tone dismissing. Some of the things the Koopa King ranted about sounded… familiar? No, no of course not. He brushed it off in his mind, there was not a single thing about this raving reptile that he found familiar. Him? The Great King of Evil? Work for a ‘hand’, whatever that meant? Never. Ganondorf would never in a thousand years be caught dead serving anyone, let alone alongside a childish creature such as this. And then there was that last part. Stabbing him in the back. Well, that sounded a little more like him, but still impossible. This premise that he had worked for or served any being or entity was absolutely absurd.
”...Should I have?” he then asked with a condescending smirk, now growing genuinely annoyed by this creature. At this point Ganondorf may as well have been taunting him.
The koopa king stood there for a moment literally smoking with rage, jaw working to try and find a response. Then, he found one. He took a step forward towards Ganondorf
”Sire, please, calm yourself-” Kamek attempted to step in and stop what was about to happen but his king pushed on , ignoring his advisors advice as he so often did, growling ”Oh, don’t worry. I’m just going to knock some sense into him” as he continued to advance, shooting down Rika’s offer to help with ”No, just me. Gonna feel even better to beat the smug look off of the face of the real thing”
Watching the Koopa’s anger, something about it just made his day, though Ganondorf couldn’t quite put his finger on why. All the same, as soon as the big fool announced his intention to fight, the King of Evil got an idea. Without a word, he silently clenched his right hand into a fist as Bowser traded some words with his followers. In Ganondorf’s fist, a fiery dark heat began to rise. It always took a moment or two for this one to charge up, and so making it do so in secret and without warning was usually the ideal way of using it. While it was a good bet that Bowser wouldn’t notice the fiery dark energy building up in Ganondorf’s fist, one of his servants probably would and attempt to issue a warning. But that was also the exact moment Ganondorf’s punch would come. A sucker punch, admittedly, but oddly satisfying nonetheless. And it wasn’t just any punch, it was an empowered Warlock Fist, releasing the built up dark energy upon impact in only the most explosive manner possible.
”Maybe next time don’t loudly announce your intention to attack, you fool!” Ganondorf said, loosening his fist which now briefly had a bit of smoke wafting off of it from the attack. A few wiggles of his fingers dispelled it and he let the golden triangle on his hand shine briefly with its raw power. Then he did something odd. He removed both swords from his person and stabbed them both into the solid ground at his feet. In fact he did so with enough strength that only he would be able pull them back out again. After all, no reason to risk having someone try to steal from him while he was indisposed. But the message was clear enough. He’d fight with Bowser if the latter wished, but could and would do so without any aid or weapons.
”But if it’s a fight you want, then it’s a fight you shall have!”
The other king, who had indeed taken the sucker punch just as Ganondorf had expected and been sent tumbling back as a result, picked himself off of the floor, his expression having darkened from the vicious if eager grin he had had on his face before it got smacked. Literally darkened, infact. As had the rest of him, the koopa king seemed to be devouring the light as he snapped his fingers, dropped a strange rabbit creature out of thin air into his hand and then used a device on said creature's back to revitalize his smashed in face.
Somewhat, anyway, you didn’t just undo a warlock punch.
”Good” he grunted as he dropped the striker to the ground, and then with a roar, came at the king of evil with a graceless bull charge, fist reeled back far to deliver a punch of his own.
The incoming punch wasn’t exactly hidden like Ganondorf’s had been. But rather than try to dodge it or even block it, Ganondorf instead decided to take it head on. Maybe he was showing a shred of pity for the Koopa, or maybe he was just so confident that he could take it? Either way the punch came, and similarly threw Ganondorf back a ways and tumbling. To his credit, the King of Evil was at least able to flip himself back onto his feet without losing a beat. He rubbed his chin, feeling a few minor pops in his jaw as if having fix it from being dislocated, and then he spat out a smattering of blood from his mouth and smiled.
”Not bad… for an overgrown lizard.” then Ganondorf sprang into a forward leap, fist poised for what looked like another Warlock Punch. But his opponent would quickly realize that this strike wasn’t directly aimed at him. Instead Ganondorf smashed his charged fist into the ground for a Dark Impact, creating a shockwave attack. This wasn’t necessarily used to harm enemies, so much as disperse them and to keep them at arm’s length from him. But he wasn’t done, Ganondorf immediately lunged forward again, this time with a Wizard Foot kick that sent him gliding forward straight at his quarry.
Bowser’s heavy footing was unsteadied by the shockwave, which left him in a prime position to have his leg taken out from under him by the sliding kick. He stumbled, flailing, only for the center of his shell to pop up and a set of four long crab like legs to pop out in a flash. These and the king’s hand caught him before he could fall face first into the ground, and then swiftly he reversed the fall into a leap, the king landing some way off and then performing two more short hops to cut his momentum, each landing sending out a radial shockwave of fire that hugged the ground as they lashed out. If the others had not cleared out of the area already, they most certainly would do so now.
When the Koopa made his first leap, Ganondorf thought to run in his direction in pursuit, interpreting this as the lizard running scared. He saw the incoming shock wave of flame and hurdled over it, and while he was able to jump quick enough to clear the second one as well, the third one was where he had issues. Each jump gave him less time to react to the next shockwave, and so he missed the timing for the third one and ended up taking the shockwave for his efforts.
”Hah, Mario’d have cleared that no- huh?”
And yet, miraculously, the King of Evil still managed to stand tall. Despite the fire of the third shockwave clearly enveloping him, he was not daunted by it. He looked a bit singed in some places, but otherwise was still in fighting form. His Triforce of Power glowed mightily, having likely been responsible for protecting him from taking too much damage. And instead he restarted his run for Bowser to close the distance.
Once close enough, Ganondorf would reach out his hand glowing from the Triforce and attempt to grab ahold of the Koopa King. If successful, he would lift the considerably larger turtle up with his mighty strength only to chokeslam the Koop back onto the ground while also releasing a small explosion of dark fire right in the other king’s face in the process. His fearsome Flame Choke, another of Ganondorf’s trademark moves alongside the likes of his Warlock Punch.
Bowser had brought up a boxer’s guard in response to the incoming attack, having assumed it was a punch, and though this did prevent his neck from being grabbed, the king still went up and then down into the ground via a grabbed arm. Again, crab like Dreugh legs popped up to right him, but this time instead of back off the koopa king spun on his foe with a round swing of a claw attack, long claws of burning energy extending from his own, before flowing that up with a right hook and then finally a rapid fire set of stabbing strikes with his electrified Dreugh limbs.
Ganondorf brought up a boxer’s guard of his own when the claw attack came. This kept him from taking a serious blow to his head or anything vital, but the claws still got his arms and that was not a pleasant experience. But he didn’t let a pair of bloodied arms slow him. When the right hook came he was able to bat it away with his own right hand. He had to quickly go back into the boxer’s guard for the stabbing strikes. He managed to evade a few of the strikes, but others were able to land glancing blows on his arms and shoulders. Though for one in particular he managed to catch the Dreugh limb with his right hand. The Triforce glowed furiously, as if it was currently the sole source of Ganondorf’s remaining strength and will to keep fighting. The Gerudo King spun his body around to try and fling the Koopa King away from him and toward the big Black Egg.
After this, his arms drooped from the injuries they’d sustained. The Triforce looked like its glow was beginning to flicker. But no matter how battered he may be, the King of Evil remained as tenacious and strong-willed as ever, refusing to let himself show any weakness or fatigue.
The other king slammed into the black egg door, and if being used to toss him hadn’t crippled the Dreugh in question, then slamming into the door certainly did, along with the other four. All of them were pulled back inside as the king picked himself up. While his scales and shell meant he didn’t show any external injuries, besides the lingering blast to the face and the new one on one of his arms, being thrown about was doing a number on his bones and muscles.
Also his head hurt from having his tiny brain rattling around his skull.
Time to put the power he had been building to work. The dark aura that had surrounded him the whole fight dropped away, revealing the red tentacruel orbs in his shell to be glowing brightly where before they had been passive and dull. He pushed himself up just enough to turn his maw, towards the king of evil, light flooding from the orbs into his fire pouch, causing his mouth to glow brilliantly before the king unleashed a flash cannon laser blast at Ganondorf.
Ganondrof tried to close the distance, but just couldn’t. Despite him not openly showing it, he was tiring out. His legs just weren’t pushing him forward as fast they had been earlier. If he hadn’t been so drained or injured, he might have been able to reach the Koopa King for a quick Gerudo Uppercut that might have been enough to forcibly redirect the Flash Cannon’s aim elsewhere. But not so in this instance. All he could really do was put his arms defensively at the last moment as the brilliant laser blast collided with him.
When the dust cleared, Ganondorf was somehow still on his feet… but only for a moment. He heavily dropped to his knees, and then all the way to the ground and slow and heavy thud. His right hand was reached out as he lost consciousness, as if he was still somehow trying to continue fighting. And finally, the Triforce at least was reduced to a faint dim that faded away until no longer visible on the King of Evil’s right hand.
”Hah! Ha ha ha ha ahhhh that did not feel as good as I hoped” Bowser bemoaned, before making a grunt of pain as he straightened.
”You ok papa?” came a call from jr as he poked his head back into the room, and then hurried over once he saw it was all over, with Kamek (carrying the out of it froggit under one arm) and Rika not far behind.
”Sire, that really was … quite foolish”
”Nah, I totally had it in claw all the time-” the king insisted, then giving a contented sigh of ”ahhh thanks junior” as his son patched him up with his healing magics. Then he continued and insisted ”Plus, I’ll be worth it to see his face when he remembers me, right at the same time as he know I beat him fair and square” despite the fact that had, technically, broken the unspoken rule of it being fistycuffs with his last maneuver.
”Soooo, now what?” Rika asked, to which Bowser responded by snapping his fingers and summoning a friend heart, which got the ship girl asking ”Even though he stabbed you in the back”
”Eh, he’s useful … and it just means we have to stab him in the back first this time” he said, tapping his forehead. The king might have been a slow learner, a very slow learner, but he did learn.
That said, he dropped the heart onto the king of evil’s body, and then stood tall above him so that, once the king was done going through the process of coming to and remembering, he would be in prime gloating position.
The color slowly restored itself upon Ganondorf. When it did, the Triforce suddenly and violently erupted with a brilliant glow. The Gerudo King angrily pushed himself to his feet, looking absolutely furious. But not at Bowser. Well, not only at Bowser. He remembered everything alright. Including how it was he came to be down in this goddess-forsaken hole. He clenched his fist and a dark warlock aura enveloped him. Then, all at once he let out a very loud bestial scream. One of pure rage and hatred. As for what he actually said…
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town
The convoy blazed past Midna’s little rest stop, but while her fingers itched on the trigger, she held off firing, muttering ”wait for it, wait for it” to herself before her eyes locked onto and then the turret swiveled towards her intended target
”there you are!” she cried out, before pulling the trigger of the gun she had not actually practiced firing yet. The kick of it took her by surprise, and so her first shots hit nothing but sky, but she quickly corrected and then tracked her target while declaring that ”Trumpets blow! When I get home I’m gonna replace the one the royal herald has with a flute. Or a big drum!” a taunt which would likely not be heard over her torrent of bullets messing up the trumpeter.
She kept blazing him till the convoy took a corner. Then she spun around in the turret, so it was facing the other way, did half a backflip, grabbed the back of the driver seat, and pulled herself down into it to complete the (levitation assisted) flip. Butt planted on her booster throne, the princess grabbed the wheel in her hands and then, with a ”Step on the gas!” drove her foot home and gunned the engine of the warthog.
The engine of the warmachine growled to life and she was off, the princess racing to catch up with the trucks and, while they were fast and had more experienced drivers, the light reconnaissance vehicle more than made up for Midna’s driving skills with raw power of its liquid-cooled hydrogen-injected ICE engine.
”Ready or not, here I come!” Midna yelled over the noise as she rounded a corner and found herself hot on the heels of the convoy. Hot on her heels? A howling storm of sand she’d dragged out of her home while catching up, all now ready to act as a reserve of ammunition she could command without letting go of the wheel. Which was good, because without a crew, and with her Initiate strikers on cooldown (the chilfos she knew would have no idea how to use the turret), she didn't actually have anyone to man the free spinning chain gun behind her.
Things as she found them, did not look good, and she couldn't even see the incoming head on collision of yet more trucks. None of the demons were dead, least of all the trumpeter, who was just finishing unleashing a wave of disappear on the crew when she arrived and started pulling up towards the bus.
Then, before she could even begin to try and assess how she could help, that same trumpeter turned his gaze (though not his trumpet, that had vanished at some point apparently) back to her and unleashed yet more nuclear devastation.
Her and the bike riding Sakura had to evade. Sakura had barely managed to draw back this far, the motorcycle rattling beneath her. Clenching the handlebars so tight she was dealing grey damage to herself, Sakura wished Poppi was available to make good on what she said earlier. When the Trumpeter turned its nuclear attention towards her, Sakura’s heart leapt into her throat and she wrenched the motorcycle to the right, closer to Midna’s warthog. Scraping through a pothole, the bike started to wobble.
”I’M GONNA FREAKING DIE!” Sakura yelled in dismay, seconds away from losing control entirely.
Midna wasn’t exactly having the best time either, but the warthog’s intuitive controls and sturdier body were seemingly more reassuring than the flimsy civilian bike. It was definitely more reassuring than the bike, Midna mentally corrected herself and rapidly tried to work out what she could do to stop the streetfighter wiping out.
”Goddesses, um, ah, hold on I can grab you!” she resolved upon, extending out a shadow hand, and trying to effectively do the reverse of what she had done when demonstrating how she might deploy a bike in-order to snatch Sakura and her vehicle from the street before both were reduced to atoms or a smear of blood and oil.
Sakura gasped as the shadow hand rescued her from her crash. Even if she was pressed somewhat uncomfortably against the bike in the grip, she was very grateful. ”I- I’m gonna live?!” She shouted, holding on tight and preparing for explosive impact. The one aimed for her struck the ground a few feet to where she had been- but even with a successful dodge the Trumpeter would no doubt have succeeded in causing her to crash.
As for the explosion aimed at Midna, well, once she had Sakura she said ”Step on the breaks” to herself as she did just that, slowing and swerving to dodge the explosion shot to land ahead of her, tires screeching as they burned rubber against the road. She pulled the car straight again, and then, now that she had a bit more space between herself and the herald of the end times, slapped a hand up to tap the wheel of the motorbike. A portal opened on the car itself, and sucked up the bike to pop it into the twilight realm right next to its remaining sibling, leaving Sakura’s legs hanging free, and leaving the princess free to plop her down somewhere.
”Gun or seat!” she called up
”Wha- huh?!” Sakura said, her hair literally frazzled as she swung her legs around without purpose.
”Gun it is, grab on!” Midna said, as she lowered the woman onto the back of the warthog, setting her feet down placing her in front of the chaingun’s handles.
Sakura grabbed onto the handles and planted her feet, happy to be on something close to solid ground. It took her a few moments to process just what the heck she was looking at as the futuristic machine gun rested in front of her. There were two handles with no trigger, and a lower handle with what definitely looked like a trigger. ”U-uh!” The Trumpeter loomed a medium distance away. She glanced over to where she heard the alert to the wild trucks. They had to catch up! Sakura braced herself and aimed the machine gun high into the sky where she knew it wouldn’t hit anyone. She reached down and grabbed the primary trigger with one hand and pulled it, the machine gun spitting hot lead at a lethal rate, causing Sakura to flinch in surprise. But, if started treating it like she would her ship girl guns, even though those skills had left her now, the memories hadn’t. Steadying her nerves, she held down the trigger and watched the stream of bullets. She used that to aim, guiding the bullets like a hose towards the Trumpeter. It rattled her arms and quaked her core as she fired upon the demon.
”Ste-e-e-e-p o-o-o-n i-i-i-t!” She called out, barely audible over the sound of the gun.
”Stepping!” Midna called back as she did so, putting pedal to the metal to try and catch back up with the convoy. Not satisfied with simply driving, Midna initiated the plan she had made to be able to fight while still keeping her hands on the wheel. She pointed two fingers of her steering wheel gripping hands forwards, and sent her sandstorm howling over the top of them. Rather than sweeping it through the party however, she used the looming mass as a source for more direct attacks, using flicks of her fingers to send blasts of sand down at the trumpeter to try and throw off its aim, and doing the same to any other demon that tried to attack them directly.
Mostly, however, she focused on keeping them on the road and unnuked, something likely easier said than done.
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town
Midna’s combined volley had mixed results, but that in and of itself was very informative.
”Oh, so you don’t like fire huh? Ehehehehe, well do I have bad news for you, because I have ways to burn you in spades!” Midna jeered from the back of her bear-based flame cannon. Unfortunately for her, instead of being able to put any of that arsenal to work, she had to endure a cavalcade of retaliation, and unlike her ground type Vibrava, she did not have the advantage of being immune to the electrical attacks coming her way (the ground typed pokemon fleeing not due to damage but due to the time Midna could sustain the enlarged mon in the world of light running out).
First, the enraged demon duke unleashed a scream that ripped through her party of minions, and though the frozen undead were immune, Midna found herself stricken when two of the initiates caught the hunger and, rather than being affected themselves, passed it on to her.
”Goddesses, worse than when I was banished” the princess cursed, clutching her gut that suddenly felt as if it had been empty for days, a feeling she had not felt since the days right after she’d lost her kingdom where she’d had to learn to live on her own, without the conveniences of royalty. Her own groan was joined by a loud rumbling beneath her, caused by her bear’s tummy, the cybernetic beast having simply lost the coin flip.
If there was any consolation, it was that the initiated not being affected by the scream meant that they had time to get off another psychic volley in retaliation, another set of three bolts hammering the demon. The next one they where far more vulnerable to however.
At the flush of a toilet, glowing balls of ice formed all around them, one for each member of her squad in fact, hovering ever so close and rapidly increasing in brightness, giving only a moment to react before they detonated.
”Chilfos, front!” Midna barked, as she raised her shield, stretched out her shadow hand, and put herself and the bear in-between the ring of ice and the initiates, who had the least defense. This turned out to be not the best idea. Icy shards bloomed, slipping past the chilfos’s thin forms illmade for body blocking, biting into the amazons where their cultist robes and weak energy shields did little to stop them. Hand, metal augmented bear, and shield took the blows better (the shield in particular unleashing a retaliatory burst of needles that swept round and harried the Duke) however Midna herself did not.
Thought guarding as bet she could, the omni directional burst was impossible stop all of, and though mask, helm, shield and shoulderguard all did their parts, shards of ice still snuck through and sunk into her exposed flesh, the cold spreading like poison and dimming an inner fire she had not know she had had till it was chased away from where the cold touched.
The princess cried out in pain because apparently ice, bane of dragons, hurt like hell. That would have made the following dance of ice and fire oh so swift and deadly, demon and princess both wealiding each other’s weaknesses. Unfortunately, that potential romantic battle was rudely interrupted by a trumpeter, who rained down nuclear fire upon the battlefield.
”What in the goddess- move!” Midna commanded, her minions rushing forwards to get out of the light, while the bear simply returned to the twilight realm. The princess herself, however, stumbled, a pain in her gut and one of her ice shot legs too much for a moment.
A few rapid fire life or death heartbeats later and nuclear fire bloomed. The slow Chilfos found themselves lagging behind and got clipped by the edge of the explosion, while the initiates, used to skirmishing, had time to get out of harm's way and get a third psychic spear out each before all of the striker’s time was up, their effectiveness highly debatable given the amount of aoe attacks they’d drawn.
And the princess? Well. Of her there was no sight for a good couple of seconds as the trucks continued to roll forwards … right up until they approached an occupied layby on the twisty turny roads. A lay-by occupied by a 4x4. A 4x4 with a massive machine gun on mounted on its back, and mounting the machine gun? Minda, her mouth chipmunked full of granola bars.
As for how she was here: the princess had tossed herself off the side of her truck in a last ditch effort to avoid becoming atomised, landed in its shadow, and then jumped from that shadow into the ones of several lamp posts and street signs lining the road to get ahead in-order to get some breathing room, and to also set up an ambush.
That ambush she now sprung, the princess she opened up with the minigun turret, blazing the trumpeter, or any other demon not in close proximity with a hero, with bullets, making up for her ill-practiced aim with volume of fire as the whole convoy raced by her. Joining her hail of gunfire was her Vibrava, again summoned sized up, which unleashed tight blasts of dragonfire at anything that got close.
Then, once the convoy passed, and if no one came to stop her, the twilight princess tossed herself from the turret into the driver’s seat, short (and still burning with pain) legs hitting extended pedals and butt sitting on a mini throne mounted on the regular chair (no it was not a booster seat) so that she could see over the dashboard. Both of these were things that she had badgered Eddie Rigs into installing when she’d first claimed it, in-order to actually make it usable for her impish form.
With a feral snort, the engine of the warthog would roar to life and the princess would begin racing after the trucks, a singing sandstorm building in her wake as she released the deserts of the twilight realm into the world, and her shadow hand pulled up over the windscreen of the car ready give anything that came close, or that she got close too, a taste of titanic dragon claw.
First likely thing on her agenda? A vehicular battle with the demon’s battle bus if it was still bringing up the rear of the pack.
Cherry on Top, level 6 [adventurer], level 12 [flower fairy], crept through the dark and dingy passageway hunting a deadly menace.
As she did this, she reflected on how she’d ended up here.
They’d been in Sanctuary for a while now, her, her tribe, and they’d since been joined by a few others that Monpau had picked up like stray kittens before he’d started getting proactive about improving the lives of her kind where he found them. In that time they’d learned the ups and downs of living among big people.
Positives:
They scared off anything really big, and could be relied upon to help if a pike or something came along.
They produced massive amounts of food that was, for the fairies, incredibly cheap (a single loaf of elven bread, or better yet, a cake, could feed a whole tribe for a week).
You could sell to them
Some of them were very nice
Negatives:
Their cities attracted vermin that were at worst an indirect threat to them, but could be ever so dangerous to a fairy.
You had to worry about being squished by them on accident
It was kinda hard to find work that’d pay any good (they couldn't exactly compete in the physical labor market much), and the merchants were already well situated so competing with them was hard, especially with how little capital the generally down on their luck Coin Fairy tribes who had been invited here had had on them.
Not that they were at risk of starving or anything, Sanctuary had an acorn dole thanks to how productive its nut gardens were, but it wasn't very dignified, and a Coin fairy could not live off nut bread alone. They craved sugar. Not to mention the not quite innate but very common desire to buy and sell that also needed sating. Plus, after living on the edge for so long, the fairies wanted to buy everything they could that could improve their standard of living, both to use and to reverse engineer and miniaturize.
So what they needed most, desired most, was money. Coins. After all, what, really, was a coin fairy without their namesake?
Thus, Cherry, skulking around in this dank dungeon, fighting monsters in the dark.
At least she was better prepared this time. Much better prepared.
Her body was clad in armor made from crab carapace. In her hands, one of flesh, the other a rather beautiful arrangement of stem and cherry red flower petals Ferngaurd had personally made for her to replace her lost arm, she held a long spear with a poisoned barb at the end that she’d grown herself as part of the drudic training needed to control her replacement limb.
She’d need all of it, because her foe, oh, it was an alien beast with great pointy teeth, blood red eyes, shape sense, a scaly tail and ok look this isn't going to have the same impact a second time so i’ll cut to the chase.
She was hunting rats in a storeroom. The foreign pests had come in with a sack of grain someone bought at the bazaar and they needed rooting out, and the fairies could do it far better due to being able to squeeze into all the nooks and crannies the pests could.
Was it glamorous? No. Was it dangerous? Well, when you were inches tall and the rat had a few more on you? Yes. Though they weren't the worst thing creeping around the walls of the city.
So she was grateful when she did find one, the great big rodent snacking on a looted piece of redwood deer cheese.
Its whiskers twitched as she crept up behind it, and the fearsome beast turned its head back to look right at the fairy … and then went to make a run for it.
“Drat” Cherry cursed her lack of stealth skills, but rather than run after it she smacked her spear against the pot she’d squeezed past and made a chittering sound mimicking a ratty cry as she [taunt]ed it.
The rat, who’s honor had been sullied by her bespoke breakdown at its lack of virtues, turned to fight, though as this was no [enrage] it came in carefully, dared into battle but not foolishness.
It stalked forwards, carefully, carefully, and then looked to its left and gave a squeak of confusion. The fairy took her chance, springing forward with a [quick stab] that grazed the rat with her thorn spear. That was enough, venom sinking into its veins. It cried out in pain and lunged to retaliate, but already the toxins were dulling its movements giving the fairy the time to buzz her wings to reverse her lunge faster than any big person could, pulling her back out of reach.
It came after her still, driven mad by pain, and the fairy had to lean into all the, kinda brief, training she’d gotten to avoid becoming a statistic, using her spear to ward away its bites, smacking its head aside, trusting in her armor to ward of scratches, and then finally driving her speartip right into its eye.
If the first stab hadn’t done the trick, that certainly did. The rat squealed, stumbled back, and then fell to the ground, blood tinted green by her poison drooling from its wounds.
Cherry gave a little sigh of relief that it was over, only for it to catch in her throat as purple light suddenly filled the ruined eye, and the rat began to rise once more.
“Ooooooh goddess” she swore both as she saw this reanimation, suddenly remembering the rat squeaking to her left and glancing that way as well, just in time to spot a wall of purple goo oozing between the pots. As the fairy swiftly backed up the ooze spread out and out, beginning to fill the space, and three dark spots slipped in to examine the area, two voids like eyes and third eye that looked like a hollow nose, which joined together along with with a jagged maw below giving the impression of a grinning skull.
The slime opened that maw wide, and the undead rat gladly leapt into it, joining the bones and glowing eye’d skulls of its kin to be digested. Its devourer looked content for a moment, before it turned its eyes to the horrified fairy … and started moving towards her too.
The fairy did not even bother attempting to strike the gelatinous mass with her spear, she knew enough about these monsters to know there was nothing to stab. Instead just quipped “guess I don’t need to [taunt] you” with a voice that did nothing to mask the fear hiding behind that attempt at levity … and then turned and made a run for it, calling out “Slime!” in warning to the others also sweeping through the store room.
The necro slime looked a bit peeved that its next meal was running instead of dutifully feeding itself to it, but, well, it had ways of making that happen. While it began devouring the flesh of the freshly dead rat, it spat out the bones of two others, which picked themselves off the floor and went racing after the fairy, bones rattling as they scampered.
“Oh no no no yes!” Chery panicked as she was hounded by the animated skeletons right up until she burst out into an intersection of sorts and saw that her call had brought aid to her side, a pair of fairy [adventurers] having come to her aid. With little shrieks they launched themselves forwards, clashing with the bone constructs with thorn blades. Cherry whirled around to fight with them, but all three quickly found that their poisonous weapons were rather ineffective against the skeletal foes.
“Gosh darn it heck” she cursed as she beat the skeleton over the skull with her spear to little avail, the fairies swiftness affording them little but survival, none of the three having the strength or arms to smash the bony foes aside.
Then, suddenly to their left, a crackling sound which was the only warning before light flashed and a sound like a tiny, tiny thunderclap roared … and one of the skeletons recoiled as a miniature lighting bolt struck its skull, blasting it to bits. Cherry shook her version clear, and then glanced to the side to see a fourth fairy, a mighty [dragon tamer], and her reptilian charge … which she was carrying in her arms like a cat. The diminutive berry dragon, small even for its kind in everything except plumpness, made a happy little chirp as its trainer praised it for its annihilation of one of their foes.
With (further) numbers on their side the fairies fell upon the remaining undead, jabbing blades into holes in its skull and then pulling, ripping it from the body and tossing it on the floor to be splintered by magical breath
Yet even as they succeeded in disabling the last undead rat, its master began to ooze into the scene. The [dragon tamer] gave it a blast of lighting, but that just tickled the necro slime, and made it mad.
“Ok, time to go! I’ll draw it out! Blooped bloop get [taunt]ed slimy!” Cherry yelled at the her companions and the monster, and they collectively scattered, the slower [dragon tamer] breaking away in one direction, while the nimbler [adventurers] raced forwards, luring the slime on and on and then suddenly they burst from the maze of pots, sacks, and boxes, and into the light.
They breathed a moment of relief, only for the slime to follow them out into the open, the mass of slime taking on its true round blobby form on the open floor, and starting to roll at them, worryingly fast, a triumphant look on its face.
Even when the fairies took off into the air, slowed somewhat by their armor, it was not discouraged, the necro slime pulling acid sharpened bones out of its internally stored collection preparing to fire them at its fleeing prey. Dark magic coalesced around the bones, drew them back, and then lost them in a volley … which smacked harmlessly into a wall of porcelain as an elf the fairies had paid to lend a hand if things got dicey popped a jar over the top of the slime. Then he slid a stiff leaf that the elves use as paper under the rim of the cup, trapping the slime within like it was a spider he was going to politely toss out of his house.
“Oh nice, you got another one? What’s this one do?” the elf asked as he picked up the pot, lifted the improvised lid, and instantly regretted it when he got pinged by some rat bones for his efforts.
“Hey, hey, is that new one?” Cherry asked eagerly as she hovered over “oh and thanks for the save big guy”
“Ow…yes. New one” the elf informed her, rubbing his unharmed face
That got a cheer from the coin fairies, one to the tune of “We’re going to get so many discovery discounts!” while they linked hands and spun around in a circle through the air
That was one of the advantages of being small, you got to find new stuff the big folks overlooked, and new stuff could be handed in to the adventurer guild in return for a finder’s fee in the form of stacking discounts. Already there were pots containing all sorts of unique slimes, from forest slimes to apple slimes, crab slimes, bread slimes, and more, and each and every one was a saving to be made for the Coin Fairies.
Compared to that, the reward they were getting for their pest extermination was ever so secondary.
“Alright girls, that’s enough celebrating” Cherry said after she decided they’d indulge in cheering for long enough, the fairly re-equipping her spear and declaring that “There’s more money to be made!”
Elsewhere
The elves of a little village in the woods peaked their head out of their [druid] grown homes at the sound of titanic hoof falls. These were not unusual in the dark woods, no not at all, for all who lived there knew of the Huwu’idang, those titanic deer of growth who rivaled the trees themselves in size, who dwelt within the forests. That said, not all had actually heard those sounds first hand, let alone seen one of those majestic beasts, for they tended to keep to themselves, and only intervened if nature was disturbed or, so the rumors went, if a child were in danger.
As such, it was a touch concerning to hear one coming towards the settlement, rather than just passing by in the distance. Their first instinct was to chatter, checking if anyone was missing or there were any other alarming things going on. There were not. Which got people a mix of concerned and curious. Had they upset the great guardians of the forest somehow? Was this a coincidence? Was there danger none of them had foreseen? These and more were all suggested as the elves chatted quietly while preparing for the worst, just in case.
They were all wrong, something that became quite clear when the Huwu’idang rolled into town carrying on its back a small compared to its own size yet quite substantial in the general number of finely crafted and beautiful painted vases, all of them lashed carefully to it via a nest of living vines.
Or, no, not vases, not all of them anyway.
As the elves peered closer they saw many of them were created into shapes other than simple jars. Some, several, looked like… homes. Homes which, as the giant deer pulled up next to the village, divulged a flurry of golden skinned beings. Coin fairies. And entire bustling towns worth of them, traveling on the back of one of the titanic protectors of the small.
And as they hovered out of their homes they pulled down little signs, throw open little shutters, and called out all sorts of things, like:
“Hi hi elves. Wanna buy some herbs? Grown by level 15 or over [herbalists]?”
“Best bread from Sanctuary, kept fresh by our [storage managers]!”
“Clay pots, plates, bowls? We got, em all and more. Never eat off a leaf again!”
“Our [plant shapers] are the best in the business, we got tiny hands to make the tiniest of changes! Get yourself a perfectly grown thorn knife today. You deserve it dontcha?”
As the trading town unleashed an entire market squares worth of sales pitches on the village, and, well, with an entrance like that, how could you possibly not buy something?
We take a look at how the coin fairies are getting along. First we see Cherry and some other fairy [adventurers] hunting rats, and collecting slimes, in a store room to raise funds for their tribe, and also see that they have started taming berry dragons. Then we see a Huwu’idang with an entire (fairy sized) town built on its back pull up to a village and engage in some trade with it.
Start: 0mp-2ap
1 ap: (offscreen) teach coin fairies to commune with the Huwu’idang
1 ap: (offscreen) teach coin fairies how to become [dragon tamers]
End: 0mp-0ap
Adventurers’ Guild Start: 9 In long post +2 Trained up new members quickly -1 End: 10
After the Troop had finished ripping up thanksgiving dinner they gathered together and bathed in more of Jr’s Medica pulses and some targeted Cures to patch up the worst of their wounds from the fight. The former of these magics seemed to catch a certain fellow in a cloak who Jr had not realized had followed after them till the moment he picked himself out the flower bed and quickly made himself the prince’s problem.
That’s what good deeds got you, the boy guessed. Specifically it got you no thanks, sass, a backstory, and a pile of questions
”We’re the seekers, and we’re” the boy’s explanation as to what they were doing, namely working their way up to slaying galeem, proceed to just slide off of the galeeming man’s think pan without him noticing it had happened due to that great multiverse destroying glowball’s curse, before the boy concluded with ”and your now at the bottom of a pit full of monsters”
”The creatively named ‘under’ … or ‘underground’ according to F, the one who dropped us down here” Kamek interjected
”F? What kind of a name is that?!” Jr asked, to which Kamek just shrugged, leaving Jr to turn his focus back to the self-titled Adventurer and saying ”Well whatever. Long story short, your ways home are up” he stabbed a finger up to the massive tunnel they’d fallen down, and then moved it to point vaguely in the direction the monsters had come from ”or uh… somewhere down there?”
”I believe there is another train station somewhere deep down below that we were meant to go straight to before we were redirected up to dirtmouth … which I am going to blame F for as well” Kamek helpfully informed them both
”Right. So… I guess you can stick with us, if you're useful in a fight. Or as monster bait. Either works. Or you can go wander off and face that on your own” Jr concluded, jabbing a thumb over his shoulders at the monsters.
Unfortunately his point was slightly undermined by what he ended up pointing at was Bowser laughing in the face of one of the little monochrome monsters due to how pathetic they were, followed by them being effortlessly mind controlled by Sectonia.
”… Look, the ones that we're here before you woke up were way scarier, trust me. Here see …” he held up the spirit of the monster the troop had killed, and, well, let us just say that the fork welding turkey was not very intimidating either in this diminished state
”Look, unless you are some legendary butt kicker, you don’t wanna go out there on your own if you wanna live … and if you are a legendary butt kicker we could kinda use you on the team” Jr said, but ultimately it was up to the adventurer.
Speaking of going off on your own, that was exactly what Bowser realized Nadia had done (after he was done picking on the Loox that was) which had him a bit worried.
”I’m going after Ms. Fortune!” he announced after a few moments thought, which Rika quickly followed with a ”Me too!” before she went thruster boosting off into the darkness after the cat girl, leaving the king to go stomping on after her, the ship girl easily track-able due to the pair of torches glowing in her Brachydios styled rifle gauntlet’s eyes.
They almost caught up with their flighty feline at the fragile platform filled cavern due to her getting distracted by bits of paper (that the pursuing pair had no idea what the deal with was), but then got left behind again as the aforementioned fragileness of the platforms resulted in one or two… interior redecoration moments when heavy turtle dragon met architecture made for light bugs.
As a result, when the huffing king and not at all winded ship girl arrived the bout of misfortune was already over. The kind guardian of the ruins was dead, and the evil king was free, not that they knew anything about the character of the former. They were, however, just in time to hear the genie Nadia had apparently freed from the bottle offer her a favor in return for freeing him.
Bowser gave a single gawf of a laugh at hearing it, kinda undermining the moment a bit, before commenting ”Classic stuff from an unbottled evil. Bit overdone maybe. 7/10. Good to see you're still on form Ganondorf” with just a little bit of sass.
”Huh, you know this guy?” Rika asked, while giving the king an odd look.
”Yeah we go back a bit. One of the smash crew. Oh and Link’s nemesis too” Bowser said, before remembering one important detail regarding their prior interactions that caused his brow to furrow. Then a moment later the expression was gone and, with a fair bit of cheer, the king actually said hello to the familiar fellow ”So yeah hey there, my ol partner in crime, how’s this hole the ground treating you?”
I think what you've got would actually work fine if you made the location the Ruins instead of the Barge, as in he's 'coming to' in the flowerbed that broke everyone's fall through the Chasm as the fight with the monsters concluded, having been stunned by the fall himself
This is what I'll be working off anyway, otherwise things get all squiggly time wise
Double
Lord Zee
Goldeagle1221
wintersoldier
Snowdrops
LG
Timemaster
Damycles
Izurich
