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8 yrs ago
dissertation done. can actually post again. yay.
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In World of Light → 2 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay

The Koopa Troop

wordcount: 3,675 (+4)
Bowser: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (258/120)
Bowser Jr: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (143/120)
Kamek: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (135/120)
Rika: Level 8 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (69/80)
Location: The Under - Home of Tears


The troop took off once more after the little planning session, intending to look into the broken market they’d spotted from on high and, rather specifically, a surprisingly intact burger joint Bowser had spotted from on high.

Unfortunately, while the trip down had been free of actively aggressive foes, the corrupted city was full of lurking dangers. With their wyvern mounts, however, the troop safely avoided most of them, only to end up drawing the ire of several dark magic corrupted lampyre which buzzed up from an alleyway filled with the black sludge that had warped their bodies.

Their first warning of the ambush was a glow from below as each of the Jr sized coromon’s 4 wings illuminated for a moment, all of them before fired off 4 spear like bolts of electrical energy, one from each wing, up at the troop. Rika swerved her steed to the side to avoid most of these, but the enlarged wyvern carrying Bowser and Kamek lacked the maneuverability to do so, and so several bolts hammered home, punching holes in the greater wyvern’s wings.

As it began to lose altitude as a result, the lampyre ascended, already charging another round of shots.

”Oh no you don’t!” Rika shouted at them as she got in the game, wheeling her wyvern around and charging their attackers head on, spear in hand. The corrupted monsters fired again, but with her eyes on them their projectiles flew slower, giving her a chance to avoid them.

Even still, lighting was fast, and she had to endure shocks on her energy shielding, gauntleted arm, and steed’s own body before she could strike home, lancing one of the bugs with her spear and punching a thin hole in its chest before flicking it away to the side before it could slow her momentum. As she swept past them Jr whipped his paintbrush towards the skewered one, splattering it with burning ink that set it ablaze.

They flew on, wheeling around again to do another pass, but in that time the bugs got a chance to focus on Bower and Kamek, and they were not doing too well. The king had urged his advisor to bring them closer to join in the fight, but the lumbering wyvern was nowhere near as swift as the steed the kids were using, allowing the lampyre to easily dodge out the way of Bowser’s attempt to flame-breathe them.

The two healthy ones buzzed underneath, and began cutting at the defenseless underbelly of the construct with their small but sharp claws, while the heavy wounded third sought revenge on those that had harmed it.

Quad volts lashed out at them as they came charging in again, only for the pair to arc to one side before they got close, swooping around the lampyre while jr summoned a swarm of Flukefey strikers to dive down at it, finishing off the first of their foes as they flew towards the rest.

They didn’t get there in time to stop the larger wyvern’s end however. The accumulated damage to Bowser and Kamek’s steed became too much, and it began to come apart at the seams, careening downwards and smashing into one of the buildings below.

”Papa!” the two kids cried out in alarm, Rika immediately altering course and swooping down to the crash sight rather than stay on the offensive. They paid for that, both them and their own steed being struck by quad volt shots as they flew, forcing them to make a landing as well, lest they crash down too.

The pair rushed into the ruined attic that their elders had smashed through the roof of, and found a badly electrocuted Bowser rubbing his concussed head with one hand while holding a mostly unharmed Kamek safely in another.

Jr rushed to heal his papa, leaving Kamek and Rika to face the two lampryes as they came buzzing in through the hole in the roof. They did not come alone, and were instead accompanied by a distracting swarm of electrical motes that buzzed like far to brightly blinking fireflies. Kamek shot a magical blast through them to little avail, while Rika’s grizzco blaster cleared the air far more effectively.

Still, the swarm distraction had done its job, allowing the bugs to blast them with impunity, adding further harm to Rika and badly injuring the rather frail Kamek, forcing him to retreat. Facing the two bugs alone, Rika pulled out all the stops to take them down. She grappled one of them and pulled it close, using her knight and cloyster strikers to block incoming shots, before driving her chainsaw bayonet into the grappled one’s face.

The poison card attached to the weapon made sure that even though it got away alive, its days were numbered, and not even because of the toxins running through its veins, for its poisoning had empowered the shipgirl thanks to one of the items she had smelted. She lunged forwards bringing her spear down with a chop and cleaving into it with the helbard like spines, before charging the other one.

As she sprinted the little pot at her waist summoned a wisp, one which swooped out and collided with the poisoned lampyre, finishing it off. The other one attempted to back away, but the ship girl used her maneuvering thrusters to gain an extra burst of speed that let her cross the distance and ram the tip of her spear into it. Then she teleported the spear so it was facing the other way around, and fired both rear mounted cannon barrels into it at point blank.

Despite this serious damage, the dark magic infused bug was only badly hurt instead of dead, and so the ship girl proceeded to hammer it with a pair of shots from her grizzco blaster, which finally finished the deal.

”urgh. Those things were nasty. Good work Rika” Bowser praised his daughter as he approached, before giving her a bit of support as the adrenaline left her and the pain from repeated electrical shocks set in.

”I dunno, I think something you fused with doesn’t like lighting, you were way more hurt than I would have thought given how much you were hit”

”Well, crash landing didn’t exactly help either.” Kamek noted, before suggesting ”I recommend we make the rest of the trip on foot, so that we are all combat ready instead of just half of us” to which there were no objections.

This proved to be a fruitful plan as, other than having a brief run in with the claw-like hands in the corruption filled alleyway when collecting the lampyre spirits, the rest of their short trip to DineMite was a relative breeze.



”Sire, I know it's a bit late to bring this up, I’m not quite so sure this is the best use of our time. We already have plenty of pizza after all” Kamek felt he had to point out as they approached the eatery, one sporting a large burger shaped sign on its roof, which was what had drawn the king’s attention in the first place.

”I mean yeah, sure, but a burger lunch sounds real nice to mix things up after pizza breakfast” Bowser retorted, while jr added ”besides, you're the one who’s always telling me to get some variety into my diet Kamek” only half jokingly.

”That is if there are any to be found” the mage muttered in response as Rika stepped forwards and pushed the door to the building open with the tip of her spear.

As soon as she did a hopper came, well hopping out of the door and lunged towards her with its wickedly sharp proboscis, eager to fill its empty belly with her vital fluids.



The ship girl was prepared, however, and lashed out with her rigging’s hull blades, slashing down with one of the cleaver like weapons and smashing the bug into the ground. Then she took a step back, giving Kamek and jr both the clearance they needed to blast it with fireballs, the heat from which caused it to explode into a steaming shower of fluids.

”Ewwww. That’s gross” the ship girl complained as she wiped some of the goop off her armor, before adding ”urgh, and there’s probably more of those in there”

”The place is likely infested, yes.” Kamek agreed, before asking his king ”Do you still want to take a look, sire?”

”If there’s stuff living in there, then there’s gotta be stuff to eat, right?” the king suggested, before authoritatively commanding ”Troop, time for some exterminating! On my mark, we bust this joint and sweep it clean!”

His kids weren't exactly convinced one way or the other, but they dutifully formed up behind their one man battering ram of a father, and prepared to breach the building with him. After sighing, the mage did the same.

”Three. two. one. Charge!” the king roared, before shoving open the burger joint’s door much more recklessly than Rika had, and then rushing inside with the others hot on his heels.

As Kamek and Rika had expected, the place was indeed crawling with hoppers. Or rather jumping with them. A dozen or so of the half a jr sized bugs snapped their red eyes towards the intruders, and then started bouncing across the benches, chairs, and tables of the fast food joint’s main room towards them.

”Careful not to bring the building down on top of us. Just because it's still up doesn't mean it's not close to collapse” Kamek warned, as the other three spread out to take on the bugs.

Rika immediately nailed one with a burst of machine gun fire and a second with a grizzco blaster shot of explosive goop, before switching to her spear, twirling it around one gauntlet defensively to bat away a third and fourth before they could get close and bite her.

While she held the right of the entrance, Jr held the left, the prince opening up by using ”stone” to rip out a chunk of the floor and launch it at an incoming hopper, only for that rock to be transformed into a shower of flukes as soon as it started to be launched by the charm he had acquired. The shotgun blast of bugs hammered the hopper to the ground, and then promptly exploded around it, finishing it off. Then he smacked one down with his paint brush, coating it in shocking goop in the process, stunning it long enough for Mimi, who was riding her trainer’s shoulder, to nail it with an electroball’s worth of additional shock damage.

Bowser, standing holding the center of the store, ended up being the one who had the most amount of trouble. Unable to simply roast the incoming bugs for fear of burning down the building, he instead found himself whiffing punches and demolishing furniture while the annoying hoppers bounced around and tried to sink their blood sucking snouts in him,

Fortunately, the king had thick scales, so they achieved little, but it would have only been a matter of time before they slipped past him, had his shell not unfurled and revealed nimbler limbs. Tentacruel tentacles and Land Dreugh limbs all stretched out and began stabbing at or constricting bugs.

Finally, Kamek floated above them all, out of reach of the jumpers, from which he provided fire support, using magical blasts from his wand and summoned magic fist strikes to pick off or soften up several of the hoppers before they even got close to his wards.

In short order, the bugs were dealt with, and barring some goop splatters and destroyed furniture, the building was no worse for wear. Well. except for a hole in the floor Bowser had smashed open when trying to use his kinetic strike module on one of the bugs.

”Before you say something, look I found a thing” Bowser said, pointing a finger down into a small basement the hole had revealed, one containing a cargo container of some kind.

”Has to be some kind of meat locker” he insisted, before gloating ”and you said this wasn’t a good idea” right as the ground started shaking.

A wave of confusion and concern swept through the group, as they quickly pivoted around to the source of the shaking, which was coming in behind them. First the ground shook, then there was the smashing of stalls, and then, moments later a greater hopper came smashing through the ceiling of the restaurant.

”Oh for badness sake! I ask one thing!” Kamek grouched as he dodged falling splinters.

The others were a bit less concerned about the state of the building (jr and bowser just toughed it out, letting it strike their thick shells and skulls, while Rika slowed anything falling towards her just by looking at it, letting her sidestep it with ease) and more about the massive bug. The really massive bug. It stood at twice Bowser’s height, and it was mad.

Hopping mad

”I think we killed its babies” Jr shouted as he leapt to the side as the giant blood drinker launched itself towards him with a great leap, smashing through more of the ceiling in the process and adding a shrapnel shower to its full body attack.

”And now it’s next!” the king roared as he charged forwards and tried to land a punch on the monster, only for it to leap into the air again to avoid him and chase after his spawn for some eye for an eye retribution.

Said chase and its erratic bouncing movements made it entirely unsafe to shoot at, Rika found, as she tried to line up a shot, only for Jr to repeatedly end up in her crosshairs. That or the roof above him, which she’d rather not blow out and rain down on her new brother.

Rather than risk blasting him then, she flicked out her grappling hook, and on the second thwip of the line, caught her target ”Alright how about thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis” which had unfortunate consequences, as she was bounced up and down while being reeled in.

Add to this Bowser also chasing after the bug on foot through the rain of rubble it left behind, and the whole thing made for quite the ridiculous scene, that would have been funny had a child’s life not been on the line. Kamek certainly wasn't laughing as he watched this, instead shaking his head once and then started chanting

”this reached pest is quite a handful
Best we bring it to a standstill
But how to do that, I hear you ask
I tell you now I am perfect for that task
With the knowledge that makes me oh so wise
I’ll cut this problem down to size!”

Before unleashing a blast of magic that flew towards the titanic bug- and then missed the deceptively hard to hit bug, striking a support pillar of the building and shrinking it down to a quarter size- and promptly bringing the rest of the building that hadn’t already fallen down on top of them as a result.

Kamek surrounded himself in a panicked sphere of protection as timber rained down, burying everyone and everything in a layer of debris, and kicking up a cloud of sawdust.

As it cleared, Bowser and his son popped out of their shells and clawed their way out of the debris and into the cave light, finding Kamek still floating in the air, surrounded in a shimmering shield that had deflected most of the debris shower.

Rika had not fared so well, and was out cold, and, worse, still attached to their foe by her grappling hook. Said foe had lost track of them in the cloud of dust, and simply kept bouncing off in one direction, but now it pivoted and went after the first target it saw. This turned out to be Rika, resulting in the jumper chasing its own tail for a few moments before the grip of the ship girl’s grapple was finally shaken off, and she was tossed into a pile of fallen timbers.

Fortunately, the rest of the troop had, mostly, not just been idly watching the absurd sight, and were ready to leap in. Jr had found his paintbrush, and now raised it above his head and cried out ”Benediction” instantly restoring Rika to full health with the long cooldown spell, while Kamek sent toadies in to scoop her up and carry her into the air so that she would not be crushed while she was regaining consciousness.

”Building’s already down! Now let’s blast it!” Bowser roared once the ship girl was out of the way, before deploying his shoulder cannons and unleashing several shots on the hopper. Mimi, who had simply ignored the raining shrapnel via her ghostly intangibility, joined in with an electroball.

The giant hopper suffered from these strikes, but it was big and tough, and it would take more than that to end it. Fully aware, Bowser charged on in to draw its attention, shouting for Kamek to ”Shield me!” before ducking into his shell and sliding the rest of the intervening distance.

The hopper came crashing down, but rather than pulping its prey into a drinkable juice like it usually did, instead it landed on a target protected by a shimmering barrier, that greatly reduced the damage the impact did to Bowser, while doing nothing to reduce the damage Bowser’s spikes did to the Hopper’s underbelly.

Unperturbed, it lept straight up, indeding to strike down with a far more precise jab of its proboscis, only for the spikes that had jabbed it to suddenly shoot up into the air after it. The king’s spike missiles stabbed into the giant hopper again, perforating its gut further, before violently exploding.

They did so right at the top of the arch of its leap, causing it to hang there in the air for just a moment longer, and leaving it as still as it had ever been. Perfect for a bit of clay shooting.

Electroballs, homing fire balls, magic blasts, super scope and sniper shots from strikers, and even some gunfire from the airborne and awake Rika all blasted fourth, hammering into the already wounded hopper, and ensuring that the only part of it that ended up touching the ground was ash and its spirit.

”Yeah! We did it” Jr cheered, joined by a ”Woo!” from on high by Rika and a ”Good job troop” from Bowser as he picked himself up and dusted himself off. Not that it improved the appearance of his, rather wrecked at this point, suit. Said outfit would most certainly do with 3 washes and a fair number of patch jobs.

”mmm, yes, and look what we have to show for it” Kamek added sardonically, referring to the broken remains of the restaurant they had entered perhaps a minute or two ago.

”So while I was up there, I saw some word blinky cylinders sticking out of some of the rubble, maybe those are good?” Rika informed them as she flooded down to the ground, to which Jr added ”Plus there’s all the spirits and that box thing in the basement”

”True. Though we will have to dig those up” Kamek agreed, before pausing for a moment, sighing, and getting ahead of a request he knew was coming ”Or yes alright before you ask, that I’ll have some minions dig up”

A little while, and a whole lot of drybone digging, later and the spirits of the hoopers had been recovered, as had the two cylinders and the way into the basement. Sadly it did not contain any sort of way down to the cavern layers below, but it did contain some food surprisingly enough: a few mite burgers and packs of spicy fries ready to be reheated.

While Bowser started a small, controlled, fire to warm up the food (using some dug up kitchen equipment), jr had a look at the container crate, and, after a bit of work, worked out that he had to attached the two blinking cylinder, and then after a bit of tinkering using his toolkit the machine dramatically popped open, launching stream of colorful minerals up into the air.

”Woooow”

Which promptly hailed down on the boy, giving him yet more comical head trauma

”Ow ow ow ow! Who thought it was a good idea to build this thing this way!?”

That certainly hadn’t been what they had been expecting to pop out of a restaurant’s storage unit, and neither was the hologram of some rather classy looking outfits that was displayed afterwards.

”What a strange assortment of things to have down here” Kamek commented as he eyed the costume, that was, he assumed (correctly), a bit like the alt costume things they’d seen every now and then, one of which Rika was currently wearing.

”Perhaps it would suit you, sire, considering the, ah, less than perfect condition of your current attire?”

The king looked over with a ”Huh?” having been more focused on cooking than his son’s tinkering, but now approached and gave the outfit a look up and down”Oh. Hmmmmm.” before shrugging and saying ”Sure” and reaching out and claiming the alternate costume.

In a flash it displed his current getup, and replaced it with the Bnabra Set, the king’s body being covered with the tasteful lilac getup, the outfit automatically modifying itself for his large and inhuman body plan, leaving his shell exposed and fabric free, while modifying most of the masculine outfit’s parts to fit him, other than hanging the multi tipped coat tails from the feminine set around his waist.

”Huh not bad” he commented as he examined himself, before suddenly spinning with a call of ”oh no the food”

Fortunately, the distraction had not been long enough to do more than slightly singe some of the fries, and so the troop got to tuck into some elevenses while keeping an ear out for any calls reporting the discovery of a way down to the bee kingdom below.
In World of Light → 2 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay

wordcount: 1,632(+6) (+9) (+4)
Midna: level 9 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (25/110)
Location: The City of Glass
Warp Charges: 1


Midna found it rather sad, seeing Tora go off on his own, even if she got it. She’d seen him struggle without his partner, and even with the added gear she had lent him (or as it turned out, gifted him, because she found it much too awkward to ask for it back during their farewells), it was clear he couldn’t keep up with the rest of the seekers without her. So it made sense for him to go with the more technical people, and focus on putting his tinkering and engineering skills to use instead.

Still he was now the only one who she’d shared her entire journey with, and indeed, was apparently one of the original group who had started the whole chain of freedom from Galeem off. So even though it made sense, and was on good terms, it still felt like a bigger loss than any of the other departures.

She wished him luck and made sure to insist he not remain a stranger as she gave him a farewell that reflected little of her internal thoughts on the matter. After what he’d been through, Midna thought he deserved a happy farewell.

Yet as one person left the party, another joined. Or two rather. Clara and her invisible friend, Mr. Svarog. The princess was not sure if their dynamic of small person without much combat capability on their own, and powerful robot being who pulled all the weight being rather similar to Tora and Poppy’s was a fel omen or not, but it did leave her with mixed feelings on the matter.

An incident on their trip to regroup with the rest of the party tipped the scales on that feeling.

Having been focused on first saying goodbye, then on retrieving her various bits of ditched arsenal, and finally on the report coming in from their angelic mission control that they needed to get out of dodge, fast, the princess ended up not focusing on a rather important detail.

Namely that she was still carrying around the unconscious body of Zanzo, who, despite being armless, was nowhere close to harmless.

She was given a rather pointed reminder when they were riding down in the L.I.F.T.

As it turned out, bashing someone over the head was not a reliable way to maintain unconsciousness, and so the man proceeded to wake up part way through the ride.

She had been prepared for this, to the extent that she was still armed anyway, and immediately swung the sword she had been holding at his head to knock him out again as soon as she saw him moving, only for the man to tilt his head to the side at just the wrong moment, causing her to smack down on his oversized green mohawk, which cushioned the blow enough for him to remain conscious.

Worse, it stirred him out of the grogginess of waking he had been in, and kicked him right into fight or flight mode. Bereft of legs to run with, all he had was fight.

Bars at the side of the princess’ vision tracking his strikers all emptied at once, as he brought out each and every one of his minions around him. The princess cursed, hurling her own summons at them while bringing back her sword for another strike with its flat, only to be beaten by the punch. Literally.

Svarog flashed into visibility, having been watching the man closely, lest he become a threat to little Clara, and delivered a massive right hook straight into Zanzo’s face the moment he did, which was accompanied by a sickening crunch as the man’s battered cranium gave way. At the same time spears, claws and jaws all ripped into the strikers, compounding a flurry of damage that ended the man’s life. And left him as ash on the floor.

”That. You know what. Maybe for the best” Midna admitted, after apologizing for letting it happen in the first place, and thanking the robot for preventing anyone from getting hurt. Afterwards it turned out that she was, ultimately, the only one who had really cared that he had been killed, and she’d only really kept him alive in the first place because the option had been there. With his cooldowns all gone, the man had been defenseless, and as much as cutting him down to size had been cathartic, killing him had not felt right in the moment.

Still, even as she had felt bad about it, the 6 resulting spirits gave her the dopamine hit that booted her out of any risk of spiraling into negative emotions, and instead let her mind fixate on what she was going to do with them for the rest of the ride.

She was still on it when she arrived at the rendezvous point, whereupon she caught sight of Sandalphon, now free from Galeem’s influence. Upon seeing that she made an incorrect assumption that the woman had almost died doing a medical rescue like the one she had done for her team, which put her in the mind to thank her for that bit of assistance with more than just words.

Specifically she approached, and offered both her appreciation ”Thanks for the healing and striker timing thing, those were both real life savers'' and also an offer of some of her pile of spirits to kickstart her journey on the path to the empowerment, loss of self and clashing aesthetics that spirits represented ”Want any of these? Zanzo just would not stay down, and, well, Mr Svarog was having none of it”

That was how she ended up parting ways with Vigilant, the sniper exo-suit, and while she did sigh about how she’d never learn how to use guns at this rate, she was mostly being facetious in said frustration. Besides, she still had 5 whole spirits left afterwards, and it was quite the haul of powerful ones too.

Having already had time to think about what she was going to do with them before making the offer, she swiftly made use of them before everything could go pear shaped. She went ahead and turned two into strikers (roadblock and skywave) seeing as she had just seen how effective those had been, while Zazo was crushed (who wanted that annoying jerk in their brain or as a summon? Not her that was for sure) producing a pair of impressive looking but rather unwieldy in practice cleavers (that mainly made her miss the two sleek knives she’d had before), which left the other two for carrying on down the path of fusion.

She first took the sword wielding Mursame into herself as a power, which caused her to grow larger once more, the combination of Urbosa, flygon and this new component overruling the smallness of her imp form and the shortness of Orendi, and take on several mechanical attributes. Most notably her skin became somewhat synthetic though it retained all heat and sensation despite this. What she did lose, however, was rather alarming, said alarm occurring when the floating princess dropped out of the air and to the ground, and ended up putting weight on her wounded foot.

”Ow ow ow ow, goddesses that hurt” she complained as she summoned her mecha wolf bear to lean on for support, while using her new Skywave striker to heal the injury up somewhat.

”So fusion can just take stuff? How does that even make sense, a bunch of the other things couldn’t float so why that robot? Am I too heavy or something … huh. I mean I guess I am more me size now” she said to herself, before admiring her own height. You could hardly tell she had been cursed any more, which she found delightful.

”Going to have to un-modify the warthog now though, but that’ll have to wait. Next up, this big thing” she said out loud, before slapping that final spirit into the steed she was using as support. The resulting fusion with the giant mech that was Blodia promptly ruined her ability to do this, causing her to stumble as it shot up to a whopping 30 feet tall.

”Goddesses, I knew it was big but wow” she marveled at her new giant even more robotic bear wolfos dragon thing … and then promptly grew concerned when it showed no sign of individual motion.

”Hello? Move. Walk?” she shouted at it, while also rapping her knuckles against the machine’s leg to no avail.

”Well, that’s disturbing” she observed, fusion having seemingly taken the beast’s mind, while also noting other than pure size and more armor from the physical transformation, it was unclear what had even been gained ability wise.

That went the same for her own fusion as well, and though there were benefits to be found, the experimentation to find them would have to wait.



The reason it had to wait was because two things came along to hurry them in short succession. The first was the arrival of Raz and Luka, the pair bringin news on how they had worked out where Peach had been taken. That and the rather concerning fate of a few Psych-OFS operatives who had gone looking for her, who presumably has not been in on either the resistance or the conspiracy’s side of what had happened to the pink princess.

”Poor people. I wonder if it was the regime or the rebels who took their memories. Either way, we’d best be careful we don’t fall for whatever trap they wandered into” she said as she implicitly volunteered. She’d been one of the ones insisting they save her after all, she wasn’t going to back out of that commitment at this hour.

The second issue introduced itself via slamming through one of the walls.

”and that is our cue to leave” she declared, briefly attempting to float closer to the group of psychics, before remembering she couldn’t do that any more and striding over instead, dragon claws biting into the ground to give her the grip to avoid sliding while doing so.

”Do we need to hold hands or something of the like?” the princess asked as she offered one of the four she now had to Sakura ”or is proximity good enough?”
In World of Light → 2 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
Development Hell

Location: Midgar Sector 06, the City of Glass
Midna’s @DracoLunaris, Macaron, Clara
Word Count: 5970 (+6)


”Ok. So. What in the goddesses’ names is a meme,” Midna found herself asking, once again having not understood half of what was being said, and feeling herself getting a migraine as a result.

What she did get, or decided that she got, was this: Zanzo was a negligent leader who was all baseless ego, while Monsoon was some low life dressing up might makes right in pretty language, and she had absolutely no issue in beating the smug attitudes out of them.

”Best start praying boys, because the strongest are right here, and we’re here to protect the weak from the likes of you,” she announced, before pointing a massive orange glowing finger in the two’s general direction.

As she did this, she popped open a portal and summoned both the volcano fragment and the sun on a stick, which should have left her unwieldy using a two handed weapon in one hand and having no grip on her steed’s fur for support, if she hadn’t thought of a new bit of spellcraft on the ride over.



Lines of power like a mix between runes and circuitry flowed down the back of the princess’s neck and then over her burn scarred chest, before out from beneath each a small replica of her head mounted shadowhand formed. One of these grabbed the scruff of her steed’s neck for support, while the other gripped the base of the volcano fragment’s shaft, letting her properly wield the fire axe at the same time as the fire loving mace it synergised so well with.

Geralt grimaced as Zanzo summoned a quartet of Strikers, because of course these people not only had Strikers, they had a small army of what looked to be genuinely dangerous ones. After having his ears assaulted by the inane driveling of two madmen who thought themselves clever, Geralt drew his steel sword and sighed as his hand made the Sign of Quen in the air. “So, we’re killing them both?” He asked bluntly, his voice flat. “I think I’m okay with that.”

“Either way, baddypons get proper beating!” Tora added.

The attitude on display from Geralt didn’t sit quite right with Macaron. “W-well, we don’t have to kill them…”

“Hah! As if simpletons like you could ever step to a natural genius like me!” As Monsoon ran toward him, he pulled his paired cleavers from their scabbards on his back. The two dual bladers met in a flurry of steel and sparks, but from the outside it became painfully clear that one wildly outclassed the other. Zanzo looked like total amateur, his impractical weapons wielded with the finesse of clubs, and in quick succession he got repeatedly blocked, parried, sliced, stabbed, and finally -after Monsoon caught his cleaver in a sai’s hook-shaped crossguard- disarmed. “What!?” The next instant Monsoon whipped around to sweep Zanzo’s legs out from under him, then descended on him with both blades downward for a dual stab.

Instead the red-armored Murasame appeared to absorb the attack in a guard stance, then pivot and launch upward with Vajra Counter. Though the parry left Monsoon off balance for a split second, he’d been expecting something like this and managed to defend with his sais in time, but the force of the upward slash still carried both him and Murasame into the air. At the height of its arc the follow-through threw Monsoon back, at which point the sniper Vigilant -having manifested behind Zanzo to take aim- nailed him in the chest with a high-speed shot. Monsoon fell, as Zanzo got to his feet, the magician Skywave appeared behind him to drop an AoE heal on him. “That’s more like it!” he said, getting to his feet. “Now where were we?”

Gritting his teeth, Macaron ran toward him and leaped into the air to come down with a might slam. “Paying for your crimes!” Before he could bring the hammer down, an enormous blue rectangle got in his way, and with a shove the massive Roadblock pushed him off. Strong Macaron might be, but against energy shields like this his fists wouldn’t be of much use.

”and learning how a summoner really fights” Midna boasted as she dashed past Macaron, raising her mace and then thrusting it forward commandingly, her darknut at Roadblock, the enlarged giant of a knight sliding across the ground on one knee and clashing shield to shield with the bulky exosuit.

As bulwark met bulwark the princess had her steed leap up onto the lowered flat of her knight titanic blade, and use it as springboard to leap over Zanzo’s first line of defense. Doing so led her to realize that Zanzo had retreated the moment his shield went up, running backward to give himself some distance. Roadblock ran out of time and vanished, but Midna knew it was only a matter of time before it -and the other Strikers- reappeared.

”Is that how it’s going to be? Fine then, if it's a hunt you want, it's a hunt you’ll get!”

Though she led the charge to chase him down, Macaron followed right behind, and to her surprise she spotted Clara in tow. It would be a touch late to balk at fighting alongside children now, but she hadn’t exactly taken the girl for a fighter, so she made sure to check that ”You can handle yourself in a fight, right Cara? If not, you’d be better hanging back”

“I’m not afraid of them!” the girl insisted. “A-and it’s, um, Clara.”

”Ah. Sorry for doubting you Clara” the princess replied, sounding faintly embarrassed by her misspeaking.

As the three of them closed in, Zanzo’s first Striker finished its cooldown and reappeared. The hooded markswoman Vigilant hit the scene with a flourish of her snow-white cape, but rather then open fire with her rifle she unveiled her Frost Lock, hurling an icy cluster right into the middle of the group. It burst in a shower of diamond dust and froze Zanzo’s earthbound assailants to the floor. “Hngh!” Macaron grunted. His brute strength allowed him to break free, but the same couldn’t be said for Clara, her bare feet entombed in ice. “Clara!”

Clara squeezed her teary eyes shut and doubled over, crying out, “Help me, Mr. Svarog!”

The air around and over her shimmered, then burst, sending up clouds of dust as a massive, dark figure uncloaked. At least ten feet tall, clad in dark blue armor and black clothes, the hulking robot crouched around her protectively, but the tranquil fury of his vividly red eye shone on Zanzo. The robot laid one hand on Clara’s head, gently hugging her close, and from the palm of the other shot an orange laser that struck Vigilant -and therefore Zanzo- full in the chest. “Agh!” he gasped, watching Svarog vanish almost as suddenly as his Striker. “You…!”

“Nice shot!” As the ice behind him timed out, Macaron ran toward his target. “Let’s get him, but watch out for a counter!”

”Lets” Minda agreed at his side, having launched herself off of her steed when it got frozen solid inorder to keep moving. With the beast now free, she portaled it in and out of her home realm to bring it back to her, and then surged ahead.

”I’m tired of your running! Initiates! Roots!” she shouted, summoning some of her own strikers. Masked and hooded in purple robes, the cultists rose up and then bowed down, sending psychic energy surging through the ground till it erupted around the scientist in the form of glowing vines that reached out to try and restrain both his mind and his body.

”Now, what will you do?” the princess murmured as her obscured eyes darted to and fro, seeking his counter, so she could make one in kind.

Right away Zanzi recognized both Midna's use of Strikers and what she intended to do with them. As the initiates' psychic roots sprouted around him, he summoned Murasame again, but not for defense. Istead the crimson exosuit dashed forward and raked across the Initiates with a powerful Crescent Moon slash. The sweeping strike instantly redirected their aggro away from Zanzo and toward Murasame itself, though all the Strikers would time out before anything else came of it. Well, except for Midna’s shadow hand darting forward grabbing the sword wielding striker in-order to crush it within her grasp, the princess having anticipated a counter striker summoning, but not quite the speed that this particular one could move at.

That left the playing field even, and both striker summoners wounded by recoil, but Zanzo had more cards up his sleeve, and he needed to use them fast as Macaron charged in.

With Roadblock still on cooldown, Zanzo pulled out Skywave to drop a Graviton Cluster on his incoming foes. Macaron quickly found his approach stymied yet again, but as he pitted his strength against the gravity well an idea came to mind. "Two can play at that game!" He activated a special feature in his mechanical arms and hurled down a thrumming purple orb that burst into a Gravity Well, trapping Zanzo in a vacuum, too.

"I want to help!" A moment after Clara said this, Svarog uncloaked directly in front of Zanzo and slammed him with a downward hook punch before vanishing again.

”Nice hit Clara” Midna praised the girl, from where she had also been sucked into the vortex. From within its confines, she raised up her shadowhand above her head and started inflating a sphere of magic, readying it to be unleashed as soon as the gravity well ended with a cry of ”Now eat this: twilight volleybomb!”

Zanzo watched her bomb build up with wide eyes, his hands clamped to his cheeks as Macaron’s Gravity Well jerked him around. “Gyah! Where in the world is is–aha!” As the glimmering green-black sphere of runic darkness careened his way, he pulled out Roadblock in the nick of time to absorb the blast. Both vortexes came to an end a moment later, but the giant yellow exosuit stayed out, its giant shield deployed. While Macaron initially assumed it could only exist for a moment as it performed a single technique, its continued presence made him realize that this must be more like a guard stance, allowing Roadblock to defend for longer as long as it didn’t take another action. Of course, Zanzo seemed happy to wait behind it, barely clinging to the pretense of wielding his cleavers as he waited for his all-important strikers to return.

“Think fast!” The big man scooped Midna up (”Wait what?”) and hurled her like a baseball, up and over Roadblock’s shield to put the Twilight Princess behind the exosuit’s summoner. If they could pincer this guy, they could stop his cooldown-conscious keepaway.

The princess stopped crying out in surprise about halfway through the toss when her brain caught up with what was going on and she used her levitation to stabilize the head over heels spinning. Focusing on that meant she wasn't able to also rotate herself the 180 degrees needed to face her foe however, as the princess landed facing away from him.

”Spears! Behind me!” she shouted as she started her pivot, summoning 2 of her 4 chilfos facing the correct direction. The frozen undead rose up bearing their icicle spears held first in a princess guarding X cross as Zanzo hurled his cleavers at Midna, before being brought down to stabbing angle as they closed in on their foe.

Though the Seekers’ strategy seemed sound, the now-unarmed Zanzo curled his fingers with one hand in front of his face and the other by his side in a devious pose. As his adversaries converged on him from both sides, he leaped into the air, then called upon Vigilant. Once he grabbed hold of his own Striker, the sniper fired her rifle straight downward, not to hit anyone but to launch both her and Zanzo even higher into the air. At the apex of his leap she vanished, but before he could begin to fall he replaced Vigilant with Skywave. The witchlike exosuit caught Zanzo in a bridal carry and began to slow-fall, allowing Zanzo not just to stall for time out of Macaron’s reach, but seize Skywave’s aether lance to rain down explosive orbs.

“What the…that’s gotta be cheating!” Macaron exclaimed in dismay as he shielded himself with his arms, already very tired of Zanzo’s strategic guile.

”Oh no you don’t!” Minda shouted after him before summoning a scaled up darknut. It raised its shield up to protect itself from the rain of orbs, while crouching down and settling its sword over its shoulder, such that the tip touched the ground behind it. Then in a very Macaron inspired move, the princess stepped onto the end of the sword, and was promptly catapulted into the air after the insufferable scientist by her undead knight with a cry of ”Now get back here!”

Faced with his bombardment, the princess used her levitation and rudder-like flygon tail to adjust her flight path, narrowly weaving around explosive doom. Given the improvised and unpracticed nature of this, however, she wasn’t exactly confident in performing some kind of arial fly by, and instead opted for the much simpler strategy: flying right at Zanzo to headbutt in the gut.

The sight of Midna hurtling toward him put a dampener on the mad scientist’s leisurely descent with Skywave. “Oh my- guh!” Given how his Striker was holding him his attacker struck him more in the side than anything. Still, the force of the blow not only roughed up his ribcage, but also knocked him out of Skywave’s arms, and the exosuit promptly disappeared. “WAAAAAAGH!” Zanzo wailed, flailing wildly as he fell until Murasame appeared. The crimson swordsman grabbed Zanzo around the middle with its sword arm and fired its Strafe Hook into the ceiling, allowing it to lower both to the ground safely. The moment the taskmaster touched down he struck a daring pose with a grin of utter confidence, as if he hadn’t been screaming like a little girl seconds ago.

Of course, Macaron wasn’t about to let him stay on his high horse. He came at Zanzo with massive swings, forcing him to dodge and duck like crazy. After the second near miss Roadblock manifested to cover Zanzo as he retreated, and though he walloped Macaron with a mighty haymaker, the engineer did not lose his head. He shook out the stars and put up his guard to absorb the next two blows. Then Macaron struck back with a full-power slug that actually sent Roadblock flying backward. It vanished just in time to not hit Zanzo, though the look of sheer terror on his face as he covered his head made it clear that wasn’t intentional. “H-hah hah, hah hah hah!” he laughed, semi-convincingly. “Try all you want, you’ll never…” He bent backward until his chest faced the ceiling, his hands held up like claws, to reveal Vigilant taking aim behind him. “REEEEEEEEEACH!”

Like an experienced boxer Macaron dipped out of the way, and Vigilant’s charge shot screamed past him to hit Clara instead. Or it would have, had Svarog not uncloaked in front of her to take the shot with his own shoulder. Then his red eye blazed with pure rage at the attempt on Clara’s life, and he raised his palm. ”This is the plan.” A purple laser blasted forth, and when it hit Zanzo it arced between him and Vigilant, dealing one hundred and fifty percent damage total.

As the humans (and invisible machine) had duked it out down below, Minda had buzzed overhead, propelled by the wings of her vibrava who was holding onto her back, only to release and drop her like a bomb as it passed overhead.

The princess plummeted down, but with more control and planning this time, resulting in her shooting out her shadow hand as she approached her target, slapping him flat onto the ground. ”Finally got you!” The nature of her magic prevented her from concussing herself with Newton’s third law, but the resulting angle still prevented her from catching Zanzo before he slipped out of her attempt to grab him with her shadow hand.

”What are you made of, soap?”

Unfortunately for the scientist, he was still in close range, and low on summons, while the latter the princess most certainly was not. Volcanic fissures cracked on the ground infront of him as he tried to get space, before bursting up with thermal energy as her vibrava swooped down and unleashed its earth power, sending him stumbling back onto the tips of two chilfoss spears.

The undead drove fixed him in place for a second, before smoothly stepping back right in time for the princess’ mechabear to come charging in, delivering a headbutt that knocked Zanzo away. Macaron joined Midna shoulder-to-shoulder as the two gave chase to keep the pain train rolling. When their dazed target hit the ground, they closed in, and as he sat halfway up Zanzo realized he couldn’t afford to hold back any longer.

“Come!” he yelled. “BLODIA!”

His final Striker manifested behind him, looming overhead, for it was massive. Though only its top half had appeared, it still dwarfed everyone in the room, and the shadow its body cast over the Seekers thanks to the molten core behind it brought Zanzo’s imminent beatdown to a screeching halt. Blodia was a titan of vivid red and shining steel, and the fist that it raised to bring down on its foes was as tall as Zanzo himself from pinky to thumb. Momentarily frozen in surprise, Macaron barely cleared the way in time, and Svarog uncloaked to pull Clara to safety himself. The immense punch fell with the weight of a collapsing building, destroying the alloy floor to expose part of the lava lake beneath the room. With a tremendous creaking, Blodia raised its fist, then disappeared to leave Zanzo standing alone. Though by now, everyone knew that the head of R&D never stood alone.

“You’re finally beginning to realize, aren’t you?” he taunted them. “There is but one master of machines, and I am it!”

”Good thing you aren't one, because I am sick of playing your game of cat and mouse!” Minda shouted back, as she ditched her melee weapons, and pulled out what she should have used in the first place: a gun.

Specifically the Therian Viral Rifle she’d stolen back in the subway from one of the cat snipers.

The princess floated in the air, four hands all gripping the long barreled weapon to support it as she raised the scope up a mask-covered eye, and took aim at the head scientist, before squeezing the trigger.

With an ever so soft sound the futuristic air powered rifle launched its biochemical payload at the man.

She missed. Macaron hadn’t expected the summoner-warrior to pull out a gun, but if she meant to take potshots at Zanzo she was going to need cover. Especially since that meant a shootout designed for pinpoint marksmanship. Therefore, despite the threat posed by Blodia, Macaron began to chase down Zanzo once more. He could use another Gravity Well to pull his enemy in, but the constant gyration would make it almost impossible for Midna to shoot him, and Macaron didn’t want to interfere. That meant he needed to make his way into melee range once more. Large size plus desk job meant that his calisthenics really weren’t the best, and after so much exertion already Macaron’s movement speed was suffering. That meant Vigilant showed up with time to spare and zeroed in on Midna. As the sharpshooter’s scope glinted, the Twilight Princess was faced with a split-second decision: take the shot or get the hell out of dodge.

Instead of an enemy marksman, however, the striker found itself narrowing in on a princess who seemed to have just finished angrily hurling her gun at them with her shadow hand. Vigilant’s rifle thundered, but when the muzzle flash died down, Midna had disappeared from her sights.

Meanwhile, the hurled weapon flew over both Macaron and Zanzo’s head, but the sound of it impacting with the ground never came, as instead the princess pulled herself out of the rifle’s shadow, and then caught it before it could hit the deck. She smoothly brought the rifle up again, aimed, pulled the trigger- and completely failed to shoot the scientist in the back. Though she gave him a good scare.

Instead dart whizzed past his ear and then, because no one had taught the princess gun safety, struck the larger target currently charging towards him instead. The syringe embedded itself into Macaron’s arm, and discharged its payload into his bloodstream, the biotechnological substance flooding through his veins, swiftly saturating throughout his entire body.

It left him feeling rejuvenated and re-energised.

Midna never had worked out which glowing green substance was for healing and which was for harming after all.

Of course, that gave him a scare too. “Whuh!? …Oh.” He blinked, realizing what had happened. “Thanks, miss!”

”I mean to do that!”

He swung at Zanzo, who narrowly avoided it but just about stumbled backward into Midna in the process. Realizing he was surrounded, the man threw caution to the wind and started summoning. Murasame appeared to slash at Macaron with a three hit combo, but on the final overhead swing the engineer clapped his palms together and caught the blade in his hands. Skywave manifested behind Zanzo to face Midna, immediately using Optics Jammer to fire off a shockwave and render the Twilight Princess blind. Then he rounded on Clara, who’d just arrived to help. With the effects of Promise, Not Command still active, he couldn’t see her and not try to hit her. Roadblock arrived and let loose its right hook, the gigantic fist careening toward the little girl’s terrified face.

Then it stopped dead, and Svarog uncloaked to reveal he’d caught Roadblock’s slug in his left hand. Pulling the arm closer, he overclocked his other hand and brought it up below the exosuit’s elbow joint to deliver an upward palm strike and break it. Then the purple laser blasted out of his palm and through the arm, a critical hit thanks to the Mark of Counter Roadblock gained by attacking Clara, and blew the arm straight off. A split second later the feedback reached Zanzo himself, and his right robotic arm exploded off at the elbow, punctuated by a shrill cry not of pain, but fear.

He got more feedback a moment later when an oversized wolfos (summoned by a cursing princess who was hunkered down beneath her darknut’s sheild) lunged forwards and snapped its jaws around Skywave, canine teeth digging in while it savaged it like a small bird.

With all three Strikers rendered vulnerable, Macaron had an idea. He pushed Murasame off, causing it to stumble into Zanzo, then jumped up and dropped a Gravity Well on top of the whole gang. Unable to despawn while still being hit, the Strikers and Zanzo bumped against one another until Svarog snapped his fingers. ”Analysis complete.” He unleashed Shrew Bombing, firing a bevy of micro-missiles from his back to deal a boatload of damage to the mad scientist. Only then did the Strikers disappear, their master bearing all their wounds.

Desperate for a way out, Zanzo called on Blodia. The red mech’s giant fist descended on his position, scattering everyone as it cratered the floor. Though the head of R&D had sustained a lot of punishment, it looked like things would be going back to normal until Sandalphon’s voice reached Midna.

“I’ve completed my analysis as well. I’m giving you a heads-up display of the exact status for all of Zanzo’s Assists. In his current mental state, I predict he will use them the second they come off cooldown. Good luck.” Sure enough, little blue bars with Striker icons appeared in the corner of Midna’s vision, lighting up when they filled completely. With that, the scales were tipped even further in her favor. The final round was about to begin.

”Well, those are strange” the princess said, waving a hand over where the icons looked to be as she picked herself up from where she and her knight had been blasted back too. Their appearance having come at just about the same moment as her vision returned had certainly made the experience even more bizarre, the princess briefly worrying something in her eyes had broken until it became clear what they where.

”You two …. Or three?” she wasn’t sure what the robot that kept appearing and disappearing around Clara was, be it summon, tool, or person, ”seeing these?”

Of course, the others weren’t connected to Sandalphon, and even if they were, the concept of a heads-up display would take a lot of explaining to convey to someone like Midna if she couldn’t intuit it based off what the Archangel said. Macaron glanced between her and Zanzo, who this lull in the battle expressly benefited. “What d’you mean?” he asked, cautious about a potential trap he had yet to notice. “If you’re seeing something we’re not, you’ve gotta let us know. He’s on his last legs, we’ve gotta finish this before his helpers get back!”

A moment after he said this, the progress bar marked with a reticle icon filled up and turned green, flashing with the warning text ASSIST OKAY. That very moment, Zanzo summoned Vigilant, and this time she used her Overdrive. She spun her rifle like a staff above her head, then couched it by her side with a vibrant blue flash. When she opened fire, her next three trigger pulls split the room as fully-charged railgun shots. With Promise, Not Command depleted, she expressly avoided firing at Clara, instead landing a brutal bodyshot on Macaron before she aimed the next two at Midna. And all the while, the other four progress bars floating in front of Midna’s head continued to fill.

”Oh goddesses” the princess cursed as she hurled herself out of the way of the first shot, and then scrabbled on all six like some kind of bug to try and avoid the next, only to get caught in the foot and feel like every bone in it broke at once.

”Ffffffff-” she bit down the swear word, as she instead flicked a hand and piled up a load of container crates for cover. Then she hurled her broken interdimensional axe in Zanzo’s general direction via shadow hand as a fake flanking attempt while she instead pulled out and, intentionally this time, shot Macaron with her Therian Viral Rifle.

”I can … see when his summons are about to activate” she explained, not entirely understanding how Sandalphon’s whole thing worked, and having falsely assumed that her talking to them meant she was connected somehow. ”I’ll call them out by weapon. Sword, shield, that kind of thing” she decided as she tried and failed to shoot herself with the healing rifle, and then just gave up on her foot for the rest of the fight.

Healed a little and too big to take cover, Macaron pushed toward Zanzo. “I’m all ears, then!’

Then Midna checked the order their issues were coming in while trying to formulate a plan. With Vigilant back on cooldown, next up would be Skywave in about seven seconds thanks to a shorter cooldown, followed by Murasame in eleven and Roadblock in fourteen.

”How do you feel like going for a drive?”

“A drive?” Having taken cover alongside the Twilight Princess, Clara’s eyes were wide with worry.

In response she snapped her fingers, and portaled in her the warthog, her 4x4 scout jeep complete with mounted minigun turret ”Seeing as you seem to be tired of running, let’s skip that bit and go flat out to get in his face.”

She and Clara jumped into the Warthog, although the little girl was quickly forced to make a concession. “I…can’t drive.” If there had not been holes in the floor that dropped straight to lava, Midna might have tried to give her a crash course as she was, ironically enough, the only one of them who could comfortably use the modifications made to let the imp sized princess use her vehicle (namely a booster seat in all but name and extensions to the pedals).

”Then hold on.”

As Svarog uncloaked behind the vehicle, an orange shot blazed overhead and destroyed the crates to clear the way. He then clamped his metal mitts down on its rear bumper, and gave it a mighty push. The Warthog zoomed forward, its occupants holding tight as their ride bounced along, but it lasted only for a moment; Svarog had calculated the exact strength necessary to make the vehicle stop right next to Macaron. Though initially shocked, the engineer understood what was going on and jumped aboard, plopping down behind the driver’s seat to get the Warthog the rest of the way.

Time was precious, and Zanzo made the most of it. Right when Skywave came off cooldown the airborne exosuit appeared to use her Optics Jammer on Zanzo, healing him with the shockwave. Macaron put the pedal to the metal as fast as he could, planning to ducktail the Warthog to smack Zanzo non-lethally without running him down, but according to Midna’s heads-up display, Murasame would come off cooldown right before the vehicle would make contact.

”Sword incoming!” Midna shouted in warning, before she pulled out all the stops and most of her remaining energy to ward it off. An oversized wolfos and mecha bear were summoned to run alongside the slowing vehicle as physical barriers on either side of the vehicle. At the same time she reached out and warped her shadow hand around the hood of the car as additional armor, before finally summoning her darknut to stand with one foot in each of the front seat’s legroom, shield raised prepared to block a strike from ahead or above.

Just as predicted, Murasame appeared, but not to strike. He flashed into existence already in counter stance, ready and able to take a headlong collision with the Warthog before dishing out a massive strike in return. With the vehicle slowed down and its occupants pivoting to defense themselves, however, Murasame just sat there waiting, its counter never triggered.

“Good call!” Macaron stood up in his seat. Clara threw her arms around his shoulders just as the engineer jumped, forcing Zanzo to dodge backward or be crushed. Unfortunately for him, the former head of R&D was too close for Zanzo to get away. “This one’s for me!” Macaron unleashed Love Top, shmooving forward with a big hook from either side. Midna could see Roadblock’s cooldown poised to end right after her ally’s second blow.

”Shield's incoming” she called out in warning. Too pained to have been able to move herself into the fight, she had instead directed her darknut to step down from the vehicle and approach, leaving it in prime position for her to help. ”Macaron, flank him” she shouted and then, if the big man juked to the side as she hoped, would have the undead knight swing its massive blade at the Zanzo to force him to use his block.

Her plan worked beautifully, as Macaron backed off just as Roadblock appeared, and as Zanzo used his striker to block Midna’s evil-looking summon, the engineer lent his strength. Together their might proved to be the last straw, and Roadblock’s shield shattered the exosuit stumbled then disappeared, leaving just one striker left: Blodia, incoming in two seconds.

”Giant fist! It's all he’s got left!”

When Blodia appeared, both arms raised for a gigantic double punch, the team was ready. Svarog uncloaked, and next to him dropped a huge robotic hand hard enough to dent the floor. It immediately picked itself up and floated off the floor, its fingers twitching open. On the other side, Macaron braced himself. When Blodia struck, both Macaron and Svarog caught the fists in a terrific display of strength, slowing them to a stop and then holding them in place. Blodia tried to pull its arms free, but it couldn’t move, and neither could Zanzo. As if on queue, Sandalphon’s arrival in the other half of the fight led to a huge burst of healing, shoring Midna up more than enough to deal the final blow.

”I want you to know” the princess said as she pulled out a plain longsword and grabbed it with all four hands ”That I don’t really know who you are. Or what you do. Or really why we’re taking you down” she jerked a head, causing her initiate strikers to appear and root the man down, doubly ensuring he wasn’t getting away ”But you're incredibly annoying, so that makes this personal anyway”.

She raised up the blade, and brought it down hard, cleaving into the trapped man’s remaining robotic arm as he tried to protect himself, severing it in the process. Then she did the same for one of the legs, then the other, before finally raising her weapon while standing the now entirely unable to escape man- and then proceeded to smack his head with the flat of the blade several times till she knocked him out cold.

Macaron winced. “Oh, jeez. I mean, I know he’s a real scumbag, better than most people really, but still.” Since he hadn’t been the one to take the reigns, though, he figured Zanzo ought to be grateful that the violent twilight goblin didn’t go all the way. The mad scientist’s defeat put an end to his onslaught of Strikers, though his continued life meant that’d still be a factor in the future. Speaking of which, Macaron didn’t really know what to do next. He rubbed his head. “What now? Sure, revenge felt good and all, but Vandelay Technologies isn’t any different. Even if Zanzo’s gone, Kale will just find another yes-man with big ideas and no conscience.” Clara didn’t say anything, but just held tight to Svarog’s leg as the big robot stood in silence.

”I think we’ve also got people punching Kale as well, so presumably, by right of conquest, we’ll be able to claim the company. Or something. Look I’ll be honest I am here to help Tora get everything he needs to save a friend of ours. Everything else? Well you can ask her” the princess pointed a finger over at their restorative savior, who by that point had long since vanished.

”or. not.”

“That’s…interesting, I suppose. Me, I’d hope we could find Roxanne Vandelay and convince her to come out of retirement, at least for as long as it takes to get the company on the right track again. Kale’s…well, he’s achieved record fame and profit, but it just isn’t right. Or sustainable!”

The princess was mostly thinking about what to do with torsoboy, muttering to herself about how she bet he’d do a Crow if she freed him, but she was paying enough attention to respond with ”I well if you think it’d help, you can fill everyone in on the details once we group up again.”

With that in mind, she remembered, rather late, that they had only been dealing with one half of the problem.

”I hope their guy wasn’t as annoying as ours”
In World of Light → 2 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay

The Koopa Troop

wordcount: 1,718 (+3) (+13)
Bowser: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (254/120)
Bowser Jr: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (139/120)
Kamek: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (131/120)
Rika: Level 8 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (65/80)
Location: The Under - Home of Tears


”YAAAAaaaa-oh hey, you did it. Good job team” Bowser said, his charging warcry coming to a trailing end when the rest of the heroes, many who had gone straight for their main foe, finished dealing with him.

Well.

Sort of.

”Is he not. Is he just? Stuck there? What?” Jr asked, voicing what was a general feeling of confusion (at least in the Troop) as they approached the body of their fallen foe. And it was his body, which was presently sticking out of the ground, and with his head buried into it.

”Well then. That is disturbing” Kamek put it succinctly, the fact that this absurd foe could simply not be killed being quite the unnerving prospect. Yet he was still defeated, showing no signs of trying to get himself out of the predicament he was in, or much in the way of life. Certainly he did not react when Bowser joined in with Nadia’s 30 seconds of using him as a punching bag to no avail.

”I suggest we get a move on before things get even stranger. We have what we came for after all” the mage suggested, referring to both the mask fragment and the unguarded way forward victory had afforded them.

”What, and leave the treasure? No way” Jr said, having crouched down to inspect the gem pile

”Oh right, there’s spirits too,” Rika realized, adding ”let me just” before turning and using her grappling hook to retrieve the grovetender’s one. ”Do we wanna use the hat on this one too?”

”As soon as feasible then” the mage amended with a sigh as Rika went to acquire the item crushing enhancing hat from Sectonia, before stepping in and preventing Jr from trying to haul off all of the money on his own, and making him settle for just the rubies … and then also the pizza recipes because really, who else was going to take those.

After all, they already had a prize they had a 100% claim on, and what it turned into after being crushed be was a little jar.



”I tried opening it, but it won’t budge on its own” Rika complained when she reported back post hat wearing, re-joining the list of people who needed healed as a result of said hat, much to Jr’s annoyance.

”It does seem magical however” Kamek informed her, before also pointing out ”and there’s a little strap too, so perhaps you need to wear it?”

The ship girl agreed to try it out, and would eventually find out that running or sailing around at high speed would rapidly produce wisps from the pot that would fly off and attack much like ones the grovetender had produced.

After they were all ready to go, the troop set off, only to be immediately stopped due to running out of path to traverse. Instead they were presented with a massive drop down down down into the depths, quite possibly even deeper than they had just ascended up via the tower.

”Long way down huh. Guess I could float and grappling hook” Rika mulled out loud, while Bowser groaned aout ”Claw scratching all the way down. That’s going to be a pain”

”Real lame that we gotta deal with this when my car’s still busted. Sooner we get to this bee kingdom the better” Jr complained, before being interrupted by a polite cough from Kamek, who gestured to a wyvern he was in the midst of conjuring.

”Ohhh, right. Those”

”Yes, those.” Kamek confirmed dryly, before calling over to the others ”And I can do a few more if you feel like there would be difficulty in getting down. Only a few however, I’m not made of mana”

Whether or not he was taken up on the offer, in short order Rika was mounted up on the back of a fire wyverns’s back, with, for efficiency’s sake, Jr sat behind her, one hand on her rigging for support, the other still holding his paintbrush for defence.

Bowser meanwhile was mounted atop a suitably regal looking gold wyvern, with Kamek sat in front of his king and focused on channeling his magic to increase the magical mount’s size such that it could carry the mighty koopa. This channeling was a fairly major part of why there would not be a flight of wyverns available to carry all of them down.

Despite not being able to offer transport for all, the Troop were able to offer protection, particularly Rika, who found that her new spear was filling in an absence she had felt the last time she had used one of Kamek’s flying steeds. The armored ship girl looked like quite the arial knight now, one ready to lance any threats that might try and harass those taking less controlled descents.

As it turned out, Bowser’s own was still going to count as one of those, as his wyvern took to the sky with rather ponderous slowness with a flap of its great wings and kicked up great gusts of air.

With its smaller red escort, the golden wyrven began to slowly descend down the giant chasm and, surprisingly enough, the biggest issue was not hordes of arial baddies or other tricky obsticals.

It was traffic.

”Come on move it already you giant bug! Get outta the road!” the king found himself yelling at various booflies that got in his way. Despite their massive size, the giant bugs were not at all aggressive, but they also did not give a fly’s abdomen about who or what got in their way as they buzzed about. After one terrifying plummet caused by one brushing against the massive gold wyvern’s wing, the fliers had learned to give them their space.

It was that or start destroying them, and Kamek urged caution, given that there was a massive pit’s worth of them, and angering one might well anger all of them. After some convincing the King had agreed, but that didn’t mean he was going to do so quietly, and so plenty of insults were hurled at the oversized flies as they navigated around them.

Floating in the air along with the flies, there were also the mantaray like cave angels, which were polite/sensible enough to get out of the way of the angry king, and a few floating islands which moved for no koopa.

Said islands also sported a large orb like machine filled with smaller orbs, which was odd, and after passing a few the troop agreed to land on one of the islands to take a break from flying and to investigate.

”There’s a kind of pedestal thing here that looks like it's supposed to take something, but I dunno what” Jr reported, him and Rika having landed first and had a chance to look around before the older koopas arrived.

”Perhase it’s a puzzle, and there’s some item or other around here that goes in it?” Kamek suggested from where he had taken a seat on a stone inorder to take a rest and let his mana reserves recharge a bit.

”Or maybe it takes money? It looks kinda like a gumball machine after all” Jr suggested, which perked up Rika’s interest a bit. The prince started to fish around in his duffle bag for some geo, only to notice Bowser was stomping right towards the device with a very angry look on his face.

Before anyone could ask what he was doing, Bowser suddenly lept the last few meters between him and the machine, before grabbing on with one claw, and then reeling the other back. With a roar, the king fired up the rockets on his kinetic strike module, sending his fist blazing forwards, smashing into the dome of the device and shattering the ancient machine in an instant, spilling the orb like capsules all over the island.

”Ahhhh, now that’s better” the king said as he dropped down and dusted off his hands, having satisfyingly worked out some of his frustration at the booflies in the strike.

The rest meanwhile stood there in shocked silence before jr broke it with a realization of ”Ohhh yeah. I forgot we could just do stuff like that.” before cheering ”Way to go dad!”

”Yup. And let that be a lesson. Just because we’re doing hero stuff and playing nice, we shouldn't let that get in the way of what we are: bag guys” the king declared, imparting yet more dubious wisdom on Rika in the process, before asking the question none of them had really considered, which was ”So what is this stuff anyway?”

As it turned out, all the orbs contained various Zonai Devices from fans to balloons, lamps, rockets, gliders, wheels and even weapons like cannons and flamethrowers, though those were greatly outnumbered by transportation related equipment. Importantly, there were also a few big batteries that could power all these machines for a time.

Given that the island they had picked was relatively close to the side the seekers had started on, if the others could cimb down to it (and then get a wyvern taxi over), they might well have yet another way to get down the rest of the way. Jr’s GDI Engineer Suitcase was no ancient king’s magic arm, but it could weld stuff together just fine, and was on hand if anyone wanted to if they get their engineering mitts on.

As for the troop, they hung around a bit to make sure no one was going to plummet to their doom after the first hurdle, and tinker around with their prizes a bit. This involved a fair few things with rockets attached blazing upwards into the air unhelpful, and at least one unstably doomed glider plummeting down into the abyss.

Then, once everyone was in the clear, and they were bored/rested, they’d gather up a few of the more interesting devices, before remounting their wyverns and continue to descend down down into the depths.
In World of Light → 2 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay

The Koopa Troop

wordcount: 2,407 (+3)
Bowser: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (238/120)
Bowser Jr: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (123/120)
Kamek: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (115/120)
Rika: Level 8 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (49/80)
Location: The Under - Home of Tears


”Gotcha!” Bowser reassured his daughter as he caught the shipgirl after she pulled off her two times fly by of pizza face.

”Did you see that! I stabbed that pizza face in his face pizza!” Rika cheered, trying and failing to join in on the pun-ishment being inflicted on their absurd foe.

”that’s not how puns work!” Jr called out as he swept in with a squad of strikers, which crashed into the food based mooks who were trying to swarm the pair.

”Awww” Rika sighed only a little disappointed as she started casually lancing and grizco blasting mooks upon being set down onto her own two feet again by the king.

”Good effort though” Bowser encouraged her as he joined in with the carnage.

As they sliced, diced, and blasted mooks, the rest of the crew followed up with yet more strikes on the pizza face. They were so effective that in only a few more moments the boss was descending from the sky, looking ever so defeated

”Well, that was a cake walk” Bowser declared prematurely as he dusted off his claws, jinxing them to world -1 and back in the process, while Jr and Kamek both wondered why the fall looked less like a thing dying and more like a thing crashing.

Then the machine of bread and cheese popped open its face, and revealed the true form of their foe.

”Wait, so, the pizza face was secretly a different guy who also has pizza for a face? What?” Jr called out as he threw his hands up in confusion that was matched by the other koopas, but not Rika, who savantly pointed out that ”Well I mean it’s more like he has a pizza head instead of a pizza face seeing as he has a body and stuff”

Then things got weird, and what had been silly … well it kept being silly, but more of a killer clown silly instead of a regular clown silly. The sky turned orange and filled with pizza toppings, and then they all got what Jr was pretty sure were healthbars, the Koopas getting images of shells, while Rika got a weird warbling mishmash of symbols that after a few heartbeats seemed to give up and just turned into another spiky shell.

Rika declared this supernatural acknowledgment of her new family status as ”Neat” while a much more spooked Jr retorted that ”No, not neat! we’ve all only got 8 hit points or something!”

”What do you mean by that young master” Kamek enquired to which the prince replied that ”That we can only get hurt 8 times and then that’s it, game over!”

”Well doesn’t that mean he also only has 8 of these points of hitting?” Rika pointed out, which got Bowser onboard, declaring ”Yeah, then let's go pulp that pizza face back into dough!” just in time for the foe in question to summon up some reinforcements to stop them from doing so.

Bigger, nastier reinforcements this time.



While four of the monsters emitted bestial roars of one kind or another, while the fifth among them simply gazed at them with the gaping hole in its masked face. Then it reached up behind its back, and pulled the lid off a pot that it had strapped there, unleashing a steady stream of burning mask like whisps that acted like homing missiles, arching up into the air and then flying straight towards a target before exploding violently on contact.

This latter effect was discovered when one smashed head long into Bowser and, well exploded. At which point they found out exactly how right Jr had been about what the little floating icons had meant, as the ones that had attached themselves next to Bowser reappear, only for one to ‘pop off’ of its row and fall away into nothingness.

As the king grunted in pain he flashed white several times, during which more homing wisps slammed down into him, yet none of these seemed to do any additional damage till after a few seconds when the flashing ended and a second shell token got knocked off.

”Gah, make them stop!” the king demanded, unable to really take any kind of cover up on the towertop battlefield, or move fast enough to duke the shots into missing like Rika (with her projectile slowing gaze) was doing just to the right of him.

”Don’t worry papa! I can heal you” jr called out (he and Kamek apparently being further back from the grovetender saving them from being targeted) before raising up his paintbrush staff and calling out ”Cure!” and pulsing healing magics through his father’s body.

The two lost shells, however, did not come back.

”Uh oh.”

The prince tried two more times, even burning away the long cooldown Benediction in a hope it would somehow heal enough, but it was no use, and he was forced to conclude that ”I can’t heal us any more!”

As the prince discovered the greatest malus of this curse, the other two Troop members had moved to lend aid in their own way.

”Toadies, go! Intercept those masks!”Kamek commanded, summoning and sending forth magical minions to physically intercept the grovetender’s own. This not being their intended purpose however, it was a battle he rapidly started to lose a war of magical attention.

Rika’s solution was much more straightforward, one she spelled out rather simply with ”The best defense is a good offense!” while leaping to the side to avoid a whips, and then yelling ”Die thingy!” as she unleashed her nautical firepower upon it.

Rigging turret launched shells soared across the tower, crashing into the grovetender that had been advancing towards them, staggering the monster for a moment, and cutting off the stream of whisps. It also caused its own health bar to appear, and for one of the masks representing its life force to pop off of it.

It looked like everyone was playing by the same rules.

”What’s wrong, cat steal your pot lid?” Rika attempted to taunt it as she struck this first blow, tried being the operative word there.

”Try ‘serves you right for putting your hand in the cookie jar’ instead” Bowser suggested, very thankful that the wisp hail had ended, but perhaps not so concerned as he should be about being down 3 masks after the opening engagement.

”I don’t get it but ok!” Rika replied, but her reiteration of the taunt was interrupted by a warning call of ”It’s charging something!” right before the grovetender finished doing so, and unleashed another attack.

Having closed in while raining down wisps, the masked monster unleashed its other skill, a shotgun blast of 13 scorching hot chains. These lanced out, one right at Rika, nailing her in one of the arms and thereby bypassing her energy shield, while another of the stray shots hit Bowser.

Both troop members lost a shell container, and then suffered the secondary effect of the chains, namely being dragged closer to the grovetender. This would have made its rapid succession of follow up shots devastatingly effective had the invulnerability frames of the pair not been flashing.

As it was it mainly dragged them in nice and close for Bowser to drive home a rocket propelled punch into it.

”How do you like that fuzzy!” he taunted, as Rika followed up with her own punch, only for the invulnerability to be on their foe’s side now, giving it plenty of time to charge up another shotgun blast of chains while they wailed on it ineffectually.

”Dad, get back! You can’t win by just touching it out this time!” Jr cried out in warning, a statement to which Kamek added his own agreement.

Right on cue the chains slammed into the close range pair, putting him down to a measly 3, and Rika to 6, while their blows knocked it down to 5.

Even Bowser could do that math, though his son’s warning had been what actually made him actually stop to do said math.

”Time to go!” he announced grabbing Rika and then leaping backwards, cannons on his shell deploying and firing to blast him back with additional recoil like Rika often did.

”Hey, I could have toughed it out!” the ship girl, who had also done the math, complained, but her papa retorted ”And leave you with one hit left? Not a chance. We’ll still have plenty to do after this shmucks’ done!”

Of course, the grovetender wasn’t going to let them get away that easily, the masked monster firing off another chain of chainshots at them. Rika saw it coming this time, and as the first once lanced close, she summoned her cloyster to use protection, nullifying the attack. Then her Knight to do the same for the next with his shield, but the final striker she had at her disposal had no shield, and so the war cleric was dragged in, sparing them from being grappled, but not her from harm.

Then they were skidding along the ground as Bowser made a landing.

”Your woundednesses, please stay back, we shall take it from here” Kamek told the pair, as the two smaller uninjured troop members took to the fore.

”Yeah, because I’ve got an idea!” Jr added as he tossed up a pokeball, and summoned Dazzle the Poppilo to the field (with the mon getting his own 8 pokeball icons upon entering the cursed zone).

”It’s time to fight fire with water! Dazzle, use your watergun on the flaming masks” he commanded as the grovetender again unleashed its wisp swarm.

The mon did just this, blowing up a trio of bubbles of water from its nose, tossing them up, and then skillfully swatting them with his tail, sending them sailing fourth to strike home, extinguishing the burning lifeforce of the masks and causing them to drop from the sky.

Those masks were only the vanguard of many coming however, and while Kamek sent a reserve of toadies forth to collide with 4 more, after that he was out of reserves.

”You gotta shoot faster!” Jr demanded of his pokemon, but the attempt to follow this commanded mainly caused one of the next three shots to miss as the mon cracked under pressure, allowing a whips to crash home and knock a hitpoint off both of them

”What;s the matter with you, I could hit those no problem!” the prince berated the mon as more shots rained down onto their flashing forms as they pulled themselves back to their feet, only to have an idea.

A moment later, out of the smoke cloud caused by the exploding masks shot another water gun shot, nailing the next mask. Then in quick succession another shot, and another and another, as the smoke cleared and revealed Dazzle and Jr working together, the Popilo serving his bubbles to his trainer, who then used his paintbrush to bat them forward, nailing mask after mask with extinguishing strikes.

”Told you it was easy!” jr insisted, even as his arms rapidly got tired from the swinging.

”I got your back son!” Bowser declared from behind opened up with his own shoulder cannons, shooting twin dosing streams of water from them.

”Me too! Get flak you dumb masks!” Rika called out as she too joined in, her grizco blaster shooting out large air bursting shots of goop that also did the job.

”Well done your extingishingnesses!” Kamek praised the royals, before turning his attention away from making minions for interception, and instead to launching spells at the grovetender itself, correctly guessing that his weakest ones would do, and saving mana by doing so bit simply tagging it with basic spell blasts.

Four, and then three masks remained, and then the tender switched track again, charging forwards and charging chains. Forewarned however, the troop took this as a cue to back up, retreating well out of shotgun range. Then they switched back to shooting down the whisps when it switched tactics back, and another mask fell as they slowly backed up. Just when they thought they had things down however, they ran out of tower top to run across.

Bowster’s steel boots tethered on the edge of the tower, and though there wasn’t much of a drop, what with 99% of it being buried in the ground, it was just enough to get them to pause, and for the grovetender to get into chain shotgun range.

The chains lashed out, catching and dragging in Kamek, Jr and Dazzle in. All three lashed out as they were pulled in, popping off the next to last mask (as well as plenty of redundant damage), before the grovetender proved itself to have the capacity to learn, as it used its hands to swat at them rather than charging at more, the pathetic strikes still chipping away at their hp reserves.

”We got you!” Rika called out as she, held by Bowser for support, launched her grappling hook and grabbed Jr. The prince in turn grabbed Dazzle, hooking his tail under an arm while his arm was wrapped around his body.

While Kamek simply teleported back, the prince was pulled away, only to be faced with the same peril Bowser and Rika had been, and with no damage blocking strikers to his name. Only a paint brush and an armful of sea lion pokemon

”Oh wait” he said, before commanding ”sing that thing it’s swan song” as he lifted the pokemon up a little so its snout was pointing right at the grovetender, and lightly squeezing him. From the mouth of the mon shot a beam of pink sound waves, which struck the grovetender right before it finished charging.

The last mask fell, and with it, so did the monster.

Jr skidded to a halt, caught by his dad’s claw to prevent him from backspiking Rika, and then stood up. He was about to put down dazzle again, when he had second thoughts, and instead slipped the paintbrush under his front to act as support, now holding the pokemon like a living cannon.

”Yeah, that works” he decided, before the troop formed up, with Bowser uncharacteristically at the back of their formation.

”Alright troop, let’s get that pizza head weirdo!” the king roared, gaining a round of affirmations from the rest as before they went charging back across the tower towards their foe.


In World of Light → 2 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
Vandelay Campus - Research and Development

Location: Midgar Sector 06, the City of Glass
Midna’s @DracoLunaris, Geralt’s @Multi_Media_Man, Tora
Word Count: 3334 (+4)




Those who decided to venture to Vandelay’s Research and Development division were in for a surprise when Sandalphon informed them where they’d be headed. “Your destination is the volcano situated in the rear of Vandelay Campus, the angel explained. “The R&D division exists beneath it, using the heat of its magma for geothermal energy, as well as its proximity to the plate’s underside and Deep-Paris to its advantage. DespoRHado’s troops are accessing it via the Employee Express, and I suggest you do the same. Oh, and for the duration of this op, hail me using callsign Halo. I will hail your team using callsign Phalanx.”

Following her directions and the trail of destruction left by their cyborg precursors, the trio set off. Even without Poppi to help him, Tora could bounce along at a decent clip, and the possibility of augmenting his quest to recover his companion with Vandelay’s finest tech gave him enough hope to stave off despair. Driven by the thought of seeing Poppi’s smile once more, he forged ahead alongside Midna and Geralt through a belt of structures somewhere between Vandelay’s public-facing front and its purely industrial facilities. These turned out to be primarily residential areas, not for the minority of human personnel who commuted to the campus, but for its robotic workers. They encountered VA-SER, TEC, PGR, and OL units, as well as diminutive SCR-UB, CAR-11E, and O5-KARs. Such machines might not need to sleep, but they did need to recharge, and these motel-esque power stations provided just the place to do so. Of course, being robots they received accommodations much, much smaller and meaner than any hotel might possibly consider offering, barely more than cubbies, and being non-combat robots they’d put up no fight at all when DespoRHado tore through the place. The whole area was in crisis mode, with panicked SCR-UBs and CAR-11Es flailing their arms as they rolled around in circles. That made getting through to the nearby on-site subway station easy, at least, and after descending to the platform the trio found that a train had just arrived.

They also found the DespoRHado rear-guard. Hulking and gorilla-like, the robots had been too big to board the Express themselves, so they remained behind to destroy any Vandelay robots attempting to use it themselves. When they spotted the newcomers, the three Unmanned Gears turned on them, their eyes glowing as they released mechanical roars.

“Mastiffs,” Sandalphon’s voice announced. The angel routed her communication line through the magically-attuned Midna, and came through with just a slight, almost melodic echo. “I do not have authority over these units. They wield brute strength, agility, and hidden arm-cannons. You are clear to engage.” If the Seekers wanted to reach R&D, they’d need to get through these things first.
”Good, I need a warm up anyway“ Midna boasted, before declaring ”I’ll take the one on the left“ and then racing to do just that.

“Then I’ll go right. Tora, can you handle the middle one?” Geralt asked, not unkindly, but also without the tinge of pity the Nopon might be fearing. If he needed a hand, they’d be happy to provide it, but if not, there was no point in putting the extra focus on their friend when they could instead put it on their enemy. Regardless of the answer, he drew steel and cast Quen to protect himself, moving towards his chosen foe.

Tora gawked up at the giant Unmanned Gear, approximately five times his size, with nothing but a medieval hammer to his name. “Mehhhhh…”

As Midna’s wolfos charged forwards, the princess quickly shifted so that both her feet were on its back, and then right before they came close to the brute bot, leapt off of it and into the air. While her steed switched to entirely focusing on evasion, the princess grabbed the massive tree spear she was carrying in both hands, and used it to deliver several swift downwards thrust, glinting from both the charge she had pumped into it crackling as she struck, before slamming a shadowfist downwards to finish her combo. A respectable burst of damage, but these Mastiffs were tough as nails. Planting its back foot, the unit attempted to clamp its arms around Midna’s shadowfist in order to grapple her and pull her in for a pounding.

Knowing about the hidden arm-cannon in advance was very helpful, given that the one he went after raised one of its arms and launched a grenade at Geralt, who was able to quickly pivot around it, avoiding a direct hit and leaving the projectile to detonate behind him as he rushed in. The Mastiff responded with a roar and a downward punch, which Geralt deflected with the flat of his sword before lifting it up and along the machine’s side, scoring the metal but not doing much damage without the time to build up any momentum. The Mastiff replied with a backhanded swipe from its heavy arm, more to ward the Witcher off than anything. It leaped backward out of range, launched a pair of hastily-aimed grenades, then barreled forward to pull off a spectacular dropkick.

Tora, meanwhile, was suffering. Once it registered the tiny, ovoid creature in front of it as a threat, the Mastiff went to town, repeatedly punching and slamming to ground to try and squash him. Having been a steadfast defender for so long, Tora tried to block the attacks on instinct, but even if his hammer were suited to the task he had no extra ether shielding to protect him. After eating a few hits, he focused on evasion instead, trying to dodge the Mastiff’s wallops in order to bludgeon it legs, but he was too slow and the robot just stepped away from him each time. Finally, Tora bounced into the air, leaping as high as he could to bring his hammer down on the Mastiff’s head. The hammer promptly flew from his grasp, leaving only a dent behind, and the Unmanned Gear grabbed Tora in its giant arms to squish him like a squeaky toy. “MEH-MEH-MEH!” he yelped as he struggled helplessly, his eyes bugging out on each squeeze.

”Vibrava! Initiates! Support Tora!“ Minda shouted as she wrestled with the mech that had her by the shadow hand. To do so, she stabbed the spear forwards, and then held it there to use it as additional leverage to keep herself from being reeled in. Then she aimed to punish it for keeping her close by discharging the remaining voltage stored in her spear via a trio of rotating pillars of lighting, while also opening the shadow hand, and rapidly expanding a vollybomb into it. The magical explosive rapidly grew in size, seemingly harmless until its radius touched the floor below and everything inside was wracked with the resulting detonation. It did a number on the Mastiff, cracking its armor in enough places to send pieces flying, and its head in particular took enough damage to render its optics useless. When it staggered drunkenly to its feet it wildly swung what remained of its arms around, trying to swat Midna down before she could sting him again.

While she did that, her minions moved to aid Tora. The hooded initiates of the penumbra cult stepped away from all the fights, and then bowed down, planting their hands to the ground and sprouting psychic roots around the foe that was squeezing the life from Tora (a safer bet than the spears which would risk friendly fire) and repaying the immobilizing favor. Her Vibrava, meanwhile, buzzed around behind the robot, before threatening to swoop in to deliver an armor sundering crunch to the back of its head.

Unfortunately, the Mastiff’s design prevented that–stooped like a hulking gorilla, its head seemed to be completely obfuscated by its hunchback from behind. Sensing stronger opponents, however, it promptly hurled Tora at one of the initiates like a football, then unleashed hell with its arm cannons.

Geralt sidestepped away from the backhand, performed a pirouette to avoid the poorly-aimed grenades (the explosion from one sent some shrapnel into his back, but the Quen shield meant that Geralt barely felt anything), then lifted his sword into both hands to deflect the flying simian robot, knocking it ever so slightly off course and off-balance. He followed up with a heavy downward swing as the machine UG was getting up, gouging deeply into its arm and leaving the mechanical limb sparking. Lifting his blade, he thrusted forward as the Mastiff punched at him, moving closer to let the limb sail harmlessly past his side, a solid foot of his sword penetrating into the machine. Eyes narrowing, Geralt took advantage of this unexpectedly effective attack and withdrew his blade to quickly slam the pommel of his sword into the machine’s face before it could react. Rather than react with any sort of discombobulation, the Mastiff simply grabbed Geralt with both of his massive arms, though the grip on the damaged one was noticeably weaker.

Having rolled to a stop nearby after his head-on collision with one of Midna’s Strikers, Tora picked himself up dazedly, then shook the stars from his eyes. If nothing else, the Nopon certainly possessed a hardy constitution, and being a chew toy for a Mastiff was nothing he couldn’t handle. When he got up, though he saw Geralt subjected to the same treatment “Oh, no!” If Geralt got his back broken by a bear hug here, Tora’s mission would be that much closer to dead in the water. He mustered up all the heroic courage he could find, scooped up his hammer from where it had fallen, and charged toward Geralt. “Hold on friend, Tora is coming!” He lifted his weapon overhead, ready to bring its business down on the Mastiff’s foot with everything he had.

While the boys duked it out with their own gorilla bot, Midna and her minions found themselves occupied with the other two. For the one flailing around blindly, the princess drifted up into the air out of range of the targetless attacks, and then proceeded to summon and drop the massive steel ball on a stick that was her clubba-club right on top of it.

Her Vibrava meanwhile had a bit more of an issue with its brute. Having failed to find a rear weak point it was at least at range when the grenade spam started, and the psychic roots restricted the ability to aim the shots at it. Still, one of the explosive shots managed to clip the dragon, causing a retaliatory darrage thorns shooting out of the pokemon and at the bot, dealing light damage.

What didn’t cause light damage was the mon retaliating by unleashing the power of the earth beneath the Mastiff, shattering concrete and sending geothermal energy raging up in a miniature volcanic eruption that unsteadied the machine as much as it buffeted it with geomental might. As it stumbled, the pokemon hammered it with blasts of dragon breath, tight beams of purple energy hammering the machine while making sure to keep out of range of those powerful arms.

The Mastiff stumbled when Tora’s hammer came down on its foot, and Geralt took advantage of the opportunity to draw the Sign of Aard between himself and it, the concentrated telekinetic blast launching the machine backwards. Geralt turned his head to his Nopon “rescuer” and nodded with a short, “Thanks, Tora,” much to Tora’s delight, before charging back in, steel sword finishing the job on its damaged arm as the UG regained its bearings. Following up with a spinning cut to the body, Geralt carved a furrow into its armor and blocked the punch it tried to counter with.

Seeing the situation Midna and her Strikers were in, Geralt scrunched his face up and, after taking another heavy swing at the Mastiff and dealing far more damage than he felt he ought to against the armored machine, summoned the Judicator in the middle of the group, commanding it to launch its spectral fires at both other Mastiffs to distract and deal some minor damage to them.

Returning his focus to his enemy, Geralt stepped in, deflected a wild flailing punch, and strafed around the side of the machine while bathing it in a concentrated stream of fire from Igni, turning its metallic body cherry-red and ripe for a finishing strike.

Tora knew the limits of his strength -as well as his reach- but he also knew very well just how pliable hot metal can be. While Geralt kept himself one step ahead of the furious machine’s swings, Tora waddled in beneath the purview of its red-hot haymakers, took his hammer in both wings, and dealt a single well-placed smash against the outside of its left knee. Already softened up by the intense heat, the thin metal around the critical joint gave way, buckling in a way it shouldn’t beneath the Unmanned Gear’s weight. It reeled, attempting to stabilize itself as much as possible to counteract the instability before it fell, but Tora just kept hammering. “Meh-meh-MEH!” After two more blows his hammer blasted straight through, and the Mastiff began to fall. Unfortunately, it happened to fall directly toward him, and as the robot’s shadow enveloped him Tora gawped up at the smoldering heap metal. “Oh no!” Thinking quickly, he reached out his hammer toward the Witcher, hoping that he’d be able to snatch it and pull the attached Nopon to safety.

Tora’s hopes were met with results as Geralt yanked the Nopon out of the way of the collapsing Mastiff, and to ensure that their efforts were not in vain, his steel sword was brutally stabbed into the machine’s chest, tearing through the softened metal like a hot knife through butter, and he dragged it through the molten slag with ease, destroying vital components and shutting the Unmanned Gear down for good. “Good work. Now let’s see if Midna needs a hand or four.”

They turned to her just in time to see a giant cyber-bear headbutt the final foe into a wall, before Midna and her vibrava unleashed earth power and vollybomb strikes on it in quick succession, blowing it to smithereens.

She also had the audacity to be standing there with her arms casually folded while doing this.

The Mastiffs had been rather tough nuts to crack, but with the last one out of commission, the trio could finally board the monorail in peace. Tora waddled on and plopped down to rest for a moment, panting, as the monorail automatically pulled out of the station. This had been his first taste of combat since losing Poppi, and the reality of how much weaker he was -and how little help he could be- stung. He wanted nothing more than to stand between his allies and whatever might bar their way, fearlessly negating whatever they might throw at him, but now the others were the ones rescuing him. Twice. Even if he happened to be of some use during that skirmish, the negatives dwarfed the positives. His eyes fell on the hammer, laid down beside him on the ground. If not for Poppi’s unexpected aptitude at the batting cages, he wouldn’t even have this. It was a sobering reality.

Midna wasn't exactly blind to this reality either. She'd assumed the Nopon would have asked if he needed help, but given what she had just seen, it was time to be proactive.

”So, I take it the shield you used to use was a Poppi thing? Do you need a replacement?" She asked, pulling out her green thorn shield out of a portal and offering it to him, before thinking and adding ”or anything else? I've got all sorts of things sitting in the Twilight realm, and I'm pretty versatile in what I use, so it won't hurt to lend it out."

Having said that, she swept a hand around the area, and summoned several crates she had used to store gear, offering up everything but the helmet, pauldrons, mimic tooth necklace and rosary she was wearing.

”Ah, but maybe not that" she added after a moment, sending the cursed sword back to where it came.

Without much in the way of pride in anything but his engineering ability, Tora quickly relented and accepted Midna’s help. After sorting through all the interesting gear, he took both shields -the Sabo Shield to wield and Darwin’s Danger Shield to wear- and the Scorcher Flamethrower (which Midna seemed equally sad and excited to see him choose with for some reason). He might not be proficient with ranged weapons, but anyone could use a flamethrower: just walk forward and hold the trigger. With the extra protection and literal firepower, Tora felt a bit better about what lay ahead, not knowing that the resistance encountered so far was just the tip of the iceberg.

In World of Light → 2 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay

The Koopa Troop

wordcount: 1,032 (+2)
Bowser: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (235/120)
Bowser Jr: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (120/120)
Kamek: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (112/120)
Rika: Level 8 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (46/80)
Location: The Under - Home of Tears


”Sausage, sweets and pepperoni!” “No!” “No!” “No!”

”Cheese, peppers and seafood!” “No!” “No!” “No!”

”fruit, mushrooms and honey!” “No!” “No!” “No!”

”Kamek?”

”mushrooms, sweets and pepperoni!” “No!” “No!” “No!”

”peppers, seafood and pepperoni!” “No!” “No!” “No!”

”Kamek!”

”sausage, sweets, and honey!” “No!” “No!” “Ohhh, now that’s my pizza!” Arno broke the tune of the last however long as he looked at the offered pizza with something approaching love, before snatching it and adding “Took ya long enough! Wasn’t my sweet tooth obvious?”

”pepperoni, cheese, and peppers!” “No!” “Mmmm, yes! Now that’s more like it. Nice and spicy“ Willa declared before snatching up the offering

”seafood, mushrooms, and fruit!” “No!” Shyler cried out in fury, before his eyes suddenly dropped the rage at bad pizza they had been filled with, and focused on the final pizza “Oh, no wait! yeah that sounds good actually.” before politely asking “can I have it?”

”KAMEK!” Bowser roared in his advisor’s ear, which finally got his attention, causing both him and the dry bones holding the pizza to leap into the air, and spilling the dish to the ground as a result

”A, um, oh, yes sire?” he turned to ask after landing, leaving Shyler dancing with impatience yet unwilling to simply snatch the pizza now that his senses were back

”We’re heading up” the king simply informed him, jerking a thumb towards

”Oh, ah, yes, of course. My apologies. I got a little caught up in solving the puzzle”

“Can I…. Can I have the pizza now, please?” Shyler repeated, edging closer

”Hmmm? Oh, yes, of course, here you go” the mage replied, before waving the dry bones closer ”Enjoy”

“Thank you” the final troll said, sounding genuinely touched as he took the pizza

“Alright! 3 .. 2 .. 1 .. Pizza party time!” Arno chanted, before all three pizzas tossed their pizzas up in the air, and then swallowed them in one gulp

”I uh … huh” Kamek said as he looked on, stunned as all his work vanished in an instant, with nary a moment given to savor it.

That said, despite their speed eating, the trolls still looked like they had enjoyed themselves immensely, rubbing their bellies in a satisfied manner.

”So” Bowser asked ”Was it worth it?”

”Ehhhhh” The mage examined the mess resulting from rejected pizzas, and wasted ingredients as a result, and then shrugged

“Course it was worth it. Because now we can tell you where you need to go to get out” Arno

”Staff only, boss door” Jr called over

“Uh. yeah. Good guess” Arno conceded for the trio

”Uh uh” replied noncommittally, before calling out ”now hurry up, we have a pizza to face” and then giggling at his own joke.


”yeah booooo, weak! Where’s the presentation!” Bowser jeered in tandem with Nadia’s laughter, not rating this bad guy highly at all so far. 3/10 at most.

”This was the guy we had to get out of the levels before he showed up? Yeesh, we coulda taken it slow if we’d known that” Jr complained

Either in response to the mockery, or because he was just going to do it anyway, the big bad boss of the pizza tower summoned a whole host of cronies to do his bidding.

As Artorias aptly demonstrated as he flipped first into action, those minions were going to be a real hurdle when it came to actually getting a chance to hit the pie in the sky.

”Two can play at that game!” Jr (who was still fighting on foot due to not having had the time or energy to fix up his machine) called out, before summoning minions of his own.

”Flukefey flight, dive bomb those piggy snipers!” he called out, sending a wave of tooth and wing swooping down at a squad of piglins armed with crossbows, before following it up with ”Murlock Marines! Koopa Corps! Goomba Swarm! Meet those mooks head on!” creating a veritable swarm of strikers that surged forwards with the prince at their center.

Goombas trampled over cheese slimes only to be skewered by fork knights, who themselves were knocked down by spinning koopa shells and beaten down by the murlock’s crude weapons. Sympathetic recoil damage peppered the prince as his strikers got hurt, but by using his aoe healing spell, he turned that same sympathetic connection into a boon, healing himself far more by hitting his whole swarm than using single targeted heals on himself ever could.

Of course, he wasn’t the only minion summoner, with Kamek joining in with a pronouncement of ”More than two, actually!” before conjuring up a horde of drybones and a quartet of magi-clones to join the fight, chump blocking and spell blasting more of the minions.

Now, it could probably be argued that adding all these extra minions, on top of the antlions already cluttering the tower top thanks to a certain bee-queen, simply made more of a chaotic mess rather than fixing the issue, but the other two Troop members did their best to work around it.

Or rather, over it.

”One royal fastball, coming your way, you cheap third rate villain!” Bowser called out as he reeled back and then hurled the deadliest projectile he had available.

Namely Rika.

”woo hoo!” the princess cheered as she sailed through the air, before yelling ”I’m going to get a slice of you!” while chopping sideways with a fly-by swing with her halberd like lance, before using her maneuvering thrusters to spin around, her feather fall rune to get a double jump’s worth of extra altitude and then her grappling hook to latch on and come swinging around for a second hit.

She warped the spear under her other arm and aimed to deliver a piercing strike to the back of the pizza pile, before flipping her weapon around in an instant, and opening fire with its rear mounted cannon, along with her rifle and rigging guns, using the recoil to blast herself back towards Bowser.

The king for his part shoulder barged through a scrum of mooks, before lashing out with tentacles and dreugh claws deployed from his shell while he used his own claws to catch his boomerang of a projectile before she could get into trouble crash landing among their foes.
In World of Light → 2 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay

wordcount: 4987 (+5)
Midna: level 9 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (111/100)
Location: The City of Glass
Warp Charges: 1


In her dreams, the princess drifted over a lake lit up by a crimson moon. In the distance, but growing closer, was a castle, it’s dark stone tinted the color of dry blood by that crimson sky. Beyond it lay a city. A city she had never seen. A city that no longer existed.

A city she still somehow knew was called Redgraccoon city.

In between the two was a rather grotesque looking bridge, one made of everything from broken ships, storage containers to piles of furniture (anything that floated really) all of it tied together by a disgusting looking biomass.

At the city end of the bridge many of the structures were overgrown with the same biomass, creating a pestilent hive, while on the end touching the castle, Midna got a closer look at the creators of that particular brand of horror.

The mass of them where claw like Drones (some of which carried parasites on their backs) which where in the process of rushing breaches blown in the castle walls by acid spitting Mortarbugs. Stalking above the mass of drones were on their long legs where defensive Shieldbugs while at their feet scrambled much smaller Xenonites a stream of which were being spawned by pulsating eggsack like carriers that where hanging back with the mortar bugs.

”Smart bugs” Midna noted as she took in the fairly robust strategy of shield bugs covering for swarmers in front, while ranged and minion spawning support hung back ”Be a shame if someone flanked them.”

A moment later, the princess did just that, shadow hopping to one of somewhat intact boats behind the alien swarm’s backline, and then charging in for the kill on wolfos back. Her shadow hand rose, fell, rose, fell, and pounded the vulnerable support forms into paste, before she surged forwards into the breaches they had formed to help whoever they were attacking.

She expected to find beleaguered knights and foot soldiers, and though there were knights, they were by no means ones in shiny armor. A handful of skeletal blood grinder knights wielding chainsaw toothed blades carved through drones, while dripping hounds known as Gieremund rushed to meet them claw to claw.

After those monsters, however, things took a turn for the strange rather than horrible. Above bizarre harpy-esque creatures. who’s heads sat within large beaks, hurled feathers at foes below or clawed at annoying buzzers, while absurd elephant sized horned cats snarled and clawed at the shieldbug’s chitin barriers.

Ironically it would have been the giant cat that gave away what these were to someone in the know, namely demons. That, and a lone woman with a spade tail who was wearing, of all things, a bunny costume on the battlefield, and delivering swift kicks to her foes.

The princess, not in the know, and also not one to judged based on appearances given her own, did not see this as reason to be anything other than cautious while joining the battle.

Despite the infernal powers of the defenders, they were sorely outmatched, for while the swarm moved and fought as one, the demons fought as individuals, with little concern for coordination or eachother. Indeed, some were simply standing around at the far end of the entrance hall, and made no move to get involved unless the fight came to them.

As a result, even as the princess drove into the back of the bugs, the demons were falling one by one. The giant cat, distracted by the shield bug ahead of it, was swarmed by drones due to having no one to protect it flanks, while a harpy swooped to close to a parasite, and was promptly infested by the leaping horror, causing her to explode into a shower of them a few moments later.

Despite their sizes, said parasites turned out to be the worst, as only the undead knights were immune to them. That at least gave Midna the knowledge of how to beat them, as she summoned up an undead darknut to distract her foes while she struck from the rear.

Explosions of twilight energy blasted away hordes of drones, her shadow hand reached out and crushed the exposed rears of shield bugs, or swirled up miniature tornadoes that sucked in and blended up parasites, Xenonites and buzzers.

Despite her efforts, once the last invader was crushed there were only a handful of defenders left. Not that they seemed to care. They at least didn’t seem to care about her either, be it hostility wise or thankfulness for saving their skin wise, which she found odd.

”So, not even a thank you then?” she asked which got her a brief look from some of the demons, but all but the most human looking one looked away again. For her part, the bunny eared one gave quizzical look and asked “for what?”
”For saving you all?” she clarified

“Pff, the rest of those weaklings maybe. I’d have been fine” the demoness insisted, before scoffed “What, do you want a medal or something? Go ask the master then, you weird little imp, I’m suuuuuure he’ll care about all you’ve done to further his little human extermination plan”

That last certainly raised the princess’ eyebrows, before her gaze tightened and she asked ”And where would this master be at the moment?” tersely.

“What. Are you really going to do it?” the demoness asked, before breaking down laughing at the idea.

For her part, the princess merely rolled her eyes, and floated off to seek out this master who wished to end mankind.

For a time she drifted through the halls of the castle through which demons of dozens more shapes and sizes roamed free. Roamed, she thought, was very much the right word, for the monsters were just as aimless, unguided as the ones at the front gate had been. There were no leaders or even general consensus, and certainly no patrols or guards to stop her seeking out the master of this place.

She found him in a high up throne room, backed by a great window that exposed it to the moon, and would allow the master of this castle to survey all that lay before it.

It came as little surprise that the ruler, a man with alabaster skin, which in places was turning to a crystalline mosaic, a man she knew was Gebel, sat with his back to this view. Blind to what was occurring below.

Her arrival caused the man to start from some form of languishing contemplation, eyes widening with surprise and, for some reason, horror, before everything about him hardened and he locked his eyes upon her.

“Why do you disturb me, imp? Your rightful place is on the field of battle, is it not?” he questioned his unexpected guest sullenly. “Or have you perhaps come to bring me news that humanity has already been wiped from the face of this world?”

Minda was somewhat confused by this man, who looked human, wanted humanity’s death, but she certainly found his confidence amusing given the state of his forces, and decided she could afford to poke fun at this fact ”There’s not much progress on that front. Can’t even make it out the front door after all”

She directed a finger past him, out of the window, to where already a fresh alien swarm was surging forth from hives they had grown within the city. Whatever alien intelligence or instinctual collaboration guided those monsters from beyond the stars, it was going to carry them to victory against the leaderless demons.

”If I hadn’t come, it would be those things disturbing you instead of me soon enough” she told him as the man beheld the state of his forces.

“How truly ironic that the forces of hell, unleashed at last after such wanton sacrifice, turn out to be so…impotent,” Gebel bemoaned, his voice stricken by a crushing mixture of frustration and despair. “To think that my crusade of vengeance would come to such a bitter end, brought low by mere…insects.”

”The complete lack of leadership doesn’t help” Midna noted, before asking ”So … what are we even getting vengeance on humanity for anyway?” curious

“Is it not obvious? Look upon my blighted body, imp.” The patches of sanguine crystal stretching across his skin creaked slightly as he moved, gleaming with unholy light. “Look upon the conspiracy of the damnable Alchemists. Those mad fools, desperate to cling to power in a world quickly leaving them behind, infused myself and others with such shards of demonic power. To be sacrificed, and throw open the gates of hell, so that the world might need the alchemists again. And what you see before you,” he waved his hand at the decimated cityscape. “Is what followed.

”That’s … awful” Minda replied, genuinely appalled, before frowning and pointing out a slight logical consistency ”but you’re also still alive?”

“I do…and yet, I am human no longer. There is no place for me in this world. The greed and cruelty of humanity made me a monster…so a monster I shall be. Humanity deserves the hell they brought upon themselves.”

”All of them?“ she asked ”Aren't they also the victims as well as the perpetrators? Aren't you also human? Aren't there any you knew before who deserve to live?“

For a moment Gebel was silent. He could think of only one face he cared about, and yet she seemed so very, very far away. After a moment his face hardened, and he replied. “Throughout their lives, every human on earth is given the choice. The power to choose between heaven and hell. And what do they choose? Violence. Debauchery. Self-interest. They so the seeds of self-destruction. And so they shall reap. I merely expedite the conclusion of humanity’s sorry tale.” He slumped suddenly on his throne and muttered. “Or…I would. If only these demons could quash some wretched bugs”

”I see“ Midna replied, and really, she did. He was wrong, of course, but she could see what had driven him to this madness. She had not expected to feel bad about putting down this master of demons, but she would now, as there seemed to be something in there that could be saved. Yet there was no time, he was a threat, and if allowed to run rampant he’d eventually break out of this nightmare city and bring devastation to the rest of the world.

Or just be eaten by bugs, but then those bugs would get out and … the princess paused her thoughts, as she realized that should he fall, then it might break an equilibrium and allow the alien swarm to launch forth instead. When he fell, rather.

“Is that the extent of your business with me? I’ve entertained your quest for information, little hellspawn, but the novelty begins to wear thin.” Gebel told her, interrupting her thoughts, or rather bringing a conclusion to them.

”Well, see, I could go out there and just punch bugs, but that’s a losing battle. The demons are leaderless, acting on their own, so they’ll get slowly whittled down one by one. Without a general, your vengeance will never be achieved“ she told him, before swiftly adding that" ”but lucky for you, I could be that very general you seek. All you need to do is make me your right hand woman, and I can take charge. Lead your forces to victory, bring order to this city. Crush all the monsters within and bring it under our rule“

“A bold suggestion. And an intriguing one. For no other demon has demonstrated such initiative, nor conviction. ” Gebel concluded “Very well. I shall give you the chance to serve as my field commander. Lead my forces as you see fit, if you can. Crush the bugs, take this city, and once you are done, sweep forth from its borders wipe out all humanity!”

”Should you still wish it, it shall be so“ The princess agreed with a bow, that in being the crux of her plan. To see if she could peck peck away at his anger and find the part of him that doubted that plan, and bring it forth into the light.

The first part of that plan was quite simple ”As your general, may I recommend that you yourself accompany me for a time, so that you can inform the others of my new position. Plus, a king should be seen by his subjects after all, not languish on his throne, if he wishes to inspire great deeds“

A look of doubt, then a nod of agreement before he pulled himself off of the throne, declaring “Very well. Let us hasten the end of this tragedy” before he and she went forth to do just that.



What followed for the princess was a blur, the greatest hits of a violent rise to power. She was proclaimed his general before a throng of demons (including one ever so shocked bunny-eared demoness) and immediately set about organizing and training them into an actual army under her thumb.

Soon after the forces of hell surged out of the castle once more, now drilled into a cohesive fighting force. Harpies scouted out targets, gieremund wolf packs struck swiftly at exposed targets, while cohorts of undead knights steadily advanced under the orders of demoness officers, and demonic cats crashed through the enemy’s defensive positions, along with close to 100 other kinds of demons, all of which she found a palace for in her forces.

Hellfire scorched clear the hives of the alien swarm, and then they pushed out into the rest of the city, crushing undead hordes and mutant scourges beneath her giant glowing orange fist, while subjugating the forces of other hells and incorporating them into her forces.

As for the human survivors, well, Midna’s rapidly growing power allowed her to squirile them away, or simply temporarily transform them into other forms such that they were no longer ‘technically' human any more and thus did not need to be exterminated. Babysteps and logical twists, slowly trying to worm around her “master’s” burning hatred, while she also delicately poked at it from other angles, trying to bring out the person beneath the stained glass corruption.

She even managed to slow the corruption that was still ravaging his body even now, amassing a library of tomes on dozens of different eldritch and demonic lores to draw dark knowledge from, yet a true cure was always tantalizingly out of reach, as if an unseen force was foiling her at every turn. All she needed was one more conquest. One more piece of the puzzle seized from monstrous hands. That was all she thought it would take, until, at last and in the blink of an eye, there were no more hands in the city from which to take.



The dream solidified once again, weeks, months, maybe years having passed in minutes of sleep, on the day of victory.

Gebel never truly cared about a throne. Nor did he intend to rule–only to avenge, and destroy. Rather than indulge in hypocrisy by affecting any sort of ostentatious royalty, he wallowed in solitary misery, the throne -and the limelight- ceded to the architect of the region’s conquest. So it was that in a grand hall in his netherworld castle, in which the victorious demons were celebrating their complete and utter victory, their general sat in a throne of her own making to enjoy the spoils of war.

It was good to be a proper princess again, rather than a wanderer with only the title to her name.

Yet it was all to an end. An end to the fighting. An end to the threat of this cursed city. An end to Gebel‘s suffering. All of them now at hand, or oh so close.

And then, like a nightmare, the doors to the chamber crashed open, bringing with it a chill night breeze that extinguished all light in the hall but the glow of the ever present moon, as a masked man showed himself inside.

Gebel turned away from the balcony, where the blood-red moon always beckoned. He watched in tacit silence as a huge man, clad in strange armor crowned by a tragedy mask and accentuated by a black satin cape, strode through the throne room. The heavy oaken doors lay open behind him, revealing half-melted demon corpses beneath the candlelight, massive trail of carnage left in his wake.

The shardbinder quickly moved toward the throne to join the Twilight Princess. His voice betrayed his wariness and confusion. “My lord Consul? To what…do we owe the pleasure?”

“I’m here about your debt,” Consul D announced, his booming voice resounding through the room. “You here in this castle have been living large on borrowed time. Working hard to earn your keep, filling up your Clock, shining ever brighter. I’ve been watching with bated breath to see just how high you’d rise.” Pausing, he lifted a glass to his mask. In it lay a vivid, rich red fluid, though it shone in a way that normal wine did not. What manner of spirits, Gebel wondered, was this man imbibing? Somehow, D managed to drink it through his mask, and he drained the goblet dry. Though he’d satiated his thirst, he seemed rather hungry too, for he was really chewing the scenery. “...Imagine my disappointment, then, when your splendid string of victories came to an end. Were you content with your achievements? No more foes left to conquer, no more mountains left to climb? I suppose it’s true, what they say. Once you reach the top, there’s nowhere to go…but down.” With a swing of his hand, D cast his goblet at Midna’s feet, shattering it into pieces with a noisy crash. His voice was low, menacing, laden with intent. “...And so I am here. To collect.”

For her part, the princess carefully set down the drink she had been enjoying, and then rose to face this new challenge.

”I wouldn’t be sure of that, as it seems like I’m looking at one more mountain, and this one’s a real pinnacle of arrogance by the looks of things“ Minda said as she drifted up from the throne while brimming with her arrogance, arrogance she was actively using to push down a primal fear gnawing at her gut ”one I am oh so looking forwards to mining the secrets out of once we take you down“

Her shadow hand shot up and made a clenching fist, ready to throw down, while the princess raised one of her mortal hands, fingers curling around a pulsing locus of power that called fourth the titanic drake Valac, who’s twin heads pierced in through the grand windows on either side of her throne.

Her exposed eye glanced to the side at Gebel, not forgetting about who this was all for, and then inviting him to join the dance with ”Let’s show this interloper who he is messing with.“

Only silence answered her, however. When she looked back, she found Gebel hesitating, his eyes narrowed and his face deadly serious. Slowly, he raised his hand and snapped his fingers. When he did, the undead dragon turned lowered its loathsome heads, bowing to the Consul before them. “Now, now. Let’s not be hasty. As their invoker, these demons are mine. Your authority is but borrowed.” Gebel then put a hand on his chest, and bowed his own head toward D. “Forgive me, my lord Consul. I allowed this foolish upstart to command my army, but I did not anticipate that she’d lose the will to fight, nor lose her mind, as well.”

”Lost my …“ Midna started to echo in confusion, eye opening a wide for a moment, before narrowing back down to a glare as her gaze flicked back to the Consul and demanding to know ”Who are you, really, and what hold do you have over Gebel? Tell me! Because you are both sorely mistake if you don’t think I have the will to fight for what matters“

“What matters?” D looked from Gebel to Midna, then back at Gebel, the annoyance and incredulity hidden by his mask made crystal clear through his voice. “As if prattling knave, an insignificant speck like you, could possibly know.” He lifted his cape, and within roiled an illimitable darkness, smoldering with hellish flame. “I see how it is, Gebel. You’ve made a high-minded friend, amassed a little power, and let it go straight to your head. Well, so be it. If you will not stoke the flames of war, your usefulness…is at an end.”

“Wait!” Gebel extended a placating hand, his voice urgent. “Lord Consul! My aim is as it’s always been: the annihilation of mankind. And I will stop at nothing, I swear.” His eyes landed on Midna, and he grit his teeth. “It was her. She is behind the cessation of conflict. You understand? She came to me in my hour of need and convinced me to put her in charge. Only too late did I realize that I had been usurped. Had I the power to claim the reins once more, I could give you war everlasting…”

”After everything I’ve done for you, you’d just cast me aside?“ Midna asked, half in anger, half in sadness, for surely this could have been avoided if only she had found the cure she had been seeking.

But it was too late for that now.

”Fine then. Call me a usurper? I’ll show you what usurpation really looks like!“ as she rises up her hands and a dozen twilight portals open, spewing out demonic artifacts and tomes of eldritch lore that all swirled around her in a mass of dark power that poured into the fragment of fused shadow she was wearing.

The princess became engulfed in dark power, re-completing the work of her ancestors using her amassed power, while around more portals unleashed a trio of twilit Argorok that took to the air, while before the throne a legion of undead darknuts rose up to defend their princess. Gebel, meanwhile, retreated into the shadows.

”Bow down before the princess of twilight, or face my wrath!“

“And what is twilight?” D spat, his tone venomous as he stood, unflinching. “Nothing but a prelude to darkness!”

The Argoroks inhaled, preparing to let loose torrents of fire, only for two of them to be crushed and immediately killed in immense, hideous twin maws of Valac. D threw wide his cape, and from within erupted a fusillade of unholy fireballs. The hellfire rained down upon Midna and her legion, bursting into pillars of incinerating flame on hit. From parts unknown descended rays of ghostly green power, cutting through the inferno and any monsters yet to succumb to it. Midna strove to power through, pushing her monstrous form through the withering bombardment of dark magic to plunge her trident down upon the spot where the Consul stood, but before she could so much as scratch him he exploded into a swarm of bats. A blazing light shone down on her from above, and when she looked up she caught only a fleeting glimpse before a barrage of flaming meteors pounded her into and through the floor, smashing her all the way to the castle’s entrance hall.

Forcibly returned to normal, Midna lay half-senseless in the dusty debris, broken and bloody. Her Fused Shadow lay beside her, just close enough that she could weakly extend her throbbing arm in hopes of reaching it. Before she could touch it, her hopes were dashed as Consul D stooped to take it for himself, casting it into his cape to disappear. “What’s the matter?” he smirked. “I was told there would be wrath. Can’t you muster some up? Just a little wrath, as a treat? Ahh, a pity, muahahaha!” Chortling evilly, he reached down and picked Midna up, cradling her in his arms. “Well, no matter. You’ll just have to give me…” As he spoke, the mouth of his helmet unhinged, coming apart to reveal a real mouth underneath, filled with cruel, moon-white fangs. D bent down, reaching for her neck. “Something else.”



The princess gasped awake, bolting upright and clutching her throat.

”That … was different“ she eventually muttered to herself after she’d steadied her breathing ”Normally it’s … him, but. Instead. A Consul?“

She’d had dying dreams before. She knew exactly what it felt like after all, her life slipping away at the hands of another. At the hands of Ganondorf. But it was always him, always that moment when he had ended her life. Never another. Till now.

”Did… did it all get to me that badly? Or is my mind trying to tell me something“ she asked herself, trying to reach out and grab the already decaying dream and lock parts of it in her memory.

”The clock. Fueled by war. Eternal war. Maybe? That makes sense. Like the clockwork castle Chaos mentioned, feeding on the war“ she mulled it over, far too restless to sleep, and, by the time on her new watch, there wasn’t much night left anyway.

The desire to do something welled up along with her musings, and so when dawn came it found Midna full of milk and oats, and using an old bonesaw she’d retrieved from the clinic base to try and fix the mess Blazermate’s shield had made of her undead Darknut.

It also found her having settled on a mostly accurate, but obviously mostly baseless, guess as to the nature of flame clocks and the Consuls’ interest in perpetuating conflicts to fuel them, but obviously no idea as to why. Other than a plain lust for power.

The other was having second thoughts about her suggestion about working with Armstrong (working for a lesser evil hadn’t exactly worked out in the dream, and she assumed it had been her mind’s way of telling her that) a plan Goldlewis promptly came along and nailed into he coffin she had been putting it into with the news that Riden’s half of DepoRHado had gone to war with Vandelay over the announced replacement.

”I mean in a way I guess my suggestion was right though, if these people can be trusted, and it’s a big if“ Midna commented, but she’d go along with the plan no matter what, because it would mean they could get Tora into Vandelay with plausible deniability about what they were actually doing there, namely trying to find a way to counter the machine virus.

Yes, they needed a reset to fix Poppy, but keeping her fixed and stopping the other bots from being turned were also important.

Either way, she had no objection to opening up a portal, and sending them all on their way to what would likely prove to be an exciting start to the day.



Midna hoped the general public either got well clear, or were still in bed, as she took in the devastation of what had once been the gaudy city of glass.

It made the clean and stylish garbs of the ones who invited them to the party stand out even more.

Their leader, Sandalphon, said a lot of the right things, she had to admit, but the twili found herself asking ”Uh, huh, and what about the rest of us that aren't human?“ when the woman spoke of a way forward for humanity.

Still, she did have a point, and was offering a fair amount of support, so the princess was happy enough to go along with this for Poppy’s sake.

”I’m with Tora. I keep my promises after all“ she announced when they started making callouts about where they were going, before summoning her wolfos steed and riding into the fray by the nopon’s side.
In World of Light → 2 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay

wordcount: 1,434 (+3)
Midna: level 9 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (106/100)
Location: The City of Glass
Warp Charges: 1


Midna exited the arena riding someone’s shadow, mind abuzz with all the information they had just gleaned, and whether they could trust, well, any of it. As a result, she hardly noticed how the city of glass had changed in the dark, which was unfortunate, as she would have appreciated the soft pink, almost sunset like, glow the bay was reflecting onto the area around it had she seen it.

Rather than take in the scenery, what she wanted was to both rest, and talk things over, but there was still a bit of work for her to do before she could do either.

Whisking people back to home base was fairly taxing as a result of the day’s exertions, and the way her thoughts were running in circles inside her stressed skull. She was still in control, and there were no close calls, but it was extra taxing. Then she had to go back, and pick up Giovanna and what was apparently a new member she’d found somewhere.

”Alright? Are you adopting stray dogs out of alleyways now? What was he doing, tailing us?” she asked when informed of the news, and when the latter turned out to be true she was too tired to be surprised or concerned that someone could do that ”Huh. Alright. Another sneak for the team it is then. Could come in handy”

”Welcome out of the light. We’re completely outnumbered, working with barely any information, and fighting a false god” she told him as welcome ”So, you know, typical hero stuff from what I’ve heard”

”Now stick close, I’d rather not lose you in the twilight realm and have you turn into an actual dog” she beckoned them close and then away they went, wheezing across the city in only a few heartbeats.

”This here is our current little base away from our main base. Make yourself at home” she announced as they arrived, before doing the same herself.

The fact that Goldlewis was giving a recounting of events she had been present for gave her the time to do so, the princess storing her armor, giving herself a quick wash, and then getting some water and granola bar into her body. She would have loved cooked food, but, well, she had no real idea how to use the modern kitchen appliances. So snacks it was.

Maybe she could convince someone to make something nice for them in the morning.

Once everyone was up to date on what had gone on after the show, and she was not dying of thirst and hunger, she joined in the conversation on what to do with all this information

”Only way to find it is to capture something infected and try it, I suppose” Midna replied to the two robots discussion about how they needed to “reset” Poppie in-order to get her back, and how a friend heart might do it ”But before we do that, we’ll need to work out how the city’s forces resist it in the first place, so that you are both safe from the virus. Or just keep you well away from it”

She made a mental note to not use her cyber-bear when the machines were around after giving that advice.

”As for Peach, well, we need to work out where the resistance are keeping her, get into the Supernatural Life Research Facility to work out how they make the stuff that gets her her mind back, and after that well, if we can get 10 of the same kind of spirit she can turn into something that isn’t an Other at least” Which might well result in them having two impish princesses, which meant that she was speaking from experience when she said ”It’s not easy, but you get used to not being you anymore after a while”

There was hope then, though she could already think of all the ways it could be dashed. Resetting could not work, the cure Peach needed could be far too hard to use full time, or deeply unethical in its own way.

”Lastly, if that Bede kid is anywhere, he’ll be at that pokemon capture site that they use to produce more psychics” she added a yet another place for them to break into, on top of the end goal of the area’s boss.

Speaking of it, the princess had a theory or two about what it was doing down there ”Maybe the guardian was something made by, or someone working for, Shinra before the merger? Then Galeem promoted it to the position due to being strong, and coming with a whole lot of inbuilt defenses”

”Which is going to be a problem, because while Shinra might be awful if we do a lot of damage while breaking in it’ll hurt the city by reducing the forces they have to use against the crises, and make it much harder to work in the city as well” she worried. Not that they weren't exactly working outside the law a lot already, but becoming public enemy number one would make that oh so much harder.

”Same issue for this Konoe person. If they have most of the regime’s forces under their thumb, then, well, dealing with him is also going to get messy” she added, regarding Zenkichi’s in-depth knowledge of the man who had been put on the path of becoming the, well, secret third candidate for president in a way.

”So as much as I hate to say it, as much as he is probably also bad news, we might need Armstrong. He’s the only one who can fill the power vacuum that we’ll end up causing when we go against shinra” Midna suggested, not at all fond of the idea but as far as she saw it ”What other options are there? Even if we can get them on side, the PSYC-OFF rebels have just been broken, Konoe has his fingers in Neuron, we have no contact or clues about any of the other rebel groups, if they’d even work out as replacement powers”

The idea that they might be able to fix a man with such twisted aims as Konoe never even crossed her mind.

The same kind of thinking guided her thoughts on Roxas’ question on why the Consuls would serve Galeem in the first place ”Given that Galeem already destroyed those worlds, sucking up to the new god to get some power here sounds like something worms would be willing to do for a lick of power in this one”

She had to disagree with the boy’s assessment of Darkness as well ”You can control dark powers, if you know what you're doing. I’ve got proof right here after all” she tapped the ¼ of the used shadow she had set down on a table while they were talking ”and generations of wisdom in my head about it too. There were disasters and horror at the start, my ancestors were not nice people and they didn’t care who got hurt in their pursuit of power, but my people are past that now. Power is power, what matters is how you get it, and how you use it, not if it is light or dark”

She was apparently finding herself arguing a lot with Roxas, which did not feel good, but she then also found herself disagreeing about Organization XIII as well, at least in part.

”If Galeem’s pawns are trying to stop us, the path the Organisation is helping us on must be a right one. Plus, given they probably didn’t know about us till we’d already done a lot of damage, it is probably best not to let them in on the existence of the Organisation either” she retorted, before trying to smooth things out a bit at the last moment by suggesting that ”Plus, it would be far easier to ask one of them, next time one shows up, anyway. We could have Raz read their thoughts or something like that even, no trust in their words needed”

While she and the keyblade wielder had their disagreements, she was in full agreement with Geralt’s assessment that they should leave it for the morning once things started winding down ”Given that everything's going to go wrong tomorrow apparently, that’s probably for the best. The enemy can’t ruin our plans if we don’t have any after all”

Once everyone had had their say, Midna found herself a spot for some well deserved and very needed rest.

Unfortunately for her, her dreams would not be allowing the night to be anything close to restful.
In World of Light → 2 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay

The Koopa Troop

wordcount: 1,865(+3)
Bowser: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (235/120)
Bowser Jr: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (118/120)
Kamek: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (110/120)
Rika: Level 8 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (44/80)
Location: The Under - Home of Tears


”Young master! Young mistress!” Kamek called out with a mix of frustration and chiding in his tone as he floated over to the pair. Quite relief that the pair seemed to have gotten out of the surprisingly dangerous pizza tower levels unharmed had been replaced by dismay as to what they had acquired.

”Did you really get sweets? For breakfast of all things? And you’ve been eating them already too, you’ll spoil your appetite!” he told them, having spotted a smear of chocolate on Jr’s cheek.

”That’s funny. The weird cookie baking meat grannies said that too before Sectonia banished them from the face of the world” Rika commented, not actually getting what she was being chided over, while Jr quickly hopped in to deflect blame ”Also it was 100% her idea. Sectonia I mean”

”Wha-! Why?” he demanded to know, only for jr to reply simply ”She’s a giant bee” as all the explanation needed

”Ah…” the mage replied, deflating, while Bowser caught up and immediately asked ”Oh neat, are those cookies?” before helping himself to one of them ”Mmm, those are really good. But why do you have them”

”You can put them on pizza papa!” the prince replied, which Bowser found a weird but neat idea.

”Yes, well, perhaps go for something else for breakfast” Kamek suggested before the king started to set a bad example for his children.

”Sure, I wanna try all the other stuff too after all” Rika replied to that suggestion, having had her fill of sweets for the moment, to which jr nodded in agreement with strength away, making Kamek wonder just how much sampling the pair had done while gathering. Probably as much as their father, he then immediately guessed, which given the king had snacked at every shop they’d been through, was probably a lot.

Still, despite this, there was nothing like running for your life to work up an appetite all over again, and so all of them had space. Kamek especially, seeing as the area he had been to had not been compatible with his dietary habits.

He was thus very pleased with the dancer and the thief for having acquired a whole host of fruits, and said as much, after which the mage immediately went ahead and ruined the troll's day by putting far more of those than should ever be on a pizza, well, on a pizza. Then he put some honey on-top for good measure.

When presented with the veritable fruit salad Arno and Willa were understandably appalled by the fruit itself being on there, while interestingly Shyler, who had asked for more toppings when presented with just Sectonia’s fruit pizza now objected, presumably due to the presence of the honey.

They were then all horrified to be next presented with Rika’s everything pizza, which, well, had everything on it. There was barely any pizza to be seen under the complete food pyramid she was having. Admittedly she had made it so that there was a spread of toppings across her pizza rather than everything being everywhere, resulting in an extreme version of a half and half pizza. An eight eights perhaps.

Regardless, none of the trolls were having any of that, getting her a chorus of “there’s something on there I don’t like!” equivalents. So she stuck her tongue out at them, and then moved on.

Bowser meanwhile drizzled some pork sausages in honey to get the closest he could to honey glazed ham (Willa and Shyler where not fans of something on there, Arno wanted more), mushrooms and peppers (no one liked that combo) and then finally a prawn and claw grated lemon zest combo (S more, W + A no).

Finally Jr went with a pepperoni pizza (W more, A+S no, indicating a difference between plain and spiced sausage in terms of preference categories).

Incidentally Kamek was the only one keeping track of all this out of the 4 of them, the rest far more interested in chowing down after having made their snubbed pizzas.

”I see, I see, it's like a puzzle in a way. How interesting” the mage noted to himself, before declaring that ”Well there’s only one way to go about solving that, and it's to find the ingredients they do like individually, and put them together after the fact”

Then, rather than get up and do that himself, he just snapped his fingers, and summoned some dry bones to do that for him. What should have been an easy and lazy solution hit a snag as, having reviewed 8 pizzas already that didn’t meet their vague requirements, the trolls were starting to get antsy. As a result, after a pizza with just peppers (W more, S&A no) and just sweets (A more, S W no) a frustrated Willa gave the offending skeletal server a slap that sent it skidding backwards a few steps, unharmed, simply displaced, alongside the usual cry of dislike.

”Well now, there’s no need for that” Kamek complained from over where he was dictating pizza production ”Here, how about, hmm, just honey, how do you feel about that?”

“MORE TOPPINGS!” Arno shouted as he delivered a powerful looking right hook that, rather than breaking the dry bones as the force involved would suggest, instead launched it ceiling-wards. Like a rocket. Or someone at 999% damage being hit with a home run bat.

”Wha-” Kamek began, only to be even more flabbergasted as the skeletal minion somehow penetrated through the ceiling and just kept going, phasing through a dozen floors of the pizza tower, through solid bedrock and then out into the open air high above.

”Whaaaaat!” Kamek, who had a vague amount of sense sharing with even the dry bones, cried out as he jolted to his feet. Around him, the other dry bone’s slowed as the increasing distance added significant tax onto Kamek’s mana reserves.

He was too transfixed to simply cut the connection however, and instead got to watch as the drybones flew high high into the sky, then arched down to go diving straight back towards Peach’s castle, the place where Kamek had started his journey.

It fell, fell, faster and faster, and then suddenly physics switched around and it started to decelerate to the point that it ended its journey by softly touching down outside the castle gates.

A gobsmacked Kamek, surrounded by collapsed manaless drybones, got a hazy vision of a very wary looking toad peeking his head out from behind the gate before both the bag of bones and its summoner collapsed from the manadrain caused by the extreme distance involved.

”He launched it all the way back to peach’s castle. All the way. Intact!” he murmured in awe as Bowser picked him back up, dusted him down, and settled him back down into a sitting position.

”Gotta admit, that’s pretty impressive” Bowser replied, before frowning down at a half eaten pizza now splattered on the ground ”Though he did also make you drop your pizza, the jerk”

”Guess I’ll make you another one” Jr offered, and before Kamek could weakly protest commanded ”Goombas! Go make him another one!”

”Yes I suppose that would work” he muttered as the trolls said something about the goombas not being fleens as they set about making pizza, before starting and crying out ”No wait!” right before an unfortunate goomba was smacked in the face for having the audacity of making the same pizza twice.

Unlike what Kamek had shouted out in fear about, apparently knockback did not apply to the spirit’s control, and as the slap did no damage, well, the only consequence was that another goobma had to catch his pizza, and the toad at the gates of peach’s castle got even more confused by the second falling and then disappearing Bowser minion.

”Speaking of Peach’s castle-” Bowser moved on from all this as if this was the most normal thing in the world, and people weren't going to have to either copy Jr or request his aid when it came to making their pizzas from now on, (which was going to make mass production somewhat of a pain till someone solved the puzzle) ”none of the rest of you had joined up by that point, right? Guess I should fill you all in on how this all started”

”See, while you lot were minding your own business when the worlds ended, I was right there, at ground zero, facing down that big glow ball and his army of master hands. We were all going to take down a couple hundred of them each, when that loser of a lightbulb pulled its cheap trick and blasted everyone and everything. There was a buncha big deal heroes like Link, and Mario, and Samus and Snake and stuff there, along with big bad guys like me, and we all got blasted away” He started, which wasn’t the most encouraging beginning to the tale it had to be said

”All except one. No idea how, but Kirby, he’s like a round pink ball this size who just eats and stuff apparently, he got away somehow. Flew faster than those beams of light and survived it all free from Galeem’s influence” he told them, ”and then he crashed down at the top of this hill. Now I don’t know what I was doing there, but me, Tora, Blazermate, and a few others were already there, and I guess maybe someone used that power F used in the city, because we all tried to take him down”

”Now, uh, obviously I knew something was up, and was holding back with my super strong willpower or something, because the pink ball beat us up, and free’d us all using those heart things. Handy that he knew how to use those” Bowser said, downplaying how he got his butt kicked.

”Anyway, then he went off on his own, and the rest of us, well we saw Peach’s castle in the distance and so I set us off to go there. Along the way we fought some robots and other stuff. Oh, and we met that Master of Masters guy who told us how to use spirits. I think he said he learned how to do it from use in the future or something it was weird” he added, casually dropping some kind of time travel or clairvoyance into the picture before going on ”oh and then the master hand also summoned a bunch of people the others cared about and forced them to fight. Not me though. Kinda weird, but I guess it was a bit pointless seeing as most of the people I cared about where inside Peach’s castle already”

”Wouldn’t that have made summoning us easier. You know, just have me or Peach or whoever walk out the door?” Jr asked, finding this very odd

”yeah, I dunno why that didn’t happen. Anyway, some of the others beat up their friends and freed em, and some, I dunno, gave up and became Galeeming because they didn’t wanna fight, and then we had to beat both of them up” Bowser explained, dropping yet more knowledge, and finally finishing with ”and the after that we went inside and beat up another version of me. One with wings and things. Not sure what the deal with that was but apparently there can be more than one of you in here”

”It was you from that time with the rabbids when the mega bug mind controlled you, so maybe it was really just that bug looking like it did when it was at its strongest. Though I guess Mario did kill that bug so, um, more time travel?” Jr scratched his head, not entirely sure if he was right ”maybe, I guess, well, the Consuls are servants of Galeem and they’ve had time powers so far so, maybe Galeem also ate all of time as well as space? Which is, you know, kinda scary”

And wasn’t that some fun information to mull over over breakfast.
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