Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
”Alright, let's get this party started!” Bowser declared as Barnabee leapt forwards to take care of the first patrol that ran across them.
Rather than do the same and get stuck right, the King leapt up onto one of the nearby buildings, before roaring at the top of his lungs to announce his presence. Stealthy he was most certainly not being.
If the roar didn’t give that away, then the king proceeded to belt out a challenge of ”Listen up chumps! I’m going to tell you this, and tell you this once! The Koopa king has come to town, so you better run away wasps, or you're going down!” too the occupying army certainly did, followed up by him giving the command ”Koopa troop, attack!”
Attack they did, joining in with queen Sectonia and opening fire on the various bee-bop drones hovering around the hive. Magical blasts from Kamek, gunfire from Rika and pink sound waves from Jr (who was using Dazzle as a hand cannon) all lashed out and knocked the robotic drones from the sky.
While a wasp on camera drone watching duty some ways away ran to find someone in charge, the troop entered the fray properly, just in time to back up Barnabee as the additional squads came in.
The troop opened up with a gust of icy wind launched by Dazzle, the pokemon’s frosty gust hampering the flying foes as they were pushed back, and frost formed on their wings. Then magic blasts and water cannon shots, followed by explosive bursts of goop, and that was all before they got into melee where spears, claws and rocket powered punches awaited them.
Suffice to say that, if the seekers stayed grouped up, the individual wasp patrols were no match for them when the numbers were remotely even. They were meant to keep the various bee workers in check after all, not see off a concentrated invasion force.
Worse for them, in seeing their oppressors fall, and the return of a hero of their people, some of the bees abandoned their indentured tasks to race to his side. Not all, not even many, but some. They picked up tools, raided now undefended weapon stockpiles, or went to battle with only stinger and bear fists to their name, fighting for the hive and for freedom.
”Ha ha! This is going to be a cake walk! We’re building our own army and everything, and what have they got? Nothing!” Bowser laughed, right on cue for his earlier aggrandizing to come around to bite them in the thorax.
The thrum of heavier wings, much, much heavier wings was heard, and then two titans, twice as tall as their lesser kin and far more bulky, entered the battlefield, or rather, by their very presence, truly made it one.
The first of the pair brought the swarm. Adorned in crimson robes and with red ribbons trailing from her antenna, the ichor queen carried with her in her four arms a single cleaver as tall as she was. Accompanying her where lesser pretenders to her own image, also carrying great cleavers and dressed in red, as well as a very small cadre of male drones, their faces veiled, every hand carrying a weapon, and something stirred in their blood that made them far more dangerouse than mere mortals.
The second arrived with a smaller contingent, but neither it nor she were any less dangerous because of this. Her brown hued chitin had a metallic sheen to it, and spikes radiated off of it. She carried with her a small rune covered hammer that was no weapon, but instead a tool she had been using to craft artifacts, many of which she now carried: she was armed a sword who’s reflections shone like sunlight and which could summon vines, and a large poisonous thistle shaped like a mace, while being protected by both a shield and a helmet made of lead. A thick layer of soil clung to her feet and lower legs, giving her the appearance of wearing boots made from the earth itself. Accompanying her were several wasps carrying staves and wands decorated with ribbons, these blue and green instead of the blood red of the cult.
These immediately demonstrated what exactly they were by taking up defensive positions, whereupon those with green banners engaged in some kind of ritual to draw strength from the earth, before they began barrages of launching spinning blades from out of thin air, while those with blue banners immediately began hurling lightning bolts. The brown hued iron queen meanwhile began casting spells that empowered small groups of wasps, turning chitin to iron much like her own was, and conjuring spectral beast hides atop that same defense to further increase the resilience of the swarm.
When combined with the missile onslaught of the Heavy Drone B-33 and the odd javelin wielding wasp, the arrival of the mages meant that the heroes no longer had an overwhelming ranged advantage, forcing the troop, at least, to back off and take cover.
Rather than surge forwards into this space, the cultist wasps took the moment to pray … and to sacrifice. A number of bees adorned in white robes of purity and bound in chains had been brought with them, and in the moment they were given, the cultists turned their blades on these captives first, spilling blood from which a swarm of bloodflies erupted. The flies, like redfured mimicries of the bee’s own hivings, surged forwards as an expendable vanguard which the blessed cultists then followed. All but their ichor queen. She instead channeled her magic, empowering herself, readying to enter the fray at a decisive moment and deliver the executioner's blow.
The charge was met by sporadic firepower that mainly managed to cut down the swarm of flies, and then crashed into the seeker’s minion frontline. Man sized cleavers were swung overhead, crushing dry-bones and antlions in a single swing, while the wasp drones utilized their four smaller weapons to overwhelm with flurries of blows, cutting down nimble hivlings that avoided their sisters’ singular strikes.
They did not do this without taking blows, of course, but this seemed to only make them more furious, the wasp cultists devolving into a frothing berserker rage when hurt that rendered them even more dangerous, their blows keener and heavier than ever, though in that fury the became far less focused on protecting their remaining vitality. The enraged drones were even worse than their sisters, for on top of being empowered by harm, their wounds also knit shut shortly after they received them.
As they broke through the expendable summon line in places, or simply flew over it, they entered into a street fight with whatever seekers were on the ground, and the bees fighting for their freedom alongside them.
While fights with the latter were rather one sided in the cult’s favor, the former was anything but. For the troop’s part, Bowser and Rika were their frontline.
The ship girl's first cultist kill came easily, a hail of lead from her rifle gunning down one of the massive cleaver wielders before she could get close. The second she splatted with her grizzco blaster, covering it in goop that caused it to drop to the ground, where she blew it apart with a barrage of shells from her rigging guns. The third got close enough that she had to bring her lance out, skewering it upon the needle thin point thanks to the element of surprise.
It was the fourth that caused issues: a drone, his hide turned to iron and a phantom cloak of some beast’s hide draped across his shoulders, all thanks to the iron queen’s magic. Bullets pinged off his enhanced chitin as she tried to gun him down, he recovered too quickly from the goop blast for her to nail him with her ship guns, and the point of her spear was parried away by two of his many blades.
With a wordless cry the ship girl princess met him with gauntlet and hull blades. She slammed an armored fist forwards, only for the drone to buzz to the side and only be grazed by the blow, after which it struck back. Cleavers smacked against guardian hull blades, energy shielding and armor, doing more harm from their bludgeoning weight than any cutting.
Her chainsaw bayonet squealed against steel as she tried to cut though his armored skin as he continued to hack away at her, one of the blades finding her narrowly missing her unarmored neck. In a half tactical, half panicked move, she fired her maneuvering thrusters, slamming herself forward into him, and then him into a wall, his magically metal hide doing little to increase his weight it seemed.
She kicked off the wall while the drone was momentarily stunned and hammered him with her grizzco blaster, first with fiery goop, and then with electricity. That last seemed to do the trick, the electricity coursing through his metal chitin, stunning him just enough that she could line up her rigging guns and open fire.
The heavy anti ship shells hammered the drone, punching through armor and detonating inside of him, turning the drone into a shower of gore. In the half second it took her to realize that this itself was odd, the demonic blood that the drone had been filled with formed into a writhing living thing and attacked, tendrils of blood streaking out, tips hardening into crystalline ponts.
The princess cried out in pain as these hammered her armor with rapid jabs. She tried to fight back, but being made of blood, the slime-like mass resisted being punched and chopped. So she retreated, grappling hook latching onto a building and pulling her up and away.
There she took a half second to breathe, and then, before the demonic blood could flow off and attack nearby bees, she launched herself back at it. Her goop blaster fired, striking the blood, filling it with inky contamination. Again and again she shot, till the blood was to full of ink to remain cohesive and at last her foe fell
Yet he had been only one of ever so many, and no sooner had she dealt with the blood than she had to run forwards, bringing up her spear as she rushed to support an embattled team of worker bees. They needed all the help they could get. The princess rammed her spear through one wasp, hammered another with her fist, and then unleashed an all out assault on another drone to stop both him and his cursed blood, and by the end of it found herself leading the remains of the bees in a charge across the street to aid a second group of their kin.
Behind this melee, as much as was possible to be behind the messy streetfighting anyway, Kamek and Jr engaged in duel of ranged firepower with the wasp’s mage core and the Heavy Drone B-33, who were quite contrasting in their era, but neither was outdone by the other.
Lightning flashed, hammering into buildings and shocking right through armor, while hails of double ended throwing knives rained down, all accompanied by laser blasts and missile strikes.
Kamek and his doppelgangers returned fire, poking heads and wands out from out above the tops of buildings to blast at the enemy mages, while Jr wielded Dazzle like a gun, and had Mimi on his shoulder, both pokemon blasting away with lightning and song when the prince ducked out from cover.
In the air, queen faced queen, as the iron queen’s ledden shield and helm let her resist a lot of the damage of magical attacks and her transmuted chitin mundane attacks, while a ring of 7 gems and a self empowering spell she had cast caused any wounds she did suffer to regenerate at a frightful rate. She actively placed herself in harm’s way, protecting her team with her own durable form while they continued to trade fire with the seeker’s ranged fighters, as well as healing any who became harmed.
Sectonia’ idea to send their pair of brutish kings forwards under magical empowerment then was doubly wise, as it seemed like the best way to break this stalemate, and Kamek joined his own spellcraft to hers, surrounding one or both with a physically resisting barrier.
In response, the damage Drone charged forwards to meet them, Bowser and it slamming together, sending a shockwave echoing through the battleground. They pushed at each other for a few moments, before the king grabbed the drone with both his claws, and hurled it to one side, sending it smashing through the wall of a building.
He laughed in victory, only to turn in response to a warning call as the ichor queen finally entered the fray on her own. She had not spent the opening moments of battle idle either. A barrier of air surrounded the queen, deflecting projectiles, while her body had turned to mist, protecting her from minor blows while doing nothing to reduce her own deadliness, and she was surrounded by a half dozen illusory reflections of herself.
She and her mirrors slammed down their great cleaver, though only the true one struck true, smashing into the king’s shoulder. He grunted in pain but the barrier protected him from the physical harm. It did not protect him when she buzzed back, avoiding his retaliatory punch that would have hit an illusion anyway, and blasted an electrical shockwave from an outstretched hand.
Convulsing from the super effective damage, the king was unable to avoid the return of the drone, which slammed out of the ruined building, into the king, and then carried him and it into another one, slamming him through said wall and leaving the empowered ichor queen unchecked on the battlefield, and ready to charge forwards to deliver death whenever she might please unless someone faced her.
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
”In hindsight, I suppose the place with the trees growing out of it would have root caverns beneath it” Kamek mused as the troop looked up at the foliage bursting from the abandoned arboretum. They’d come here after receiving Therion’s message, but, unbeknownst to them, had ended up coming at the place from a different angle, and thus an entirely different entrance, than the thief and his friend had taken.
Nevertheless, they picked their way through the top layer with relative ease and lack of any notable encounters, until they came across a curious sight. Streaks, or paths, of slime coated the ground in one area, all of which converged upon a singular path down towards the lusher garden below.
They found out this latter fact because Rika had immediately stepped on, or rather above, the still wet slime, the presence of even that thin layer of fluid letting her sail rather than walk, which she much preferred. To follow her, the royals were able to simply walk alongside this trail for a while, but when they found the way down, well, it was entirely coated in the slime
”Are we really going down that way” Jr complained
”It would be best to not make the others wait too long, but I suppose we could take a look for another one?” Kamek said, looking to Bowser to get a final say on that matter.
Before he could give it, however, Rika, who had already been sailing ahead to check out the tunnel, piped up ”I think I hear fighting going on down there? There’s magic pew pews and shouting and stuff going on I think” which settled the matter.
”We’re going to get down there and back up whoever’s gotten themselves into a mess. Koopa troop, charge!” he commanded, before stomping forwards onto the slime and down into the tunnel. Jr groaned and then followed his papa on foot while Kamek floated slime free above.
The tunnel dipped and bent, and then took a steep decline which had some rather unfortunate consequences, namely both royals losing their grip on the ground and instead starting to slide down the slime.
”Wowowowow!” Bowser panicked while his arms pinwheeled to maintain his balance, while jr entirely altered his opinion on the slime trailed path, sliding swiftly past his papa with a cry of ”Woohoo!” as he effortlessly kept his balance while shooting down the rest of the tunnel.
The prince burst out into the lush lower level with Rika at his side (the ship girl having matched his pace, one he caught up with her) a little while later, which sent them both careening into a miniature warzone.
One side, that of the garden, had formed a defensive perimeter centered around a relatively normal looking tree tree, sans for the fact that green energy periodically emanate from the tree to settle upon the hulking form of an Awoken Hollow, both revitalizing it, and seemingly causing it to grow even stronger after each revitalization as more vines sprouted from its shell.
The tree was also host to six of sword armed harpies who swooped down out of its branches to attack, before retreating back to it if harmed inorder to be healed by their roost. The remaining bulk of the garden’s forces meanwhile consisted of a number of what seemed to be the fleshless shells of termites, the capitol’s former residents, reanimated by a mass of vines and moss, and a few harpy skeletons animated in the same way (the living ones did not seem to mind this at all), all of which shambled forwards in zombie like fashion towards their foes.
Such slow speed might have made the termite and harpy manikins easily outmaneuvered by most foes, but as it turned out they were matched for speed by the ones they were facing. The decimators of gardens. The leavers of the slime trail. A horde of snails.
The main mass of the slimy invaders consisted of blamish snails which crept along the ground, their shells as tall as men, their maws full of surprisingly sharp teeth. Where they and the manikin met, the snails attempted to simply devour the vines animating the undead, while the manikin in turn tore into them with claws of bone or chitin, or attempted to lash the snails with whip like strikes from their vines that seemed to inflict fatigue at the touch.
These ground borne foes where no threat to the harpies, but what was where the milk snails whom while the where where only about half the size of their blamish kin, where able to unleash bolts of blue magical energy from their stain glass patterned shells. It was they who kept the harpies from simply harassing the snail army to death, as each attempted swoop would be met with an AA barrage of magic blasts.
Finally, at the center of the mass, pushing forwards towards the tree and its awoken hollow guardian, and showing no fear for the way it was smashing aside foe after foe, was a single member of a third kind of snail, one smaller than all the rest, that rocked on its shell rather than its slimy body.
Like the groves forces Rika or Jr noticed that final third kind of snail, for they were much too busy careening into the rear ranks of the slimy army. Literally careening in Jr’s case, as, having no real way to slow down, it was all he could do to spin himself around and slam spiky backed shell into one of the blamish snails, punching holes its armor in the process and eliciting a bubbling cry of pain from his impromptu crashmat, and drawing the ire of the other snails in the process.
His victim attempted to bite him with a mouth containing just enough hard parts that it might actually hurt, and got punched in the face for its efforts.
”ew, gross, you got your slime on my fist” jr complained as he pulled said fist back after leaving the snail’s head a ruined pulp, before pushing away from its disintegrating body, and finding himself surrounded by its angry kin.
”What, are you supposed to be scary? Maybe if I was a cabbage” Jr taunted, before twirling his paintbrush and then giving a warcry of ”Lets see how you like the taste of your own goopy medicine!” before slashing with the brush, leaving a streak of burning slime that started to roast a pair of his foes.
As they burned, the prince leapt up onto their backs, clawed feet finding footing on their large shells despite the slime coating them, after which he started leaping from snail to snail, stabbing down with his paintbrush to deliver ironically slimy death to snails after snail.
Rika meanwhile had avoided smashing into the snails, but by virtue of association also became a target, causing several milk snails to pivot around to attempt to blast her with their magical bolts. They achieved little in trying to do this.
Rika’s gaze slowed the snail’s shots, while she continued to take advantage of the slimy snail trail to sail to and fro, thus avoiding the shots with ease while returning fire with her grizzco blaster and lancing any snails that got close with her spear. As she did this, the harpies took advantage of the distraction, swooping down and swiping at the odd snail with their claw held blades, shrinking cries of triumph and thanks as the unintentional intervention from the pair of youngsters seemed to have turned the course of the battle in their favor.
Then the snail traveling on its shell rather than foot got close to the Awoken Hollow. Fooled by its unassuming stature, the construct of vines and purple armor made the mistake of striking at one of the larger blamish snails instead of this small strange one.
It was a fatal mistake.
The snail opened its maw wide. Wider. And then engulfed the entire hollow within, devouring it in a single bite.
The harpies' cries gradually died out as they all came to realize what had occurred, and then ramped right back up into ones of panic as the snail that had devoured the tree’s greatest defender now moved slowly towards it. Vines rose up around the snail at the tree’s command, attempting to esnare it, and manikin shuffled forwards to try and fill the breach, yet in response the other snails crawled forwards with the devourer, consuming vines and letting what might well be their leader keep moving towards the prize.
The harpies tried to swoop in to defend as well, but bolts shot up, swatting one from the sky, and warding the rest away.
The snails swarmed the fallen harpy as she tried to struggle up, and none, not even the young troop members, could get close to help either her or the tree.
Then Bowser came careening out of the same snail slime slick tunnel his kids had shot out of only a little bit ago. He’d gotten stuck in a wall at one point, slowing him down, but now caught up, once again sailing fourth uncontrollably and as a result, where his son had smashed into and been slowed by one snail, the king stopped for no one and nothing.
Shells and slimy bodies were smashed aside as the king unwillingly entered the fray, careening through the slimy army. He flattened several of the snails trying to eat the fallen harpy alive, giving her sisters an opening to swoop down and pull her out of danger, and then careened right past the devourer snail and smacked, rather lightly (most of his momentum having been killed by flattening snails), into the trunk of the tree.
”Urrgh” the king groaned, before looking down at his snail roadkill splattered clothes and groaning ”and I just got these too!”
“Behind you, noble turtle! The devouring abomination comes to eat us whole!”
”Huh?” the king enthroned as a voice spoke from the tree itself, before turning to look back the way he’d come.
”Devourer?” he asked, when he saw nothing worthy of that name
“There, right there, sitting on its shell, its coming!” the voice cried out in fear as the strange slowly rocking on its shell snail came closer and closer, along with several of its taller kin
”I don’t see anything except more snails” the bamused king said, still not seeing the danger.
”Look out papa! Don’t let it get close!” Jr called from where he was balancing atop a sail shell, to which Rika added ”Shoot it shoot it shoot it!”
Bowser looked even more bemused for a moment, before shrugging, deploying his shoulder cannons, and giving the weird snail both barrels. Shell after shell slammed into the snail, which while a terror to plants and medieval monks was no danger to modern firepower, and quickly blew it to smithereens.
”That good?” Bowser asked, as he dusted of his hands and undeployed his cannons
“Ohhhh thank the Pantokrator” the voice sighed in relief, as the remaining snails that Bowser had not flattened while rolling were rapidly finished off by the tree’s remaining forces and the rest of the troop (including a very late arriving Kamek).
”So am I talking to a tree or what?” the king asked as he took a step back and then turned to face it.
“I am no simple tree, I am a Hamadryad and a wise and magical guardian of this here domain” the tree, or rather dryad, spoke, before offering “for your gallant and timely assistance, i offer you my ancient wisdom. Please, ask, and I shall tell”
”Hmmm” Bowser hummed as he scratched his chin, and the harpies cries of “what are you gonna ask!?” drowned out any attempt by Kamek to get a word in, before asking ”You know where the way down is?”
After they gathered up the various spirits, or rather had some toadies do it, they were given a harpy as a guide, who brought them to the place where the siren had been freed by the siren, and prevented them from running into any trouble along the way.
There they camped down and tried to wash off some of the snail slime while waiting for the others. Once they were all together, they ended up making a bit of a display of all the spirits they had, from the 3 kinds of snails they had just killed, the Awoken Hollow and a few manikins they had scavenged, and the hoppers and Dark Magic Lampyre they had slain earlier while sorting through them all, leaving a perfect opportunity for anyone who had any interest in any of them to make a request before the troop used them up themselves.
If Ganodorf asked him/filled him in, Kamek would comment that the clock the king of evil had seen was most likely a flame clock, and wonder out loud about the strangeness of it being out in the open in the city’s seat of power, when they had never seen any but the one tucked away above the city of tears before.
After that, they headed down with the others and sure enough, the cave led right down to the bee kingdom as the travelers had predicted. There they saw a few bee-like bots enforcing the wasp’s orders, but interestingly, no actual wasps, even though the paper hives clearly indicated their presence.
”I suspect that once one of those flying things sees us, we’ll kicking the hornet's nest, or well, the wasp’s nest, and the occupiers will come buzzing” Kamek predicted, guessing that the bee-boop drones where as much security cameras as they were security.
Bowser meanwhile agreed with his fellow inhuman royal with: ”Yeah, what do we look like, sneaks and thieves? Lets’ get out there and conquer this kingdom already!”
”Liberate” Kamek lightly reminded him
”Same difference”
”At any rate, perhaps we could, as Primrose suggested, have it both ways? We have a, ah, daring and powerful team go out there and get the wasps' attention, while a more subtle force goes around the disturbance and takes out the queen wasp while her soldiers are distracted?” the mage suggested, expanding on the plan that was somewhat coming together.
wordcount: 1,404 (+3) Midna: level 9 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (31/110) Location: The City of Glass Warp Charges: 1
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town S.O.U. Building Seiran Clinic Underground Roadway (Seiran Rebel Base Outskirts) Below City of glass entrance (plate maintenance tunnel) Vandelay Campus (Alleyway)
As it turned out, yes, holding hands was what they did, and so the princess proceeded to fully offer her hand to Sakura as if she was inviting her to dance at a royal ball, despite the urgency involved in needing to flee the giant machine that had just crashed the party. Once it was taken, they were off, waltzing across the city in a series of teleporting leaps.
In doing so they excited the fantastical futuristic city found near the heart of the city and entered a region near the outskirts that was far more mundane. Well, mundane for those who were familiar with the modern world at any rate. To Midna it was still new and interesting architecture, just of a different flavor. More somber, less garish. She felt like she might have liked it if she hadn’t found out it had been used for some sort of vile practices, and they really must have been vile indeed considering some of what the city authorities thought was ok.
”Or I suspect they might have not closed it at all, and simply claimed they did. It seems like a stupid decision to start using it again for new terrible things. Hmm, or very smart cover due to how obvious it is” the princess mused, before shrugging ”we’ll just have to demolish it to be sure it can’t be used a third time. After we get everyone out. Dark deeds tend to linger so it’d be best to get rid of the place if we can”
Speaking of dark deeds, the princess could not stop herself from commenting on the theories on where OSF got more psychics from, despite the fact that she should really have left it to Sakura on if she would elaborate or not, by adding that ”the psyfish part certainly was, at least according to the psyfish themselves” and then leaving them to do with that information what they would.
After that she stepped back to let the psychics do their thing, but made sure to take note of all the abilities whichever one of them she was going to go with would have access too. As it turned out she ended up heading out with Gemma, mostly because she happened to be standing near him when they were sorting out teams.
He ended up leading them into a lovely combination of hospital ward and prison, or at least that was how she interpreted the presence of the metal gates. Kept prisoner within where no people, but rather collections of manikins in various states of disassembly.
”Creepy” she commented, before jokingly telling Hemma ”You’ve really brought us to the nicest place for our first time together, didn’t you”
Midna was slightly concerned that the collection of manikins might hide among their mist some of the Other, like the Rummy type ones who were rather manikins-ish already, but that fear turned out to be misguided. It was the manikins themselves that were to be feared.
It started with the flickering of the lights when they were powering up a gate, a hint of movement that could have just been a trick of the light, and then a full blown attack when the fuse blew and they were plunged into darkness.
Ironically, it was the last gasp of the light that made it hard for Midna to see rather than the dark itself, the flash from the blown fuse momentarily blinding her. Meanwhile, when she turned to face the noise of several approaching somethings from behind them, and her vision returned, the darkness was clearer to the princess of twilight than if it was a brightly lit space.
What she saw was a headless manikin lunging for her, already past practical summoning or shadowhand range. She momentarily wished she had been carrying a weapon in preparation for an ambush, but even as she had that though she felt a thread of connection to her blades she hadn’t before.
She always knew roughly where they were in her otherworldly collection of course, but now it seemed clearer, as if she could reach out and touch them. So she did, the princess reaching down to her side, clasping two left hands around the hilt of her longsword, and in one swift motion drew it into the world of light.
In a soft flash of moonlight she drew the blade from a portal as if it was a scabbard, cleaving the blade into the side of the manikin, sending it stumbling to the side. She flashed a grin behind her mask, and prepared to line up a strike on the next of her foes, only to see out of the corner of her eye the one she had struck was entirely unharmed, not a dent in its clothy gown or wooden looking body.
She only had a moment to process that before she had to deal with the next, backing up a step and bringing her blade down, before swiftly drawing one of Zanzo’s cleavers as she had the long sword to strike a third. The heavy blow smacked it away, but again, no harm was done. A fourth foe was struck by a third drawn blade, but now that they were out, the 2 cumbersome cleavers proved as unwieldy as she had expected.
She took another step back as she clumsily bashed a fifth manikin aside, before having an idea. She lightly tossed the two cleavers to the ground as she guarded with the longsword, letting them fall into portals.
Then she took another step back, and proceeded to quickly draw the cleavers again, bashing two manikins away. Drop, step back, draw, strike, another step back- and she suddenly found herself bumping into the wall, and having made no noticeable dent in her foes.
It took that bump to knock her out of the rhythm she had gotten herself into, one free of thought and focused in action, and to really take in the futility of what she had been doing, but by then it was too late.
The princess was swarmed by the monsters, who reached past the blades that she tried to cut them with and grasped her arms. They pulled her forwards as more hands reached out, crushing grips grabbing her chest and neck, trying to crush the life out of her. She gasped, robbed of air, before dropping her weapons all at once, and then dissolved, slipping through their fingers.
A moment later she reappeared on the opposite end of the darkness cloaked room, having faded into shadows and then hopped from where the horde was upon her to another spot. Momentarily losing their quarry did little to phase the manikins, though what did was an odd disunity that proceeded to occur. The ones the princess had struck with the crescent moon blade drawing strikes moved to cross the room to reach her specifically, while the others went for the closest hero, causing a small traffic problem in the process and at least one manakin stumbling over another and tripping to the floor in the process.
”Interesting” she commented between heavy breaths as she observed this, her mind switching gears from what kind of firepower she could bring out to hurt these things, to something more immediately and observably useful that she could do.
With a wave of a hand she summoned the stocky shield bearing exosuit roadblock whom she had turned into a striker, and commanded him to ”Get their attention for me”
The suit obliged, challengingly beating its shield with a fist, which caused a half dozen or so heads to snap in its direction. While her striker taunted their foes, the princess stepped forwards to strike another manikin with an attention drawing slash, having deliberately dropped her blades into portals before hopping away, adding another member to her growing crowd of manikins who wanted to get their hands on specifically her.
That became the core of her strategy going forwards, the princess taunting the unkillable foes, and then using her ability to shadow hop about the dark environment to lead them in a merry game of cat and mouse which they were unable to win, thereby keeping them off of the others. Her hope, then, was that they would be able to find some way to win or move forwards while she acted as bait, drawing as many of the foes away from them as she could.
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
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
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.
wordcount: 1,632(+6) (+9) (+4) Midna: level 9 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (25/110) Location: The City of Glass Warp Charges: 1
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town S.O.U. Building Seiran Clinic Underground Roadway (Seiran Rebel Base Outskirts) Below City of glass entrance (plate maintenance tunnel) Vandelay Campus (Alleyway)
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.
New Strikers spiritbound: Roadblock A hulking robotic exosuit on a long cooldown. When summoned he can perform a hard-hitting three hit punch combo, put up his shield (it can be held for up to ten seconds and has good durability against physical damage, or canceled with a rocket bash), beat his fist against his shield to taunt enemies (one he times out, said taunt transfers to Midna), or if he's been used three times already in one fight, perform a giant tornado lariat
Skywave An aerial exosuit on a long cooldown. When summoned she can use her aether lance to lob three projectiles that explode in a small area to heal allies and damage enemies, send out a short shockwave that blinds enemies and heals allies for three seconds, perform a vertical spinning thrust to carry herself and her summoner into the air, fire a gravity cluster that pulls in surrounding foes for three seconds, and if she's been used three times already in one fight, create a field for five seconds that stops enemy movement
Items created:
Zanzo’s cleavers a pair of impractical heavy and squat blades that are very much style over substance. The dense metal backs and sharp steel fronts make them very effective against defenseless training dummies, not so much against combatants with the survival instincts to get out of the way of the weapon’s heavy blows. Trailing cords can be plugged into power sources that can be used to make the screw head like disks on the weapon spin, which adds no additional combat capabilities.
Spirit absorbed: Mursame The host is now taller than an average woman. She's gained some futuristic red armor plates, most notable on her shoulders, chest, and thighs, all loosely styled after the armor of a Samurai. Her helmet is now adorned by the same material and is mostly symmetrical except for one covered eye, its faceplate fixed in a demonic scowl. Her skin now has an artificial look to it, with seams as if between interlocking parts, rivets, small built-in metal plates, and a few blue light fixtures. This spirit confers the Power Crescent Moon. This special sword slash allows Midna to near-instantly draw and strike with a bladed weapon and taunts the enemies it hits, making them more likely to target the host. This spirit also confers the Weakness Can't Fly, making the host unable to fly under her own power
Notable spirit consumed: Blodia The summon is now a bulky wolf-bear mech, thirty feet tall but still quadrupedal, completely mechanical in appearance, part bright red, part dull ice blue, and par brown. This spirit confers the Power 8 Way Airdash, which allows the mech to dash forward, up-forward, straight up, up-back, backward, down-back, straight down, and down-forward after jumping in the air. This can be performed twice per airtime. This spirit also confers the Weakness Piloted, requiring someone to actually get into the summon to pilot it in order for it to do anything
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?”
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.
Midna level up: Quad Wielding: Midna taps into the fused shadow a little more and is able to summon a second pair of arms, these attached to her body in the same palace, and featuring the same style, as Orendi extra set (with the princess tapping into that spirit to gain familiarity with that particular body plan).
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.
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
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
”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.
You have obtained: Little Disciple Every 1.6 seconds while sprinting, the artifact will send out a wisp that will home in on the nearest enemy, dealing 300% of the damage the owner would with a basic attack as unaspected magic damage. A wisp can travel 40m before dissipating. Having bonuses to movement speed will decrease the cooldown
”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.
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
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
”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.
Location: Midgar Sector 06, the City of Glass Midna’s @DracoLunaris, Geralt’s @Multi_Media_Man, Tora Word Count: 3334 (+4)
Monstrous Physique- The inhuman strength of the Orphan of Kos has suffused into Geralt, improving his already-impressive physical strength to levels far beyond human. This also improves his physical durability, allowing him to withstand more punishment.
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.
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
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
”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.
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