She didn’t end up having to contemplate whether she’d have to use her Armageddon spell for very long, because almost as soon as she’d raised a barricade, the attempts to shoot through the windows ended. As did the sound of combat because, according to the flying woman, Sanae, they’d scared off the attackers.
At least that is how she interpreted it, mind more focused on the relief that it was on how exactly that had come to pass.
Then, before the boost adrenaline died down, she got another, different kind of boost, as the boy offered them thanks, which caused a small flash of light to appear around Rayne, along with metallic clink of two thin translucent teal chains forming and then disappearing.
“Oh!” The Witch Knight started as she felt the power return to her, causing her to float up and off of the ground, the Link having ironically unlinked her from gravity. A shimmer of magic formed in each hand briefly as she flexed a pair of familiar magical muscles, reaching for her sword and ‘gun’ for a moment to make sure they were still there.
All that took less than a handful of heartbeats, after which she nodded to the young boy in her own thanks, before seeing his concerned face and wondering what was wrong. She didn’t have to think on it herself however, as the knight had already figured it out: the native’s home was still in danger.
“If there’s still people to save, then of course I’m coming” she started to tell the knight when he asked if any of them would be willing to go after the Ravens. But in doing so she had to turn to face him, and his body could only block what he (and a few others) had done to the attackers. Her final words faltered, and she found herself clapping a hand over her mouth, looking and feeling sick to her stomach at the sight of the slaughtered.
Blood and mangled bodies lay in the grass outside the church, the results of a lethal and decidedly one sided battle. It shook her to her core. She knew this was what happened when people fought, her fellow knight witches had killed living soldiers as well as golems during the war under the broken sky, this she knew, though only as of the prior day due to that information being hushed post conflict.
But at the same time, it looked like not a single scratch had been laid upon the summoned people who had slain them, so she had to ask, voice quite yet forceful “Did you have to kill them? They never stood a chance”
Whatever argument over morality that question resulted in might have to wait, because at more or less the same moment she asked, the ax wielding green golem broke down under the pressure of all the unanswered questions.
“That doesn't-” she started to dismiss his concerns, more worried about the deaths that had occurred, and would occur if they lingered, but that wasn’t fair. He’d said he wanted to help despite his confusion, and it wasn’t right to put him down, or use him as a way to put down her own similar thoughts and fears, at least in terms of how they got here, or how they’d get back. Then, as that chain of thought rolled through her mind, it remembered something for her.
“You said there was a goddess who spoke to you, right?” she asked the boy rhetorically, as if that was the most normal thing for someone to claim, before running with that information and inferring that “If she brought us here, then maybe she could send us back after we’ve helped?”
She emphasized that last part, very eager to get moving, and she would, as soon as she knew if any of the others would be coming, and if they would be able to keep up with her dashing through the skies.
The Wheel, The Maiden, The Mother, The Crone, The three in one, Aunty, Granny, The Goblin Queen, The witch in the woods
Domain Cycles, Wheels
It is the nature of the universe that things they do keep happening forever, often as not over and over and over again. Planets spin, seasons change, water flows down mountains to the sea, only to be carried back up as rain, oxygen is bound and unbound from carbon, the gazelle eats the grass and then its body rots and acts as fertilizer, an eye for an eye leaves generations blind, what was hip 40 years ago is hip again, history repeats, people form habits, civilisations rise and fall, even the universe will end and be reborn one day.
Life, death, rebirth.
Destruction and creation.
All that is has already been and shall be once more
The power of cycles is both wide and rather narrow, for she can initiate innumerable things, but only if they are things that will occur again and again and again. Creating a pillar of flame is beyond her area of expertise, but causing one to burst from the ground at a certain spot every day at noon is, for example. Living things are rather notably all cycles, as long as they breed and die. As is, or would be, a system of reincarnation.
Wheels are a means of conveyance, used to facilitate ease of transportation. This gives her dominion over all wheels, wheel-like objects, and things with wheels. On top of carts, cars, and such, this can also include water wheels, grind stones, paddle wheels, cogwheels, pillbugs and other rolling creatures, pizza cutters, saw blades, fly wheels etc. etc. allowing for a fair bit of niche diversity.
Asheel is most often seen in one of three forms, the Maiden, the Mother or the Crone, 3 points on the wheel of mortal life. More rarely she takes the form of the wheel itself, granting a glimpse behind the curtains at the cold uncaring cogs and gears that keep reality spinning.
Description
Asheel’s personality very much depends on the form she is in. As the Maiden she is full of youthful energy, daring, cheek, and reckless disregard for consequences. She is the mold breaker, creator of new cycles, no matter how short lived. The Mother is equal parts nurturing and controlling, ensuring cycles keep spinning as intended, be it by gentle guidance or a stern hand. The Crone is at once full of patience and wisdom, and at the same time full of rye wit and sick of your shit. She is the end, the breaker of cycles, clearing space so that new ones can form. The wheel is distant, indifferent, caring only about balance, about flow, the big picture, and not a whit about the individual moving components.
While this already makes her somewhat difficult to comprehend, Asheel often adds to the confusion by switching between these forms in the midst of conversations with little rhyme or reason, which can make her motives and desires difficult to pin down. If you really boil it down however, when she is not dedicating herself to the work of cycles themselves, Asheel knows that everything that is already has been, and will be again, so why not just enjoy the moment?
She also dislikes things that do not change at all, seeing immortal edifices as unseemly blots that should be torn down so that new things can sprout in their wake. Not forgotten, mind, but all things must end so that they can start anew, to grow and bloom and surpass what they were before.
The Koopa Troop’s @DracoLunaris, Sectonia’s @Archmage MC, Cyclops the Driller, Overhard the Engineer Word Count: 4094 (+5)
Eventually, the wave petered out, leaving the cavern filled with ash, smoke, and innumerable spirits of fallen insects, which Jr only got a look at once he stepped out from behind his spiky barricade.
”Woooow, would you look at all that stuff” he marveled, as if he was looking at bountiful fields and not a field of death.
”Stuff?” Kamek asked, before understanding ”Ah you mean potential items. I suppose, though it might be difficult to pick out anything of value”
His words very much rang true, for it turned out to be rather difficult to pick the spirits of the bigger, stronger bugs out of the swaths of grunts, and they didn’t exactly have time to find the needles in the haystacks. Efficiency, as the dwarves would tell them, was the name of the game, because apparently it was only a matter of time till another swarm came a-crawling.
Still, that didn’t mean that there was no time, and so while the dwarves called down and then grouped around some kind of pod like squirrels round a bird feeder, the troop took a moment to do some much more adhock resupplying via spirit crushing.
Or rather Rika did, borrowin the mimic hat with Sectonia’s approval on her head, Jr at the ready to top up her HP.
Items obtained: Geo x912 Chitin x8 A polymer and characteristic component of exoskeletons, radulae, beaks, shells and various other physical structures in organisms throughout history. It’s firm, flexible, and useful for making various things like armor, saddles, cementing paste, and so forth Batnip x3 A weed with a black-to-orange gradient. It’s irresistible to small insects and can be used to attract any that get within a few dozen feet of it, even if they’d normally be flighty. It degrades after a couple days A keg of Glyphid Slammer An adventurous mix of a cheap, powerful ale with an equally cheap, powerful energy drink. The result is almost, but not quite, entirely undrinkable. But it sure does put a spring in your step Glyphid Trophy Hunter Experimental Plasma Charger Bullets are so last year. Instead, why not incinerate your enemies from the inside out with a highly experimental anti-matter-powered gun firing supercharged plasma bolts? What's the worst that could happen? (If you find out, please report to R&D). Not upgraded Glyphid Trophy Hunter Deepcore GK2 A dependable, hefty weapon. Usually not the first choice of proper Dwarves, but the combination of heft, weight, and satisfying boom makes it worthwhile all the same. Not upgraded Grapple Worm A small, tubular creature, dull dark blue in color with coarse, high-friction black stripes, roughly the size of a long can. It can be held in one hand and squeezed, and depending on the part squeezed, it will extend a sticky pink tentacle from one or both ends. These tubes have mouths on the ends with extremely hard teeth which can latch onto most surfaces. This allows it to function as a grappling hook or, if both ends are out, a zip line. If it’s not fed plant matter every day, it will die, and it cannot function as a grappling hook when dead
The pile of gear rapidly amassed, until one part of it (the grapple worm) started eating another part (the Batnip) which prompted them to stop and be confused as to what in the world the first object was.
They found out when Rika poked it too hard with the butt of her spear, causing it to shoot out its tentacle, latch onto a nearby rock, and reel itself over there.
”Ohhh. It's like a grappling hook. A really meaty grappling hook. Neat” She commented, before noting that ”I mean I’ve already got one of those, but I can say for sure they’re good”
”I know I’m an insect, but I have class. That is just… ick.” Sectonia said upon Rika describing the grappling worm in such a way and seeing it move.
It took a bit of convincing, but Jr ended up taking said hook, a decision that Rika immediately got vindicated for suggesting as he started grappling around the caves alongside her. He also took the plasma pistol, while Rika emptied the rifle of its rounds to use them in her own rifle. Said empty rifle and the other items not seeing immediate use were shrunken and stashed, except for the barrel of very unpleasant smelling fluid.
That one of the dwarves inquired about, mainly because of the distinct container, and though he was not particularly pleased when he found out what specifically was inside, he was still interested enough to take it off their hands and stash it in their walking cargo hauler. There was vague talk of paying them back, but neither side really valued the drink highly enough to bother in depth negotiation over it, especially with the looming threat of another swarm breathing down their necks.
After they’d used up plenty of precious time on looting, it was time to split into pairs and take down a pair of generators.
The way the royals (and Kamek) ended up going ended up being rather a dirt blocked way, necessitating they take small pauses to wait for it to be excavated by Cyclops’s pair of arm mounted drills. Unfortunately for him, two of the people accompanying them were rather large compared to the dwarves, which meant a lot more digging needed to be done. Fortunately, his drills could tear through dirt like tissue paper, meaning that Cyclops could clear the way in a matter of seconds–were he so inclined.
On the first time they did this, they had the additional issue of Rika’s massive whale, who was not going to be able to fit inside the small tunnel. They intitaly ended up abandoning it, only for Jr to have an idea a few moments later, and running back to toss the spinner he’d gotten a few hours earlier. The gold 3 pronged frisbee spun through the air, landed beneath the monster and then proceeded to capture the willing beast inside of it in exactly the same way a pokeball would, allowing Rika to carry it around in a pocket.
On the second camping out and waiting for this, Kamek suddenly snapped his fingers as he remembered ”Ah, you know, I think I can help with this” before requesting ”One moment. Or ten” as he conjured up a Big Beetle steed for someone to ride.
”This big beastie will be able to tunnel through that soil with ease, or so I understand it” Kamek explained, before suggesting the Cyclops give it a go and combine magic and technology to make holes suitably large for the king and queen.
At that, the dwarf raised an eyebrow, not that the others could see it beneath his distinctive helmet. “Oi, you think I need ‘elp makin’ ‘oles? What kind o’ dwarf you take me for?” His double drills roared to life, and before the Troop could object, the way was open.
That left the Kamek rather disappointed it had to be said, the mage demising the construct with a wave of his hand and figuratively sulking atop his broom for much of the rest of the trip towards the power station. Sectonia gave a bit of a laugh at seeing that, saying. ”A person from the underground knows it best I suppose.”
After incinerating the crops the dwarves were trying to steal when dealing with its Kirikuri guardian the Bowser (and by extension his family) decided to leave the rabbit food nabbing to them, and focused on pushing forwards and dealing with the odd stray bug or seven. He then had to be dissuaded from picking a fight with the giant pig, Kamek once again refusing his King’s request to enlarge him so he could take on a large foe in an unnecessary manner. Instead he summoned some toadies to transport the stomping king in a more sneaky manner.
”Ok but this, this we’re smashing, right?” Bowser asked when they arrived at their destination, namely a big computer machine thing that was apparently one half of the inverted pyramid’s shield power supply.
Overhard glanced his way, considering the idea. “Usually, we call down Hack-C to take it offline for us nice an’ easy-like. These things’re tough as nails, our weapons don’t even scratch the thing. Who knows, they might even be rigged to call for backup if someone tried shuttin’ ‘em off manually. With a hazard level like this we don’t wanna bite off any more than we can chew, but who knows. Maybe you’d ‘ave better luck bustin’ it.”
”I could shatter reality around it… but that takes time to charge and if you have a faster way of dealing with it by ‘hacking it’, perhaps that would be the best way to handle it. If.” Sectonia said, nonchalantly telling the dwarves her most powerful spell at the moment but letting them ultimately decide on what should be done, deferring to their expertise in the matter.
Before the conversation about how to handle the Power Station could proceed any further, however, a strange noise issued from the bushy bamboo thicket. It was a mechanical tone, but distorted, almost angry. Then the foliage began to rustle, vibrating with the gaspy roar of an unhealthy engine, and through the underground forest crashed a hefty four-wheeled tank. Boxy and heavily armored, with wheels that could rival a monster truck’s, the all-purpose, all-terrain Metal Attacker featured a laser chaingun with three barrels stylized like bamboo stalks. Those barrels had already spun up, and after a brief moment it released a spray of green laser bolts with a lurching motion, prompting the surprised dwarves to start moving. While the others might wonder just who was attacking them in this mean green machine, Cyclops and Overhard could see that the problem wasn’t inside the cockpit as much as outside. “Xynach Charge-suckers!” the engineer yelled, his voice shrill. Lifting his Warthog auto shotgun, he began to fire at one of the two heinous-looking organic growths adhering to the Metal Attacker’s sides. One had glommed onto the left-side hub just over the wheels, and the other stuck to the right side of the cannon battery. “Shoot ‘em off, quick! Then we can use that thing for ourselves!”
A stream of fire gushed from Cyclops’ flamethrower. “Two licked suckers, comin’ up!”
”I’ve got the one on the left.” Sectonia said, taking this time to go after what she assumed was the ‘safer’ of the two disgusting growths. From the ‘meat hook’ to this, things were somewhat unpleasant weren’t they. Well, she’d take the ‘expertise’ of these dwarves into consideration once more as she blinked to that side to zap the thing with her dark lightning from her staff.
The troop meanwhile initially focused on not getting blasted by that laser sprayer, with Bowser summoning Marie Korbel to form bone walls, Jr planting a hand to the ground to form a him sized metal shield, and Kamek tossing out a few dopplegangers to draw fire.
Rika meanwhile just grappling hooked away, relying on her ability to slow the incoming shots by looking at them to avoid most, and her knight and cloyster strikers to block what she couldn’t dodge.
Survival secured, or at least given consideration, the troop returned fire, focusing the opposite side from the queen. A glowing fist appeared next to the machine to punch the growth courtesy of Kamek, while Bowser showered it with a spray of toxin from his cannons so he didn’t need to worry about damaging the machine with his poor aim. Meanwhile Rika nailed the infestation with her disruptor cannons, and finally jr arced a spiked iron discus around his cover to nail the growth without even worrying about exposing himself to fire.
Sticking to a single side quickly proved to be a needlessly difficult task, and the dwarves (not to mention Overhard’s turrets as he built them) just shot whatever side they could hit. Their shields and bone walls proved ineffective though, because this Metal Attacker could move. It rolled around on those huge tires at high speed, plowing and drifting across the cavern’s fields in huge sprays of mangled crops and rich loam to get around the Troops’ barricades and gun them down. It was agile enough that when Cyclops threw a sachel charge, he only managed to catch it in the edge of the blast, though the dwarf quickly chalked that up to poor light in this cave. Out-maneuvering this thing seemed to be the only truly viable option. Still, the damage that the dwarves and the Seekers racked up together quickly reduced the charge-suckers’ overall vitality by about a third.
At that point though, the parasitized tank did something new. It activated its suspension and jumped over a dozen feet into the air, at which point its tired pivoted to face downward, their hubs becoming green rockets whose blazing power kept the Metal Attacker aloft in the air. With both charge-suckers partially obscured, the tank began flying directly above its ground-bound opponents, scattering them with repeated bolts of lightning from its undercarriage. Its main gun, meanwhile, could still be angled to fire on Sectonia and any other fliers.
”Ow ow ow” Jr smarted as his shield got bypassed and he got sprayed with bolts, which got him to rapidly come up with a solution ”OK, new plan, a mobile shield!”
The prince ran over to his similarly flanked father, and quickly put his new scheme to work, the prince using both metal and healing magic, in conjunction with his dad’s vine growing from overheal power, to form an interlocking towershield of iron and ivy for his father to carry.
With this in hand the pair could shield themselves from the incoming fire, be it from the side or raining down from above, and then repair it when it got damaged. This, admittedly, left both royal Koopas mostly on the defensive, but their tanking and drawing of fire did leave the others more free to operate, and if the weren't being targeted, then they would be free to lower their shield and shoot back at their foe.
Said shooting back got a fair bit more difficult when the machine flew up in the air, hiding its weakspots. When it did so Bowser and Jr both switched to sonic attacks, Bowser trying to confuse the plants using supersonic sound waves, while Jr deployed Dazzle and had the Brionne let loose his disarming voice, sending pink soundwaves pulsing up into the air.
Kamek didn’t have much trouble getting into a shooting position, but he did have the issue that he was rather frail. So instead of taking the machine head on he stood back, tossing doppelgangers at it. He also used the power station they’d come to destroy as a platform atop which to summon his sniper strikers, if a good angle presented itself.
Rika actually had the least issues, because after giving up on trying to jump/grapple up to it, she realized she could just launch her electro swarms at it, the firefly-like bugs able to simply fly up too and electrocute the growths on the machine directly. Even if individual motes could be blasted, by having them fan out before striking Rika made it near impossible to take them all down (although this did also result in a lot of them being friendly fired).
Sectonia, not wanting to be the target of the chain gun, activated her pipe of insight to absorb the occasional lighting bolt that headed her way as she blinked away from the gun aimed at her. She’d first try to get around it, but the machine would spin quickly to lock onto her and fire, so seeing as she really didn’t have that many options due to her size until this attack was over and realizing she’d just be blinking around, she decided to instead blink behind the generator they were going to shut off itself. The Dwarves did say it was extremely sturdy, and it sure was as it took the tank’s gunfire and didn’t even care.
Although this left Sectonia herself in a bit of a pickle until the attack died down, as her long ranged attacks really didn’t do too much to the machine’s very small weak points either with how bad her accuracy was at these longer ranges, so she was stuck just charging her Spacial Shatter move to use if she got the opportunity.
Though the hard-hitting, defense-piercing deluge of lightning bolts put the ground fighters on the back foot, it was by no means a perfect strategy. Overhard was forced to abandon his position, not to mention his turrets, but when he and the others fanned out the tank naturally couldn’t hover over all of them. Only those who barely moved or stayed still, like the snipers, took the storm’s full fury. Even, the machine’s ungainly flight pattern meant that it wheeled around through the air above the explorers, never bombarding the same place for long. Meanwhile, the ground fighters shot up at the charge-suckers through various means, either damaging the parasites or debuffing them, even if their own debuffs didn’t transfer to the Metal Attacker. The fliers got their chance to shine as well, provided they didn’t run afoul of the tank’s bamboo chaingun as it cut through the air with a stream of deadly gunfire.
Pretty soon, the Metal Attacker exhausted its supply of lightning charges, and its hover fuel was by no means infinite, either. It fell back to the ground with a mighty slam, allowing Cyclops and the others to get some free shots in for a second or two. As pilots went, these charge-suckers weren’t the most skilled or intelligent by any means; it beggared belief that they could control the Metal Attacker to this extent in the first place. Still, with just about one third life left collectively, the parasites had one more trick up their proverbial sleeves. The Metal Attacker began jumping around, over and over again, aiming to crush its foes beneath its weight. At the same time, its missile rack came online, and in addition to spurts of chaingun fire it started shooting out tracking rockets to chase the Seekers down, three at a time. “Gah!” Cyclops roared as he stumbled backward, a salvo of missiles blowing up the soil around him and putting his heavy armor to its limit. “Where’s Paintbrush when you need ‘im?!”
Gritting his teeth as the Metal Attacker jumped at him, Overhard used his Platform Gun to create a sloped wall of plascrete in front of him as a shield, which absorbed the tank’s fall damage on impact. “We got shields of our own, dipstick! Use ‘em!” He started firing around the area, creating emergency shelters of thick, spongy, yellow material.
Dropping a partially charged Spacial shatter, only cracking the air but not shattering it, Sectonia had to swap to a bit of a defensive maneuver to protect the others. While Overhard used his platform gun to make some defenses for the stomping machine, Sectonia, having her own cover by the generator, summoned a large crystal to use as some additional cover for the others.
Bowser and Jr had to again switch strategy, the King tearing apart their improvised shield and hurling it to the side inorder to lose weight and Jr recalling Dazzle, before they legged it for one of the shelters Overhard and Sectonia had created. As they did this, Rika grappled over to cover them, latching onto the king and pulling herself close, before using her grizco blaster as a flak cannon to try and blow up the incoming missile barrage. It worked out well, detonating the rockets prematurely, but there were plenty more where those came from.
In doing so she reminded Jr he had his own hook, and a moment later the prince was reeled over to one of the cover pads by his grapple worm. One beneath it he tossed out Mimi, who did her best to nail the bouncing machine with electroballs, while jr splashed goop about to try and further bog down the Metal Attacker next time it crashed down on them.
Rika finished escorting Bowser to cover a few moments later, and then grappled away again inorder to find her own safety from which she could try and nail the machine with her disruption cannons. The king meanwhile took the moment of comparative respite to catch up and huck a mega fireball into the air, properly lighting up the cavern.
It was also something the fliers had to operate around unfortunately, and Kamek, having been hit by quite a bit of feedback due to misjudging his sniper striker’s timers, did not want to go anywhere near. Indeed it wasn’t the only friendly bit of fire flying through the air, as the erratic movement of the Attacker resulted in far more stray shots than the first two phases.
As a result he abandoned the skies entirely, instead teleporting down under one of the shelters, and from there, sending out dozens of individual drybones into the open to act as bait.
All this culminated in the Attacker splashing down onto Jr’s goop, getting its wheels covered in it and slowing down its leaps. Then it got bogged down crushing drybones, allowing Rika to stack up a pile of disruption globs on it, which sapped its attack power, which in turn let Bowser brave the weakened fire.
Utterly fed up with the mobile machine, the king launched himself out from cover and into the path of the debuffed machine and demanded ”Embiggen me Kamek!” even as he used his own magic to grow in size.
In his haste to do this, the mage pulled out the dusty and oft unused sub-power of his enlarging magic, and causing an effect identical to a supermushroom on the king, increasing his size and strength by 50% in a few scant moments. Right after said moments passed, the Metal Attacker slammed into the king, but the enlargement magic absorbed the hit, both persisting and stopping the Attackerin its tracks for just long enough for Bowser to grab it in his claws, and suplex the entire machine over his shoulder, slamming it turret first into the ground.
Doing that left the Metal Attacker almost completely defenseless. It couldn’t swivel or adjust its turret or fire any missiles, and with no lightning left it couldn’t let loose a thunderstorm from its exposed undercarriage either. “Hell yeah!” Cyclops roared. With that one move from Bowser, the battle was one. Now it was just a matter of sealing the deal. “Clear the way!” he yelled at the others, chucking his last satchel charge. As soon as it landed, the explosive device started beeping dangerously, projecting an indicator of its (large) blast radius. “Eat THIS, you disgustin’-!”
BA-BOOM!
The blast launched the Metal Attacker into the air. It came down on its side next to the crater, the charge-suckers melting away into ash, then tilted over to land on its tires with a slam.
“Nice goin’ lads! The Power Station’s ours” Overhard congratulated everyone, though his face fell when he checked his ammunition stores. “That took everythin’ we ‘ad, though. Let’s order a resupply along with the hackin’ drone.” Before going to scrounge up some more nitra exposed by the damage to the cavern’s foliage, he glanced over at the Metal Attacker. “Reckon we could fix that up and get it workin’ for us. Any o’ you lot know ‘ow to swing a hammer?”
”I can give it a look yeah” Jr called over, as he rummaged around in his duffle bag, pulled out a very small engineering suitcase from it, and then had Kamek re-enlarge it for him. Then he strolled over to give it a look. Other than the final massive detonation and Sectonia’s only slightly charged shatter, they’d mostly tried to avoid wrecking the machine itself, and so it did not seem like it would be the worst job.
Everyone got to work getting ready for the next stage. First, the hacking drone arrived a ways from the Power Station, requiring the team to set up a chain of data node stakes to connect it to the target. That was minion work for sure, and Kamek’s toadies were set to the task of ferrying the nodes to and fro under the mage’s direction. Sectonia would summon her antlions as well, but they would act more like security for the toadies, only rarely helping out with placing the nodes. Once the nodes were laid out, with a green data stream flowing between them, the pod opened to reveal the little robot Hack-C with its little keyboard. It wore a tiny mining helmet on the warning light atop its head, and the twin fans in its rear included RGB lighting.
While he did that, Rika borrowed Jr’s gadbrush and painted a nice sea of electric goop around the hacking pod, which would hold off any ground based foes and let her sail around to boot. Overhard lent her a hand by laying down a plascrete slab on top of the pod to give it and Hack-C some protection from above as well.
Once the dwarves got enough nitra and stowed it in Molly, they called down a supply drop that drilled in through the cave ceiling. Both planned to take half of the total each, filling their stores up to full. Finally, repairs on the Metal Attacker completed, and the tank was operational once more. It wasn’t that roomy inside, allowing at most two individuals of average or below-average human size to sit in single file, but its controls were intuitive. Its official designation seemed to be NORA MA-05 ‘Kuebiko’. Once everyone caught their breath and readied up, the hack could begin.
Jr, naturally, climbed inside the machine he’d just fixed up and took the piloting seat, fiddling around with the controles for a few moments till he felt confident with them. With their main healer piloting the machine, Kamek left a number of white mage clones of himself hovering around the station, ready to keep everyone topped up.
Bowser, finally, had done nothing to prepare, other than take a break and a snack, which in a certain way left him the most prepared of everyone who had been busying themselves in between fights.
It was a relief to regroup with the others. It looked like they all won their respective fights. But Roxas’ shoulders sagged and he still had difficulty staying on his feet, at least until his MP recharged. A Curaga spell handled the injuries he took from the final part of his bout with Ninten and Lucas, but the healing spell wouldn’t do anything for his increasing fatigue. This had been a very long and arduous day so far, and it didn’t look like there was an ending in sight just yet. Roxas probably needed to cut back on the amount of times he used the Keyblade Purge consecutively. Of course, doing that meant deliberately not freeing someone from Galeem’s influence when an opportunity presented itself. Could he really bring himself to not help someone when he knew he had the power to do so?
When she rejoined the others, Sakura found that they were all successful in defeating their foes. She did a little dance, hopping from one foot to the other. ”Hee hee! Good job, everyone! We sure showed them.” She offered high fives to everyone.
”Now, let’s funs over, so let's get back to business! We gotta find Raz. And crack this mystery!” Sakura punched her fists together.
Jogging with the others to get to the Otherlobe, Sakura kept an eye out for any other Psych-OSF. Clearly disappointed when Raz wasn’t where they thought they’d be, and a little unnerved by all the ash, Sakura crossed her arms and looked at the two soldiers. Thankfully, they had more sense than their predecessors and weren’t up for a scrap. But if Sakura wanted to find Psych-OSF she wouldn’t need to look particularly hard when a line of plasma lit up the ground in front of her. Her eyes widened and she flailed her arms before regaining her balance.
Compensating, Sakura stood strong and put on her game face, already in her stance. Not only were the two psychics in front of her much stronger than the pair she had just challenged, they were also backed up by a giant killer robot.
”Gisu and Morris were pretty tough.” She said. ”You should give ‘em more credit. You should also stop trying to capture us. Because your orders were given to you by bad guys! Brain stealing, Other-making, evil goons! You’re doing their bidding!” She pointed between the two commanders.
”Don’t forget mind controlling on top of that” The princess added, as she stepped back a few paces, not out of fear, but because she needed space to open one hell of a portal to the twilight ream if she wanted to even the playing field.
Milla sighed, her expression resigned. “So that’s what this is about. Armstrong sure managed to whip some impressionable people into a tizzy with those words of his.” She shook her head. “Haven’t you stopped to consider that’s just what he wants? To cause pandemonium and infighting so that he and DespoRHado can take over this city by force? Just look at Suoh, all these poor people!” She gestured to Main Street. “Others don’t come from buses. This attack is no coincidence!” As her gaze hardened, her shadow beast laid its bony claws on her shoulder, its head lowered as if preparing to lunge. “But maybe you know that already. Your friends’ handiwork, perhaps?”
“Don’t bother, Milla. This isn’t a courthouse,” Sasha said flatly, his cold stare on the Seekers. “Whatever you have to say, your goals or your affiliations, save it for the judge. Your accusations, testimony, evidence–you’ll be able to make your case once you’re in custody. Even if you’re responsible for this mess. But that’s a road we can only walk once the streets are safe.”
Luka grimaced, his eyes pleading. “But the streets aren’t safe. People are still fighting. Civilians are still dying! Sasha, Camilla. We’re not here to cause trouble. We’re just trying to find our friends, and we saved everyone we could, killing many Others on the way.”
It was then that Pit was finally able to make his way back to the group, running to join them as they stood opposite the latest obstacle in their path. Fresh from a fight with monsters, the cuts and scrapes on his person served as further proof of Luka's words, though the sounds of chaos behind them should have been enough.
During the Others' initial descent, Pit's fighting had taken him away from his allies on the main streets and up onto higher ground once more. His arrows had joined the anti-Other guns in trying to take out as many as possible before they touched down. Those that made it through the artillery fire and landed on rooftops he intercepted with his bow, reducing the monsters to dust to stop them from jumping down and wreaking more havoc. Naturally his higher vantage point gave him a greater view of the neighborhoods turned battlefield, and of all the civilians in immediate danger. He didn't think twice about straying farther from the Seekers, alighting from his perches and swooping down to defend anyone in need of help - actions that inevitably led him to the battle's fringes were the Others had spread while the response was still focused on the epicenter.
Now that he was reunited with everyone, Pit watched the argument while catching his breath. He hadn't dismissed his bow during the rush over, and with all the tension in the air he felt no need to do so now. If anything, the hand wrapped around its grip squeezed tighter.
“By beating down soldiers within an inch of their lives who were doing the same?” Milla questioned Luka, barely sparing the newcomer a glance.
Hanabi bristled, her eyes fiery. “That was obviously self-defense, they wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer!”
“I’m sure we can talk this through,” Yuito added. “After the current crisis has passed!”
For a moment Sasha didn’t respond. He looked reluctant, as if he were gnawed by doubts. After a moment though, he pursed his lips, his brow furrowed. “It’s as you say. But the crisis is right in front of us. Even putting aside our orders, you’ve resisted arrest and attacked Psych-OSF soldiers. If you really want what’s best for the people, come peacefully, and let us do our jobs.”
“And that’s our final offer,” Milla added.
”Make our case?” asked Roxas in a disgusted tone, ”Will that be before or after you steal our brains or fuse us with P-Types so you can add us to your little army?” he added, clenching his gloved hands into fists. Ever since he arrived in Suoh for the first time he hadn’t liked Psych-OSF. Something about them just kept rubbing him the wrong way. And that was starting to show itself here.
”We’ve already seen the underground lab in Beacon Hospital. We know your organization is rotten to its core.” Roxas said, pointing an accusatory finger at Sasha and Milla, ”I didn’t need Armstrong to tell me that. And as for DesporHado? Maybe you haven’t noticed but they already suffered a severe blow at Vandelay Campus today. Wanna take a guess how many of us were there and helped make that happen?”
Roxas shook his head and just summoned his weapons, ”Let me make something very clear to you people. I don’t care about the election. I don’t care about Shinra or Armstrong, or any of the political nonsense. I’m here on my own mission. And not you or anyone else in this stupid city is going to stop me.”
”Yeah! He’s right! If we get arrested we might as well be toast, and all the bad guys would just go free. No, no, no!” Sakura shook her head vehemently.
”Justice is on our side!” She proclaimed defiantly. Before she became a Seeker, she wasn’t usually able to say that. It felt different to fight for justice than it did to fight for fun.
Milla tilted her head, clicking her tongue in a condescendingly full-of-pity way. “Tsk, silly girl. Do you think there’s ever been someone who doesn’t believe that?” She gave a defeated sigh. “Regardless, I suppose we have our answer. Once they shook out the grogginess, our squads were kind enough to tell us all about you on your way over. So this should be quick.”
When she raised her staff, the crystal in its tip shone a vivid red. Her shadow goat’s eyes flared up with the same wicked luster, and with a hollow bleating it brought its clawed forearms down on the ground. With a final, mighty push, it dispersed into the street itself, and the ground began to pulse. When Luka moved back from the impact zone, expecting some sort of damaging shockwave, he quickly realized the Originum Art’s actual effect: an 80% movement speed reduction. Milla’s Quicksand Conversion continued to pulse every 1.4 seconds, each slow lasting for .8 seconds and almost completely halting the movement speed of all enemies within a wide radius, regardless of whether or not they actually touched the ground.
As Luka looked on in horror, realizing just how crippling an effect this was, Milla giggled. “What do you think? I got it from Miss Earthspirit. These horns, too. Aren’t they darling?” Lowering her staff with one hand, she tapped her horns with the other. “In the end she may not be good for much, but she’d very good for one thing.” Activating her own Levitation power, she floated up on top of a pink hoverball, boosting her own movement speed dramatically. “And once I slow you down…”
“We will stop you.” Sasha raised two fingers and then pointed them at the renegades twice. Without delay, the Sectopod opened the bay on its head, revealing and promptly firing its armor-shredding laser blaster. It let off two bursts of fire right into the group of Seekers. While Milla had been talking, however, Luka had been sending messages via Brain Talk. If the same idea hadn’t already occurred to them, they got the message loud and clear. Before the Sectopod could light them up, Luka, Yuito, and Hanabi used the platoon leader’s Teleportation to bug out, leaving both the firing line and the range of Milla’s Quicksand Conversion, large though it was. With its final action for the turn, the Sectopod began to prepare its Wrath Cannon, its main gun charging for a blast of legendary proportions.
For those unconnected to Brain Talk, the strategies differed. Pit opted for the same plan of getting out of the slowed area, but without teleportation he jumped instead, intending to simply leap up and away. He quickly discovered that was a mistake. Despite the pavement visibly pulsing with the effect, Milla's ability still affected him even when he wasn't in contact with the ground. He hardly had time to think, dang it, before the laser fire began.
His wings had been beginning to unfurl and assist his escape, but now he slowly pulled them back in toward his body. His mind stuttered as he tried deciding what to do. Rather than chance the Orbitars' summoning taking too long with the slowness and ending up with no protection, Pit started to spin the bow already in his hand. In normal circumstances he could deflect lasers with his angel ring technique like this, even while hanging in the air - but he was about to find out if that was still the case when the projectile was strong, and his reduced speed meant the bow blades couldn't turn even half as fast.
The result was painfully disappointing, in a literal sense. It was like moving in slow motion. The spin wasn't anywhere near quick enough to form the titular ring of the technique's name, and as such it was no match for the speed of the beams. A lucky strike turned away maybe one or two of the laser blasts in the volleys, while the rest chewed up the area and nearly did the same of the angel. Fortunately he was tougher than the average person; he did his best to defend himself while the impacts pushed him slowly and steadily toward the area of effect's edge.
Sakura had gasped in surprise when she realized what was happening to her. So slow! They barely had more than a second to act even if they avoided the pulse. Her time at Psych-OSF had definitely put enough trust in her to follow an experienced psychic’s lead. With a blip, she teleported straight backwards.
In a crouch, she spotted her angel-winged ally’s predicament. ”Pit-kun!” She called out, extending her hand. Using her base telekinetic power, she took hold of Pit and wrenched him backwards in time with the end of the slow effect. That would pull him out of harm's way and out of the effect of the pulse radius.
”You’re okay!” She said.
Pit recovered quickly, all too happy to be back at full speed. "Thanks to you!"
”There’s no way that powerful technique can last forever, right?” With that hopeful question she and Pit dove behind cover, hiding behind an abandoned car out of range of the pulse. Sakura grabbed the edge and poked her head out, watching the Sectopod. In another few seconds, it would be finished charging its Wrath Cannon, and it seemed to be pointed her way. Sakura gulped.
"I don't know much about psychic powers, but let's hope not because it's really annoying!" Pit used this time to safely unequip the Palutena Bow and swap to the Guardian Orbitars. They'd be more useful for protecting himself and others while under the hail of projectiles that the battle looked to be turning into.
While about half of his enemies moved out of range of the slow-inflicting pulses, Sasha moved in. He borrowed Levitation to dash forward, his feet not touching the ground. Inside he enjoyed immunity to the effects of Quicksand Conversion and the protection it bestowed. From there he turned on the escapees immediately, taking aim with his manacaster. Unlike the Sectopod, he didn’t need Milla to reliably hit his targets. A spread shot of bright green wind bullets ripped through the air, catching Yuito unawares as he turned to get a bead on his enemies. The blast knocked him down, which got Hanabi’s attention, and she managed to jump away from Sasha’s next shot just in time. Rather than keep shooting at her with his manacaster, the Psychonaut put two fingers to his head to unleash his Marksmanship. A flurry of blue psi-blasts hit the girl as she moved, juggling her higher with each hit, until Sasha switched back to his manacaster to intercept her as she fell. A Guardian Vision of Yuito manifested just in time to block the spread, and by that time Yuito himself was back on his feet. His sword flew in, propelled by Psychokinesis, but Sasha dashed to reposition between shots. Even when the sword came back around like a boomerang, the Psychonaut saw it coming and dodged again in order to deliver Yuito another blast. Luka avoided Sasha’s shots much better since he could use his Teleportation much more, and when he saw Yuito falter again he made his move. He teleported right in front of Sasha to sucker punch him with his Weight Hammer, but while he took the Psychonaut by surprise, his efforts were all for naught. A Guardian Vision of Milla overlaid her companion to negate the damage. From the Vision issued a powerful Dirge Shot that sent Luka flying, inflicting Stormlash on him while granting Sasha Enemy Insight.
Meanwhile, Midna had repositioned via portaling in one of her few remaining crates, which promptly got destroyed, and then used its shadows to hop away. Her destination of choice had been a fair bit up the street, and behind the Sectopod. There she unleashed the stored up magic she had been channeling, opening up a massive portal to her home realm beneath herself, and up from it rose a machine to rival the towering biped in size, as the 10 meter tall mechanical bear-wolf-thing rose up, carrying her up with it atop its head between its ears.
She had intended to use the inanimate cyborg as a stationary cannon to blast the enemy mech. Instead she found out how it actually worked at either the best or worst time, as in response to her standing atop it, the new hatch in the mech’s head opened up, and promptly dropped her into the cockpit found within.
The princess landed in the pilot’s seat with an ”oof” and then briefly panicked as a seatbelt automatically secured her to the chair, and then freaked out more when she saw that infront of her was a rather small brain floating in a jar.
”What kind of deathtrap is-” she began to demand, only for a glow to surround the brain, on that spread to the rest of the cockpit, liting up consols, monitors, and most importantly, a screen showing the outside world. Controles were thrust into her hands, and at the slightest nudge, the machine moved.
”Ohhhh” Minda marvaled as she understood, before thrusting the controles forwards with a cry of ”Oh it is on!” as she set the bear charging towards the fray.
Even as Sakura gaped at the giant kaiju robot right out of a saturday morning cartoon that had joined her side, she had to stay focused on the matter at hand. Uncertainty about engaging in close quarters combat made her reluctant to leave cover, even as the Sectopod aimed at her. Briefly standing up, she gathered a Hadoken within her hands and charged it with Pyrokinesis. Then she fired a blue and red ball of energy towards the Sectopod, and followed up with two slings of her arms to send some flameballs towards the robot. Then she dove back behind the cover of the car.
Her target didn’t seem to register the attacks; she’d have to do a lot more than that. Instead it kept its target squarely on her, its emitters reaching their fully-charged state. Before the Sectopod could annihilate both the car and the girl behind it with its Wrath Cannon, Sasha used Brain Talk to send a message to its system’s Psynet port. “S31, change targets. Eliminate enemy armor directly behind you.” The huge machine obeyed, sparing Sakura as it turned around to face the new threat. The amount of time Midna took to spool it up, in combination with its slow speed, meant that it had barely gotten started before the Sectopod turned around to face it.
”Phew,” Sakura watched the Sectopod turn its attention away right when she was about to bolt out from behind the car. She wanted to chip in to help Midna a bit, but it looked like her fireballs weren’t enough.
That left Sakura and Pit in the same boat as Luka, Yuito, and Hanabi: pitted against Sasha. Typically five versus one meant bad odds, but Sasha Nein wasn’t the third-strongest Septentrion for nothing. He activated Prism Break, imbuing himself -and his weapon- with a refractory magical power. For the next twenty-five seconds his attack speed increased dramatically, and for every shot he fired at someone, identical shots would fire towards the two nearest other targets. That meant that when he fired a spread shot of wind bullets at Luka, he simultaneously fired at Yuito and Hanabi too. Worse still, if only one of them got hit by any triple-blast, that blast would hurt over twice as much. The area became a sea of wind shots limited only by Sasha’s (boosted) fire rate, the wind bullets’ travel time, and their max range. With the added crossfire, everyone started taking hits left and right.
Having already overused his teleportation, Luka’s power ran out at the worst possible moment and he got downed within seconds. Hanabi dodged over to him and created a wall of fire in front of them with a sweep of her staff, which seemed to block this elemental wind effectively, but at the same time Yuito had different plans. “We’ve got to attack!” he yelled, borrowing Sclerokinesis to weather the storm as he charged forward. He used Psychokinesis to throw debris as he ran in, forcing Sasha to dodge. He floated to a stop and turned to shoot again, only for Yuito to shrug off his blast and slash him repeatedly.
With a grunt, the Septentrion closed his fist. “Karmic Quietus.” In an instant the buff conferred by Yuito’s Sclerokinesis was dispelled, granting Sasha a second stack of Enemy Insight in the process. He then lifted his manacaster and fired a point-blank Dirge Shot. The punchy blast stormlashed Yuito and sent him flying the same as it did Luka, leaving him on the ground at the edge of unconsciousness. That also granted Sasha his third and final Enemy Insight, and as he turned toward Hanabi’s wall of fire he began to float off the ground with Levitation. This battle was just getting started.
The Wheel, The Maiden, The Mother, The Crone, The three in one, Aunty, Granny, The Goblin Queen, The witch in the woods
Domain Cycles
It is the nature of the universe that things they do keep happening forever, often as not over and over and over again. Planets spin, seasons change, water flows down mountains to the sea, only to be carried back up as rain, oxygen is bound and unbound from carbon, the gazelle eats the grass and then its body rots and acts as fertilizer, an eye for an eye leaves generations blind, what was hip 40 years ago is hip again, history repeats, people form habits, civilisations rise and fall, even the universe will end and be reborn one day.
Life, death, rebirth.
Destruction and creation.
All that is has already been and shall be once more
The power of cycles is both wide and rather narrow, for she can initiate innumerable things, but only if they are things that will occur again and again and again. Creating a pillar of flame is beyond her area of expertise, but causing one to burst from the ground at a certain spot every day at noon is, for example. Living things are rather notably all cycles, as long as they breed and die. As is, or would be, a system of reincarnation.
Asheel is most often seen in one of three forms, the Maiden, the Mother or the Crone, 3 points on the wheel of mortal life. More rarely she takes the form of the wheel itself, granting a glimpse behind the curtains at the cold uncaring cogs and gears that keep reality spinning.
Description
Asheel’s personality very much depends on the form she is in. As the Maiden she is full of youthful energy, daring, cheek, and reckless disregard for consequences. She is the mold breaker, creator of new cycles, no matter how short lived. The Mother is equal parts nurturing and controlling, ensuring cycles keep spinning as intended, be it by gentle guidance or a stern hand. The Crone is at once full of patience and wisdom, and at the same time full of rye wit and sick of your shit. She is the end, the breaker of cycles, clearing space so that new ones can form. The wheel is distant, indifferent, caring only about balance, about flow, the big picture, and not a whit about the individual moving components.
While this already makes her somewhat difficult to comprehend, Asheel often adds to the confusion by switching between these forms in the midst of conversations with little rhyme or reason, which can make her motives and desires difficult to pin down. If you really boil it down however, when she is not dedicating herself to the work of cycles themselves, Asheel knows that everything that is already has been, and will be again, so why not just enjoy the moment?
She also dislikes things that do not change at all, seeing immortal edifices as unseemly blots that should be torn down so that new things can sprout in their wake. Not forgotten, mind, but all things must end so that they can start anew, to grow and bloom and surpass what they were before.
“I… do not believe we will be needing to swim all the way there” Fae said after a long moment, really hoping that the pair talking along that line of thinking where joking, before deciding to pivot this into a snipe at their benefactors “After all, I’m sure the Unity Organization can afford a ship if this matters so much to them”
As it turned out, they could, though that came a little later, because before that the quality of the candidates was further shown off when one of them turned up late for the party.
They certainly were an interesting one as well, to Fae at least, who analyzed it as a fascinating combination of cutting edge technology and total hack-job. A corporate job, he guessed, due to the complete lack of artistry and disregard for preserving the subject's humanity while doing the work. Emphasis on disregard, those damn mechanisms would have gone further and intentionally stripped it away, and this lacked that ideological intent.
It was certainly not something he’d ever install, nor was he likely to ever have a pleasant conversation with the person who did, but he wasn’t so foolish as to dismiss the effectiveness of the augmentations out of hand either.
He did all this analysis in the blink of an eye, and then rather than be found dissecting her with his eyes set a subroutine to passively analyze the scans he’d made while he himself actually addressed her greeting and question.
“Good day, and yes, you have missed a fair bit, but here, let me just-” he paused to manufacture a mix of metal and illusory magic crafted into the form of a butterfly, which took wing and began to flitter over to the other cyborg as he explained it contained “a recording of the meeting from my point of view” one which it could play on its illusory wings after landing on a perch (such as her hand).
Only a little after that their handler arrived, informed them of the irreverent names the taskforce head had come up for each of them (upon which Fae simply commented that “octopus would have been more accurate” and took some mild amusement from Sinmara’s ogre pun), and then gave them actually useful information, namely that there was indeed a ship ready and waiting to transport them to their destination.
“Ah, finally, someone competent” he declared with a single light clap, before adding “I always knew they had a few people like you squirreled away somewhere, keeping everything actually running” only half joking as he did.
As for the name of the team, Fae delicately suggested that “it might not be the best idea to lean into the same imagery as our ‘damned’ opponents?” regarding Sinmara’s own suggestion, and not even touching on how self aggrandizing it was before adding “If we must run in the same vein as them, perhaps something of a lighter mirror instead? Citizens of Salvation or something of the sort? Or we could ignore/dismiss them and be simply the Seekers of the Seven”
At any rate, a fair bit later they were rolling up to their nautical transport, and while Sinmara’s concern that they’d be given a sailboat was rather absurd, he hadn’t exactly considered that they would be getting an entire warship assigned to them.
“This whole operation is all over the place in terms of investment it seems” he assessed, one that was only added too by the pratfall that left him less than confident in the crew’s abilities.
At least the ship was able to stand up to having Sinmara crash down onto it, which given it was going to host her, it had best be able to do over and over if they had any hope of reaching land. As for why it had to take that first hit, well, the oni of a woman had challenged them to a race.
“Oh please, I hardly think this is appropriate behavior for people in the employ of the fine and upstanding unity organization” he replied boorishly, even as his mecha-tendrils all planted their claws on the ground, coiled, and then without warning launched him upwards in a similar leap to the one she had just made.
Somewhat similar anyway, as he didn’t reach anywhere close to the height, and so had to reach out with his claws, stick them to the side of the boat with a mix of magnetism and speed welding, and then finally climbed his way up to join her. Throughout this, he kept a calm composure, hands clasped behind his back, expression showing not a hint of exertion.
“Completely inappropriate” he joked, as his feet touched the ground again.
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 the last of the Other fell, they came face to face with the other team that had cleared the other half of the street, and there was a brief lull in the battle that Midna knew would only last so long. She wanted to use it to catch her breath, but unfortunately here Vibrava had other plans, namely its ash coated form started glowing brightly, and then that glowing form began to grow and warp.
”Gah why are you, what are you, what?!” she demanded to know as she shielded her light sensitive eyes from whatever was going on, which thankfully meant that the final burst of light when the transformation ended didn’t straight up blind her for a few moments.
Instead she lowered her hands down, and was greeted by the sight of her pokemon’s towering evolved form, the now truly dragon looking dragon type greeting her with a chirp of its name “Flygon!”
The wolfos has now evolved into a flygon, crossed with a saboquill. The disk on its head has fused with its chitin, giving it a dark metallic crest, one with the wider fronds of the Saboquill. Its green hues are much darker, and the reds on its wings and eye protectors have turned teal. Its arms are more akin to the Saboquill, with wide spiked shoulders (which sport circular teal twilight markings) and larger claws. Its thighs are similarly spiked, and its feet have gained small clawed toes. Its fan-like tail tip sports a metal band/shackle at its base, has been filled with a darker red and has gained several more segments, making it look like a 2d dragon fruit.
Powers: Moves: Dragon Breath: breaths a blast of purple energy that will paralyze the target 30% of the time. Bug Buzz: Buzzes it's wings to create harmful sound waves and will increase vulnerability to non-physical moves 10% of the time. Dragon Claw: The user slashes the target with purple energy wreathed claws Earthquake: The user sets off an earthquake that strikes those around it. Technically a physical attack, as they need to touch the ground to perform it.
Strengths: Hit Reflect: which causes 50% of all damage dealt to the host to be inflicted to the attacker as well, calculated prior to defense modifiers and immunities. This also applies to the vibrava’s owner if both are together. Damage delivered via retaliatory volleys of cactus needles/spikes.
Ground/Dragon type resistances: Immune to electricity, half damage from poison and rock moves.
Levitate: able to fly, and immune to ground type moves as a result.
Physical attacker: Its physical (melee) attacks are 25% more effective than special (ranged) attacks
Weakness Ground/Dragon type weaknesses: quad damage from ice, double from dragon and fairy
Plant Property: increasing the host’s fire weakness to 4x
”Ok. Don’t really know what just happened there but … guess that can wait” she decided, as she and it both turned to face the Other squad. Inevitably, her failure came to bite them in the butt as the Psych-OSF team proved to not be the one they had been hoping for, and instead consisted of a group of unfamiliar faces. Unfamiliar faces that threw down accusations of treachery, and then prepared to throw down for real.
”Alright, trial by fire it is then,” she declared as she squared up and prepared to fight, phrasing which her still very flammable new flygon did not exactly appreciate, even if she was entirely right. This was not going to exactly be the easiest of test runs of an entirely new body, particularly with Midna declaring that ”No one dies in this, no one,” even as she quickly drew her spear with a crescent moon slash.
She didn’t have time to charge it, so instead would be relying only on the faith powered shocks as she flipped it round so she’d be sticking em with the blunt end as she faced down the two psychics who happened to be standing opposite her as the two sides had squared off.
The princess, with a polearm in her hands at a big green monster at her side, cut quite the imposing figure. They’d been through a great deal together after all, from the treacherous bowels of Al Mamoon to the peak of Split Mountain, through the perils of Nyakuza Metro to brave the concealed atrocities of Midgar. These poor fools were just another hurdle on her journey to saving the world; they just didn’t know it yet. Nevertheless, neither Sabrina nor Will showed any sign of fear, nor an overabundance of aggression for that matter. Out of every enemy present, they seemed the calmest, most in control, and most mature. Not to mention the most experienced in the art of beating Pokemon.
“That looks like a Flygon. Shades of cactus, though…a regional variant from the eastern sands, perhaps,” Will remarked off-handedly. “A shame Fubuki isn’t here to OHKO it with Cryokinesis. Still, I think you’ll find you’ve met your match.” Turning his masked face (not to mention his prominent beak of a nose) to the side, his left eye gleamed with a radiant cross of psychic energy as he foresaw an attack, and he spread his patterned wings wide. “The future is my hands.”
“And reality bends to our will.” When Sabrina raised her hands, Midna could see that each bore only four fingers, their nails more like white claws. Her long black hair, which turned to blonde as it parted in twain, began to flutter in a psychic wind. Two giant spoons slid out of her belt and into her grasp. Immediately she unleashed Psychic, a blistering wave of telekinetic force. Will produced two mines and flung them like frisbees into the wave to send them hurtling straight toward his foes. Then, without any delay, he moved a short distance to drop another mine in what seemed like a random spot.
In response, Minda deployed the ever useful Roadblock in the way of the psychically propelled bomb attack, and though the barrier wielding exosuit was pushed back, it did give her time to respond to their twin mottos
”Catchy, but I already beat a goddess of time itself, and I’m up against a breaker of reality. So let’s make this quick” she taunted, which was perhaps not the best use of the time/protection her striker had bought. Still, she had it up for a while longer, and so she commanded her new Flygon to ”Buzz em”
The pokemon moved to comply at once, leaping out through the shield, and then flapping its wings lighting fast and at just the right frequency to produce a wave of damaging sounds that lashed out in every direction. Midna had her striker’s shield to protect her, her foes, and their bombs, were not.
Rather than try to stand firm and let the wave wash over her, Sabrina covered her ears and floated off the ground, allowing the Bug Buzz to push her farther away. It by no means fully mitigated the damage, but it helped. Will clapped his hands over his ears as well, and when the soundwave struck the mine he laid down, it went off prematurely–sending the metal trash can it had been laid behind sailing toward Midna, up and over her shield. It might end up being little more than a distraction, but it was something. As it flew, Sabrina recovered enough to use Reflect, bolstering herself and Will somewhat against nonphysical moves with a barrier of telekinetic force.
While this had been occurring, the princess had been dancing, spear held to her chest, flying with power, as her own body became energized as well, surrounded by a faint purple aura of draconic might. Yet she had to end the steps before her second twirling rendition of the dragon dance thanks to the trash can, the princess deciding to simply push forwards rather than try and block it.
”What a trashy attack” she called it
With hastened steps she exited the barrier, dragon claws digging into the tarmac as she twirled her spear and facing its deadly tip away from her foes.
Her flygon was much more likely to do so, and so as the princess charged Will, aiming to jab him in the gut with the butt of her spear, the dragon pokemon flapped its wings again, this time launching itself up into the air before bearing its claws and swooping towards Sabrina and attempting to disarm her rather than strike her directly.
Just as Midna made her move to strike Will, twenty seconds had passed since the psionic foresaw an attack. Apropos of nothing, a hefty semisolid mass of psychic energy dropped on the princess like a lightning bolt, or an artillery shell, falling upon her and promptly exploding. Will sought to capitalize on the opportunity provided by his Future Sight, and produced another mine while Midna reeled. One he slid across the tarmac, hockey puck style, to come to a stop beneath her. Then he used Future Sight again, another portentous gleam from his eye foretelling the arrival of another psychic ambush.
”What in the actual-”
The princess, her spear presently embedded in the side of a car, was in the middle of picking herself up from where she had been exploded too when the puck came in. Unable to finish getting up or responding quickly enough to avoid it, she instead kept a hand on the ground and opened a portal, launching her wolfos out of it and towards Will. As the massive beast stormed towards him, looking set to simply trample him, the puck slid between its legs, and into the portal it had just come out of as Midna focused everything on holding it open for longer than normal.
Will gritted his teeth as his attack failed and Midna sent a new one his way in the same stroke. Rather than try to dodge the rampaging wolf, however, he stood his ground. He’d seen what would come next–he just needed to trust in what he’d seen. When the minion struck him, a Guardian Vision of his squadmate Sabrina overwrote him in a defensive posture, and though he slid backward a touch from the blow the damage of the impact was negated. To Midna, being mentally inept, it looked as though he’d executed a perfect parry. As the wolfos continued on, a little confused, the Guardian Vision faded and left Will standing there, his breathing more intense. Still, he’d made it. His expression turned to a grin as he used SAS to tap into the power of his squadmate, Ninten. “Let the games begin.” He used DefenseUp to increase his physical resistance, and the floor was Midna’s for the next ten seconds until Future Sight came to pass.
Unfortunately for her, she hadn’t worked out how that future sight attacking worked, and so rather than go on the defensive, she had leapt behind the car her spear was stabbed into, and was asking herself ”Where in the goddess’s name did that attack come from?” while trying to find some hidden aerial attacker.
There was, naturally, none to be found.
While this had been occurring, Flygon advanced on Sabrina, prompting the psychic to put up her guard, creating a ring of spoons in front of her that together sustained a wall of force. Her opponents struck them, almost breaking her guard, and swatted a couple spoons aside that clattered across the street. This Pokemon wielded considerable physical strength; better to dodge instead. Sabrina dashed backward, trying to circle around the Flygon, and kept it busy with Kinesis, a flashy telekinetic display with the fallen spoons that would diminish its accuracy somewhat. So she’s having it fight on its own, she thought. A big mistake. Without a trainer, a pokemon is just an animal. Since a Flygon’s defense and special defense for even, it didn’t matter what kind of move she used. She tested out a Psycho Cut, sending a blade of mental energy the creature’s way.
While entirely correct about the nature of its mind, she had an entirely incorrect assessment of what kind of animal the mind belonged to, as the flygon that had once been a wolfos followed up its charge not with a draconic charge but with a wolfish flank. Still, that only set to throw off her aim a little, and so her blade still clipped the beast’s hip, scoring a deep groove- and causing the spikes on that hip to burst from the flesh, turn in the air, and then spear directly towards her.
Even as they did, the flygon swooped further to the side and sprayed her with its dragon breath.
The monster’s Hit Reflect ability was a strong one, taking Sabrina by surprise as a portion of the damage dealt by her Psycho Cut got returned to her in the form of piercing spines. Unfortunately for the Flygon, the ability derived from Sabrina’s Alakazam fusion proved even more potent. When those spikes made contact, they were destroyed, negated by Sabrina’s Magic Guard. No indirect damage, from status effects to recoil, could touch her. And when the Flygon’s dragon breath washed over her a moment later, it burned painfully, but Reflect mitigated the damage enough for Sabrina to mount a resistance. She unleashed Confusion, hoping that the one-in-ten chance to confuse her target would accompany the jolt of psychic damage.
Fortunately for the flygon, it did not roll that one in ten like its mistress had the previous day. Unfortunately for it, it was still confused in the normal way as to why its ranged attacks were not working as well as it had hoped, nor why its recoil effect was being negated, causing it to swoop up and out of both their effective ranges rather than rushing in.
It hovered there for a moment, and then decided to return to its mistress, who could probably figure this out. As such it came swooping towards her just as Will’s predicted psychic attack came striking down on the princess who had wasted her 10 seconds, but was at least looking up and primed for evasion when it arrived.
When the psychic payload finally descended like a bolt from the blue, Midna’s readiness allowed her to dodge it, but her troubles were far from over. Will hadn’t spent those ten seconds idle; he’d prepared another mine and slid to where his Precognition told him that Midna would evade to. The princess’s elation at thwarting Future Sight turned the next second to dismay when she witnessed the beeping device laid just in front of her, and the moment after that it went off in a fiery blast. “Hah!” Will gloated, taking the moment to pose rather than set up another gambit. “Just as I foretold!”
Midna’s Flygon wouldn’t get a taste of super-effective fire damage fortunately, but Sabrina wasn’t about to let the fused Pokemon turn tail on her if she could help it. Reaching out with Psychic, she attempted to flip the car over and on top of the Flygon, giving it just a brief window in which to act.
The car came crashing down ontop of the pokemon, or rather, where it had been, because a moment later it rose up out of a portal beneath its mistress. The princess herself was burned, though not quite as badly as she could have been, as a fragment of a golden mask on her rosary had devoured 25% of the flames.
This still left her bare skin singed and scorched, but her masked senses and magical arms were unharmed, leaving her with the will and way to grab onto her steed’s head crest for support, and then urging it to take to the skies, out of reach of any more mines.
”But not out of the way of those, what were they, delayed attacks?” she asked herself as she reached out with her shadow hand and pulled her spear out of the flipped car. Said vehicle was not going to be taking anyone anywhere anytime soon, as the flip had perfectly intercepted the flygon’s retaliation barrage, leaving it perforated with cactus spikes.
”Ok, enough games. Lets see if you can see this” she asked, before sending her vibrava diving towards Will. As she did so, she did two things. One, she pushed electricity directly into the metal crest on its head, preparing it to deliver an electrified headbutt. The second thing she did was summon Skywave at just the right moment for the striker to unleash its combination healing and blinding wave in such a way that it hit both her and her target.
When his foe flew up Will took the chance to use Future Sight again, foretelling an imminent attack, but after that things took a turn for the worse. His Precognition showed himself unable to escape Midna's coordinated attack, instead taking both the lightning-infused headbutt and some sort of energy wave from an unknown assailant l. "Wha-?" He gaped, frozen like a deer in headlights. Could this future be prevented? There wasn't any time! "What do I-!?" Paralyzed by the concept of predetermination, Will received the full brunt of the minion's combined assault. Except that his own ability, Synchronize, activated to make Flygon blind as well. He fell back, stunned and sightless for a couple seconds.
Sabrina watched the whole thing go down, sighing. Just like Will to massively overthink things and get trounced by an attack he could have avoided. The psyshocks she'd been firing at Midna in flight clearly weren't cutting it, so it was time to step it up. "Hey, eyes on me!" Unleashing her Psychic, she picked up a half-dozen objects and pieces of debris all around her and slung them toward her opponents in a punishing barrage.
The princess barely noticed her steed’s blinding, hands tugging on its crest like handlebars to guide its flight, making it swoop round so she could see what the helpful called out attack was. Upon seeing the incoming volley, she turned her earlier time wasting into a boon, calling up the off cooldown ”Roadblock!” again to block the barrage. That gave her the cover to take her eyes off of Sabrina, and glance down at Will to check on his condition, catching her spear in her healed arms as she did so, and preparing to give him some more volts if he looked to be getting up.
While the exosuit's barrier mitigated the first wave. Sabrina wasn't done quite yet. Narrowing her eyes, she bent her spoons to either side, parting the objects she'd hurled into two groups that split to either side around Roadblock. Ever since that striker put in its first appearance, she'd been workshopping a way around it. The trash cans, bench, pieces of car, and fire hydrant would clash together in an attempt to crush either Midna or Roadblock between them. Though in a bad spot, Will grinned up at the princess defiantly. The attack he foresaw was a glorious one–it just needed a little more time. The mine rack on the underside of his arm dispensed a fresh explosive into his hand, a guarantee of mutual destruction if Midna tried to beat him while he was down.
Instead of that, the princess spurred her flying steed forwards while Roadblock pivoted one way, and behind it she briefly summoned up the rather beaten form of her darknut. As the two guardians blocked the barrage from either side, she burst between them with a cry of ”Coming through” and charged straight at Sabrina, preparing to use her (still reversed) spear as a lance.
Sabrina stood her ground, tapping into SAS. "Please assist me, commander." Once she activated Sasha's Marksmanship, she spared a brief moment to aim and then took a surprise psychic headshot at the incoming princess. It lacked the stopping power of a bullet, but it would be a severe blow to her mental health. Meanwhile Will ran off, using the SAS to co-opt Ninten's PSI so he could start buffing himself with DefenseUp, OffenseUp, and Quick up as fast as possible.
The princess responded by doing a barrel roll atop her steed, avoiding the shot but fouling her own aim as she swung round and upside down in the entirely unpracticed maneuver, leaving it effortless to dodge. The pair blasted past the psychic, before half turning in the air and hitting the tarmac, 4 sets of dragon claws digging into it as Midna urged her minion to copy her own ground gripping technique.
As they slowed Midna opened portals to blast sand towards Sabrina, and then had her minion leap forwards and slam into the ground again nearby, causing a shockwave to pulse through it as her flygon created a localized earthquake that she, being atop it, was immune too.
After avoiding the careening train wreck of a trainer-pokemon duo, Sabrina fixed her mind’s eye upon them, firing one Marksmanship blast after another. They might not do that much damage by themselves if they didn’t hit a weak point, but they were easy to land and added up quickly. Midna tried to cut the psychic fusillade short with flurries of sand that threw off Sabrina’s accuracy. Thanks to the sandstorm, she couldn’t see what the Flygon was up to until it was too late. The street’s surface cracked and ruptured with tectonic energy, dealing a jarring blow to the psionic’s legs and knocking her down. Her ability might be incredible, after all, but it wasn’t Levitate. If Midna or her pet meant to capitalize on that hit, though, they were disappointed. Now that twenty seconds had passed, the universe rained on their parade as the attack foreseen by Future Sight came to pass, battering them with what felt like a giant, psychic water balloon from above.
“Up you get!” Will called out as he ran up beside Sabrina. He held out his hand, and when she took it, he lifted her to his feet.
“You’ve stalled us long enough,” Sabrina said flatly. She reached up and tugged the cord at her collar, causing her hood to flip over her head. In the pitch blackness that obscured her face, bright orange triangles formed a pokeball symbol. Will responded in kind, his pattern mimicking his theatrical face mask. This was Brain Drive, a state of heightened mental acuity that pushed their users’ bodies and psychic abilities to their limits. “No more playing around.” The two posed together for a split second longer, Will activating Future Sight as he did so for a little extra menace. Then the two advanced forward together. Sabrina released a flurry of Psycho Cuts to carve toward her enemies from a distance, while Will used Stored Power. On its own the move was piddly, but with the power it derived from all his stat buffs, it fell upon Midna and her Flygon like a miniature warhead of pink psychic energy.
In response, a wounded Midna checked her watch before the sand swirled around both her and her steed, and then as it cleared they were gone.
The conspicuous absence of their opponent as the fallout of their attacks dissipated put both psionics on edge immediately. Stored Power was strong, but not that strong, and Psycho Cut should’ve left ample evidence behind even if all of them hit. “She…absconded?” Will exclaimed, incredulous and a little indignant.
Sabrina kept her eyes peeled as the scoured the immediate area, but there was no sign of their opponent. “Or she’s lying in wait. It’s possible she knows about Brain Drive. What do you see?”
“Nothing. I can’t see far enough ahead to to know where this leads,” Will replied irritably. “What a scummy tactic. What about you?”
Shaking, her head, Sabrina raced to find a solution as the seconds ticked down. “It’s too dark. They could be hiding anywhere. I’m trying to think of a counter…”
“Of course, that’s it!” Will snapped his fingers. “Didn’t that newbie Kotone have a shadow power?”
Sabrina’s eyes widened, and without delay she activated SAS to co-opt the Umbrakinesis of Kotone Aguilar. Will followed suit. Neither had really tested their new recruit’s power before setting out today, but they understood that it could be used to control light levels, and it was worth a shot. Before their will, the shadows around them began to evaporate like morning dew, replaced with mere dimness. As the area of effect expanded, Will received a vision. In his mind’s eye, he saw the shape of his foe spring from the darkness, like a wild animal flushed from its hiding spot. That shape lunged his way, only to be enveloped by multiple explosions and be blown to smithereens. “I see it!” he crowed. “Victory is ours!” He began deploying mine after mine, juggling them. “Sabrina, Psychic, right there!”
“On it!” Trusting her teammate completely, Sabrina used her power to launch Will’s mines in the indicated direction. Sure enough, Midna had seemingly arisen from the shadows to attack, and the next instant the volley of mines struck her and went off in a resounding symphony of destruction, scattering her ashes to the winds. Relief flooded through Sabrina as Brain Drive ran out and her hood fell back, but she couldn’t take her eyes off her opponent’s remains. Was that truly ash? If anything, it looked more like…
”Sand-” came a call from above as Skywave dissipated, and dozens of portals to the twilight realm opened. Portals just like the ones she’d blasted Sabrina like, and used to eat several of the mines that had come her way. But if Sabrina had thought what had been fired had been a sandstorm, she had been sorely mistaken, for what came raging out of those portals was a true ”Storm!”
Sand rained down, singing a siren’s song as it engulfed the pair on the ground, a song that was joined in duet caused by the flapping of a flygon’s wings when it burst from a portal, caught its trainer, and then dove into the storm. From the outside it seemed that sandstorm transformed into a thunderstorm, as lightning flashed through the grains as the masked princess unleashed the charge of her spear upon her foes.
Try as he might to shield himself from the onslaught with both his arms and his wings, Will could only take so much punishment. Buffeted by sand and jolted by electricity, he couldn’t focus enough to use his Precognition, and any attempt to set up some mines around him would result in them blowing up in his face. When Midna capped the sandstorm off with a golden blast from her spear, it blew through the chaos to hit Will dead on. A high-pitched shattering sound rang out, the same as when a bulb popped out of an Other, and Will fell to his knees. With his mental health depleted, his body vulnerable to a knockout blow. “Im…possible…”
When the electric sandstorm subsided, it revealed Sabrina much less worse for wear. After all, Magic Guard could negate the indirect damage caused by ambient weather, including sandstorms. But she was in a bad spot. She realized the state her partner was in immediately, and knew she couldn’t afford to let the opposition perform a Brain Crush. Using Ninten’s PSI through SAS would allow her to heal him, but how could she do that with Midna and her beast still on the field? There was only one option. She fired off a handful of suppressive lasers at her foes with her borrowed Marksmanship, then targeted Midna with Hypnosis.
”Let’s finish thi…s…” the prince’s triumphant cry slipped away from her as she slumped on her steed’s back, dropping her spent spear and causing it to glance back at her in confusion. It chirped, and tried to rouse her via nuzzling to little avail, and so instead wrapped its tail around her to prevent her dozing form from slipping off entirely.
Then it briefly took stock of the situation, and decided that if Sabrina could actually be hurt, as she clearly had (even if it was not nearly as bad as Will), then it presumably had been doing something wrong last time. So it did the only thing it knew how to do, and charged her, claws at the ready.
Sabrina had anticipated this. The only question was whether or not she could deal with it. As the Flygon approached, she used her telekinesis to rip up loose pieces of the street and sidewalk next to her, then clumped them together in a large mass. “RrrrrrrrrAH!” She hurled it at the monster, then used Psychic to let loose a terrific blast of force. It spread across a wide area, and when it struck the boulder, it exploded in a shotgun-like blast of asphalt and concrete. She put everything she had into this–her best chance to succeed.
In response the pokemon pivoted slightly and then flapped its vibrating wings once with enough force to kill all its momentum, and in doing so sent a shockwave of insectile sound blasting forwards into the incoming debris. Bug and psychic type force collide, and by type advantage, the bug won out. The asphalt shotgun was stopped dead in its tracks, while the waveform of the bug buzz blasted clean through the psychic power and slammed into the Psychic herself.
Having spent all her energy on that last ditch effort, the ear splitting sound and physical wave were enough to drain her willpower as well, causing her to collapse to the ground.
The last one standing, the Vibrava let out a cry of victory, one that finally woke a gumbling Minda from her unnatural sleep, the princess going ”Huh, what, is it over?” before shaking her head, checking that neither of the pair she had been fighting where dead/dying, and then once that was confirmed pivoting to see if anyone else needed help.
Her plea for faith fell on deaf ears, which in hindsight was somewhat unsurprising with everything else going on. People pulled out of wherever they had come from, unsure if it was just part of wherever that was. Rayne at least had the advantage of knowing this was somewhere entirely beyond the context of where she had been due to the loss of her links. Meanwhile they called out for allies, made preconception leaps of logic, or in one case slipped away from the group as if they were a danger.
It only came to Rayne’s mind that that last was perhaps the smartest reaction to finding yourself around dangerous looking strangers when one of them floated up into the air, activating some kind of power in what came off as a threatening manner as he demanded answers. Rayne hoped it was just that he was scared and defensive, rather than wanting to lash out, and so she approached her reply with that hope in mind.
“We’re-” she pushed because technically she couldn’t talk for everyone and then corrected “I’m not a ghost, and I don’t know where we are, but I do know it's nowhere near where we once were. I was connected to everyone left alive where I was from, and none of you were among them. So. It's a different place ? A different world? We’ll need to figure it out together so please, don’t attack anyone here!”
She wasn’t really sure what terminology worked in terms of how to talk about this place outside of the context of the place she had just been, but they were beyond the reach of Gaia’s cycle, and that raised all sorts of questions. The information they got from the locals raised even more, about who this goddess was, how she’d brought them here, why people were being attacked, and oh so many more. But the questions would have to wait, because one of the others wanted to be proactive when dealing with these ‘Raven Heralds’ who were attacking the church.
The creator of the barrier agreed, and so it looked like they were going to have a fight on their hands ever so soon.
Acting out of habit Rayne lifted her hand up and splayed her fingers as she always did when preparing for battle, only to be surprised to find a trio of spectral cards appearing in her hand.
“Wait but how…” she asked herself, before figuring it out.
Her mana pool wasn’t sourced from the Link, she’d grown the said pool via hearts of nature and the cards were technically physical things, enchanted to work alongside her Link given powers rather than being sourced directly from them. So she had this power at least. Just no way of refilling her incredibly limited mana reserves.
Wrecking ball, magic shield, sentry gun, she saw as she checked her hand. The first was powerful, but the way it shot wrecking balls out in front of and behind her meant that she’d risk wrecking the church’s wall if she used it too close. The third was worthless, because if she couldn't shoot magic bullets, it couldn't either.
The second however came in handy almost right away, because while the green haired woman’s barrier was lower to let people sortie out just after a volley of arrows struck, that didn’t mean that that volley was the last. So if she could do one thing, she resolved to do something about that problem.
She jogged over to the window through which the shooters outside could get the best angle on them and then called out “Magic shield!”as she put a thumb to the spectral card and flicked it upwards out of her hand to use it. As soon as she did, a 3 meter tall oval shield of some kind of brassy-bronze material appeared before her, floating in the air, blocking the window, and a few moments later absorbing some arrow fire just as she’d intended it too.
Said shield was invulnerable, but as a trade off it did not last forever. So Rayne set about doing what she had said she would if she didn’t have power: making a barricade. Heaving with all her might, she dragged over and then upended a few of the worn benches in the church in-order to block the windows with something physical and permanent.
The Witch Knight whipped her brow and gave a little sigh after the physical exertion, and then checked her hand of cards to see what she’d drawn after her use of Magic Shield.
“Armageddon?” she read out loud, finding one of her most indiscriminately destructive cars in her hand, and then quietly adding “let’s hope it doesn’t come to that”
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
As the darkness grew, the Troop took part in helping light up the way. First and foremost, Kamek created a few wisps, the glowing blobs of mana fanning out and trying to act as little floating lamps. This, unfortunately, only worked somewhat, only really offering the ability to see what was right around them. Bowser’s first contribution had the same problem, as the king first set fire to a load of worm grass and then bathed in their light, drinking it in and cursing the tentacruel domes on his shell to glow with inner light.
They had a second problem, which was that while they lit up the cavern a little, they lit themselves up a lot, making for ever so easy targets for the things which lurked in the dark. Both Bowser and the wisps thus ended up being priority targets for the spitters, something that came to a head when the troop entered into a cavern via a narrow passageway while a touch ahead of the rest of the party.
Immediately upon entering, they were ambushed by a spread out collection of spitters, which nailed most of the wisps in quick succession, and then focused in on the glowing king himself.
”Gahhh!” he roared in pain as the acid ate through his vine armor, before he tried to fight back with his turret guns, firing wildly into the dark at where he thought he was being shot at.
This had little impact on the bugs hiding above, nor did Rika’s own firing when she joined in. Jr meanwhile was less concerned about the ceiling bugs and more about the swarm coming towards them.
The prince opened up by splashing a crescent of ink in front of himself, before hucking a fireball at the first grunt, creating a flaming patch on its location, which added a bit of light. Then he hefted the javelin he’d formed while spitting and hurled at the next, nailing it in the jaw with his olympian strength and skill. Another fireball, another javelin formed while fireballing, but this one did not find its target, as Kamek ended up crushing it with a magic fist while Jr was tossing.
”Hey! I had that one” Jr complained
”My apologies, it is difficult to see what you are aiming for in this gloom” the mage replied as he launched a fireball at another grunt.
The prince grumbled, and then happened to see how a Glyphid guard was forced to pick its way around the javelin that had embedded itself in the ground, giving him an idea for later.
Behind them, Bowser and Rika needed ideas for right now, as the spitters continued to target the king, which had caused the pair to burn through both of their healing strikers already in order to keep his vine armor up.
”Oh! My shock swarm, maybe they can go find them!” Rika realized as she came up with a plan, before popping open her gauntlet hangers and unleashing a swarm of electric insects from them.
The swarm spread out, and in doing so unintentionally outlined the terrain with their light glows as they sought out the targets. Then, when one came across one, it attracted the rest, and soon enough a spitter was zapped into oblivion.
That was good, but there were still several more spitters, but fortunately, Rika had a second idea based on the first. She launched a cheap distracting swarm, and then another, and another, flooding the cavern with the electric motes whose whole purpose was to create flashing lights. With just a little tweaking, she’d made them instead produce a steady glow, filling the air with dozens of firefly like motes and softly lighting the walls as they did so.
It was more than enough to make the bright red spitters visible and target-able. Cannons boomed and gunfire cracked as they took down the rest of the spitters, with the final one finding itself faced with a giant slow moving fireball floating towards it.
A giant slow moving fireball that acted as a giant flare, lighting up the whole room.
”Oh… Uh… Yeah I was just, uh, letting you all flex your creativity, I always knew that would work” Bowser said after a long pause after the discovery of the fact that he could just use mega fireballs to light up large rooms.
Admittedly, Rika’s own innovation still came in handy, with the princess sending her swarms forwards through the smaller tunnels, because in the particularly twisty turny ones the fireballs would only provide a brief amount of light till they hit/went through the walls.
They ended up providing both light sources when the brother longlegs snatched up the remaining wisps, a great fireball bringing a brief dawn to the cavern while Rika’s electroflies made for handy distractions that the strange monsters tried and failed to grab.
Once they had the lighting situation all set up, the smallish groups of two dozen or so bugs they came across were a manageable matter. Which naturally meant that it wasn’t long till the universe decided to toss a fresh complication at them, one heralded by a big inverted triangle and a handful of dwarven miners.
”Bet if you just make me massive I could smash that shield” Bowser insisted, but his advisor, well, he advised against that
”For all we know it would be another flame clock situation, not to mention you might cause a cave in in the process” Kamek warned, before starting to say that ”So I’d rather save my mana for any new bug threats,” only for the scrambling of claws to creep in mid sentence, causing him to sigh and conclude that he had been talking about ones ”Like that”
Having been inspired by his missed spear toss earlier, as the swarm started to dig into the cavern Jr jogged out in front of the group, tossing up a pokeball and bringing Mimi into the fray as he did so.
”Copy me!” he commanded his pokemon, before he crouched down and pressed his iron tattooed hand to the ground. Up from it sprouted a few long spikes, and as the prince quickly moved to one side, more and more formed, creating a freestanding spearwall that would deter the smaller glyphids from trying to get past. His pokemon copied him, and created her own wall of spears, forming a nice little defensive perimeter on their part of the battlefield.
To add to it, the prince flicked his paintbrush, coating both the spears and the ground in-front of them with burning goop, further deterring the ground crawlers, and funneling them to either side of it.
As for what to put behind it? Well, Rika covered part of that by screaming out in pain and summoning her the white whale that had belonged to the pacific princess, who’s to mounted turrets swiveled to the side and started blasting, while it used its mighty jaws to bring the pain to foes that came past the barrier.
Bowser ended up holding the other side of said barrier, burning and blasting glyphids that came round, and raining his shell spikes up and over the spear wall, and down to any clumps of glyphids trying to get past.
Unfortunately, that was just the smallfry handled, and as Jr worked to patch his sister back up, the two potential major complications to his plan arrived.
A trio of hulking praetorians stomped forwards amidst their lesser kin, and it was quite clear that the spiky barrier would be no barrier to their acid sprays. Similarly, the buzzing Mactera Spawn hovering through the air were able to simply huck their horrid projectiles down at the defenders, bypassing their barrier entirely.
With Jr’s clowncar still needing repairs, and the tunnels having not been considered suitable for flying steeds, that left Kamek as the troop’s only available air force. Still, he wasn’t alone, as the mage naturally had more hims, and a little extra help in the form of Mimi who had elected to ride on the tip of the mage’s broomstick. All of his broomsticks actually, as the copycatting specter had mimicked the mage’s clone spell, equipping all the doppelgangers with a familiar of their own.
He’d opted to make red clones only, and those clones made great use of their passengers, recklessly charging forwards and getting up in the mandabled faces of the enemy fliers, at which point the Mimis could scratch away at the bugs with their claws.
As his doppelgangers tied up many of the fliers Kamek prime swooped forwards between them, both he and Mimi delivering drive-by blasts as they did, before they cleared the flying swarm and soared over to the praetorians.
”Time to say, bombs away, and bid these bugs good day” Kamek chanted in a sing-song tone as both he and Mimi began dropping dark energy mines ontop of them. The magical mines spiked down into the earth, pulsed once, and then as long as there was something beneath them, immediately exploded upwards again in pillars of dark energy, hammering the unarmored undersides of the glypids, as well as the exposed green rear of the praetorians.
Things were going wonderfully until a quartet of Centiwings crawled their way into the room via tunnels in the ceiling, and then dropped down into the air and commenced their unnerving spiraling flight. They’d encountered them alone on their way here, but the number of them combined with the surrounding hostels spiked them way up in the mage’s threat assessment. He did not want to find out what they could do if they got ahold of him with their many legs, that was for sure
As he could not simply teleport away due to his passenger, he started falling back via flight, but low to the ground as he had ended up while bombing, he could not swoop for extra speed without getting attacked by ground bugs. Even if he made it past them, he might very well ram into Jr’s spikewall, so it was a dangerously slow hover he committed while backing away from the flying bugs.
As the mage and Mimi blasted at the rapidly approaching Centiwings there came a call of ”I’m coming to help!” from Rika. The freshly healed shipgirl had been tossed over the spikewall by her brother on her request, and then grappled to one of the remaining Mactera spawn, before kicking off of it for more distance. Now close enough to aim without risking friendly fire, she blasted one of Kamek’s pursuers with her rigging guns, finishing it off, and then called out ”Crimson Queen!” as she summoned that striker.
The Vespikan queen appeared beside her, and then immediately charged forwards, her humongous cleaver held overhead, before it slammed it down upon one of the Centiwings, slicing it clean in half in a single stroke. Then she thrust her stinger forwards, impaling another, before her spirit returned to Rika.
With that touch of breathing room, Kamek and Mimi managed to blast the fourth and final centiwing with spells and electroballs. As its spirit fell, the mage turned to thank Rika for her assistance, only to see the girl slowly floating down to the ground, lacking as she was in any grapple points due to his clones having taken down all the Mactera while they had all been dealing with the centiwings.
”Oh no! Rika!” he cried out in alarm when he looked down below her and saw a swarm of glyphids preparing to claw at her when she landed, before quickly coming up with a plan and casting ”sphere of protection” upon her.
”Thanks Kamek!” the princess called up, before she, now surrounded in a shimmering amber barrier, cut her antigravity and feather fall effects and dropped down into the mass of bugs.
Claws slashed and jaws bit, but the barrier reduced the damage to a mere ⅕ of what it could have been. It still hurt, and she was still at risk of being cut down, but it meant that rather than being torn apart in moments she was able to fight back. Her spear jumped into her gauntlet’s jaws, and then was driven into a sclicer’s head. Her hull claws slashed at a grunt, and her disruption cannons blindly unloaded their globby payloads into foes behind her, all of which allowed her to strike several foes at once.
She wasn’t unsupported either, as Kamek floated low, bouncing fireballs down into the bugs trying to still reach her, while Mimi’s shadow appeared at Rika’s feet and slashed at more of them with its spectral claws.
Finally, Jr threw some support her way, sending his own Vespikan strikers into the fray, the four large wasp woman rapidly closing the distance between their shelter and the out of position princess, and delivered swift death with their four-handed cleavers.
With all this support, the bloody princess broke out of the mass that had greeted her on landing, and sprinted towards cover. After clearing some ground, and building up momentum, she leapt up with her featherfall rune, sailing forwards landing upon Bowser’s Trowlon striker that he’d sent floating her way. It moved her a bit closer, and then before it timed out she leapt again, clearing more ground and then launching her grapple and latching onto Bowser. The winch reeled her in quickly, into the awaiting hand of her papa, who caught her just before she ran body first into Jr’s spike wall.
”I gotcha” he told her reassuringly as he lifted her back into the relative safety of their defensive position, and handed her to Jr’s care, the prince only lightly complaining about how much he was having to heal her as Kamek returned as well.
Reunited behind their spiky defenses, the Troop were well placed to hold off the remaining smaller crawlers, and ready to face whatever fresh horrors of chitin came their way.
“We don’t have much time…” so spoke the colossal figure of stone and greenery that was the only other thing in this void with her. So spoke Gaia, so spoke life, death, and rebirth itself “there can’t be two of us at once”
“Two of what?” the small figure floating before Gaia, Rayne, asked
“Every living being is connected to you. You share their life, their strength. They trust your judgment. They have faith in you. That is all it takes to be me” the goddess explained, and Rayne knew that the first half of this at least was true. She could feel them through the link, that magical connection that gave her the power to do the things that had gained her that faith in the first place. She hadn’t known it was everyone however. Or she had, deep down she knew it was everyone, but she’d hoped there were more people out there, that other places had survived the splitting of the sky.
They hadn’t.
She had the faith of everyone who was left alive.
“Am I… a Goddess?” she asked, as she came to the conclusion Gaia was leading her too, before attempting to reject it “But… I don’t care about the Link! I never did! I just wanted to help people! I don’t want to be a Goddess!”
“If you were chasing personal ambitions, you wouldn’t be here” the Goddess replied simply, before attempting to be reassuring “Do not worry, You are confused, and sacred… Like I was when it was my turn. But, with time, you will do fine. We have done this many times before.”
Then she did perhaps the least reassuring thing, and began to fade away as she declared with a measure of finality that “My cycle has ended, and so your cycle begins…”
Rayne could not simply let the moment be, still reeling from it all, and crying out “Wait, I don’t know what to do!” which was an entirely reasonable concern to have when the burden of all that lived was placed on your shoulders.
“Just close your eyes. See the patterns in nature. Rearrange them - find the balance. Life can sustain itself indefinitely when it is balanced.” the goddess replied, which was less than reassuring when the reason that they were here was because people had repeatedly knocked it out of balance “After that… you’ll simply inhale death, and exhale life.”
“What if I can’t find a way?” Rayne called out, reaching a hand towards the goddess as if she might be able to grasp the fading Gaia, as if she could hold back her end.
“You’ll find it…” the goddess replied, almost silent, almost gone now “You’ll make your own cycle. You have all the time in the world” and then her time ran out, and she was gone.
There was silence, and then Rayne was truly alone in the nothingness. It took her several long moments to break the shock and then that silence.
“Ok. Ok. You can do this Rayne. Everybody was already counting on you to save the world, making a new one is basically the same level of responsibility… right?” she lied to herself, before her natural honesty forced her to admit “No. No, it's so much more. But… I can do this. I just have to breathe. Find a rhythm. Close my eyes and then-”
And then in a flash of light she was gone
??? — Ruined Church
Rayne tried to shield her eyes from the glare, and started to ask herself “did it work” before she realized something was oh so wrong.
“Wait. What. no no no no no no what happened, where’s the Link? Where did everyone go?” in a panic as she realized she’d lost her connection to all the people she’d saved, and even the people she’d saved them from. Lost her connection to Akai…
The only thing that stopped her absolutely freaking out was her vision returning, and forcing to ask the more immediate question of “Where am I?” as she laid eyes on the unfamiliar architecture, and unfamiliar people.
Many of them were strange, but she had no eyes for them, only the wounded pair who she immediately stepped towards while asking “Are you alright? Who did this?” before having that question somewhat answered for her when a volley of arrows smashed in through the window.
Despite the Link having vanished, and that meaning she had functionally, no power, she still stepped around them, putting her armored body between them and the entrance. “Stay behind me, I’ll protect you” she told them, causing her to feel the faintest bit of Link, to feel the promise of a start of a whole new network burgeoning in her soul.
As she did that powerless act, another of the strangers acted with sorcerous might, sending bits of paper out of the windows, and forming a barrier around the church.
The little promise of Link faded as hope was redirected towards this savior, but Rayne didn’t mind, even if she could see how that feeling had sent one of her fellow Knight Witches spiraling into madness. She was just glad someone had bought them time to work out what was going on.
She didn’t move from her spot however, just in case the barrier went down, and instead simply turned to face the others.
“Thank you for that” she said to the stranger in the starry dress who had created the barrier, before starting to ask “but who are you?” before pausing that line of inquiry and saying “No wait, that’s rude, let me introduce myself first. I’m Rayne, Knight Witch, and nice to meet you, despite… whatever the circumstances we’re in are?”
One of the people among them, a cloaked knight in gray armor, guessed that a good source of how to find that out would be the ones who were, unlike the rest of them, hurt (presumably by whoever was outside) and so asked them about what was going on as a small pale girl knelt down to aid one of them in some way.
“I’ll help too,” she told the pair, perhaps redundantly given her first action being putting herself in between them and danger, before broaching what she now realized was a slightly awkward topic to bring up right now, namely that she needed Link to be able to help “but I need you to believe I can help in order to help. I know that sounds weird and cyclical now that I say it out loud to someone who probably doesn’t already know what the Link is, but if you” she paused and then addressed everyone “if any of you believe I can help, then I can”
"Even if you don't I'll do what I can anyway" she clarified, "Build a barricade or something like that"
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