wintersoldier
Snowdrops
LG
Lord Zee
Timemaster
Damycles
Izurich
Villamvihar
FunnierPrezWitch One - Out about town
Juri @Zoey Boey, Roxas & Captain Falcon @MULTI_MEDIA_MAN, Goldlewis@Lugubrious, Kamek @DracoLunaris
Wordcount: 3563 (+4)
As Geralt sniffed around the market, Pit went to check the library and Rika scanned around their starting point, Kamek set about setting up his surveillance network. The pre-prepared hovering whisps spread out across the town under his direction, seeking out and then perching themselves atop the highest points in it.
He intended to use this to spot any runners or sneaky spot switchers, but as it turned out he unintentionally ran into his first hider in the process of doing so. Though calling her a hider seemed like it might be a bit of a misnomer given that the woman was casually laying on her back on a tower roof without even having donned a disguise.
Nevertheless, he (or rather the glowing fairy winged orbs now hovering on the roof near her) had found her, and so the mage took to the skies atop his broom and started to float over her way, wondering if this behavior had anything to do with how she had just been freed from Galeem, been ‘unstoried’ as Asgore had put it, or not.
Juri lazily swatted at the winged orbs like they were pesky mosquitoes. When Kamek herself arrived, Juri swatted in her direction like she was a bigger, peskier mosquito. ”Ah, buzz off, would ya? I don’t care about this stupid game.” Juri complained with a frown. Her eyes were now the vibrant green and purple they should have been from the start.
”I’m so sick of this crap.” She added.
”Then you won’t mind if I eliminate you from it then?” the mage replied as he drew his unicorn horn and floated closer to do just that, but not before offering ”If you have any questions, I will be more than happy to answer them after this. Miss Fortune’s timing for this has been rather poor I must say”
”That’s just because she’s ‘rather poor’ herself.” Juri said with a cackle. She crossed one leg over the other, and frowned again, her mood re-souring on the spot.
”Just buzz off! I don’t wanna go back to that gibbering idiot’s clown tent. I’m not goin’ anywhere.” She protested.
”I am afraid I have a young ward who’s not been having the best of time with these, so I’ll have to turn down that request” he replied with polite affluence, before grinning, declaring ”this will only take a moment” and then tilting down the tip of his broom and swooping towards her at a speed that seemed to surprise even him.
”I don’t care about your freaking ‘young ward’- you’re so annoying!” Juri yelled, erupting from the ground with an invulnerable spinning wheel kick to knock Kamek away. She landed on the roof, frustrated. All she wanted was a bit of dignity and respect!
”Give me the stupid horn! I’ll do it myself.” She shouted. ”I don’t want you pokin’ me.”
The mage stabilized himself, paused for a moment, shrugged and tossed her the horn ”if you would, I’d appreciate it”
Juri caught the horn, and threw it away as far as she could. Would you believe her if she told you that wasn’t even her plan? Up until the point she had it in her hands she really was going to poke herself with it. ”Oops!”
”and as you haven’t you may suffer the consequences” he added without much surprise in his tone, not even rushing after his capture implement. Instead he waved his wand, and caused dozens of skeletal hands to rise up around her, followed by the rest of the dry-bones pulling themselves from the roof and attempting to swarm and grab her.
While they did that, the mage disappeared in a poof of smoke, and then 6 seconds later was back with his horn.
Juri chuckled as the hands rose up to meet her. ”Ew! Creep.” She dropped herself onto her back. ”Who knew you were into this kind of thing?”
”What was that?” the mage replied, having been both away and briefly dazed upon returning for some reason. Either way once there, he approached, dagger raised with ominous poise.
”Ugh.” Juri rolled her eyes. ”What are you, sacrificing me to a volcano? Hurry up, these things got cold hands.”
”Not particularly my style that” the mage replied before raising up the horn and then staking it downwards towards her heart (for extra dramatic flare).
Juri smirked. ”If it was, you’d know I’d be no good as a sacrifice. I’m not a-” Then she exploded into confetti.
”Huh, wonder what that means?” Kamek asked himself, before shaking his head and dismissing the drybones with a wave of a hand, before finally turning to take a look at the rest of the area he had to investigate.
A quick check of the hider’s spawn point revealed nothing/no-one of note, nor some of the nearby buildings, but as it turned out the barracks was somewhere that would bear fruit. He initially drifted past the suits of armor found within, thinking them far to cliche a spot to hide, only to come drifting back a short while later.
”Well none of you have come to life, which really is a let down. So let’s see if I can encourage that” he joked, before approaching the first in the line of armors, and then with a hand gripping the helm and pulling it off with a dramatic flourish, revealing its empty interior.
”Hmmm, not you, but how about…” before waving his wand, summoning his toadies who moved, grasped the helmets of every helm that wasn’t Goldlewis and hefting them off to reveal nothing once more.
The mage gave a ”tch” of disappointment as he dismissed the minions and looked thoughtfully at the final suit of armor. Then, absurdly, he drifted away- only to suddenly appear in a poof right in-front of it and make to remove the helm, a move only slightly let down by the two second between his appearing and being able to move to de-helm the hero
Of course, his hand passed right through the illusion, but by that time Goldlewis was already moving. From the moment Kamek first appeared, the veteran had been on high alert, and the tension only grew the longer Kamek drew this out. The magikoopa seemed to be playing with his food, which quickly evaporated any trace of sympathy on the part of Goldlewis. Old or not, he would show his would-be hunter no mercy.
He burst from his hiding spot with his Burst, an omnidirectional blue energy wave. “Take a hike!” It made him invincible for a split second, and the hit also sent Kamek tumbling painlessly across the ground.
The mage shook his head to clear it, and then rather than grab his broom to fly, grabbed just the fallen horn and then actually ran after Goldlewis. Had this not been part of the game it would been a foolish notion, but the seeking speedboost worked overtime to give the old man a chance, causing the turtle to cackle with glee as he became a hare for a few moments, racing through the halls of the barracks after the mighty glacier till, inevitable, the chase came to an end.
Confetti was spilled and Kamek lost his speed boost, much to his disappointment and the complaint of his old joints.
”Ach, well, that was fun, but maybe I’ll stick to the broom from now on” he commented to himself, before letting out a sigh and hobbling back to the armor room to fetch it.
With the performance he’d put on inside, it might have seemed like he’d wasted a fair bit of time on the theatrics, but thanks to his whisps, the mage wasn’t restricted to simply his own sight when it came to searching.
While he was messing about with the armor, one of his whisps headed down into the basement, found the dungeon located down there, and encountered Roxas’ keys and locks schemes. Unfortunately for him, the little winged globs of mana didn’t even try and open the cell doors, as they phased right through them.
Fortunately for him, they did the same to him as well when they got close, and so their inspection was merely visual. In doing so they found the keys that had been tossed into one of the cells however, and a moment later there was a ‘poof’ and a puff of smoke and that cell now contained Kamek.
”Interesting, interesting. You aren't supposed to be here now are you?” he said to them as he picked up the keys, before glancing at the bedding in the room with him, and then dismissing it as a possibility. Whoever had done this surely would have at the very least have tossed the keys into the next cell, or so he guessed.
”Why not simply put them in a pocket to deny them entirely I wonder?” he asked out loud as he unlocked the cell and stepped out, before strolling too and fro to examine the contents of the other cells.
”hmmm, hmmm, hmmm,” he then pondered out loud as he examined each in turn, before striding back to the one with Roxas in it and saying that ”this one seems far to generously furnished for a prison cell” referring here to the excess bedding found therein. He then stepped in and before waved his wand through the bars of the cell, summoning his toadies once more, and instructing them to ”give the ‘prisoner’ a rude awakening” prompting them to drift down and toss the sheets aside.
Well, Roxas was indeed jostled out of his hiding spot. But since none of the propeller hatted minions carried a unicorn horn he was still safe for the time being. He also had an unusually smug look on his face for a hider who was just exposed, ”Good work on sniffing me out.” He said with arms confidently crossed in front of his chest, ”But you can’t tag me if you can’t get inside.” Which was an interesting thing to say to someone who clearly held the cell keys. But it would become clear as soon as Kamek tried them on the cell door. Not a single one of them worked. Well, one of them would have worked, if not for the fact it had been recently overridden by a Keyblade’s magic. Any lock sealed by a Keyblade, could only be subsequently unsealed by a Keyblade.
”Interesting. I assume you have sabotaged the lock then?” Kamek guessed before also thinking ”hmm, and even if I do get in, I will be an old turtle who you might well try and wrestle the horn from the hands of” out loud.
That did seem like quite the predicament, but the mage simply smiled and waved his wand, causing around him 4 more hims to appear and with a cackle, declaring that ”you best hope you grab the right one then!” before all 5 horn-armed Kameks disappeared in a puff of smoke, and reapered behind him, knives raised like treacherous senators, that held that pose for 2 seconds exactly before driving their blades down in unison.
The plan, it turned out, was not to try and wrestle away Kamek’s unicorn horn. The second he vanished, Roxas was able to safely assume he was preparing a teleport attack and thus lunged himself forward and then spun around to summon a checkered wall of virtual cubes between himself and the five Kameks who reappeared in his cell. The cubes probably couldn’t do any harm to him in this virtual game world. But they would obstruct him from immediately being able to pull off his backstab. After that he could unlock the cell and try to escape to the outside. But was he fast enough to do this before Kamek could teleport again and attack with greater speed thanks to the seeker buff? That was gonna end up coming down to a roll of the dice.
Unfortunately, the architect of the building had rigged those dice, because the last thing you wanted in a dungeon was to give your prisoners an easy time escaping. There was one way in/out, and the mages re-appeared appeared in it, blocking the top of the stairs like the barrack’s troops might appear to stop a breakout. Unfortunately the only option now was to fight. And he tried, for about two seconds. It turned out that 5 invincible speed boosted turtles around made for a nearly untouchable opponent in a fight, so it didn’t take Kamek long after this point to tag the Keyblade Wielder and explode him into confetti.
”Aw, man.” his spectral form complained, ”Why did it have to be the one person who could teleport? My plan would have stumped literally anyone else.” He grumbled for only a brief moment before laughing it off with a shrug.
”Such is fate” the mage replied as his copies where dismissed, before admitting that ”though it was fun to be on the other side of the coin for once I must say”
The koopa made a final sweep of the building after that, but was fairly sure it was clear. The next few structures were the same, by which point he’d skirted most of the outskirts and drifted into Geralt had ended up. Which looked to contain quite the host of structures, so the mage offered to help him out.
A little bit later, and with only a little bit of time remaining, the mage drifted into the bar and immediately wafted a hand in-front of his nose at the smell.
”Ack, a place that sells just that… whatever it is that wretched drink that Bacchus fellow his majesty did not like was imbibing” Kamek complained, before declaring ”delightful” in a sardonic tone.
His dislike of the smell made him stay clear of the barrels at first, prompting him to head upstairs first, but it was only a matter of time till he returned and started poking about behind the bar.
Knowing it was only a matter of time before the mage started to search the ale barrels, Captain Falcon believed he should perhaps try to make an exit. And when Kamek had gone upstairs, Cap knew now was the time to either fish or cut bait. So while he was still alone in the tavern main floor room, Falcon started creeping toward the doors that would take him outside and out of Kamek’s line of sight. He could try a full run and be out the door a lot faster but that would make more noise and more easily alert the seeker. This resulted in Cap creeping a little more slowly while also diligently keeping a close eye on the stairway in anticipation of Kamek inevitably coming back down. And unfortunately Cap didn’t quite make it to the door. Instead he had to reorient his veil to disguise him as a table and set of chairs and simply hope the mage didn’t keep count of the tavern tables. He also had to hope he wouldn’t be spotted between the legs of the table and chairs, but hopefully in the room’s lighting maybe he wouldn’t be noticeable at a glance?
It was fortunate indeed that the mage tended to float everywhere on his broom, because the short fellow was at head height with a dining top. As things stood (or rather floated) the mage made a little ”hm?” upon appearing at the top of the stairs, but did not immediately zero in on the new bits of furniture. Instead, he sighed, and approached the barrels behind the bar.
”alright let us get this over with” he sighed before murmuring ”it is a shame I can’t simply blast the things to bits or…” before making an ”oh!”[ and then a laugh of ”oh ho ho ho” and asking himself ”why didn’t I think of it sooner” as he brandished his wand.
”Bip, bap, whoop and zing!
Turn these barrels into an itty bitty thing!”
He chanted, and then with a zap of magic, chain blasted each and every barrel with spells that shrunk them down to the sizes of mugs while the mage crackled manically.
”ahahahahaha ha ha ha ahhhhh that was fun” he concluded as the last barrel was shrunk, before coughing with a touch of embarrassment and hoping no one had actually seen that. Which was just the right or wrong moment to realize that ”Wait a second!” and then pausing to count ”..ng, hm, and eight” which was not the amount there had been in here when he’d gone up stairs.
Of that he was quite sure, so he announced ”Ah ha ha, well then, I know you’re still here, I had a wisp watching the street you know” before making a show of inspecting the room again.
Against all odds however, he seemed to end up concluding that ”Hmm, perhaps I was wrong. My old age must be getting to me” with a dramatic sigh. The mage then moved to head out the building after that, only to suddenly pull the horn out of his pocket and slam it towards the ”terrible place for a table!”
For the time being Cap was still fast enough to dodge roll out the way of the incoming horn stab. Then he made a blistering sprint for the nearby door. He hadn’t initially made it to the door but he made it close enough to successfully burst through them and outside. He’d be out of Kamek’s for probably like a second before the wizard teleported outside however. So Cap made a hail mary attempt to re-hide himself as a water barrel right next to a nearby identical water barrel that sat only a few footsteps away from the tavern’s doors. Had Kamek been paying enough attention outside the building to notice the difference? That was Falcon’s only hope of escape. If he got caught again? Well, at least he gave it his best effort.
”ha ha- huh?” the mage became confused upon recovering from his two second teleportation sickness, having expected to find a fleeing captain, and yet no matter where he looked, be it through his eyes or through his whisps, there was none to be found.
”Hmm” he went, before guessing that the captain ”can’t have gotten faaaar” drawing out the ‘a’ as he did a quick sweep of the nearby objects.
His eyes darted to and fro beneath his spectacles and then he darted forwards, driving the horn forwards like a tiny lance and stabbing it into the water barrel … next to the captain.
Falcon was practically sweating bullets now, especially after such a close call. But he really had no choice but to stay put. Trying to run now would get him tagged. But at the same time, it was almost inevitable that Kamek would eventually poke at his disguise. After all he was spot on in his assessment that the Captain couldn’t have gotten far. So at this point Cap may as well have been living on borrowed time.
”Tch, I could have sworn” the mage said to himself as he glanced at his now far more depleted tagging implement. He started down the barrel, only to suddenly glance off in another direction, towards the library, tilting his head to hear shouting that should have been much too far off for him to hear.
”So many down” he said to himself, before putting a finger to his ear and having a remote conversation with Rika, which further drew out the time during which Kamek loomed over the hidden captain.
Once it came to an end, the mage had another thought and decided ”Well, it seems your numbers have dwindled so why not” before thrusting the shive at the second barrel as well. The barrel, or more specifically the F-Zero pilot it concealed, proceeded to explode into confetti. Now all that was left of Falcon was a spectral ghost version of him. But he didn’t look particularly angry or disappointed. In fact he offered his tagger a congratulatory thumbs up.
”Well played!” The Captain said, unsure if the mage could even hear him when he was in spectator mode like this.
He received a thumbs up in return, the mage seeing the very start of it before the captain faded entirely from view. He held it just a little too long to be cool, before giving a cough, adjusting his hat, and then saying ”Well then, that’s this area clear I think” with a more satisfied nod, before taking off to see if Rika needed a bit of a hand with her final hunts or not.
