DracoLunaris

Nerves In Carbonox: A Roll-Your-Own Giant Mecha Roleplay

Seems very cool, will be taking a closer look at all the many options later in the eve

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

Dredge III

Edward, Therion, Juri
Word Count: 3390 (+4)

In between the monster's ambushes, the alien hollow was unnervingly quiet. There was the occasional ambiance of foliage shifting, copper golems clomping through brush, and the repaired generators chugging, but otherwise there were hardly any other sounds at all. It was clear that besides the Seekers, and the Dredge, there were no other living beings around. If one could even call that thing alive in the first place.

After separating from the others, beast-Therion slunk through the jungle-like area and took note of any of the machines he passed. Even through the trees it was easy enough to see the gate they were trying to power up, so there was no real concern about getting lost. So long as he didn't need to bail anyone out again, he was fairly confident that he could avoid the monster playing hide and seek with them. So far so good, he thought, as he slowly circled his way back around to where Juri had been when she fixed one of the generators. After making sure the coast was clear he padded over to the machine so that he could get a closer look at what an operational one should look like. His feline eyes flickered over the bulbs, the wires, and various other doodads. Assuming that all of the generators were more or less the same, if Therion just copied Juri's work then he wouldn't have any problems fixing a couple on his own.

Therion's ears twitched and he felt his hackles begin to rise. Trusting his instincts he leapt back into the underbrush, concealed enough that when the mutilated mess of a monster drifted by a moment later it didn't spot him.

The Dredge hovered by the generator, slowly turning its head to search for any signs of its prey. Then, it raised its knotted appendage high before slamming it down onto the machine. The generator sparked and smoked as its lights powered down, making Therion narrow his eyes. Maybe it had been too much to hope for that this thing was some kind of mindless killer. Clearly it knew what they were trying to do and was going to deny their escape however it could.

Therion waited until the Dredge had moved on in its search, then waited a little longer, before he emerged once more. He shifted back into his human form, kneeling in front of the generator. Since he'd just seen how it should look, fixing it from this state had to be possible. Otherwise the monster would have just broken them all beyond repair before they'd even got here. Carefully he reattached wires where they'd been pulled from, shifted plugs into their correct places, and hit the plunger that would start the thing back up. There was a drawn out moment where nothing seemed to happen, and Therion's tail flicked back and forth in agitation.

"Come on," he hissed at the generator, smacking the side of it. It came to life then, rumbling as its lights all blinked on.

After confirming it would stay on (unless the Dredge turned back around to sabotage it again), Therion left it to head to one of the other non-functional ones he'd spotted in order to get them working again as well. It had been a little while since he'd heard any cries for help, so he could only assume that the others were avoiding the thing on another side of the hollow.

Edward for one was indeed out there somewhere, as was Juri, the pair making for a rather effective team despite all the thornyness involved in their cooperation. Stress left the already brittle working relationship full of fractures, but with their unkillable foe lurking out there they more or less had to trust the other to watch their back.

Especially when it was left turned and exposed while focused on fixing a generator as Edward was now. With various tools, from pliers to move wires without risk of shock to a soldering iron to more securely fix them back in place, the job was certainly quicker, but it still left ample time for the killer to come across him, and the increase in heart rate its mere presence caused was too late a warning sign.

It was a good thing then, that he had a look out, no matter how abrasive she was.

Juri silently scuttled back and forth across the floor of the ‘house’ they were in, though it was mostly just a selection of half-broken walls at this point. She was on a patrol, moving from window to window to check all the angles. Even the little red wooden locker a short distance away from the house. Besides making a few quiet noises that implied annoyance at how long Edward was taking, she was keeping her voice down.

The man was certainly making enough noise for both of them, clinking and clanking away, till all of a sudden there was a rumble as the generator flared to life, its flickering lights stabilizing and flooding the room. Unlike the times before, however, this wasn’t the only place that the lights came on as, through the ‘eyes’ of his cannon still parked by the gate, Edward saw that the gatehouse own had also stabilized, which to him indicated that ”I think that's enough power to open the gates”

As if to confirm this, only a short while later, the cannon’s existence came to an end, informing Edward that ”It seems our ‘friend’ agrees with my assessment, and will be rolling out the welcome wagon, which is… inconvenient”

”Gee wiz, talk slower. So the monster will be waiting for us. Big whoop, he can’t stop us.” Juri said. ”Let’s go already.” She dropped any pretense of stealth and began sprinting to where she remembered the gate was, coming short to survey the situation.

Edward followed her there in an even less stealthy approach given the flames wrapping around him as he ran, but as Juri had expected, stealth really did not matter right now. The Dredge knew exactly where they needed to go, and had brazenly parked itself exactly there: namely right in front of the switch they needed to pull to open up the exit to its hunting ground.

Even the man’s flaming arrival did not prompt it to break off and come on at them, leaving mortals and monster staring rather awkwardly at each other before the former ducked into cover to try and work out what in the world to do about this.

Juri stood out in the open, hands on her hips. ”There’s medkits and toolboxes all over for this stupid game. There’s probably somethin’ we could find to get it to budge.” Juri said, moving her hands to behind her head. ”Stupid ugly freakshow thinks he’s real smart. I could just pull the damn lever anyway, I don’t care.”

”Only other thing I have found is this” Edward replied, retrieving the flashlight he’d found and then stored in the toolbox, and offering it to her, while saying ”which I am unsure how much help it would be. So far all that has managed to inconvenience it is it blinding itself after all”

Juri took it and looked it over. It felt useful, even if it was just a normal flashlight.

"Go pull it then so we can get out of here," came a familiar voice following Juri's comment. Therion poked his head out from some nearby plants suddenly afterward, having seen the gate's power activate and coming to the same conclusion as Juri and Edward. He then looked from the former to the later, noting the other man's words. "So at least one thing works against it. We can throw off its senses while someone hits the switch."

Unfortunately while he was off on his own the only thing of note he'd been able to find was a brass key. Intriguing but unhelpful at the moment.

”I blinded it by reflecting a curse that it tried to cast on me when I healed myself nearby it, and unfortunately I think it will be smart enough to not repeat the incident” Edward informed him, getting over the important detail of said curse’s existence in the process.

Therion narrowed his eyes at the Dreadnought. He should have said that when he mentioned the blinding in the first place. "Unless you two have any other ideas, it still might be our best shot."

”She was already aware” Edward replied to the expression of irritation, now two for two on annoying people with how he delivered this information, though in this case he did not consider this his fault. Juri chuckled.

”As for ideas, given it seems content to wait us out, I could always put that time to use to make some more expendable bodies to throw at the problem” he suggested, gesturing to the conveniently timed arrival of one of the only remaining copper golem squads to their impromptu meeting.

”So you just pull these guys outta thin air, or what? Break your toys if you want, it’d be funny to give this creep the runaround.” Juri said, letting the flashlight hang from her palm.

”A touch more complex than that I assure you, but practically speaking” Edward replied, before initiating what was, ultimately, a mildly time consuming process of charging back up his mana fuel cells and then reforging his army. Given he was entirely committed to making copper golems, that resulted in them having twelve whole squads at their disposal. Thus, when they commanded operations, seventy two golems came marching out of the treeline, spears down, metal hearts hardened with unwavering will to fulfill their directive.

All the while the Dredge stared unnervingly, standing guard over the switch. It had all the time in the world to prevent its prey from getting out of there after all, while they would have to go for the exit sooner or later. The monster seemed intent on catching and presumably slaughtering all four of the intruders into its domain.

”Seventy two. That’s hilarious. Go forth!” She pointed to the dredge, commanding the robots onward with her own authority.

Whether it be through good timing or Edward unintentionally responding to the command, the legions did indeed match forward at her order, copper feet stepping in perfect rhythm as they did so. As they moved, Edward cautiously advanced after them, the way his wings were slightly spread out in preparation to retreat the only sign that the steely gazed man was not quite as unwavering as his creations.

For his part Therion was more than content to let the copper constructs get torn in pieces in place of them, and he waited, crouched with his tail swishing, for a better moment to move.

The golems closed in, threatening to form a wall of animated metal around the Dredge. Spears were angled forwards not to try and stab it, for that would be pointless, but to try and sneak past the foe and flick the switch. The only question the was this: how close would it let them get before reacting?

The answer was not that close. As they'd already established, Dredge was not a mindless monster. A calculating killer laid, somewhere, beneath its sagging flesh. It slowly looked between the first line, its head twitching, before it raised its hooked limb and moved in swiftly to destroy the first of many.

As the golems made to slip around it, blackness descended on the area. Suddenly it was as if night had fallen, making it hard for the Seekers and the golems to see more than a dozen feet in front of them. No such issue was present for the Dredge, and in darkness it began tearing into the small army, intent not to let any close to their only means of escape.

What Juri lacked in vision, the Dredge more than made up for in racket. She dropped down from above and blasted the things face with light. Their intuition paid off and the Dredge reeled back, now even more blind than its attempted curse. ”Kyahaha! Sucker!” She jeered as the copper army now easily overwhelmed the beast and reached the lever. There was a shower of sparks and the gate lifted. Juri sprinted over and slid underneath it as it was lifting.

That was also the cue Therion was looking for. Without any fanfare he went along the outside edge of the golem pack and moved towards the exit. The Dredge was still taking golems apart piece by piece but driven almost to frenzy by the fact it couldn't see and thus its prey were probably mid-escape the monstrosity turned and lashed out with a wide slice in the direction of the opening. It was easier to dodge than its regular swings; the thief skated beneath the swipe and crossed the threshold a moment after.

”Why in the worlds did that-” Edward began to ask, questioning the logic of why the device had managed to harm the Dredge when nothing else had, but it really was ”No matter” at that moment. With his many many copper eyes the man had been far less impacted by the darkness than the others, and so was more than able to make a beeline for the exit. With a flap of his wings he rose up over his remaining creation’s ranks, using one of their heads as a stepping stone to get the height he needed and then swooped towards the exit as the remaining troops moved to bodyblock the binded horror while they got away.

As soon as its sight was back, the Dredge ceased its destruction and looked at the open gate. There it could clearly see the Seekers behind it, but strangely enough it did not give chase. It stared after them with an eerie blank look on its mangled face. A few moments later the gate's power shorted out again and the door began to close itself up once more.

”Yeah, see! Chump! Coward!” Juri jeered as the door began to close. ”Know you’d get your ass kicked if you faced me out here! Haha!”

That fact raised one sudden question from Edward, who began to ask ”Wait a moment- did anyone ever see-” only for the man in question to suddenly silently step into view, taking everyone by surprise, including the Dredge itself. The hunter got its first and only view of the master infiltrator who had been repairing generators right under its nose for a mere moment, and then the gate was fully shut and they were left out in the small room found beyond it.

He gave them a curt nod, before turning, gesturing for them to follow and striding towards one of the vines in the wall, slashing it with a knife and entering the bloodstream.

”Tch,” Juri said, kicking the ground and approaching the open bloodstream. ”We should carpet bomb this place after we’re done.”

"No objections here," Therion said, though with only a vague idea of what she really meant by it he understood it was something destructive. He glanced at the mercenary who'd quietly joined them, briefly thinking he's good before continuing forward.

When they were well and truly away from Dredge, and only a short distance away from the Qliphoth's veins they'd have to take to ascend, the world darkened once more. This time it was a much more complete darkness, one that offered a choice of rewards for the victorious Seekers.

For Edward

Hot Pot - you are 7% more evasive, and this bonus is doubled against burning enemies
Emotional Decluttering - enemies you inflict with DoTs take 4% more damage from all sources, stacking up to 5 times
Flameblade Charm - Searing Weapons now converts 100% of attack damage to blue flame. Such attacks still inflict Burn, but rather than deal damage they build up Overburn. When Overburn equals the target’s health, the target explodes, damaging other enemies based on its own remaining health

It was a somewhat selfish selection, but in the end Edward decided that he could only be of value if he were alive, and the goddess Hestia quite clearly wanted to keep him that way, though very much in her own way. “You’ll find it easier to see what your foes are doing when they're lit up, eh? Now keep on climbing so you can burn this place down already”

For Juri

Shameless Attitude (Hades/Aphrodite) - you deal 10% extra damage, and if you have over 80% health, this bonus is doubled
Slaughterhouse No. 4: Rest in Peace (HSR/Aha the Elation) - non-basic follow-up attacks deal an extra hit of Aftertaste damage of a random elemental type at 80% damage
Tearing Whirlwind (Wizard of Legend/Air) - when performing a spin attack, nearby enemies are sucked in

For Therion

Side Hustle - whenever you begin an encounter in enemy territory, you get a little gold for free
Scythe Limbs - after using your divine skill, your next BP usage behaves as if an extra BP was spent. Spending BP increases your critical damage by 40% up to 2 times for your next attack
Predator - killing an enemy with a melee strike makes you invisible for 1 second

Therion's choice was fairly quick. Although getting some free money every fight was amusingly tempting, as always if he wanted something he only had to take it. And while becoming invisible was also a tempting choice, one that could definitely be useful in battle, there could really only be one choice. The middle card was almost tailor made for him, so he didn't hesitate to take it. When he did the same creature he'd had a vision of in the last hollow appeared to him again. It loomed large, and the sounds it produced were even louder, but ultimately like before nothing else happened.

Therion touched a hand to his forehead as the world came back into view. "More of the same..." It seemed the others were finished picking as well. The thief nodded towards the huge blood vessel in front of them.

Juri made her choice as well and looked to the others. To prove some kind of point, she got out her big chainsaw weapon and cleaved a huge hole in the wall, revealing another bloodstream. ”I can make an exit anywhere I damn well please with this puppy. Catch ya later, losers!” She exclaimed cheerfully, and dove into the bloodstream. With her new chainsaw weapon she was confident in her safety and her ability to literally carve out her own path in this fleshy tree gauntlet.

Edward merely signed at this continued irreverence, while being quietly relieved she had not followed up on her promise to (attempt to) ‘kick his ass later’ now that they were free of the Dredge’s domain. Then he drew his machete, gave a small flick of a salute and a farewell of ”I’ll see you on the other side” before hacking his way into the vain and diving in.

Therion rolled his eyes as they left. What a group. And they were all going the same way so what was with the theatrics? He followed after them by just simply slipping into one of the openings they'd made, and shortly after him the mercenary followed, though where the blood stream would take them after this they wouldn't know until they got there.

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

Wordcount: 1,891 (+3/+3/+3/+4/+5)
Midna: level 10 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (115/110)
Location: The Dead Zone

While watching Miss Fortune try and clean herself ineffectually was quite funny, Midna decided it would be best to remove herself before her uncontrollable urge to tease/taunt/joke about wet cats got inappropriate/grating. In place of that she headed out to go for a little relaxing ride around the lake.

Not that it was the most scenic of views between meat moss, mushrooms and an overlook of the horror infested city below mind, but at least her mask filtered out the smells of blood and rot. For those with an eye for such things, there were valuable resources to be scavenged, but Midna had little interest or appreciation for the possible uses of the scarlet rot corrupted resin or neurode biosensors.

Neither did she for the strange fish paddling around in the pools, but as it turned out there was someone who was in the area who did. Or someone who had access to the area anyway.

Having allowed her wolfos to wonder where it pleased as she rested on its saddle, arms crossed over atop the bar, chin resting atop it, the beast followed its nose, having picked up the scent of something familiar in the corrupted landscape. This led it, and by extension her, to a mound of dirt marked by a sign saying ‘bait + sell’ that also sported a little bell on top.

Bemused by this, the princess guided her wolfos away from where it was sniffing and scratching at the mound, and then reached her shadow hand over and flicked the bell to see what would happen.

At first, nothing, and then after the sound of digging a fox cautiously poked his head out of the mound of soil, looking a fair bit nervous and not entirely enthused by the presence large predator that Midna was riding atop of.

”Uh, hello? Don’t worry it won’t attack without my say so” Midna told the fox, feeling a little silly about doing so, but having met enough animal people to know she shouldn’t just assume this wasn’t a person, before asking ”What are you doing here? It’s dangerous”

In response the fox leaned to the side and tapped the sign, telling her that it was here to “Sell bait, buy fish” in a soft and impossible to gender voice.

”Those weird ones? They look infested, that can’t be good for anything” Midna replied, understandably leery about the health and safety of such things. They certainly wouldn't be good for eating, of that she was sure.

In response the fox just patted the bucket and told her to put the fish “in here” before explaining simply that it had “crafter clients” who wanted the fish, and then looking at her with a tilted head, which was all it needed to communicate the question of if she was going to help him out with supplying them or not.

Well with that vaguely clarified Midna only really had one more question, which was ”Uh huh, and why do you think I’d spend my time doing that kind of busy work?” to which the fox’s onbrandedly short answer was that it would be “Relaxing”

Hence why, if someone was to come looking for Midna, they would need only needed to follow the sound of Lyre music (or at least attempts at it, the princess hadn’t exactly had much time for practice of conventional music since she’d picked up the habit) and find her sitting by the shoreline, back to her dozing wolfos. There she lazed with her helmet in her lap, chewing on cereal bar held in one hand, strumming at her musical instrument with two more, while the final hand, to which her astral chain was attached, lazily drifted too and fro.

There would then come a tug at her wrist, prompting her to yank it back and, from the perspective of the observer, cause a fish-adjacent creature to leap out of the water and then end up hovering in front of her. Of course, the fish was actually being carried in the jaws of her Beast Legion, which could casually phase through the bloody water, making not a single disturbance, as it hunted down prey for its mistress with supernatural ease.

It would then pad over to the fox who’d stopped needing to be called back after the third fish catch she’d made in short succession and deposit it, still wiggling, into the rapidly filling bucket.

Of course, things could only go swimmingly for so long, and so, right after she’d caught and was busy admiring a ‘fish’ that was far more machine than meat she was rudely interrupted when a Deimos Carnis came bursting out of the lake, clearly displeased at this intrusion into its hunting ground.

Alongside it burst several floodfested baslaisks in its thrall, the freaky beasts crawling and hopping up the beach towards her

”Goddesses, it's always something” Minda complained as she rose, but not having enough time to redon her helmet before she had to toss herself out of the way of incoming acid spit.

With her hands full of helm, lyre, and her beast legion’s maw full of the very shiny and valuable looking fish, things weren't exactly in a great state fighting wise. The first basilisk to approche breathing some horrible black mist caused the cold of death to start gripping her bones wasn’t exactly wonderful either, but a flowmotion leap back out of the fog saw to that.

”Want to dance? Alright let’s dance!” she declared, strumming the lyre up to a combat tempo before launching a blast of electrified sand forwards into the oversized eyes of the closest basilisk. It screeched and started rapidly blinking, giving her space to leap full over said eyeballs and to slam both dragon clawed feet into its back, an extra gust of wind joining the double stomp and fully slamming it into the dirt.

As she struck once with sand and once with feet, her new boon activated, surrounding her with two layers of shimmering rainbow barriers that would soften the next blow she took. Given the swarm of basilisks crawling towards her that looked like it might be coming soon, but not if she could help it. With another leap she repeated her gambit against the next basilisk, and then the next, sanding and stomping them with a rhythmic flow that she even managed to put a tune to using her Lyre.

She got so into the tempo that, in-fact, that she entirely lost track of the Carnis, right up until it lunged in and with a slashing claw knocked her entirely off her rhythm. Rainbow barriers burst as they absorbed about a quarter of the damage, and her armor did much of the rest, but it still stung.

”Ach, thank you whatever your name is” she said to the nameless god who’d granted her that boon, and then immediately cursed as the basilisks sought to take their revenge, black mist sweeping towards her.

She, fortunately, was not alone, as her little performance had been quite the distraction that let her beasts harry the foes rear, which they did so more aggressively now. Claws slashed as the wolfos howled, drawing attention, before they retreated back to draw some of the foes away, the beast legion still carrying the fish in its mouth, which amusingly to Midna meant that said fish must seem like the source of the invisible clawstrikes to the infested foes

”Careful with that thing, thing!” Midna called out, before coughing from having inhaled lingering basilisk mist. That was the last straw, the princess declaring ”Alright, enough messing around” as she yanked herself to her beast legion’s back, and then, while riding it away, finally got her helmet on.

Hand free of holding it, she drew a blade and began charging it with lighting as they wheeled back around towards the horde of hopping horrors and their centipede overlord. Not wanting to put her fresh catch in danger of being death misted however, she leapt off her beast legion as she entered the fray, blade flashing as she sliced it down into one of the eyes of a basilisk. Wind howled and thunder roared, as a wind aftershock sliced into the existing wound, and a lighting blast struck the creature’s back, knocking the wind from its lungs and preventing it from using its death breath on her long enough for her to claw its other eye out.

Neither blow actually killed however, rather intentionally, but it took it out the fight more or less. Naturally there were others, but a circular sand blast gave them just enough pause for her to focus on her primary target: the Carnis.

Her shadow hand punched up, smashing the centipede in the face as it came in to try and slash her again, the strike and follow up wind blast stunning it enough that she had time to summon her darknut. It arrived sized up, sword raised high, and then brought it down in a mighty decapitation strike that was meant to sunder the foe in half, but instead only got some of the rear as it recovered more quickly than she’d liked skittered to the side.

A Basilisk lunged blindly at a frustrated Midna, clipping her and expanding her starward barriers, and causing it to receive a trio of musical bolts to the face from the princess’ lyre for its efforts.

”Not interested in you, you wastes of space!” she yelled at the chaff, before shouting ”I want to try my new thing out, so die already you bug!” at the Canis as she went after it with her sword, hacking at its lower limbs, crippling them enough that, in conjunction with the damage to its rear, the monster went crashing to the ground.

It tried to drag itself away with its remaining claws, but the princess leapt onto its back, running along it, sandblasting basilisks as she went, before leaping head over heels over its horns, and slamming her shadow hand down straight down in a punch right onto its head, crushing its already fractured skull.

This strike launched her up, but she yanked herself to her beast again to get controle of her tumbling flight, and as she did so, behind her, the ashifiying remains of the Carnis suddenly bloomed with lunar flowers and the beast rose again, now, briefly, in her thrall. Towering over its former minions, the reanimated Carnis immediately began to lay into them, claws slicing, acid spitting, as it cut a bloody path through them without Midna having to lift even a finger or put any of her more important monsters in danger.

Instead, content to let it finish the job, she rode up to the dirt mound and sign, and rang the bell to sell the fish they’d so rudely interrupted her selling of.

Unfortunately, that would turn out to be her last sale, as the little battle had unfortunately scared off all the fish. Sure, she could have found another spot, but with the one so conveniently near to the fox merchant ruined, she decided to call it a day.

Thus, with a pocket (or rather portal) full of a few thousand extra zenny, and a few extra spirits to boot, she headed back to the rest stop to see if anyone else had shown up since then.

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

Lilith’s Encroaching Shadow II

Lvl 7 Sandalphon (54/70), Bowser Junior, Rika, Roland
Word Count: 1414

Eager to pay the Seekers -and especially Sandalphon- back for the archangel’s shapeshifting stunt, Lilith kickstarted the action with a powerful -and familiar- hex. For the second time, a great many vortexes manifested along opposite sides of the Qliphoth hollow, facing one another as they gathered energy. As a nice change of pace from Carmelized Sweets, the demon’s challengers didn’t need to worry about any patterns or gimmicks, just survival. Given how fresh in everyone’s mind this attack was, Sandalphon hardly felt it necessary to demonstrate her new strategy by marking spots for the others to run to. They just needed to defy their instincts and approach one of the walls of dark magic, so as to not get blasted from both sides at once.

Unfortunately, given the team’s vitals according to Sandalphon’s scans, this was still a big problem. With Lilith’s wings still intact, these lasers would be unavoidable, and once the smoke cleared her team would be in dire straits. Every few seconds that passed made the Creeping Corrosion in the Seekers’ bodies more lethal, and without any more emergency healing, the archangel needed to charge her skills through damage against Lilith. While the weakness she gained from Azure had seemed manageable at first, the nature of this fight could very well render it fatal. Left with no choice but to press on, however, Sandalphon steeled herself, her eyes squeezed shut. A second later the giant lasers let loose, and an unholy violet luster filled the arena.

Fortunately, while he’d been focused on driving, Jr hadn’t been casting much magic, and so once they were gathered up at the slightly less deadly section of lasers (the prince having painted a trail of ink for him and Rika to sail over there on) the boy started putting it to use

First came two casts of ”Medica!” one before and one after the undodgeable attacks which at least made things a touch more manageable.

”You said something about breaking her wings to stop that?” Rika recalled after recovering from the microwaving, regarding a comment Sandalphon had made near the start of the battle.

”Then let’s break them already!” jr declared, before using ”Presence of Mind!” to boost his casting speed, and using that speed to generate a storm of small metal shanks that he used to ”Sick 'Em”, sending groups of the blades homing in to shank the wings specifically.

Rika joined in on the impalement, deploying her Red Baron Drones and sending the sword sized machines arching towards the foe in a pair of claw swipe like gestures, three blades for each wing.

These lasers that Lilith were firing had an unintended side effect when it came to Roland. With them more or less being canceled out or overpowering his clashes due to their special properties, Roland’s Magical Girls finally had its condition fulfilled and he became immune to all of Lilith’s status effect debuffs, had a massive increase in his own defense, and now whenever Lilith attacked him, a corrosive acidic shadow clinged to her making her take 10% more damage cutting through her defense even more. Still, if the Creeping Corrosion he’d purged claimed his healer and allies, he’d be pushing up daisies nonetheless.

Although this buff came with a downside as all the constant damage had been taking a toll on Roland’s fortitude and with the last laser giving him Magical girls did give him his ability, it also Staggered him. A really bad time to get staggered too as Lilith was still in her super form. The extra defense from Magical Girls would help offset the massive defense drop he got while staggered, but he was stunned for a bit while he recovered.

For the moment, at least, the Koopa Kids were doing their best to keep Lilith busy. Their combined power was nothing to sneeze at, and with the extra attention paid to the demon’s wings, more cracks were starting to show. Even Sandalphon managed to get a few shots in, once she set up a new blue tile to stand on. For now her Eye of Sol remained slung across her back, its extra stopping power useless when she needed a casting catalyst on hand at all times. Instead she plugged her enemy’s wings with one ether bolt after another, as in the zone as the archangel could get.

Sadly, the opportunity lasted only a few seconds, and Lilith clapped back with something new. ”You’ve earned this one…see ya, suckers!” She cast Sugary Surge and immediately disappeared, with seven copies of her winged staff appearing around the arena: one in the middle and six more surrounding it. A red arrow appeared from each, pointing in a random directly. Sandalphon paused, but only for a moment as she scanned the arrangement. Now, more than any point in the fight so far, knowledge was power. “There!” She used her powers to ping one staff with a holographic screen, then jogged toward it. “The one without an arrow pointing to it.” With a moment to spare she reached the staff she’d indicated, where the archangel knew that she would be safe. That said, there was another problem on the horizon: unaccustomed to this much shouting, she found herself beginning to grow hoarse. It wouldn’t be much longer before her pings would be her only means of communication.

Between them, Jr and Rika had the strength to grab and haul Roland to the spot as well. Jr had plenty of experience hauling peach around while running from plumbers, and with Rika’s very large helping hands doing the same with the larger man was no problem either.

With their burden they reached safety with only a split second to spare. Each staff fired off an immense, conical blast of deadly dark magic in the direction of its arrow, blanketing the whole arena in stygian purple save for the spot where the Seekers now stood or slumped. By the time the demon reappeared, Sandalphon had produced yet another blue tile, so an ether bolt straight to the braincase beaned Lilith the second she popped back in. ”Tch!” she spat as she dusted herself off, displeased to see that her challengers had survived. ”Where’s the blood? Where’s the carnage!?”

”Coming right up” Jr taunted, as he formed and magically launched more blades from his metal tattooed arm, while Rika’s gauntlet hangers upended up and unleashed swarms of electrical fireflies that buzzed over to deliver static shocks to the demon. Both attacks were delivered without the kids having to lift a finger, which was good because said fingers where still holding on to Roland.

Roland shook himself out of his stagger, noticing he was being carried around by the two kids. ”Thanks kids. Remind me to give you something later. ” Roland said, getting himself free and ready for more fighting. Annoyed himself, Roland decided to throw an EGO at Lilith, this one being In the Name of Love and Hate, Roland wearing a strange humanoid winged serpent outfit and holding a magic wand in his hand. Behind him appeared a giant heart shaped portal which fired a giant laser at Lilith as the arena temporarily changed into a pink mist filled cityscape.

“AAAGH!” Roland’s spectacular laser soon dissipated, but it left Lilith seared and smoking, her fangs bared in pained anger. “Damn you! Lasers are MY thing!” With a sneer she conjured two more opposing laser arrays, but this time the vortexes seemed different. They were still violent swirls of elemental darkness, but instead of deep dark purple, they appeared to be a less vibrant red, and Sandalphon could tell why. “Her wings are broken,” the archangel calmly informed the others as she moved to one side. “These lasers can now be avoided.”

Caught unawares in her blind rage, Lilith could only whip around and stare at the shreds affixed to her staff. ”What!? FUCK!”

“Language!” As the lasers went off all around, Sandalphon cast her newly-recharged Angelic Praise. It not only restored the bulk of her allies’ health, but allowed her to power through the beam barrage. “Do not succumb to her corruption, children,” she called out to the Koopas Kids as she readied herself to open fire. “We must silence this devil for good.”

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

Return of None

Lvl 14 Ms Fortune (123/140), Midna, Edelgard, Lvl 4 Captain Falcon
Word Count: 3606 (+4)

At this point in his “smashing” career, Captain Falcon had long since learned how to just shrug and roll with the punches. Going from some decaying church to a pristine-looking hotel? Eh, he’d seen weirder, especially while traversing the Great Maze in times past. His previous partner no longer in the room with him despite them using the same vein exit? Odd, but at least the Captain wasn’t alone in this new room. Floating monster with eyes around its body? At least it wasn’t oozing with blood and pus like his previous opponents were.

”Knew we couldn’t trust that guy!” Minda declared, revealing her presence as she stepped out of Emily’s shadow, having tagged along and then waited to choose her moment. That moment specifically was when her ride got left within close proximity of the giant shadow being thanks to Nadia’s impressive backflip away from the shadows, and so the Princess launched right into her defence before the monstrosity could strike.

A large portal opened, out of which her darknut, scaled up to giant sized, lunged out of, driving its shield into the foe to try and drive it back, while the princess herself slammed her shadowhand forwards, open palmed, to try and add to the knockback. Despite the fact that her target floated, puppet-like, in the air, it did not so much fly back as yield ground, wheeling away to resume its ominous stance in the very center of the open area. Though powerful, neither strike left a visible mark on the meme’s body, their physical damage seemingly resisted.

“Emily, stay back! We’ll handle this!” Nadia urged from the backlines, ignoring the soldier’s protest as she pulled her behind the bar.

Edelgard, who had until a few moments ago been wiping herself dry with a towel, pulled up her shield to block the raking of golden claws. ”Bizarre sort of beast…We shall fell it nonetheless.” Hefting Aymr, she charged to attack, though when her axe struck, the beast did not recoil or react in the way she expected. It seemed rather nonplussed by the blow, and retaliated with a lunging thrust of its feathered arm, shrouded in violet and extended like a bladed tonfa. It did not commit to an assault, however, and no sooner had it dealt its blow than it spiralled backward, momentarily evanescing into a vortex before it rematerialized in its chosen place.

Having somersaulted off the bartop when Midna and her summon moved to drive the specter back, Nadia dashed forward and slid to a stop at Edelgard’s side. Her eyes were narrowed at Something Unto Death as she bounced back and forth in her typical stance, trying to size the thing up. Already she could tell that this was no savage aggressor like the guardian had been, but a calculating predator that could strike out or pull back as it deemed fit, biding its time. Though something of a predator herself, Nadia played by a different tune: that the early bird got the worm.

“Shock and claw!” The feral burst forward as a bolt of yellow lightning, using Charge to close the distance. Rather than follow up with Battery like usual, though, she performed a short hop into a near-instant cross slash to slice at the specter’s eye. When she connected she linked into Footloose, first with a lackadaisical double kick and then with a flying knee, but not even tacking on her El Gato axe kick made the memory zone meme falter. Instead it recoiled slightly and emitted a painless pulse that pushed Nadia back, and as she slid backward upon landing it rose into the air. From there it rose into a circle, the eyes on its wing aglow, and launched a dozen violet flechettes into the team with Sunken Rain.

Minda’s darknut was called out again, at its usual size, and its shield snapped open, projecting an energy barrier that absorbed many of the shots, but ultimately shattered under the barrage, letting a few slip through. The Princess herself stayed safe behind the undead knight itself, charging a blade with lighting in preparation to attack.

Having watched the opening moves of his current teammates, the bounty hunter took note of the creature’s ability to shrug off their strikes. Unfortunately, he lacked any other viable weapon outside of just throwing his own punches and kicks. But maybe the fourth time was the charm? The Captain dead-sprinted from his standing location toward the monster in question and used his strong legs to launch himself into a high leap. ”Falcon Kick!” He announced as his body launched back downward with a flying kick engulfed in flames. He also tried to follow that with a ”Ryuugeki Ken!” Cap attempted to blast the creature with a close range burst of fiery chi from his palms before his hang-time in the air ran out. Unlike palm and claw, his flames had a noticeable effect, evidenced by the fiery cracks that briefly flared along Something Unto Death’s body, and the ethereal hiss it gave. Nevertheless, Falcon found himself shunted backward the next moment.

Behind him, Midna stepped onto the flat of her darknut’s sword and was then promptly catapulted forwards by the undead inorder to follow up the captain’s strike. Her nightsky ripper flashed as she flew past the floating creature’s head, calling a bolt of lightning down on-top of it, before she used her shadow hand to grab its tail, using it to channel her momentum into a swing that flipped her up behind and over it.

With two hands she drove the blade into its back in a diving plunge, sparking more lighting, before delivering a quick pair of slashes with her serrated knife and royal war fan. Rather than keep trying to stay up there, she attempted to run along its neck, dragging the tip of her scimitar along it as she did, trailing electric crackles. Instead the meme disappeared beneath her feet, flickering out of existence just long enough to menace her from above. Before it could strike back, however, Midna reeled herself to her beast legion that she’d left back where she’d started this attack run.

Edelgard blocked as the dark flechettes came in, and though Midna’s Darknut blocked most of them, one that broke through hit the Flame Emperor, its magical nature bypassing much of the protection her armor gave her, though not all. Grunting, she retaliated with a Fire spell, the ball of flames quickly launching towards the floating monster.

Nadia sped after the fireball on all fours, following the trail it blazed. Though not always the sharpest tool in the head, the feral had good instincts, and based on what she saw when the Captain took action she had a good feeling about Edelgard’s fireball. Sure enough, it burst against Something Unto Death with more power than one might expect, and fiery fractures spread from the impact point. Unfortunately, the Fiber Upper that Nadia then launched into the same spot had no such effect. Of course, the catgirl snapped up to her hyper-extended feet anyway. While her last fight’s peaceful resolution left her without any flames of her own, she could still help in her own way. Using Fluffy Soft, Nadia transformed her right arm and slashed at the specter with the claws of a white tiger, which cut its defense by 5%, then spiked her head down just before the pulse pushed her back.

As Nadia slid back into position, Something Unto Death attacked with a faint wail. It lunged forward with Funeral Kiss, easily piercing clean through the feral’s belly and out through her back. When it wrenched the blade out, the wound turned out to be quite narrow, but it was enough to make Nadia’s body falter, and her ears flapped wildly as she yowled. Then the meme brandished its blade, its tail feathers floating free as they opened baleful purple eyes.

”Not liking the looks of that” Midna commented, before promptly stepping into a shadow and flicking herself to the back of the room, out of whatever that gaze was. There she ditched the serrated knife, one handed sword and fan, and then flow motion lept up while taunting that ”but you won’t like this either” as she slashed her Sharpened Volcano Fragment out of the twilight realm and nicked its tail with it, setting the foe ablaze.

Then she landed beneath it and experimentally fanned the flames as she retreated, experimenting to see if she could get a reaction similar to the one flames had, based on a very minor one her single shash had previously caused. Green cracks followed the orange ones, but that wasn’t all that she achieved.

One set of eyes shone red, their pupils crossed-through circles. The sun sinks, in dying light.

As Nadia composed herself, she could see that Something Unto Death was up to something, and while she couldn’t tell what, she figured it needed to be stopped. Her body couldn’t charge it all that well right now, but she could do more than rush enemies down. Still on her knee, she reached into a pouch, pulled out the Bait Launcher, and fired it at her foe. A tiger appeared that swatted the meme with heavy claws, but it held firm.

Then two sets of eyes shone red. The sun sinks, dusk arrives.

As Nadia's tiger attacked, Edelgard unleashed a Nosferatu spell, the light magic exploding against Something Unto Death and returning half of the damage dealt to Edelgard as healing. Her magic, and the attacks from Midna and Captain Falcon, seemed to have great effect against the monster. While fire was the immediate assumption, she wondered if other magic would work equally well. Midna, for her part, decided her best move was to get out of the way of the incoming firepower, the princess leaping and then power sliding to the side so that she would not get caught in any kind of crossfire.

Edelgard’s light magic burst against the meme, but through the smoke the last pair of eyes shone red; Losing Eventide Light had been triggered. All six eyes gleamed with unadulterated, paralyzing menace, instantly freezing the Seekers in fear, and a veil of darkness spread over the battlefield. Something Unto Death slid backward into the gloom, its eyes the last to fade, before a crimson spotlight shone down on Edelgard. The shadow of death loomed over her, its bladed arm a guillotine, then descended.

The sun sinks, night falls.

With a scream Edelgard’s soul was severed from her body, which slumped to the ground as a Sombrous Sepulcher took form at the memory zone meme’s side, the woman’s ghostly visage projected from its lidless eye. Then, having returned to its original spot, Something Unto Death powered itself up with Biting Obituary, ready for the three foes that remained.

”Goddesses what did it-?” Midna started to ask as she spun around from where she’d been frozen in her getting clear of the incoming spell barrage, only to gasp ”No” as she saw the slumped over Edelgard.

”What the-?”” Falcon exclaimed when he found himself frozen and unable to move for an unsettling amount of time. He was just about to go on the attack again when he was forced to watch in abject horror as one of his teammates was seemingly cut down in a single attack. Even after he could move again, he found himself hesitating for a fraction of a moment. Were they fighting this thing on borrowed time? If that was the case then not a single one of them could afford to waste attacks or leave things to chance. They had to take this thing out and they had to do it fast!

”Fire, huh?” Falcon muttered to himself while he observed the attacks and tactics of his teammates momentarily. He’d first noticed the cracks during his own initial strike, then noticed them crop again each time someone used a fire attack. A different color appeared for wind, from the looks of it, but Falcon had no wind-based moves. But he did plenty of the former. He had one Power Gauge stock in reserve from the last fight against the carcasses. And he could only think of one way to use it.

”Let’s turn up the heat!” Cap suddenly declared as he channeled chi down his arms and into his hands. ”You want fire? I’ve got plenty to spare! Haoh Shoukou Ken!” He planted his feet and thrust his palms forward, aiming them in the meme’s direction. Then a blazing ball of flame surged forth and shot toward Something Unto Death. But he wasn’t done there, ”Ryuugeki Sen!” Falcon shouted as he continued to throw chi-infused punches and kicks resulting in a volley of four flaming disks that accompanied the larger fireball.

Even after the paralysis induced by the six-eyed sunset wore off, Nadia remained frozen in place, her body near where Edelgard fell and her head not so far from her foe. Her initial and instinctual panic at being inexplicably restrained had given way to horror as she watched her ally cut down before her eyes, but especially after that strange totem took shape, something else had consumed her: confusion. “It can’t be that easy,” she muttered, her tone almost angry. No matter how nightmarish Something Unto Death seemed, it couldn’t possibly be able to instantly kill someone–a feat that not even the Orphan or the Radiance could achieve.

As something a conniving fiend herself, she became increasingly convinced that there had to be some sort of trick to this. From her head’s current position, she could see the Sombrous Sepulcher clearly, as well as the ghostly image of a sleeping Edelgard projected above its eye. Maybe the meme hadn’t so much killed her as trapped her. When she felt Falcon’s fire in close proximity, the heat helped galvanize Nadia into action. She willed her body to circle around the battlefield while the Captain let loose, then used Charge to zip straight through both Something Unto Death and the totem. Much to her excitement, she felt something give, so once it rematerialized she had her body wheel around to nail the sepulcher with Battery as well. Thanks to her attacks, two of the totem’s eye-feathers had broken, and only three remained. Unfortunately, the monster’s pulse pushed her and Falcon back the next moment, leaving her head and body far apart. “I think we can bring her back!” she called, flapping her ears. “Hit that grave thing! Shouldn’t take tomb-any more!”

”On it!” Minda called out, in response to this, running in as the other two were blown back. With her shadow hand, she reached up, grabbed the totem, and then squeezed it with crushing force, before using that grip to haul herself up towards it, blades at the ready.

”Let!”

Both feet kicked into it, dragon claws digging into the surface for purchase

”Her!”

The Sharpened Volcano fragment hacked down, igniting the totem, yet Minda ignored the flickering flames licking at her and kept up her assault

”GO!”

She plunged her nightsky ripper into it, unloading its remaining charge

”Lethergolethergolethergo!” she demanded in rapid fire, each one of the demands punctuated by her war fan slashing back and forth across the totem, each accompanying gust of wind growing stronger and stronger.

Her assault came to an end when Something Unto Death whirled around in another Sunken Rain, and a volley of violet lances shot down. The giant barbs forced the Seekers to flee to safety or hunker down on defense, lest they get skewered; Nadia, unable to properly orient herself with her head so far away, opted to block and take chip damage. By that point, though, the damage to the Sombrous Sepulcher had already been done. After its feathers fell apart in rapid succession, the totem itself cracked apart, and Edelgard’s ghost made a break for it. Something Unto Death lunged at Midna before she could even open her mouth to cheer/taunt, a brutal Funeral Kiss her reward, but even as its blade bit deep Edelgard popped up only a few feet away, half-health but ready to exact her vengeance.

Eyes blazing with fury, Edelgard immediately unleashed a Nosferatu, the holy attack sapping some lost vitality back. ”Thank you for freeing me from that prison.” She said to the others, before pausing to channel a Heal spell and bring herself much closer to full. ”That was…most unpleasant.”

Her incantation turned out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Once Nosferatu made contact, the yellow cracks that spread across Something Unto Death suddenly burst open with a loud snapping sound. Shards of red, green, and yellow energy flew far and wide as some sort of invisible shell around the meme shattered, and the monster dropped out of the air to the ground.

Nadia knew a vulnerable enemy when she saw one, and her face lit up with glee. “You got it! It’s Edel-guard-broken!” No doubt the others knew just as well as she did that it was time to throw caution in the wide and beat this thing down in an all-out offense. The feral started by pulling out her Free Lemonade to douse the specter with sweet acid, then jumped to deliver a Fluffy Soft divekick and lower its defense. “Yellow…and goodbye!” At that point Nadia went for broke, every ounce of dramatic tension spent to split up and turn her body parts into meme-seeking missiles. “Gonna rocket inside out!” Her parts arced around for slash after slash, leaving trails of blood in the air, before all slamming together in a visceral explosion.

Realizing that Edelgard was not actually gone and could still be saved was quite a relief, albeit one Falcon didn’t outwardly show. It meant they weren’t nearly as screwed as he initially feared. But what was really a morale boost was seeing Something Unto Death drop to ground after the Flame Emperor’s retaliatory spell. And just like Nadia, Cap knew a vulnerable opponent when he saw one. The bounty hunter wasted no time as he sprinted toward the downed meme. He jumped up as he neared and came back down while he winded up his fist. ”FALCON… PUUUUUUNCH!” He practically screamed. It wasn’t often he was given an opening for a full powered Falcon Punch. And Cap had no intention of squandering this one.

Edelgard, for her part, rushed forward and unleashed a Flickering Flower, Aymr flashing across the meme’s body over and over, culminating in a final, heavy overhead slash meant to stun the enemy even further. ”You will not get away with your insolence so easily.” She haughtily taunted.

Midna meanwhile wasn’t in much of a state to rush on over, the princess hauling herself up onto her feet and leaning against the bar, having been launched into the back wall by the Funeral Kiss. Her Breastplate of Valor had prevented her from being impaled like Missfortune had, but the stomach she was clutching was still riddled with bruises, and her weapons were scattered all over the floor.

Still, she was entirely capable of striking from there.

”Rotten soul stealing Poe faced- urgh” she complained, even as she raised her shadow hand up above her head, charging and charging a massive ball of dark magic. Once suitably large, she tosses it lightly, and then with a warning shout of ”Get clear!” promptly spiking the twilight volley-bomb across the hall towards the fallen foe. It would phase right through anyone in the way till it collided with the floor, engulfing the foe and then detonated in an explosion that was the same size of the sphere.

Though typically strong enough to be weakness broken several times in the first half of a fight, Something Unto Death wasn’t ready for the sheer amount of punishment these Seekers could put out. Their combined efforts chewed through its vitality, but if they thought that their all-out assault ought to be enough to put the meme down for good, they would wind up disappointed. As the motes of turquoise magic from Midna’s volley-bomb dissipated, Something Unto Death rose off the ground once more. It bundled itself up as its tailfeather-eyes began to move, each pair opening in turn, then opened up again with a flourish. Its shadow spread across the hollow, and red eyes gleamed in the darkness.

From Realms Beyond — An Isekai Crossover RP (Now Accepting)

The Capital - Nieve - Underground Caverns

“They're alive!” Rayne elated with relife, before being very confused about what went on afterwards with the sticking of the piece of paper to the confused woman’s face. There wasn’t time to ask, however, as apparently there were intruders downstairs doing.

She did however, take a moment to at least give her name to Yoshika-chan with a quick little “Hello, I’m Rayne” and a tip of her hat using the hand she wasn’t using to support Sanae.

Speaking of Sanae, and well, everyone she was with actually, turned out that downstairs were yet more people from her world, which led her to offer one simple guesstimation, which was that “Guess the goddess who kidnapped us all had a preference for it?”

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

wordcount: 3,111 (+4)
Bowser Jr: Level 14 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(215/140)
Rika: Level 10 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(134/100)
Location: The Dead Zone

Under the Unsigned’s command, his undead troops spilled into the tomb the koopa kids had drilled into, very much intending to make it into the kids own tomb. Unfortunately for them, said kids had other plans, starting with putting these boneheads to rest.

Bonenoids with shields went first, forming a shield wall beneath the entrance to the tomb, while their rifle wielding compatriots lined up behind it, using the shoulders of the shield bearers as supports for their long guns.

It was quite the impressive little formation, which was, before it could be put to any kind of use, blown apart by Rikas white whale as it breached out of the ground, having taken a bit longer to get up than the flying kids. Its massive double jawed mouth snapped shut, swallowing several boneoids like a swarm of krill, before it slammed down atop several more, and smashed yet another pile with a flick of its anchor tipped tail.

A second later, Jr and Rika both charged the remaining bonenoids on either side of the whale, gauntlets and clown car boxing arms plumbing the skeletons, smashing them apart in a series of swift and brutal punches.

”Now give me back my gem-” Rika called up at the Unsigned amidst the hashes of his minions, only to see the tail of his cloak swishing away as he abandoned the entrance to the tomb

”Hey, get back here!” Rika demanded, tapping her feather fall rune to launch up to the entrance, only to yelp and drop back down when a barrage of machinegun fire came flying her way in response to her attempted chase.

A few moments later, Rika and Jr (standing/hovering on the back of the whale) both took a much more cautious peek outside of the tomb to find out what was out there. As it turned out, it seemed to be the remains of a mausoleum. Other tombs lay scattered around, some half buried in the tree’s walls, others shattered apart either by the act of being risen up out of the depths, or by the Unsigned’s excavating of them.

As for how it had been excavating, well, that seemed to be via combination of stick grenades tossed by grenadires and the raw lifting power of supersoldiers

The final new undead they could see where a number of skeleton riding sidecar sporting moterbikes which were patrolling around the still intact brick pathways of the mausoleum, and who had been the source of the gunfire that had driven Rika to dive back down into cover.

Naturally, there were also bonenoids to spare out there too, all of them taking similar degrees of strategic cover as their fellows inside the tomb had attempted. Concerningly, the Unsighned was in the process of producing more of these grunts, holding open its cloak till a dozen more had popped out, before doing an odd little head shoogaling dance for a few seconds, seemingly to recharge in the process, and then summoning a dozen more.

”Yeesh, that’s a lot of bone heads”

”and he’s making even more. So we have to stop him soon”

”With a plan”

”A quick plan”

Observations made, they ducked back down out of sight before they could lose their heads and, swift as they could, formulated exactly that.

A few moments later, a sheet of metal with a pair of eye slits was put up into the doorway. Rounds immediately pinged off of this, but the shooters were then distracted when Rika’s white whale came bursting out of the ground next to the shooters, though it sadly missed a shark attack level strike this time due to the lack of vision of the target.

It was distraction enough however, and so as bullets began slamming into the poor beast’s blubber, the rest of their plan burst into action. Literally.

Another part of the wall to their tomb exploded (outwards this time) as Jr’s clown car drilled through it, and then hit the path outside, go kart wheels deploying and engine revving as he burned rubber towards the enemy defensive position.

Rifles pivoted back to try and take them down, only for Rika’s giant wasp queen of a striker to finish her incantation from behind the metal face protector they’d popped in the doorway. Her titanic sword slammed tip first into the ground, prompting a 25 meter squared area of the ground beneath the bonenoids to reach up in the shape of hundreds of hands and to then drag them back into it, reburying the undead creatures.

Most of them, anyway. The supersoldiers and the Unsigned himself managed to wrestle free from the earth, but the chaff were by and large simply gone. Unfortunately, the Unsigned began immediately replacing them, declaring this merely a “minor setback” as the troops that had not been reburied fought to cover their creator from the incoming clowncar.

And the whale, which Jr healed to full hp using a manaless cast of Benediction, taking it from close to dead right back up to to a massive distraction in the blink of an eye. It promptly lunged at the closest supersolider, big enough to swallow even those whole, while trading cannon for machiengun fire with the rest.

With the footsoldiers being respawned, and the super soldiers busy with the whale, motorcycle skeletons were the bulk of the force of undeath still in the fight. With their patrolling beyond the barricades, and high powered motor vehicles, they had avoided the fate of the footsloggers more or less entirely.

”Alright bring it! Battle mode time!” Jr challenged the botany bikers as he and they started racing towards each other, only to then have to immediately duck when the bikes’ sidegunners opened up, sending a blaze of gunfire his way, though it was fortunately incredibly inaccurate due to the bad roads and bad driving.

In response, his own side gunner opened fire, Dazzle the Brionne blowing a trio of water bubbles and batting them out over the clown car’s windscreen. One slapped into the side of a bike, knocking it over, another knocked a skeleton gunners head off, and a third hit the road infront of a bike, fowling its traction as it drove over it and sending it careening off the road island into a tomb.

He then however barked in pain as a bullet clipped his tail, prompting the mon to hunker down for fear of further damage. Still, thanks to his mon thinning out specifically the gunners, they were close enough that Jr could execute his plan:

In the air above him, the titanic mechanical fist of Blodia appeared and then slammed forward into the pack of bikers, clearing a path through them, into which the prince wizzed. Then, he unleashed the spell he’d been challenging, a blast of holy magic ripping through the pack of bone bikers, either wrecking them alright, or stunning them when they were moving at high speed which had predictable results, causing a pileup behind him.

The prince cackled with glee at this carnage, only to ”Ach!” as rifle rounds started flying his way, the Unsigned having gotten another round of bonenoid out, and who was now in the midst of his head shaking recharge dance once more.

The prince swerved and dodged as best he could, shots pining off the clown car’s hull. The volley of stick grenades tossed by the grenadiers however was far more of an issue, the explosives littering the road leading towards the new sheildwall, fuses fizzing.

”Uh oh, up up up!” Jr cried out in alarm as he bunnyhopped the car into the air, deployed the propeller, and tried to fly up and over the bombs, only for them to detonate while he was above them. The blast sent him flying far higher up into the air with a ”Wawawawaaaaa!” followed by a thunk and shower of dust as he slammed into the ceiling.

”Owww”

Below, the Unsigned finished his latest recharge and took in the battlefield situation.

Whale: almost torn apart.

Turtle in ridiculous vehicle: Taking shots to the undercarriage

Girl overlanded with gizmos: …

“Where-” he began to ask, only for a quartet of black globules to slam into him from above, dark magic pulsing through his frame.

”Give it back!” Rika shouted from the high ground she’d gotten to via platforming from tomb to tomb, relying on all the carnage to get into a spot where the Unsighned’s shield totting bonenoids would be no help in covering him.

“You will pay for-” he began to say, only to receive a hail of gunfire to the face for good measure and command “-take her down!” before retreating towards one of the tombs he’d previously cracked open.

”Get back here!” she shouted at him, bullet jumping from atop thumb for a burst of speed, flaring her maneuvering thrusters for even more speed, and then launching her grapple at the retreating Unsighned and starting to reel herself in towards him.

Her Black Lance appeared in her hand, and she started charging up a vault breaker, looking set to impale the foe in one swift blow, only for a supersoldier to grab the grapple cable and wrench it free from its master’s body, it and its kindred having just in that moment successfully put down the whale.

Its reward for this loyal service was receiving the blow that had been meant for its master, Rika blasting forwards, black lance punching through its armor at the place its belly button would have been. It did not have one of those, however, nor any organs to perforate, and so even while impaled it attempted to bring up its double barreled machine gun to fill her full of holes.

She summoned Maria the dark knight to chop at the weapon arm twice, taking it off, but not actually taking down the soldier fully. So she instead wrenched him around, and put him in the way of the others, blocking machinegun fire with his body and the shield that was the twin of the lance she still had stabbed through him.

This didn’t help her from being shot in the back by the bonenoids however, rifle rounds pinging into her spartan energy shield, the skeletons fortunately going for her protected center of mass instead of limb shots. The grenades that got tossed at her feet, however, were a bit more of a problem.

She got back control of the gauntlet that had vault breakered just in time, however, letting go of the lance and shield combo, and tapping her feather fall rune to go flying upwards. Both weapons then shifted to the lighter helbard form and teleported into her back just in time to avoid being annihilated by the grenades. The supersoldier was not so lucky, being vaporized on the spot by the friendly fire.

That left several more however, and up in the air, Rika was a bit of a sitting duck. It was fortunate for her, then, that her brother had just managed to free himself from the cave ceiling, cured himself of confusion, and then came swooping in to the rescue. He swept under her, prompting her to grab the back of the car with her gauntlet, and then deployed a massive wrecking ball that smashed into one of the super soldiers, shattering every bone in its body.

The rest raised their guns to fire up at the kids, but Dazzle, who had worked up his nerve again, offered fire support via water bubbles knocking their aim askew, letting Rika make a safe leap down among them. The little lady then squared off against the towering power armored skeletons, fists flying, delivering denting blows to break their armor that buffed her attack speed on the third strike.

She stayed mobile, ducking dodging and weaving, disarming skeletons, using them as cover for gunfire coming from the others, and then when her strikers came of cooldown used them both, the queen and knight of blood’s massive/empowered blades cleaving the armored skeletons in half despite their armor.

By the time Jr had banked back around, she’d taken most of them apart, but in that time, the rest of the bonenoids had rallied/been reinforced by fresh bones popping out of the tomb the Unsigned had retreated into.

Not at all pleased with the pouring of bones out of the pit, Jr demanded ”You quit that!” and then, because obviously the Unsighned wasn’t going to do it just because he was asked, set about actually putting a stop to it. Mainly by slamming a wrecking ball into the already unstable ‘excavated’ tomb, demolishing it entirely and sending its ceiling crashing down atop the Unsigned inside.

That certainly put a stop to any more skelly spawning, though the ones outside did not crumble, or anything of the sort, so presumably their master still lived.

So they set about making sure they where dealt with before he came back

Blodia’s summoned fist crunched one of the remaining super soliders into powder right away, while Jr deployed a flamethrower equipped tank wheel as a more nimble wrecking ball, smashing it into the bonenoid shield wall, the flamers on it whirling and causing grenades to cook off, the grenadiers in the regiment blowing the rest of it apart in the process.

Rika meanwhile kept systematically taking apart super soldiers in a way that was very reminiscent of a certain pint sized boxer, and once they were through, lobbed a torpedo at the remaining bonenoids, blasting them to pieces.

Dazzle, finally, had a field day watergunning skeletons, the bludgeoning blasts blowing them apart ever so satisfyingly.

By the time that the Unsigned managed to claw himself out of the rubble, then, his forces were all gone, and he came skull to helmet with Rika who demanded he ”Give it back” one last time

“Ah. Certainly. Let me just-” he said while reaching down into the rubble he was still half buried in, before quick drawing his revolver and blasting her in the head again with a cry of “never!”.

It promptly bounced off her shield again.

”Then perish” she told him, echoing his own words, before grabbing the gun wielding arm in one hand, snapping it off at the wrist, before unloading her own point blank firepower into his skull, which included, after a clever catch and twirl, the Unsighned’s own oversized revolver that fit rather perfectly in her massive gauntlet hands.

Then the world went dark, and, like the others, for their victory, the pair were offered a choice of boons

---

for Rika

Tidal Dash when a dash / bullet jump concludes, release a burst of water that damages and knocks foes away
Experience: the Torment of Alienation increases the chance of causing effects/statuses/ailments by 16%
Bullet Light each shot will consume 1 additional spare ammo, and +25% lucky shot chance. Recover consumed spare ammo when triggering a lucky shot

The ship girl was one of the few who had any idea what was going on, and that was due to her papa having told them about how he’d run into this exact situation back in Limsa Lominscuttle Town. Based on that tale, she hazarded a guess that the watery boon would come from the same person, and she was indeed correct.

Unfortunately she didn’t get exactly what she wanted with the resulting ‘meeting’

”Where is papa!” she demanded to know, hoping that being that had blessed him might still have a link from which she could get a leed. Unfortunately, it seemed like whatever connection this involved was one way, as the god soldiered on with his spiel regardless of her questioning: “Look how much you’ve grown, little minnow, sailing free from your father’s wake! I’m glad to see that the currents of fate still brought you here to me regardless, because no ship should ever be parted from the sea for so long. Fortunately for you I, Poseidon, god of oceans far and wide, now stand at your side! Metaphorically of course”

And then he was gone

---

for Jr

Fixed Gain decreases the damage you take by 10%. Also restores a little magic whenever damage is taken
Dharma Rain when overhealing, increase max HP by 24% for 10 seconds
Field Support while moving, grant 15% weapon damage for yourself and teammates within 15m

Just like his sister, Jr had also been told the tale of this place, though unlike her he didn’t have a secondary motive for picking any of the boons, and so sat, wracking his brains, for maybe a bit too long. He had all the time in the world, of course, but the latter two boons really confronted him with what he was supposed to be, hitter or healer, which made all that time he spent thinking it through just… agonizing.

Eventually he cried out with a ”Gahhhh I don’t care any more just let me outa here!”, closed his eyes, waved his finger back and forth, and jabbed randomly at one of the two options.

For him there was no god or divine being come to comment on his choice, and instead simply the sound of a magazine clunking home before he was kicked out of his long overdue stay with hew new weapon boosting aura.

---

Then they were back and had the start of a rapid fire conversation that had just gone down before Rika remembered what this had all been about and asked ”Wait… where’s the treasure?!”

The pair looked down at the spirit of the Unsighned and the pile of rubble he was sat upon that Jr had created by dropping a tomb on top of him, prompting the prince to give an embarrassed ”uhhhhhhhh” before declaring ”I’m gonna go get the cool spirits” and then hurrying off while Rika cried out in alarm and started digging through the rubble by hand.

Or rather by gauntlet.

Even with her oversized mitts this was not fast, at all, and by the time Jr had piled up the useful spirits (the super soldiers, the Unsigned, and a pile of biker and grenadier skeletons), teleported it all to the armory, and then also banged out some of the dents in his clown car with a spanner, she still hadn’t found it.

And then they were all out of time

A roar of floodfested echoed through the chamber, coming from all sides, prompting Jr to more or less koopa handle his sister into the clown car and to once again go drilling through the ceiling to escape, the pair bickered about if jr’s destructive solution to getting the unsigned out of the tomb had been worth it or not as they went.

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

Watt in Blazes

Lvl 14 Ms Fortune (117/140) and Lvl 9 Midna (202/100)
Word Count: 4599 (+5 exp)

At the sound of a somewhat familiar voice, the ever-impulsive Nadia risked a quick glance back. The multi-armed and armored figure she saw, silhouetted against the hollow’s blazing walls, belonged to someone she’d seen a few times since returning to the Avenger, but not much beyond that. Throughout all their adventures so far, the cat burglar and the Twilight Princess just so happened to have never trodden the same path. One had sailed the Deep Blue Seaside and delved into the depths of the Under, while the other had journeyed across the Sandswept Sky and surveyed the breadth of Midgar’s cityscape. Still, she’d caught a glimpse or two of Midna’s myriad magics and various summons (minus the invisible Beast Legion, of course) and knew that this princess could handle herself. When confronted by her comrade’s question, however, Nadia couldn’t help but wonder how her counterpart managed to mistake her for a cat monster four times her size. “Midna?”

Speaking of the Successor, a moment’s distraction was all she needed. With claws that blazed like boiling lava, the Successor leaped toward the two with bestial ferocity. “Whoa!” Nadia hopped backward, rolling up into a ball just in time to avoid a scathing slash that left a trail of flame in its wake. Given what looked like an opening, Nadia double jumped with a forward somersault, unfolding to deliver a double claw slash. The Successor recovered with deceptive speed, however, and dodged away with a backflip of her own. Nadia landed empty-handed and spotted the Successor wheeling around for a double lash with tails like flaming whips, and this time the catgirl chose aggression. She used Charge to shoot forward and through her opponent’s fiery spin as a bolt of lightning, but when she rematerialized Nadia dropped to one knee. “‘Ohm’ my gosh,” she groaned, her hand on the seared flesh of her midriff. She’d forgotten that Charge didn’t make her intangible, so she’d ended up trading with her foe. The Successor looked no worse for wear, which was annoying, but at least Nadia’s extraction of the Oceanid meant that she didn’t eat an explosive Vaporize reaction too. Now the Successor stood between the two Seekers, and having lost track of Nadia, her attention lay on Midna.

Said princess presently had a hand held protectively over her eyes, or rather over the blindfold which she somehow saw through. Despite this, she also held the fire drinking mace to her chest, electricity arcing across it with increasing intensity, and a rather battered looking tree spear in front of her defensively, but not aimed specifically at anything in particular, its tip roaming in a generally warding fashion. She had been cursing wordlessly as the lightshow went off, and now that there was a brief repose, proceeded to command the thin air to ”Hit the big one!”

In response a ripple in the air moved, and then from nowhere a pair of canine claw mark trails appeared, scything through the air, as something unseen leapt forward to deliver a pair of slashes at the Successor.

While her invisible minion attacked, Midna herself backed off, still in a defensive pose, portals opening around her that started to dump sand out onto the floor for some reason. Her spear was however now pointed in the direction of the foe, following the feeling of an unseen chain tugging at the golden wrist guard she wore on a single one of her forearms.

The Successor’s attempt to bat aside Midna’s defensive spearpoint came to a halt when unseen fangs clamped down on a limb, provoking a reflexive twist away. When the beast failed to find the foe responsible, however, her molten gaze snapped back to the Twilight Princess, especially the bright blue legion core rippling and rattling within the Legatus unit on Midna’s arm. Though she didn’t understand the nature of Midna’s bestial partner at all, the Successor was clearly smart enough to identify her as the source of this invisible force. With a snarl, the Successor reached around with her right hand to seize the handle of a fiery longsword from her back. She swung it in a wide arc to knock the Treespear askew, then heaved forward on three legs for a huge overhead chop.

Fortunately, the blow to the spear was plenty to alert the princess to the fact she was under attack, and her darknut arose before her to block the blow during the time it took the Successor to wheel its blade around and wind up for the second strike.

“Forget about me?” In the brief moment that the Successor’s attention had been elsewhere, Nadia had summoned the Oceanid to bring to life a Hydro Mimic, this time a copycat of Nadia herself. “You’re just ass-king for it!” The two ferals attacked their foe’s flank at once, both with a double Cat Scratch claw slash. While the clone finished with a dropkick aimed at the side of the Successor’s knee, Nadia targeted the hip joint with an El Gato axe kick. The Successor replied by stowing her sword and planting that arm for a kick of her own. Her foot caught Nadia in the gut and launched her back, but her head popped off and into the grasp of the copycat. “Dunk me!” she ordered, and without further ado the mimic jumped up, passing the head beneath one leg on order to slam the head down on the Successor’s own.

By then, though, the Successor was already on the move. Nadia’s head bounced off the cat-beast’s back and the copycat took a Vaporize-inducing tail lash as the Successor leaped toward the wall behind Midna. She clung to the burning Qliphoth flesh long enough to hurl a handful of explosive stars down at Midna (which the darknut caught on its barrier) then sprang off the wall for a flying pounce onto Nadia’s headless body. Fiery claws lanced into her chest as the Successor pinned her down, eliciting a pained gasp from her detached head. Her own claws sank into the Successor’s arm, but it did not relent. “What are you, some kinda ninja tabby?” Nadia rolled her head over and began to skitter back to her body, her ears used as legs. “You’re about ‘tabi’ real sorry!”

The beast legion beat her to it, the otherworldly entity leaping forwards, a single overhead claw slash swiping through the air towards the Successor. Then, using this assisted aim, the princess thrust the mace forward and sent a stream of lighting arching forwards towards the foe as well. All the while dumping more and more sand into the arena.

While the Beast Legion didn’t deal much damage, it did guide Midna’s hand as she blasted out electricity, a splash of yellow amidst the raging sea of orange. The powerful shock prompted the Successor to recoil, wrenching her claws loose from Nadia’s ribcage as she backed away. She definitely felt that. With a spray of blood from her neck, Nadia’s head launched itself into her grasp. She placed it back on her shoulders, her other hand pressed against the cauterized wounds until she could pull the Ripening Heart from her pouch. By that time the Successor had already fired off a trio of heat-seeking embers at Midna, so Nadia was forced to backdash twice before she could take a second to heal.

“Yeesh. Talk about a claws for concern.” When the Successor drew her sword and slashed, Nadia dove over it, rolled, and rose with one leg transformed into a white tiger’s to deliver a spinning kick to the Successor’s middle. “Hah, just ribbin’ ya!” She used Charge just in time to blitz through her target and avoid an angry slash, then turned to deal out two quick cuts of her own with Battery. “Watts good!” Having already forgotten that behind the Successor wasn’t the safest place to be, Nadia took a fiery double tail lash the next second. “Gah, dangit!”

”Keep on it, I’m almost done!” Midna called out from behind her darknut’s fractured barrier, ensuring her beast legion kept up the pressure with its attempts to claw and slash at the Successor. As for what she was almost done with, with a wave of her mace like a conductor's baton, the sand she had been emptying around her now began to stream into the air. A chorus like a siren’s song filled the air as the black sand began to sweep forth, not towards the foe, but instead towards the outskirts of the arena.

To quench the flames, and smother the light.

“Are you Mid-nuts?” Nadia yelled back, any more attempts at humor cut off by the claw slashes against her block. While the Beast Legion continued to harry her attacker, its damage output without neither cooperation nor input from its partner was little more than an annoyance, so the Successor more or less ignored the invisible dog to focus on her fellow feline. When a handful of explosive stars flew her way Nadia backflipped away, only to see the Successor’s sword cleaving toward her the moment she landed. The cat burglar did the limbo, bending back just far enough to avoid the burning blade, though it was a near enough miss that she could feel its heat on her skin. She carried her momentum in a handstand, then pivoted upside-down with her legs extended to smack the Successor in the face with two hyper-extended kicks. The Successor stowed her sword and whipped around in another fiery tail lash, prompting Nadia to spring off her hands into the air.

“Saber the moment!” She yelled, propelled downward by gushing blood in a Feral Edge, her own tail wielded as a blade. Her divebomb slammed into the Successor’s back, but her tail wasn’t as sharp as it used to be. It struck a glancing blow, but in the brief moment that she knelt atop the Successor, Nadia grabbed at the monster’s weapon. Fueled by adrenaline, both of her brain cells immediately tried for a pun, but all she could say was “Pommel horse!?” before the Successor seized her by one leg and flung her off. The sword flew from Nadia’s grasp as she hurtled into the wall, which drove the breath from her lungs but at least didn’t impale her on any branches. She winced, teeth gritted, and opened one eye to see fiery embers sailing her way. With the steady loss of light throughout the smoldering hollow, the Successor’s flames blazed all the brighter.

And then, as the last secondary light source was snuffed out, the sand that had been swirling wildly around turned inwards toward the last light in the room. It swept across the flying embers coming Nadia’s way, growing denser and denser, grains grinding against grains, static electricity rumbling like thunder, and then the concentrated sand storm slammed into the Successor from all sides.

”You’re in my domain now, so choke on it!” Midna demanded, as the light was smothered, and the room plunged into shadow.

Briefly.

Black lighting flared within the sands as the charge built up from its flight around the room discharged all at once into the target of the princess’ ire.

A pained yowl resounded through the room as the electric flash dispersed, the air thick with coarse static and the smell of ozone. Nadia slid to the ground relatively unscathed, glad that she couldn't be electro-charged anymore. The sand did cause a Grounded reaction that cut into her accuracy, but the feral couldn't see much of anything in this gritty tempest to begin with. Not until a second light flared up, not lightning, but flame. Intense light and smothering heat radiated from the Successor as she hissed with her back arched, crystalizing the sand flurries around her. Phase two had begun.

Right away the Successor exploded in a plume of fire. By the time the dwindling sandstorm coalesced to smother the flames, it wasn't just the blaze that had disappeared–so had the Successor herself. Nadia instinctively kept her back to the wall while she peered through the sandy shadows, but the Successor didn't go for her. Instead the beast burst back into existence right behind Midna, encircled in flames as she launched her vicious sneak attack.

The princess cursed ”You sneaky Poe!” and didn’t even turn to look at the eruption of flames behind her and her darknut.

It dropped down into a portal, while she yanked on her astral chain to start reeling herself towards her Beast Legion (which was located where the successor had been) making a blind dodge to try and avoid whatever was coming.

It was something, but it wasn’t enough.

Just before the chain went taut, blazing claws raked across the princess’s back. Her armor mitigated the damage somewhat, but the red-hot blades bled through. Luckily the Beast Legion yanked her out in time to avoid the Successor’s follow-up, but after firing off more heat-seeking embers the kindled beast gave chase.

Of course, now that she could see again Nadia charged in from the opposite direction. To cover for Midna and try to take some control over the battle, she called upon the Harbor Demon. The enormous Abyssal appeared with her ordinance platform behind her, and even on her knees the pale, horned woman loomed over the Successor of the Claw, who stopped short in surprise. “Hah! That finally gives you ‘paws’?” Nadia grinned. When her striker took action with a trio of giant hand slams, her power demonstrated with a direct hit from the first, it was the Successor’s turn to dodge. The feral took the opportunity to jump, swing from the ordinance platform’s crane, and drop onto the Successor with a double stomp from her Mantreads.

Seething from the impacts, the monster struck back, but Nadia was feeling herself. She promptly wasted a bar of Tension with a mistimed attempt at a Blue Monday counter, got bowled over by a counterhit claw swipe, and then just did it again. This time Nadia’s knee struck the Successor in the face, cracking her helmet. Unfortunately she wasn't anywhere near strong enough to throw the Successor, but she could wrap herself around the beast’s throat, her muscle fibers coiled like a boa constrictor. “You’re neck-st’!” She called to Midna.

”I’m what?” the princess called back, the finer parts of the pun falling on deaf ears. Regardless of her ability to appreciate Nadia’s wordplay, she played her part well enough, the princess charging back into the fray, various fire resistance items having dulled the searing strike to her spine.

She did so atop an invisible steed, which looked rather silly, but the beast legion was fast. It also made for an excellent launchpad. The princess planted two feet on its back and then used flowmotion to leap off of it towards the foe for added speed, before driving a dragon clawed kick into the Sucessor’s cracked mask. Rather than stop there, she tried to use its face as a springboard to launch herself up and over Nadia’s neck grapple so she could slam a shadow hand slap down onto its back

From her current position, Nadia got a front row seat for her comrade’s sick-ass dragon kick. “That was clawesome!” She held tight against the Successor’s attempts to pry her off as Midna vaulted overhead for a hand slam that flattened the Successor against the ground, her limbs splayed out in all directions. Stunned, the beast couldn't stop the feral squeezing tighter, her hisses and snarls soon turned to gasps and chokes. Her tails lashed around, still ablaze, but as the Successor struggled to rise it became clear that she could no longer defend herself against Midna. It was up to the Twilight Princess to bring this fight to an end.

”Oh no you don’t” the princess told the tails, making to grab them with her shadow hand, and managing on the third try. Then she flicked the obsidian mace she’d been using for extra fire resistance into the air, and then jabbed it into the Successor's back and started channeling electricity directly through it into the downed foe, demanding that it ”now stay down”

The hollow lit up with color once more as lightning poured into the Successor’s body, as well as Nadia, who yowled and quickly released her hold around the beast’s neck. “Meeee-OWCH!” Thanks to Midna’s efforts, though, the job was done. With a shrill wail the Successor went stiff, then limp, leaking flame like blood. Rather than disintegrate into ash, however, her body began to burn, going up in flames in a matter of moments. Nadia watched, puzzled, until amidst the cinders she spied a form taking shape. It was a young Chinese woman, clad in a sleeveless black top and camouflage military fatigues, complete with a green beret atop short brown hair.

“...Huh?” With no sign of the Successor (including its spirit, much to Nadia’s chagrin) the feral approached tentatively. The army girl seemed to be breathing, quite a bit banged up and bruised but not fatally injured. Nadia crouched down next to her, then after a moment produced the Ripened Heart from her pouch. She looked up at Midna, her confusion and curiosity plain to see, as well as the question of whether or not they should heal the woman that has been their foe.

”Oh so that’s why it had those large-” Midna began, before biting her own tongue to abort that line of conversation, and instead guessing ”Probably got turned into a beast by something? Happens to some light worlders if they end up in my realm” and then weighing in on the kill or cure question with ”Guess we’ll see if her mind was also gone or she just wanted to kill us for sport.”

”That thing heal or should I-?” asked, regarding the Ripened Heart, before she completed her sentence by forming a friend heart.

“Yeah,” Nadia replied, both to Midna’s musing and her question. She reached down, rolled the soldier over as gently as possible, then pressed the relic to her chest. Though it didn't provide an instant heal, it boosted her regeneration so much that it took her only a few seconds to recover. When she stirred, but didn’t awaken, Nadia reached down and shook her by the shoulder. “Hey? Hey!” Her tone was not gentle, but urgent. There was no telling what might show up the longer the Seekers stayed here, after all. “You okay? Hey! Up and at ‘em!”

The soldier’s eyes opened suddenly. She stared at Nadia, who gave an encouraging grin, then Midna, assessing the situation with a surprisingly level head. Even when she looked around and beheld the burnt-out hollow, still unmistakably alien in appearance, her breathing only got a bit heavier. “Where am I? What happened?”

Nadia pursed her lips, considering what to share. “A place called the Qliphoth. It’s this giant, awful tree, full of demons and freaky flesh monsters. Sorry to say.” She offered a sympathetic smile. “I’m Ms Fortune, and this is Midna. What’s your name?”

“Misfortune? How fitting.” Though the woman was clearly trying to keep it together, the news hadn’t exactly reassured her. She sat up slowly, listening for any sign of the danger Nadia alluded to. “Emily. Emily Su. Do you know a way out?”

Nadia grimaced. “Sorta? Trust me when I saw we don’t wanna be here any more than you. But before we can leave, we’ve gotta hunt down the head honcho around here. And I ain’t kitten when I say it might actually be worse outside.” She sighed with a shake of her head. “It’s a crappy place to wind up. But we’re the heroes here, so if you stick with us, we’ll do our best to keep ya safe. Can you fight?”

Emily gave a stiff nod. The news did not thrill her, but what choice did she have? “Yes. My blood code is Scathach–I can fight with fire.”

“You don’t say…” Nadia muttered, while Minda joked that ”Yes I saw that”

“And I’m good with a sword.” Emily looked down at her belt, then grimaced. “If only I had one.”

”That we might be able to fix. Maybe. Hang on, maybe we’ll be lucky and someone added one to the armory since I last looked” Midna said, as she flicked out a gesture and summoned the new Armory access system Edward had set up. She pivoted it so Emily could see, very briefly filled her in, and then filtered the item selection to the desired type. As a result it ended up displaying one garudo greatsword that resulted in a displeased sound from behind her helmet, and then she visibly leaned in a little upon spotting the Nightsky Ripper.

”Why did no one tell me there was something so perfect?” she asked rhetorically, her tone ever so enamored with the blade, before pausing, suppressing a sigh, and saying ”I assume that curved one would be best for you? Only other light sword we have is technically a very big knife”

At that moment Nadia, who’d left while Midna rummaged through Edward’s Armory, returned with something in tow. It was a narrow, single-edged saber with the handguard extended up the back, and while the Twilight Princess might not have technically seen it, Nadia had gotten so close to its business end that she wasn’t about to forget it. “Hey, Emily! What about this?”

The girl blinked at it, her facing lighting up. “That’s my sword! The Blazing Claw. Did…did I drop it somewhere?”

Nadia forked over the blade. “Uh…I dunno! Just sworda figured it’d suitcha. Y’know?” She looked over her shoulder, her ears perking up. “We’d probably better get a move on before those freaks show up. They’re hardly parasites for sore eyes.” The feral peered around, searching the smoldering darkness for a way out of the chamber.

As she did, suddenly, for both of them, the world suddenly went dark and they were given a choice.

Choices for Midna

Night Bloom - grants a hex, charged by casting magic, that automatically raises the last susceptible slain enemy (once charged) to fight as an ally for 12 seconds
Regression Inequality of Annihilation - damage taken by the you and your active summons is evenly distributed among you and your active summons
Exploding Corpses - enemies you kill explode with fire, but this doesn't hurt you. This overwrites enemies own death explosions

”You know what? I’ll take the break after miss sunshine” Midna said to the air, her still stinging eyes welcoming the dark. That feeling of relief was enough to stop her freaking out by whatever this was and to take in her options, for which she had words.

For the third it was, quite simply ”I’ve had enough of being blinded, thanks. Not taking a chance on you”

For the second it was ”Tch they’re supposed to get hurt for me” Minda said, despite having often prioritized her minions' continued existence over keeping herself unharmed, and ironically seeing the way this boon worked in exactly the opposite way round others might which itself was telling. She also completely glossed over the potential of using the normally untouchable Beast Legion as a damage sink.

Thus leaving the first which was fitting statistically because ”I could always do with more meat shields” and then also, as it turned out, because of where it came from.

As her hand touched the boon, the darkness became filled with light, but rather than blindingly hot it was soothingly cool, and it took but a breath for Midna’s eyes to adapt and see the source, and it was one that took that very breath away again.

“Good evening to you, sunset” spoke the goddess who’s blessing she had chosen “I am Selene, eye of night, and I am glad my gaze soothes your weary eyes. Though daylight, storms and horrors stand between you and my moon, I have come to you regardless, to grant you this boon such that you might reach your twilight once again, little princess, and then raise your own gaze to meet mine in the coolness of night”

And then just like that, she was gone, along with the darkness, and time resumed.

She blinked once, and then tapped the menu option her finger had been hovering over, summoning the Nightsky Ripper to her hand.

”Fitting” she called it, before pressing it to her chest in a salute as she said ”thank you Selene” with more than just a hint of reverence in those words, before sheathing the new blade into the twilight realm.

At the same time, Nadia received a choice of her own.

For Ms Fortune

Lightning Reflexes - dodging at the last second causes a lightning bolt to strike your attacker
12 Monkeys and Angry Men - when dealing follow-up damage to an enemy, increase follow-up attack damage by 4% for a maximum of 24 stacks until the combo ends
Bloody Bandage - when using a defensive ability, your next attack applies Bleed for 10 seconds, increasing the attacker’s damage taken

When darkness closed in around her, however, the rather tense feral acted on her first impulse: to attack the first thing she saw. “Nyahh!” The instant the cards manifested before her, she hyperextended her arm in a spearfinger jab straight through the one in the middle, causing it to dissolve into motes of light that flowed into her while the other two disappeared. Once her arm snapped back she shook the glowing particles away like gnats, looking this way and that as she tried to parse what happened. “The hell was that? I got jumped by…posters or somethin’, I dunno.” A little worried by the lack of apparent effect, Nadia patted herself down, then blinked at Midna, a baffled smile on her face. “You clock whatever that was?”

Midna tilted her head to the side slightly and made a small sound of confusion, which wasn’t exactly reassuring, only for her to ask ”Did a goddess not talk to you after you picked a blessing from the … posters?” confirming that yes, she had seen that, but also that there seemed to be more to it.

After a moment, Nadia shook her head. “I thought…I heard people laughing? Maybe?” When she saw Emily looking at her like she was crazy, the feral changed gears, laughing it off. “Psh, whatever. C’mon, let’s get a move on before any creepy crawlies show up.”

”Oh. Urgh. Yes those” Minda groaned, having apparently somehow managed to put the horrors no doubt actively seeking them right this moment out of her head, before agreeing ”Let’s keep on moving”

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

wordcount: 3,163 (+4)
Bowser Jr: Level 14 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(211/140)
Rika: Level 10 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(130/100)
Midna: level 9 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (197/100)
Edward Portsmith: Level 4 ///////////////////////////////// (8/40)
Location: The Dead Zone

The cannons roared and roared again and again with the ceaseless stamina of machines, but the rest of the seekers were still all too mortal. Though they raged against the waves of reanimated undead with fearless determination, slowly, gradually, the tide rose, and their barriers against it faltered.

The first was quiet, a little click, as Edward’s rifle’s well of medicine/poison ran dry. A few moments later, and there was a fizzle, followed by a high pitched whine of complaint from Jr as his wells of mana ran dry. While the latter would return in time, and their primary healer was still carrying her weight, but two sources of healing coming to an end put added pressure on those taking all the hits right when things were starting to ramp up.

Rather than squad of infested people and the odd ancient, whatever intelligence was commanding the flood-festion saw fit to send out things less disposable than masses of reanimated corpses, one of which turned out to be, of all things, a due of monowheel Choppers, their hulking brute pilots and own machinery both overrun with the mixed infestation. Despite the meat gumming up their works, the heavy vehicles had the force of a battering ram at their backs, and a host of nasty prow spikes with which to sharply apply it.

Alongside them charged a whole pack of chargers like hunting hounds. Together the mass of them all looking to barrel right past the front line in order to crash into the back lines.

An armored warrior moved to intercept them, who was then joined by another who rose up out of a portal to bar the way. The latter raised its round shield, which at the last moment unfurled a great rectangular barrier of energy, against which one of the choppers crashed, sending the darknut blocking its way grinding backwards, armored boots scraping against the fleshy floor.

Beside her minion, Midna reached out with her shadow hand, slamming its open plam into the front wheel of the other Chopper, fingers wrapping around and holding the great front wheel back.

”You're not getting past!” Minda shouted at the meat machine confidently, despite the pant of breath she let out right after. She’d been brawling for she wasn’t sure how long, right in the front lines, with no breaks, and she hadn’t exactly been the athletic type before all her fusions.

She was not going to let herself be the first one to crack under pressure however. Even as she held back the chopper, she raised her arms and struck at the chargers that flooded around it, lance skewering one, while her fan flicked to slash a clawing limb before it could strike her, the resulting wind gust blowing it back as well. Her shield guarded her other side, but she then had to haul it to her front as a pir of cannons on the front of the chopper whined in protest and then unleashed a pair of bolts at her, which slammed into the icy tower shield. Doing so opened her up at the flank, where another charger took the opportunity to swipe at her.

Armor and elevation atop her Beast Legion steed made the damage minimal, but they weren't going to stop. So she hauled the chopper to the side, and had her legion burst forwards along its flank, claws coming out as it pounced, slashing the infested pilot, and then clambering on top of the vehicle’s stalling wheel.

”Come on, come get me” she taunted the chargers, stabbing her lance down at one trying to clamber up, and then shadow hand punching another down. It was a good spot to survive the horde from, even with the chopper still trying to move under her without its infested pilot.

Unfortunately, being up above the masses of meat also put her at risk from the enemy’s limited but still dangerous fire support, that came in the form of barrages of spikes from ranged forms.

Fortunately she had her own, and though she got needled lightly from a burst of fire, the offending flood revised a counter battery of cannon fire a moment later. Focused on those shooters however let another form slip through, and though it was a similar size to the supportive and descriptive ancients, the flood Tank Form was a pure melee beast. It smashed against her darknut’s already damaged energy barrier, with all its bulk, causing it to waver, and then with a slam of a club-like arm brought it down entirely.

Chargers and the chopper surged forwards, the bike crashing into the actual shield of the darknut, which reacted by parrying it to the side, letting the vehicle slip past even as the tank form smashed into the armored undead’s other side, denting armor and cracking bone.

Tapping into her dwindling supply of mana, the princess opened a portal, enlarged her wolfos , and sent it pouncing out. The towering beast bit into the shoulder of the tank form before hauling it to the side away from the darknut. Rather than follow up the attack however, it staggered back, retching at the mouthful of infested flesh it had just gotten.

”come on come come- Cura!” Jr managed to get out up above from the ranged perimeter, cleansing the beast of its imminent assimilation into the flood, but it was a close thing, the boy very much in a position where he was expending his mana as soon as he had enough. He certainly didn’t have any left to deal with the chopper and chargers presently storming up the hill towards them.

His pokemon made a valiant effort to stymie the swarm, but their reserves of mana and PP were also running low, and so they could only ship away at it with twin pairs of psybeams (Mimi having copped Peeka’s move) which wasn’t a stab move for either of them. So it was up to his sister to deal with the problem.

With the red baron drones floating next to her gauntlets she stepped into the way of the incoming foes. She pulled back and then whipped out a punch at the thin air, and with her fingers extended forwards rather than curled, prompting for three of the sword tipped drones to go lancing forwards in response to the action.

The three of the blades all stabbed into a charger’s front in a rather inefficient amount of overkill, after which she whipped the other hand around in a cat scratch like motion, sending three more blades swooping around, her fingers spread in such a way that they stabbed into the flank of one charger each. Then she pulled both hands back, wrenching the blades out of the foes and summoning them back to her side, before thrusting both hands forwards and sending them all at the Chopper.

Metal stood a better chance than meat however, and the blades mostly glanced off of the front bulk of the alien vehicle, drone blades ending up either embedded in the ground or wobbling in the air, all far from where they should be in relation to her commanding fingers.

”Wait… what do I do when they do that?!” Rika exclaimed in a half panic, this kind of balancing blow having not come up in her practice with them, the ship girl wrestling to regain control before giving up and just counter charging the motor vehicle, taking a pair of energy bolts it shot at her with her personal shield.

She didn’t do this alone however, as there came an unexpected call of ”Sortieing! from Edward of all people, the dreadnought abandoning the commanding sniping position leaping into the air with a few flaps and then gliding down into the fight.

Born by wing and gravity he whipped past the landbound shipgirl, over the top of the chopper’s front wheel, and then as he passed the driver, delivered a slash with a machete to sever its head from its body.

Despite this decapitation strike, the infestation still had enough control over the chopper to keep charging blindly forwards. But it was very much blindly, which gave Rika plenty of space to pivot her body, maneuvering thruster to the side of it, then pivot again while charging up a vaultbreaker. With a wordless warcry she launched forwards and delivered the magically empowered punch into the side of the machine, striking with enough force to knock it off of its one wheel and sending it crashing down onto its side.

It crushed out a few chargers in the process, leaving rather few remaining. Some charged up to die to Sectonia’s firepower, while jr got his pokemon, Peeka and Mimi, to dash forwards to help cover, shadowy claws and dazzling gleams dealing with chargers as Rika got control of the red baron drones again.

Down at the bottom of the hill, Edward’s wings spread wide as he slowed his rapid descent, landing right before the melee surrounding Minda’s position. His machete slashed again near as soon as he’d done so, striking a circling charger, loading the flintlock it was bonded to in the process which he unleashed upon the tank form flood, the round whipping past the armored form of the princess’ darknut.

The heavy round knocked the flood off balance, leaving the darknut an opening to cleave into it.

Edward had little time to focus on that fight however, bringing up the hunk of metal and crystal that was his enchanted buckler to block a charger’s claw swipe, before retaliating with a quick chop. Without the momentum of the descent however, the machete was hardly an effective weapon unfortunately, merely wounding the monster a second time, and giving it time to scored a retaliatory slash in response.

Embarrassing as it was, this mere minion forced him to take a step back, though he regained the momentum of the fight by smashing it in the face with the buckler. Or, not the face, he saw, as it reared up to swipe again. Merley where a collection of eyes where, while the face of the person it had once been hung limply under its body. Thinning quickly, he rammed the buckler fully into the beast, straining as he held it up and it clawed at his armor, before he delivered a stab to the under hanging head, scoring a critical strike that took it down at last.

Far too many blows for a single infested. The second pair of slashes had reloaded the flintlock however, which let him cap another infested before it could come at him, but even with getting the weapon pari’s gimmky combo down, this was hardly an optimal palace for him to be. Thus rather than wade into the fighting more, he focused on why he was here, which was to call out for ”MIDNA!” because the princess was far to deaf to hear anything shouted from further off with the din of battle going on.

The princess didn’t respond at first, as she was a bit too busy grabbing the piloting part of the Chopper with a shadow hand, and then hauling it over her head to send it crashing down on top of the tank form. Then she pulled herself to it, squeezed what she was fairly certain was the accelerator, and proceeded to grind the flood to dust beneath the massive monowheel.

It was only once this was done that she glanced to and fro, seeking more enemies, and upon spotting Edward, yelled back ”What are you doing here?!”

”We need to make a push for the enemy leader!” he called out, hoping to make use of her to lead cavalry charge out to strike down the flood command form whose arrival had prompted his downward flight, only for Sandalphon to chime in via the link she had with Midna with a different plan. Namely to retreat deeper into enemy territory.

Edward would not say he agreed, it was only putting off the problem that he thought best dealt with here and now, right up until one of the floating carriers started unloading infested directly on top of them a moment or so later. Which was something of an issue beyond the obvious, given they needed to get to a wall to follow through with the escape plan, and there where foes being dumped between them and it.

Midna saw this as well, or, mainly, the primary issue in her mind which was getting Edward himself out, which she resolved by grabbing him with her shadow hand and then hurling him into the air while yelling ”Fly cucco fly!”

After steadying his undesired flight with his wings, Edward took one glance back at the princess wrestling the infested chopper pilot out of the vehicles seat and then commanding the vehicle to charge forwards through the floodfested swarm before he locked his eyes forwards in-order to focus on dodging falling foes. Falling foes and one somewhat overloaded clown car (not that he knew that was what it was) that was carrying Rika, Jr, and Jr’s pokemon up towards the ceiling rather than towards one of the walls.

He caught the words ”because that’s gross!” as he swooshed on by, before once again having to rapidly decelerate, this time to avoid crashing full on into a wall. His machete came up, struck into the wall, and then his weight pulled it down, slashing a gushing wound that he just barely managed to flap up into against the outpouring of viscera in-order to enter the stream.

A few moments later, he cut himself out of the blood stream again, splashing to the floor, once more a bedraggled pigeon of a man.

And the heat of battle had just started to dry those out too.

He hauled himself up, raising machete and buckler defensively, but found no immediate threats, just a monolith of black stone sitting in the middle of a room filled with large chunks of rubble that looked in places like cavern walls. There was also some sort of energy barrier surrounding the room, one which he assumed was projected by the monolith, but which did not seem to be an active threat as of this moment.

That was, for him, very good, because his cannons had been left behind down below, too heavy to ride the currents even if he could have gotten them in. Even as he scanned the rooms, they fell silent down below him, connection to his mana cores severed as they were beaten down by the swarm.

Which meant that the floodfestion would no doubt come a hunting for them soon enough. Still, Edward was a commander and mage alone without army or power for his sourcery so, with this moment of respite, his first action was to hunker down defensively behind some of the rubble and to begin to see to the power part of the problem so he could use it to rebuild his forces. Thusly when other help did arrive, it found Edward crouched down behind a rock, one hand manipulating a magic circle before him that had several copper wires plugged into it, the other controlling a second circle that was in the process of sending the empty bio-rifle back to the avenger.

---

Somewhere else Minda (after grabbing the tank form flood’s spirit, crashing the chopper first through the infested swarm and then into a wall) had no such luxury of downtime. Instead she stepped out of flames, holding a fire drinking mace as the flames merely lightly singed her thanks to it and her other passive items, and into a catfight. There was a slight problem however, and that was that she could barely see and hear anything over the glare of the fire and roar of the flames, which made telling one cat from another rather difficult.

”Miss…. Fortune, is that you?”

It really did not help that the two didn’t really know each other that well either.

---

In yet another room, there came a grinding sound, followed by Jr’s clown car bursting up into a chamber of some kind, having drilled there with one of its arms. Rika’s rear mounted firefly lamp lit it up, revealing it to be some kind of man made structure. It hosted stone columns, withering creeper vines on the walls, numerous standing sarcophagi, some kind of spinning symbol emblazoned wheel and, at the center atop a plinth, a beach ball sized glittering crystal in the classic shape, this one a solar yellow.

Naturally, both children cared far more about this than any archaeological value of the tomb, and instead went straight for the gem, Rika hopping out of the clown car in-order to snatch it up first, before holding it aloft so they could both take a look at it.

”Hey, I think Kamek has one of these, right?” Jr speculated, to which Rika nodded. It did seem similar to the alien green crystal the royal mage had on his possession.

Before they could discuss that any further however, there came an explosion which blew a hole in the wall of the temple about halfway up, briefly revealing a chamber beyond filled with other such structures haphazardly piled together. Then a the man tall figure of metal, bone and cloth peered down at them through the hole in the wall his Bonenoid minions had just blasted for him.

“Ah, I thought I heard sound coming from in here” the towering figure said as it lazily fanned the resulting dust cloud with a skeletal hand, in response to which Rika raised her free hand, waved back and called out”Hello! Who are you?”

“My name is Unsigned, and you have something I have been seeking for quite some time” the figure replied, before pointing a finger at the jewel in her hand and demanding she “give me the power stone”

”Huh?” Rika replied, cocking her head to confusion for a moment, before clutching the jewel to her chest and responding passionately that ”No, it's my treasure!”

”Yeah! Finders keepers, losers weepers!” her brother jeered, and then blew a raspberry up at Unsigned for good measure.

“I see” the undead being responded evenly, before just as evenly adding “then perish” as he quick drew the oversized revolver and fired it directly at Rika’s head.

The shot bounced off Rika’s spartan shield, but the hit was enough to prompt the stone to fly out of her hand at unnatural speed, launching straight up towards Unsigned, who snatched it out of the air with glee.

”Hey! You give that back!” Rika demanded, not particularly phased by the shot that could have been lethal without her sci-fi protections it seemed, though her brother certainly was.

“I don’t think I shall” the Unsigned responded before with a wave of his revolver at them dismissively and commanding his “Bonenoids” to “deal with the children”, sending his minions pouring in through the gap in the wall to do battle with the siblings while he raised and admired the power stone while the carnage commenced below.

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

wordcount: 1,573 (+3)
Bowser Jr: Level 14 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(207/140)
Rika: Level 10 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(126/100)
Midna: level 9 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (193/100)
Edward Portsmith: Level 4 ///////////////////////////////// (4/40)
Location: The Dead Zone

Despite acting to distract the Quad BT, the princess managed to be one of if not the first to clear its goop zone. This was because, once she and her Legion started getting to the buildings rising and sinking in the slime, she decided to skip ahead, slipping into the shadows and then simply hopping from one spot of shelter to another, the entire world her twilight domain thanks to the clouds above.

This ended once she got to the end of course, and zombie building filled tar gave way to blasted empty wasteland, because the tree that was just beyond it hardly made for good cover. Great chunks of it sloughing off and crashing down to splatter on anything unfortunate enough to be beneath them saw to that.

So she herself saw to dealing with that.

She whipped a cloak off her back, which expanded larger and larger till it formed a protective dome of magic, providing thirty seconds of safety against the rain of water and flesh alike. Just in time, too, as a moment later Edward came crashing out of the top floor of one of the skyscrapers that was still in the process of rising (having landed in it when it was lower), shield flaring in the rain, and Quad BT leaping full on out of the top of the structure after him, like a cat pouncing after a pigeon.

Despite how that battle of prey and predator often went, however, the Dreadnaught narrowly managed to swoop out of the way of the beast, which went splashing down into the muck below (unharmed of course) while he glided down to safety within the Giant’s shroud, boots digging furrows in the growing dying soil as he killed his momentum.

Raw speed had ment both of them had gotten out of the mess mostly unscathed, particularly because they’d mainly suffered aging to replaceable scales and wings, but that didn’t mean they were done being involved in it. Minda shadow hopped back in, a phantom in the walls calling out and flickering in and out of the shadows to distract the Quad BT, while Edward summoned and sent out disposable copper golems marching into the jaws of the beast to get torn apart by it, the magic-constructs leaving nothing behind to be eaten.

The troop kids arrived last of all, their land swimming whale steed with its Goldlewis’ provided rainshield making it effortless to avoid the environment hazards, and yet also making them a big target for the Quad BT, resulting in lots of cat and mousing to keep ahead of the beast. Not to mention it being most obstructed by the buildings due to having to go around them.

The conclusion to that almost ended in tragedy, but instead ended with Jr cheering ”Way to go! That was so cool!” when Goldlewis got clear from the danger he’d already bailed them out of in an incredibly dramatic faction.

Rika meanwhile was, while also pleased everyone was good, just a little upset about her whale biting the dust. That one had lasted quite a while after all, even if it was entirely replaceable, though doing so would be a (literal) pain.

With the shroud above timing out, and the threat of flesh and flood returning, there was certainly a need for that unfortunately, and so from the soil there burst a fresh whale, forged from a sacrifice of blood from the princess. Fortunately, with magic back on the menu, so to was access to the Avenger’s armory, and so with a retrieved paintbrush acting as a catalyst for his magic, her brother swiftly saw to her wounds while the new whale’s guns and fireball breath started to hammer the wall of the tower along with the others.

Edward needed a little prep to start helping, but when it came to breaching walls of dark towers, he did have the perfect tool for the job, after a bit of chanting at least: ”From the forge comes thunderous justice. Magic bound in steel by mortal hands and directed against those who would use the same to claim to be gods. Hear the people’s roar against false divinity, and watch as it breaks their monsters, breaks their walls and breaks their spirits till all worlds have had their darkness burned away, and the guns at last can fall silent”

Edward Level up

Power: Magelock Cannon (tier 3 unit): Magitech engineering’s solution to building a maglock too big for someone to carry, which is to turn the weapon into a self propelled gun. This large cannon fires not cannon balls, but instead magical rounds that, upon impact, denote in such a way as to create a linear shockwave three soldiers wide that will pulse forwards, potentially devastating six entire ranks of enemy soldiers should they be so tightly packed. It is also capable of moving, anchoring itself (which takes 5 seconds), aiming, firing and reloading (over 5 seconds) entirely independent of a crew due to being a magical construct.

Defensively, it sports typical construct stats: highly reinforced vs physical ranged, decent armor vs physical melee, very little resistance vs magic, and a weakness to electric attacks.

”It’s wording could do with some amendments, I was quite irrational angry when I wrote this, but I am still more than happy with the results” he said, as the three full sized cannons he’d just forged from thin air stabbed spikes into the ground to stabilize themselves, before promptly drowning out everything else as a triple barrage of magi-tech firepower went crashing into the tower’s walls.

This was much to the displeasure of the baby strapped to his chest, the Dreadnought having not really had time or know-how to help sooth poor baby Mario. So he stepped away from the guns, which were able to keep blasting away every 5 seconds without his input, and set about passing off the problem to someone else.

To be fair though, it would be very much for the best.

”Miss Sandalphon, are you able to evacuate the infants from the field with the teleportation skill you just used? The magic linking to the armory would be rather detrimental to their health unfortunately, so you are, I believe, our best shot at getting them out of harm's way” he enquired as they worked at breaching the tower.

While others hammered at the walls, Minda, who had had plenty of fun messing with the BT and didn’t have much frustration to work out, instead geared up in preparation for a fight, and then made sure to be one of the first into the breach, doing so with stamina and mana to spare.

Shield in one hand, lance in another, a razor sharp fan in a third, and riding atop her Beast Legion, she charged forwards to meet the defenders that would surely be rallying to the tower’s defence, and instead ran right into a warzone consisting of undead meat monsters battling insectile demons.

”Just like in the dreams” Minda laughed as she was struck by deja vu for situations just like this from her half remembered time as a warlady of the deadzone.

Naturally, both sides were displeased with a third one entering the battle, but only the floodfested had the numbers to really pivot and come try and take a bite out of them. So Midna made sure to strike first, careening forwards towards their lines before her Beast legion leapt, claws slashing down onto a infested charger, using it as a stepping stone to leap again and let Minda deliver a lance strike straight through the skull of an ancient healer that she’d identified as the source of some kind of buffing aura that died alongside it.

She and her beast then landed among the horde, but she didn’t seem concerned.

”Alright, who’s next? All of you? Suit yourselves!”

She flicked the fan, using it as a casting implement, summoning four spectral Poes who then began swirling around her bodies ghosting through her foes, stealing the life from the masses while and granting it to their mistress she started to snuff out the foes lives more directly. Her shadow hand crashed down, her minions arose as titans to annihilate swaths of the sickness, all the while lance and fan struck down more powerful foes and her shield, armor and untouchable steed kept her, at least somewhat, safe from harm.

Behind her, Rika, Jr and Edward all took a more supportive role in the form of ranged bombardment.

Maglock cannons sang out every five seconds, launched over the heads of the melee fighters towards packs of infested charging towards them, blasting them apart before they could even take part in the battle, while Edaward himself did his best to snipe priority targets with the Therian Viral Rifle, or to heal allies using either it or his feather staff striker.

Rika’s whale did most of her blasting, while the princess focusing on saving ammunition for latter fights by sending out shocker swarms from her hangers to zap their foes, or, when they got closer, lashing out with the Red Baron flying blades, delivering slashing claw strikes or skewering stabs barrages from within the safety of Sectonia’s aoe doom field. Finally, she also found another use for her Vespikan Ichor Queen striker, which could stab its giant blade into the ground to cause large patches of the tree’s biological floors to reach up, trying to grab the reanimated corpses in order to drag them back into the ground where they belonged.

Jr had Peeka and Mimi do his blasting for him, electroballs and plasma bolts peppering the enemy, while he first focused on setting up defenses, painting flaming goop and scattering iron marbles around their firing position. Once that was set up, he switched to providing healing support, throwing out Cures and Esuras to help heal and cleanse the melee fighters whenever they took hits or debuffs.