Lemons
Archmage MC
AlternateMan
Eviledd1984
ctrlsaltdel
Ariamis
Double
Lord Zee
Goldeagle1221
The Koopa Troop
wordcount: 9168 (+10)
Bowser: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (232/120)
Bowser Jr: Level 12 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (103/120)
Kamek: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (107/120)
Rika: Level 8 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (29/80)
Ganondorf: Level 5 EXP:
///////////////////////////////////////////////// (11/50)
Location: The Under - Pizza Tower
”We have to work for our breakfast? What do you think I am, some kind of, I dunno, a person who does that, I guess?” Bowser asked, his brain floundering even more than usual due to the lack of nutrition. Sleeping had at least rubbed away a lot of the raw fatigue from last night, and unlike some, the Troop had a deep, mostly dreamless sleep.
Rika was the only one who had had any issues, and hers had been entirely natural nightmares about the event that had just occurred, ones that an instinctual unconscious hug from her new dad had soothed away without further incident.
Now they were up, awake, and ready for breakfast, which was something they did not have. Fortunately, the tower hosted a large number of food themed levels from which they could scavenge the necessary ingredients to make a fine feast for both today and several tommorows.
”Mmmm, I’m thinking pork. Dunno why but i’ve had a real craving for it since last night” Bowser said, licking his lips at the thought, before glancing to the side for some validation ”Sound’s good right? Nothing else here beats it!”
”I do not… yes sire” Kamek agreed rather than trying to push the issue of his herbivorous diet, and simply hoped someone else would pick up the slack.
”I mean it does but juuuuuuust pork? On all the pizza? We should get some variety in our diets, right Kamek?” Jr piped up, which got a slightly suspicious ”Yes… I do often have to remind you of that” from the mage in question.
”I wanna try everything, maybe we should split up more and…” Rika began to suggest, before petering out as she and the rest of them were all struck with worry about what might befall the others if they did so. Rather vivid worries, ones that caused them to all collectively agree that going just two ways was plenty.
”Try to stick together troops! We don’t know what’s going to be in there other than, mmmf, oh so much delicious food” the king started to warn the rest of the team before he wound up salivating at the thought of strings of sausages and glazed hams.
"Hahaha!" Laughed Ganondorf as he emerged from the corner of the room he had sequestered himself in last night. He’d overheard a bit of the conversation and found it rather amusing, "What’s wrong, Bowser? Feeling a little short on minions, are we?" But the closer he came to the group the quicker they would all notice that something was… different about him. Most notably it looked like his cape had become split into two down the middle, resulting in it now fluttering in opposite directions behind him. But a closer look would make it apparent that that was far from the only change. Obviously he had fused with one of the Spirits he had brought to the tower with him during the night.
Ganondorf offered a mocking grin, which with his new appearance did actually look fairly spooky, ”I can still summon some of my own servants. Are you… not able to do the same?”
Then king bared his teeth at the king, but before he could give a growling retort Kamek casually stepped forwards and waved his wand, causing a small horde of dry bones to rise from the ground around them as a simple demonstration that some of the king’s forces were still on hand.
The act also gave Bowser the time he needed for his brain to grind out a response to the taunt.
”If you have any minions to speak of, guess you’ve improved a bit since we last worked together. We used my guys, ROB’s bots, and the tattoo guy’s subspace army, while you didn’t contribute a single mook. Which put you on the same level as Wario of all people” Bowser retorted bitingly, before tacking on ”Or, wasn’t this a weird time thing? Where you haven't done that yet? So maybe that means you’ll get worse” with a toothy grin
”Probably drove them all away by being a jerk” Jr chipped in, projecting from one of his own experiences with that added jab, before addressing the source of his new fusion with ”and a weenie who couldn’t escape the city without taking lives, just like F wanted”
Ganondorf’s expression remained unchanged. They’re retorts came across as weak at best. But when the Majikoopa summoned the group of dry bones, he offered them a slow clap. ”Alright, alright, so perhaps I misjudged you.” he said, his tone not sounding entirely genuine. Oh he still had a rebuttal of his own in mind, but decided to let actions speak louder than words.
All of a sudden the Gerudo inhaled sharply and without warning let out a gout of purple flames from his mouth. The flames covered a modest distance, enough for him to envelop the dry bones by sweeping his breath attack from left to right. As he recalled those creatures were quite brittle and easily shattered. The breath attack would do little to the Koopas, especially Bowser. But at the very least the King of Evil demonstrated that he could wipe out the dry bones in a single fell swoop.
”Now allow me to show you what real footsoldiers look like.” Ganondorf said with his grin turning into a more intimidating grimace. With a snap of his fingers, he summoned his Moblin Attack Squad who appeared behind in puffs of red and black smoke. They stepped forward and thrust their spears forward as if in a military phalanx. Unlike the dry bones, the moblins were just short of being human-sized. Which meant they were bigger, and a bit heartier as well. What they lacked in intellect, they up for in numbers and obedience.
The troop had backed up while giving shouts that were along the gist of “what’s the big idea!” when the flame burst happened, and though they were fine, the dry bones had been reduced to piles of bones. Piles of bones that then proceed to get back up, bits and pieces floating up and reassembling themselves to the tune of a xylophone, as that was very much what dry bones do.
Of course, when squaring up against the spear armed moblins, they were still sorely lacking in height, being about half that of a regular human, and in reach due to having no weapons but beak and claw.
There were, however, dozens of them staring down the moblins with their yellow glowing eyes.
”Let’s put that to the test, shall we?” Kamek inquired, before pointing a finger forward and sending the undead horde marching forwards towards the moblins.
”Gladly.” retorted the King of Evil, gesturing for his own soldiers to advance.
The two sides advanced towards each other, but the moblins were first to stop, raising their spears and jabbing forwards at the shorter dry bones. The actual points of their spears did very little, but most managed to physically poke a skull off of one of their foes, decapitating them in one or two blows.
Yet there were still more coming, and the dead kept on rising back up, so while the moblins did not come to any harm, they did have to start backing up and up towards their king, scoring dozens of ‘kills’ each but making no actual progress. Rather than be pressed up against their leader, they broke ranks and began skirmishing instead, resulting in the 5 running around the lobby being chased by individual packs of dry bones.
The whole thing was, it had to be said, very inconclusive, though that did not stop the koopas from egging their bony minions on and groaning whenever a seemingly cornered moblin snuck away at the last moment.
After about a minute of this, Rika worked up the social energy to cough and say ”So uh, this is fun and all, but maybe we could leave the war games till after food? Please?”
”Fine.” Ganondorf replied, not bothering to argue back. He was, after all, just as hungry as everyone else. And so with another snap of his fingers the Moblin Spearmen vanished in a puff of shadowy smoke.
”Ah, yes, good point young mistress” Kamek agreed, while Bowser grunted with accent
”Oh, right, yeah, so we were gonna go do a different one so, uh, we’ll see you” Jr said as he started to step away, giving Rika’s sleeve a tug to get her to come along.
”Yeah we were gonna do-” Rika began to say, only to be very unsubtly sh-sh-shhhh’ed by jr which left Kamek for one very suspicious.
”Yes, for the variety. That said, I do think it would be best if you teamed up with another person for this one, just to keep you, and them, safe” Kamek suggested, partially out of actual concern, partially to try and guide them away from poor dietary choices.
”But-” Jr started to retort, only to sigh and accent when his papa agreed that would be a good idea.
An, a little disheartened, Jr and a clueless as to what that was all about till her new brother filled her in on it Rika were soon off, leaving the kings and the mage alone together.
”Well, don’t you have somewhere to be? We’ve got pork to get” Bowser grunted at the Gerudo after a few moments.
”I’m going in there to get pork, myself.” Ganondorf grunted back and then added, ”Feel free to follow me if that’s what you want.” And then the Gerudo strode off towards the door.
”Wah, hey, gah! Fine! You better not slow us down!” Bowser retorted, poorly, before stomping after him with Kamek in tow.
The gateway to pig city lay open before them, revealing a city street that had perhaps seen better days. Two to five story apartment buildings lined the streets, all of them looking rather run down with decaying brickwork marred with talentless graffiti, sporting the odd boarded up window and doors locked tight against intruders.
The street was hardly better pockmarked with potholes, faded (and often incoherent) road markings, and dotted with the odd burnt out car or truck, making it rather inconceivable that it was actually capable of being used.
The only things in any good repair were a few glass fronted stores, sporting within them the advertised pork products stored in thankfully hygienic conditions.
Beyond, there seemed to be other streets, other buildings, as far as the eye could see, giving the impression of a far larger city surrounding them. Impression being the key word, as closer inspection revealed the further away of these to be either wooden cutouts or painted onto the wall of the large room they were actually in.
”Wow, this dump has seen better days” Bowser said, as he stepped inside, before commenting ”but hey, impressive they fit an entire city in here” entirely fooled by the facade.
”Hmph, this room is supposed to produce food? Ridiculous.” commented Ganondorf with an incredulous tone.
Once they were all inside, a door suddenly slammed shut behind them, and when inspected or challenged, revealed no discernible manner to open it. They didn’t have much time to look into it, however, as almost as soon as the back door slammed shut, the doors to the buildings slammed open, and the residents of the not-city, blocky porcine creatures namedpiglin, came to introduce themselves.
Given the gold baseball bats, kitchen knives, frying pans, sledge hammers, chains and other improvised weapons in their hands they were not here to give a polite greeting. Instead the mobs began forming into an actual mob arrayed against the invading villains.
”Wow, hey, we’re just here to do some shopping, so if you’d just move out the way no one needs to get squashed” Bowser tried to calm the situation down for a moment, only for the response to be a feral chorus of squeals and oinks of mindless aggression.
”I’m pretty sure we’re looking at the source of the pork for this tower.” Ganondorf said grimly. Certainly a gruesome way to keep a stockpile of pork, but, seeing as how there were no other pigs in sight…
The sound picked up as the mob congealed into a formidable mass, one that at some unknown signal suddenly surged forwards, the mob revealing themselves to be less of a mass of angry individuals and far more of a horde with zero self preservation instincts.
”Alright have it your way! Bring it swine!”
Ganondorf just shook his head, still appearing incredulous to the idea of this silly tower. But nevertheless he drew both of his swords from their respective scabbards, ”Then so be it.”
Before anything else Ganondorf decided to kick things off with another Violet Flare. As he had done in the previous room, Ganondorf let loose a purple-colored fire breath attack. The flames spewed forth and certainly damaged a few of the piglins in the horde. But it was still a horde, and quite a sizable one at that. So the fire breath alone wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things. So after that the Gerudo brandished his swords and got to hacking and slashing away at the piglins as they approached. Each swing of his blades caused them to become coated in dark magic that appeared to slowly increase the more Ganondorf attacked, ”Well don’t just stand there you big lizards, start pulling your weight!” he shouted to the nearby Koopa Troop.
”Don’t give me orders! Also I’ll pull twice as much weight as you, just you watch!” Bowser shouted back, before unleashing his own flame breath, orange flames washing though the piggy horde scorching and igniting those caught in its path. Then he stomped forwards, driving a fist into the snout of a pig-faced foe to establish dominance, and then slashing mecha mit claws through the guts of two more before he really laid into the rest of them.
Together both flame waves made bacon of the front runners, but there were plenty more where they came from. Plus, though they were in a dead end of a street, there was still plenty of space for flanking, with piglins running along the sidewalk and then rushing inwards to the center of the road where the kings were making their stand.
And it was just the kings making a stand, because Kamek was already airborne and getting a bird’s eye view of the mob mob as it naturally flowed through the street to wash against the pair of hard headed rocks below. Yet he also saw that the horde had a limit, one he estimated was based on which houses could and could not have heard the door slamming shut.
”There’s a limit to these sire, so keep fighting and we’ll get a respite!” he called out, before swooping over the feral hogs and dropping dark mines within their midst, blowing handfuls of them skywards in shadowy explosions with each spellcast.
”Time to unleash some reinforcements.” declared the Gerudo, briefly stopping his attacks. In a swift motion he thrust the blade of one of his swords into the floor and then summoned his moblin squad with a snap of his fingers. Five moblin archers emerged from the puff of smoke. Armed with bows, they loosed volleys of fire arrows into the oncoming horde. Ganondorf then picked his sword back up and returned to the fray.
”Keep your distance!” he ordered his archers, ”If the horde advances, then fall back. Don’t advance unless we start pushing them back!” It was an interestingly cautious tactic to go with. Not something most people would expect from the King of Evil. But Ganondorf had had his share of experience in commanding armies. He’d previously led a successful campaign against the Kingdom of Hyrule, after all.
As he continued to cut a swathe into the horde, the building dark energy around his blades continued to grow. With each swing that dark power grew, further increasing the power of the weapons. It was like watching a melon-sized snowball roll down a hill until it gradually grew into the size of a mighty boulder. And then, when it seemed like his dark power couldn’t grow any more, Ganondorf decided it was time to unleash it. With his great strength he slammed both swords into the ground. Then he raised his fist above his head, and even began to slowly levitate upwards. He charged red and black magical energy in his hand while purple rings of ancient Hylian runes circled on the ground below him. ”DIE!” roared the Gerudo with a mighty shout. The King of Evil came crashing back down onto the circle of runes, slamming the energy in his hand into it and unleashed an omnidirectional wave of explosive dark energy around him and blasting all the piglins with a 15-20 meter radius with an inferno of darkness.
And just like that, the dark power that had been building up in his weapons was gone. Ganondorf pulled them up out of the ground and continued his previous hacking and slashing. All the while the swords appeared to begin building energy within them all over again.
There wasn’t much left to hack, the hyrule warrior having decimated the vast majority of the mob that was still to come at them using his explosive attack.. After that, the remaining piglins ahead fell rather easily to his hacking and slashing.
That still left the flanking ones, and while Bowser kept the ones on the left side of the street occupied, the ones on the right pushed back the moblins who quickly found they had no where to go, as the way back was barred by the closed door to the stage, and the other two directions occupied by the two indiscriminately swinging kings.
Before they got overrun however, familiar bones rose up out of the ground between them and the piglins, as Kamek summoned a horde of dry bones to shore up their flanks. As with the time they had fought the spear wielding moblins, the undead did not achieve much on their own damage wise, but they act like a tarpit for the piglins who got bogged down trying to beat down the perpetually regenerating nuisances.
As the pigs squealed and hacked at the dead, the moblins opened fire, launching arrow after arrow over the shorter dry bones, the combo of minions rather effectively cutting down the foes in a way neither could have achieved on their own.
Soon after, the opening brawl came to an end, the last of the street’s piglins falling to the ground and crumpling to ash, leaving a plethora of spirits behind in their wake.
”I’ll gather those up for later, I don’t expect much of use will come of it, but perhaps we will be showered with gold for our efforts” Kamek said, as he directed some toadies to start scooping up the spirits for him ”Though given the shear number we’ll be acquiring, we may need to acquire some kind of … shopping trolly? Or something of the sort. I do not believe they will be compatible with the pizza boxes”
”You’ll figure something out” Bowser replied, in a strange combination of reassurance and order, before giving an impressed whistle at the tole that had been wrought, not by Ganondorf, but by the minion team up, telling them ”Nice job mooks”
Ganondorf gave a wave of his sword and commanded the Moblins to go ahead and assist with the spirit gathering. After returning the weapons to the scabbards he glanced in Bowser’s direction, ”So what now? I don’t see a scrap of food anywhere.” He said, taking a moment to crack his neck a bit. This had better not turn out to be a waste of time, or he was not going to be happy at all. Not that he was ever all that happy to start with, but still.
”What, you've never seen a deli before?” he asked as he directed a finger a fair ways up the street towards a glass windowed store. What was inside was unclear from a distance, but the eclectic nature of the koopa’s world meant he could both live in a castle and know what a deli looked like.
”Well then they’d better use the same currency that the City of Tears did.” Ganondorf grunted, ”Because I’m not leaving here until I get what I came for.” the King of Evil added, ominously.
”You’ve got that right at least, so let’s go check it out” he declared, as he started to stomp up the road, which proved to be a basic gauntlet of jumping over cars, navigating around thrash, avoiding falling down manholes, and the odd place where the road had been swallowed up by a sinkhole. The odd pack of pilglins tried to take them on while they did this but these smaller groups were of little concern.
Kamek hovered above the mini platform challenge, while Bowser took to criticizing it as he waltzed on through, it being ”Nothing compared to some of the stuff I’ve come up with”
And then there was Ganondorf, who largely just walked through the challenge. Literally. He just sidestepped the manholes and sinkholes. And any car that was in his way, the Gerudo would use his massive strength to literally shove them aside and out of his path. ”You call this a challenge? Where are the locked and barred doors? The block and switch puzzles? Or any puzzles for that matter?”
Once they finally arrived, the store did indeed prove to be as well kept as it had from a distance, with its windows filled with rows and rows of sausages. Just regular sausages oddly enough, no ham, bacon or pepperoni though there was still a nice selection of everything from burtwasts to hotdogs.
”Oddly specialized, but I suppose we’ll take it?” Kamek asked, glancing at his king for confirmation and finding the turtle visibly drooling at the sight.
”I’ll take that as a yes then” Kamek sighed, before going and trying the door, only for it to rattle a few times as he did. Confused, he hovered up to human head height to look inside to see if something was jamming it, only to instead see a little closed sign sitting in the window of said door. Below that there was also a list of opening times which did not include early mornings.
”I do believe it is shut until mid morning” he calmly informed the pair of royals, which caused Bowser to throw his arms up in frustration at the news.
”Oh, don’t throw a tantrum.” sniped Ganondorf, ”As if a simple locked door is going to keep ME out.” he grabbed the handle of the door and yanked it with some extra strength. Assuming there weren’t any enchantments or the like he could rip the door right off its hinges with minimal effort.
He did indeed, the door falling ever so easily to his might, opening the way to the sausage fest within.
It also set off the intruder alarm.
”Tsk tsk, now look what you’ve done. Now they’ll think we’re here to steal from them” Kamek chided the king of evil over the ringing bell, before floating into the building and giving a brief inspection.
”Would you have preferred we wait around for it to open?” Ganondorf offered as a retort. Sure, maybe Kamek had that kind of patience, but Bowser? Not likely.
”It looks clear” he informed them before adding ”and also a fair bit bigger on the inside too”
Indeed, while the front of the store made it out to be simply a little deli, the actual inside of it turned out to be more of a sausage warehouse, the back wall of it simply missing and instead leading to a filled up with 20 long rows of a dozen or so shelving units each worth of pig meat.
”You know, I don’t think this is a store at all? I’m not sure if it's a clever or utterly foolish disguise however” the mage noted as he waved his wand, and sent forth some minions to collect armfuls of pork to stuff into pizza boxes, which were themselves then slotted into the bag of infinite pizza holding.
Bowser meanwhile stomped on in and immediately started helping himself to the display pieces, pausing only to announce ”Mmmf, this is good stuff”.
Ganondorf wasn’t quite that reckless. After walking in he inspected the meat. Making sure none of it was spoiled or rotten. He had no desire to eat a breakfast that would just make him sick.
Sadly, the break in breakfast was interrupted when the alarm, naturally, attacked another horde. Fortunately, the front of the fake store made for an excellent chokepoint to funnel said mob through, which allowed the royals to effortlessly take care of business with alternating flame breath attacks.
”Ha, is that all you’ve got!” Bowser taunted, and in doing so tempting fate.
”Hmph, pathetic! Ganonorf concurred.
Unheard over the tail end slaughter at the front there came a few quiet whistlings and thunks, followed by a much more audible cry of ”Ah! My arm!” from Kamek.
Bowser immediately turned and rushed into the back, meeting the retreating mage, who had an arrow sticking out of his limb, half way.
”Above sire!” He warned, prompting the king to look up, and see the source of his avisor’s pain. Standing upon several metal catwalks overlooking the warehouse were more piglins, who had slipped in via the windows lighting it, having presumably climbed up various fire escapes. These weren't the same as the mob outside however. Instead the half a dozen foes wore golden armor, and were armed with wooden crossbows with which they had picked off Kamek’s sausage transporting minions, and then nearly skewered the mage himself.
Thinking quickly, Ganondorf snapped his fingers and re-summoned the Moblin Archers. He ordered to open fire on the piglin marksman perched above. But another sound got his attention before he could do anything else.
They weren't alone either. A roller shutter at the back of the warehouse had rolled open, and though it stepped six bigger, meaner, tougher and battle ax armed piglin piglin brutes. In their midst was also a larger boar, who was smoking a cigar, had several butcher’s knives hanging from his belt, and was armed with a flamethrower.
Uncle butters, who had come to respond to the alarm at his ‘store’ jabbed a finger forwards and squealed a command to attack, sending the goons of the organized swine syndicate who ran this down charging forwards or snap firing crossbow bolts at the royal intruders, while he himself stomped forwards, ready to roast some fresh meat to replace that which Bowser had noshed on.
Ganondorf dived to the side to avoid being shot by crossbow bolts. He quickly drew the white sword from its scabbard, while his other hand went for his newly acquired Ikana Shield. The Gerudo had surmised that a more defensive fighting style was called for against foes firing projectiles at him. And he wasn’t wrong either, the shield made it easier to block and deflect incoming crossbow bolts while the Gerudo himself charged forward to meet the incoming piglin brutes head on.
For Ganondorf his tactic was all about giving and taking. He’d keep his shield up long enough for it to block some incoming attacks, and then the King of Evil would quickly retaliate with a wide-reaching spin attack of his own. He wasn’t too fond of overly defensive fighting styles like this, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to utilize it when necessary.
The brutes meanwhile were all attack attack attack, berzerkers to the last. The lack of immediate tactics and the shelving units let the king’s tactic work perfectly for a few moments, the first brute hammering on the shield till it got winded, and then got a sword to the gut.
Unfortunately, the sheer number of opponents meant that flanking inevitably happened, with two brutes charging down the row of shelves on either side of the king before coming smashing straight through them. Splinters and sausages went flying as they shattered the shelves with singular ax blows, before proceeding to lunge through the wreckage they’d created right as a third brute came charging in from the front.
Ganondorf almost rolled his eyes. Such a simplistic and rudimentary tactic these brutes were going for. But he knew exactly how to defend against it. All it required was for him to mimic one of the favored techniques of his most hated enemy. The Gerudo held his sword out and spun his body around in order to attack with a circular spin slash that kept the charging brutes from crashing into him. Then he jumped backwards. Two of the brutes had charged from the sides, the third from the front. So that left the rear as the only remaining place Ganondorf could fall back to.
Ganondorf then snapped his fingers to summon one of his Strikers. The gelatinous embryo Blastocyst appeared directly in front of him and immediately jumped straight up. Then the three charging piglin brutes crashed into Ganondorf’s shield, after which he used his monstrous strength to knock them all back a few feet just in time for the Striker Spirit to come crashing down on top of them. It also consequently released its acidic bloody tear projectiles in all four cardinal and ordinal directions, just in case any of the brutes managed to dodge out of the way. After that the spirit vanished.
Meanwhile the crossbow bolt wielding ones tried to use their elevated positions around the room to try and shoot him from multiple angles which would have been quite nasty had they not started taking fire of their own.
”If you're going to be cowards fighting from up there, then I’m gonna come get you instead!” Bowser roared as he leapt up onto a shelving unit, cracking it under his weight before he leapt the rest of the way up to the catwalks. These two, ground under his feet, but it was the ones on the opposite side that the king started his assault by blasting with an indiscriminate broadside of cannonfire that were the first to fall, taking a few of the snipers with it.
The rest either turned their fire on the koopa king, which the scaly brute either toughed out or blocked with his dinky energy shield, while those up close drew golden swords to meet him in melee. The first one getting kinetic strike module punched clear out of the building was a pretty good indicator of how that would go.
”Ha! At least make it a challenge for me!” Ganondorf gloated, so far finding no real challenge in any of these foes.
Just as Gandorf finished dealing with the trio, the last two came at him, only for one to be engulfed in flame as it got caught in uncle butters’s opening attack, the blaze of his flamethrower igniting shelving as well as he tried to roast the king of evil’s bacon.
With a smirk, Ganondorf put up his shield in order to block the incoming flames. When that attack finally subsided he hurled the shield like a frisbee at the last remaining brute. The shield’s sharp square corner lodged into the piglin brute’s head and took him out on the spot. Of course, that left the Gerudo without a shield. When uncle butters tried firing more flames at him, the King of Evil responded by spewing out his Violet Flare, breathing his purple flames to clash with the flames of uncle butters’s flamethrower weapon. This created a brief cloud of smoke obscuring vision in the area.
Perfect, Ganondorf thought. He snapped his fingers and summoned his newest Striker:
The cyborg velociraptor, Riptor, appeared and sprinted through the cover of smoke. She ran at uncle butters with a Shoulder Charge, blowing into the coughing hog and, though the burly boar was not struck down, he did lose grip on his weapon. It was all the opening Ganondorf needed to come charging through the smoke as well and impale the hog on his white sword.
The blade went clean through his chest, out the other end … and right through the gas tank at his back as well. Gas hissed as the dying hog weakly tried to beat his killer with his bare hands while his life blood drained into his own guts. Despite being rammed, impaled, and now dying, the hog had never let go of his cigar, and instead sucked deep on it, flaring the lit end before the king’s eye.
A perfect match for the leaking gas.
Ganondorf wasn’t about to let this swine take him with him. He tightened his grip on the white sword’s hilt and spun around. In this motion he was able to fling the body of uncle butters from his blade. The burly boar still exploded, but at least it was far enough away to only temporarily knock Ganondorf off his feet rather than engulf him in flames.
Up above Bowser finished off beating the snot out of the last armored piglin, before he glanced down and noticed where all the smoke was coming from and cried out ”Gah the sausages they’re burning!” as he saw the flaming mess that was the warehouse floor.
”Ganondorf what have you done!” he furiously shouted at the other king, falsely accusing him of the mess that uncle butters had left his own establishment in.
”I’m winning this battle you pigheaded turtle!” Ganondorf furiously shouted back as he grabbed Uncle Butters’s spirit, ”THEY set this fire, not me!”
”It’s not just this bit that is on fire!” Kamek warned as he and a white mage clone he had used to heal himself floated into the back, only for the mage to cry out in alarm and dodge to the side as a molotov cocktail came flying through the air and nailed the doppelganger.
The piglin mob had apparently upped their game.
”May I suggest we head out the way those other pigs came in?” he suggested with forced casualness as his copy burned to death, and then drifted up to do just that, leaving behind a blazing storefront. The mage exited via a window, followed shortly by Bowser who’s steel capped boots slammed down onto the concrete of some back alleyway.
Ganondorf leapt through the window, but not before he ran by and snatched up his Ikana Shield from the head of the piglin brute he’d thrown it at earlier.
”We still got some right? Tell me we didn’t just lose all the sausages to the fire” Bowser asked his advisor once they regrouped a little ways away from the burning building, voice full of concern .
”Yes sire” the mage confirmed, before sniping ”Also I am fine, thank you for asking”
”Yeah, obviously. I knew you could handle yourself” the king replied with out of left field praise that left Kamek blinking in surprise.
”Ah yes. Well. Shall we try and find a way out now?”
”Are you kidding? There’s got to be like, a bunch more of these stores we gotta hit!” Bowser declared, which got a groan from the mage,
”To what end? demanded the King of Evil, ”They all have the same pork, don’t they?”
”He does have a point” Kamek found himself agreeing despite himself, resulting in the koopa king giving them a gobsmacked ”Whaaaat?” before he went off that ”But we don’t even have pepperoni!” which had, for some reason, not been in with the rest of the sausages, possibly due to it needing spices ”Or bacon, or ham, or salami!” again, apparently more specialized than the regular sausage storage would hold.
”are you really telling me there’s no difference between those? You must be crazy. The trolls will for sure know, they have got to have taste he demanded to know, before he suddenly grinned and taunted the other king with ”or are you at your limit and want to tap out huh?” in what he thought was a very clever ruse.
”Ugh, fine. If it’ll shut you up, let’s go to another store then.” Ganondorf responded with a facepalm and roll of his eyes. Honestly Bowser could be such a child.
The koopa did not exactly do anything to dissuade that notion with his fistpump and ”yes!” of victory, then he pointed in a random direction and commanded them all to move ”Onwards!”
After that, and with a fair bit of air based scouting from Kamek to reduce the random wanderings, the trio became a 3 person crime spree on the city, hitting store after store without to much issue, having learned how to deal with the assorted piglin types and their flamethrower totting uncles. After a while, even Bowser found the motivation of new types of pork to cease being enough of a motivation to keep it up, and they started to look for a way to unlock the front door.
The obvious option was the only other nice building in town, which rather than being just a clean shop, was made of shining marble, complea with red tiled domes and a whole courtyard of tropical plants out front. The governor's palace certainly did stick out like a sore thumb, and had some tight security to boot, but it was nothing that they hadn’t seen before. Golden guards fell before them, the front gates were breached, and they entered the front door with only a few scratches to show for the defender’s efforts.
The insides were full of decorations depicting some pizza faced guy, a real monument of ego, but otherwise turned up little of note till they entered a random back room and found it contained a sentient pillar.
“Hey. Here to kill this part of me I take it?” it asked them with very little concern one way or the other on the matter.
”Well aren’t you a pleasant ray of sunshine.” Ganondorf scoffed, ”All we want is to unlock the exit.” he added with a shrug. He had no clue if killing the pillar was required or not. But if they could unlock the exit without wasting time with another battle, then all the better. ”I don’t suppose we can do that without killing you, can we?”
“Fraid not. If it makes you feel any better, pizza face’s made me into a horrible hive mind so it doesn’t really matter to me one way or the other” the pillar, who could not be bothered introducing himself as Pillar John, explained apathetically “I mean pizza face will be mad but that’s your problem, not mine”
Ganondorf gave an exasperated sigh. Terrific. Even when he did try to spare someone, it turned out to be impossible. Of course. Approached the pillar while shaking his head and… struck it with a Warlock Punch.
Despite his impressive size, the strike caused the pillar to fly through the air and smash through a window before vanishing from sight. Any question as to if that had done it or not was put to rest when the clocks in the palace, and there had been a lot of them, all done up to look like pizza face’s face, all rung once, and then had their dials spin around rapidly till they all showed four minutes to midnight.
Then they started counting down.
”I do believe-” Kamek began to say, only to be drowned out by the sound of police sirens rapidly closing in on their location. After a few wasted seconds he corrected himself and said ”I do believe that is our cue to get out of here”
”Good effort, that guy was just weird” Bowser told Ganondorf with a pat on the shoulder, before he turned and started to stomp back towards the exit, stopping only to punch one of the clocks in the face.
Ganondorf followed suit, turning and beginning to sprint back in the same direction the koopas were going. That exit had better have been unlocked. Otherwise he had no idea how else they were gonna get back to the lobby.
As it turned out, it was pigs. Pigs that were also pigs.
The wailing sirens had all congealed outside of the palace, and the flashing blue and red lights of the vehicles producing it reflected off of its pure white walls. Trying to drown out said sirens was a mass of muscle in an ill fitting police uniform squealing into a megaphone from behind a row of cop cars. Whether the pig of the LARD was demanding they came out with their hands up in pig, or was just going through the motions was unclear, but given that the reaction to anyone sticking their head out to take a look was for the rest of the pigs to try and fill them full of (thankfully slow moving) pellets from their double barreled shotguns it was clear that there would be no arrests today, if there ever where.
”This place has cops? But we already robbed a whole load of small shops, where were they when that happened?” Bowser shouted over the top of all the noise the pigs blocking them into the palace were making, while time on the clocks all around them tick, tick, ticked away.
As it turned out he got his answer when a set of portals shaped like John’s face opened inside the building, and deposited a pair of pigs on either side of them.
”Bah! We don’t have time for this! Forget the pigs, just go for the exit!” Ganondorf barked before he took off in another run. The somewhat slow projectiles weren’t too hard to avoid. And even if they couldn’t be, Ganondorf kept the Ikana Shield out so he could use it to block any shots he was too slow to dodge. True to his suggestion, Ganondorf simply tried ignoring the pigs. If they stuck around to fight them all they’d likely run out of time.
Ganondorf instead focused on retreating and getting to that exit. He did at one point summon Phantom Ganon and had him ride straight into the pursuing pigs to serve as a temporary distraction for them so he could try to put some distance between them and the Seekers.
He had to physically punch his way through one of the walls surrounding the palace while the pigs were distracted by his phantom to do so, but that was no issue. What was was when he knocked said wall down it revealed that the piglin and boar’s liberal use of flaming weapons in their rundown tightly packed city had had a few adverse effects.
Namely the entire place was now on fire.
”Well, that’s bad” Bowser unnecessarily commented when Kamek and him caught up, the pair having fallen a touch behind due having to take down the two portaled in pigs who would otherwise have been right on their tails.
”We’ll just have to deal with it” Kamek replied, and then the three of them went racing out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Despite the city currently burning down around them, the LARD still endeavor to hunt the fugitives, heavy 4x4 police cars doing their level best to navigate the terrible twisting roads, while above a few helicopters buzzed around above, shining searchlights down on them as they ran for it. Worse, the portals kept opening, depositing fresh pigs, piglin and boars in his way as the clocks in every single home he was in ticked down, many stubbornly continuing to do so despite being engulfed in the inferno.
While Ganondorf wasn’t keen on wasting his time fighting all the pigs, that didn’t mean he was completely unwilling to fight. Once they were running through the street, the Gerudo switched to wielding both his swords so he could efficiently cut his way past any pigs that appeared in his path. This would also allow the swords to gradually charge up their Dark Meter in case Ganondorf needed to use the explosion attack again during the pursuit.
”This… is getting… IRRITATING!” he shouted with frustration when he had to take down yet another pig that appeared in his way, ”I don’t know what the hell pizza is, but it damn well better worth all this trouble we’re going through!” After that he paused and summoned the five moblins. As he had done with Phantom Ganon earlier, they could go back and engage the pigs to serve as a distraction.
”Wait, you don’t?” Bowser gasped, pausing in the middle of ripping the door of one of the pursuing police cars that had tried to ram him off the road to declare ”Just you wait, it’s going to change your whole world!”
”I don’t know about that. We’re running out of time!” Kamek commented as he blasted another pig before he could take a shot at them, the mage very much slowing his pace to keep pace with the two mighty glacier’s own.
”Well we’re running as fast as we can! What else are we supposed to do!?” the king asked as he pulled the car’s driver out of the vehicle and punched his face into pulp.
”Note to self: Get a horse!” Ganondorf muttered to himself as he had to pause and use his strength to flip an entire car out of their path and over to the side. If he had a good warhorse he could gallop out of here in less than half the time. Something he’d have to keep in mind for the future.
He saw a trio of piglins portal in in front of them. Ganondorf rolled his eyes and charged forward, managing to slice them all aside with a single sweeping circular clash of his swords. The darkness in the blades continued to grow, but not quite enough for him to make the most use of it against the pigs. That would take a bit longer still.
”Wait wait wait, I’ve got it!” Kamek said, overhearing Ganondorf’s muttering, the comment having clicked a piece of a puzzle that made the full solution obvious ”Why get a horse when we can get a car!”
”Ok, sure, but where are we supposed to do that?” Bowser demanded to know, before following his advisor’s pointing finger to the vehicle he had just deprived of its driver ”Ohhhhhhh”
The mage swooped into the backseat, and then chanted a few bars, causing the already oversized vehicle to scale up even more, becoming suitably Bowser sized, and hogging most of the road in the process.
”Gahahahaha, now this is more like it! Running is for chumps anyway” the king declared as he honked the horn a few times and then demanded that Ganondorf ”get in, we’re blowing this joint!”
”Huh…” he said in a perplexed tone. He didn’t complain though, he just jumped up into the vehicle, ”Color me surprised, Bowser, turns out you’re good for something after all.” the Gerudo complimented in the most backhanded way imaginable. He turned himself around and decided to use his Violet Flare as a ranged attack to try and fend off pursuers. It sort of worked, but it was here that Ganondorf discovered the inconvenient nature of his purple flames. They damaged enemies, but they didn’t set any objects or terrain on fire. Oh well, it was better than just sitting there and doing nothing.
He got to have a bit of fun when the odd daring pig patrol car got close to try and board their monster of a machine, or something was portaled ontop of it, but for the most part the passengers main concern was surviving Bowser’s aggressive driving across the not at all smooth roadway. That said, be it potholes, pigs or other cars, all fell beneath the souped up police car, and the trio covered about twice the distance they had on foot in almost half the time, turning what had looked to be a doomed race to the finish line into a certain thing.
”and that” Bowser declared as he pumped the brakes and parked them in front of the exit with 30 seconds to spare ”is how you do it the smart way!” seemingly claiming credit for the whole thing before he instead told Kamek ”good thinking”
”Thank you sire” the mage nodded as he floated out of the car, which rapidly shrunk down after he stopped channeling the enlargement spell.
”Hmph, yes, great, now let’s leave this stupid pig city already.” Ganondorf added with a bit of impatience.
Not wanting to tempt fate, the trio wasted no time in stepping through the exit door, and got handed an A for their efforts, having absolutely demolished the town’s population where the other royal team had bypassed a lot of the obstacles in their path (and jr had got hit a lot).
”Hey nice. Can't do any better than that right?” Bowser incorrectly declared, unaware of S and P ranks.
”As long as we got the food, I don’t really care how we were graded for it.” Ganondorf said with a shrug, ”But did you really expect anything less of the two of us?”
That earned him a laugh and a friendly slap on the back from Bowser ”You got that right. Those pigs are never going to forget the day we came to town!”
”We came, we saw, we conquered.”
Bowser’s second statement was rendered rather incorrect as the stage reset behind them. But that didn’t matter, what did was that they had a whole load of ham and a new dish to introduce Ganondorf to.
Hopefully one that some of the others had decided to get the essentials of cheese and sauce for, Kamek thought, as it turned out they only had pork, fruit, and sweets at the moment.
