Member
DracoLunaris
AlmostEternity
BunniesOfDoom
TokyoPewPew
Drifting Pollen
Massasauga
Dragonydas
Morgannis
Xaltwind
CitrusArmsMs Fortune
Location: Smash City Alcamoth
Level 9 Nadia (53/90)
Koopa Troop’s @DracoLunaris, Blazermate and Susie’s @Archmage MC, Geralt’s @MULTI_MEDIA_MAN, Ace Cadet and Pit’s @Yankee, Sakura and Karin @Zoey Boey, Rubick’s @Scarifar, Omori’s @Majoras End, Nadia Fortune
Word Count: 1864
As one might expect, everyone was just as excited to ride the unconventional lift as Bella, if not even more so. Hatty wanted to get started straight away and even jogged over to the control panel that the Seaplane Tender mentioned so that she could be the one to press the button when ready, and both Junior and Rika were right behind her. Nadia hadn’t expected to run into the two of them on the way over here, or for the little prince to jump straight into the rather one-sided race for that matter, but the more the merrier. She wonder who ultimately won between Hatty on her scooter and Junior in his clown car, but didn’t think to ask. Something much more interesting and impressive now diverted her from the pint-sized derby after all!
She joined the others on the glass platform, followed by Bella, which made six passengers total. More than enough, she figured, to take on any spooks that happened to be haunting the grand elevator, if that turned out to be an issue. Truth be told, however, she couldn’t muster complete confidence in the integrity of the glass. If disaster struck on the way up, ghost-related or not, it would take some serious work on her part to keep everyone safe. Plus, while the feral surmised that she probably could leap between these struts, she did not relish the prospect of making the climb under her own power. As even a cursory upward glance could confirm, it was a long, long, long way up.
Hatty smacked the button, and the climbing machine got to work. Its huge mechanical legs reached upward, four at a time, to grasp the next rung in the sky-high circular ladder that this elevator shaft served as. Then, while they hauled the platform up, the next set let go of the support ring beneath to reach above the current one, and the process repeated. Despite the sheer amount of force in play, the technology worked with astonishing smoothness, with barely a bump in the platform’s upward ride. Rather than cling to handrails or spread out on the floor in a desperate attempt to not be jerked and jostled around, the passengers could stand and even walk around as they pleased, though after just a couple moments the platform had ascended high enough that the view of Alcamoth’s great atrium was snuffed out by the sides of the elevator shaft. That left the six with just sheer metal walls, one another, and some rather dramatic elevator music.
Nadia couldn’t help but be hyped up a little as she listened to it, in fact. She’d worried for a little bit that this might be a slow, boring, even awkward ride, but now she was feeling amped. Unlike the cheery, inane tunes one might find in a hotel or casino, which only existed to fill dead air, this track fitted a high-stakes fight. As she stood with her arms crossed under her chest, she nodded along and tapped her foot with the beat. The glass beneath her neither rattled nor budged as she did, seemingly secure enough to ease the feral’s worries about it breaking. “Wow, I’ve never heard mew-sic like this,” she said. “It’s weird. I can hear voices, and…violin, maybe? But I don’t recognize most of the instruments at all.” A total stranger to electronic music, she tilted her head, then smiled. “Still, kinda intense, nyeah? Make me wanna move my feet!”
“It is new to me as well, mon amie,” Bella admitted. “You say it makes you want to dance?”
“Dance?” Nadia shrugged, laughing, “Nah, I dunno. Maybe I’m just hopped up from my fight with Susie still.” She looked up, wondering how long this climb would take even at this pretty decent speed. Judging by the rate at which the light at the shaft’s tippity-top was getting closer, it would be a while. “Since we’re waitin’, though, maybe we could do somethin’. Just to kill the time, y’know.”
Suddenly a lightbulb went off over her head, and her ears stood straight up. “Oh! We could do some trainin’! Not you Bella, I mean, unless you want to of course, but for the rest of us. Check this out!”
The feral jumped into a fighting stance, bouncing back and forth as she channeled blood into her arms, increasing the pressure in her veins. “It hit me yesterday, I’m a short-range fighter, right? If I’m gonna mess someone up, I gotta get up close and purr-sonal to start slashin’ and bashin’. But after fusin’ with the Oceanid, it wondered: what if I could punch from a long way off?”
Abruptly she threw a big right hook, detaching her forearm except for the stretchy muscle fiber and blasting out pent-up blood from the back. Her punch shot across the rising arena, ran out of steam, and dove down to bounce off the floor. Then, with just a flick of her arm, Nadia snapped the forearm back. It retracted and slapped right into place with a small spurt of vital fluid, and the cat burglar flexed her fingers. “It’s like a rocket punch! The only issue is, I don’t have any practice aimin’ it. Cool, right?”
She looked around at the others. “So I can work on that, if anyone can help me with targets. Course, I can return the favor. Here!” With a flourish she summoned a squad of copycats. “You can practice with these! I can sorta control ‘em, so if there’s somethin’ ya wanna work on, I’m all ears! Just make sure that you don’t spill any blood over the sides, ‘cause I need that back.” She offered an encouraging smile to the team’s newest member. “I ‘specially wanna see what you can do, Omori! You’re gonna be havin’ our backs out there, after all!”
With a rough plan in mind, the impromptu training session began. If her sparring match with Susie didn’t wear Nadia out, the combined effort it took to both coordinate her copycats and to do her own training certainly did. The whole setup might be a little slapdash, but she and the others applied themselves with gusto; perfection wasn’t necessary, so long as they had heart.
With everyone having fun, the time flew by, and almost before the passengers realized it the light of day shone on them once more. At long last the platform finally stopped, its spider-legs creaking to a halt as they locked in position, and the six found themselves in the middle of a large rooftop balcony beneath a cloudy, overcast sky, at the absolute pinnacle of Smash City Alcamoth.
Rather than awe, however, the first thing Nadia felt was the cold. “Ooh jeez, wasn’t expectin’ the brr-eeze.” It was windy and chilly up here, enough to make her shiver a little in her new zip-up jumpsuit. She went ahead and zipped it all the way from its usual spot below her belly button up to her neck, although that did little for her arms and legs, which quickly developed goosebumps. From the top of the elevator shaft, the rooftop extended a good ways in every direction, and it was as flat as it was empty. She half-expected to see a deck chair or two where an Alcamoth resident might lay down for some sunbathing during his time off, but she guessed this spot might just be too high-altitude. A protective railing encircled the rooftop, with glowing lines running around the base, and along with the rest of the group Nadia headed toward the edge. She could see distant mountains beyond it, but not much else, and only when she got close to the railing could the feral begin to really appreciate just how high-up she was.
Nadia’s eyes widened as she stood, frozen but for the wind playing with her ears and hair, in front of the jaw-dropping view. Not only could she see the sparkling surface of the whole Eryth Sea far, far, below, but she could take in the entirety of the spiky, protruding mountain range that encircled it on all sides like the jaws of some primeval sea beast. The thought made her shiver all the more. In the highest mountain cliffs between this basin and the Land of Adventure she could recognize the vast, spherical cutout where the End once existed, according to the stories she’d heard about the Seekers’ past exploits. The valley that housed Spiral Mountain lay not far off, and beyond that range she could take in the rolling hills and deciduous forests of the Land of Adventure itself, as far as the tinge of the atmosphere let her.
When she turned her southwestern gaze all the way around and ran across the rooftop to the other side, she got her first glimpse of the staggeringly enormous desert that lay to the north, the Sandswept Sky. Its dunes seemed to stretch on forever, at least until they met the bone-white salt plains near the ocean, or the indistinct but still-noticeable wall that ran horizontally across the region at about the one-third mark. Vast sandstorms wandered the desert, as distant and amorphous as clouds, and though she could make out few details, one thing stood out to her: across the barren wastes, an unimaginable distance away, a solitary mountain loomed, even taller than Alcamoth itself, with a peak cleft in half as if by a celestial blade, spilling out a heavenly light that piqued her curiosity.
To the east, meanwhile, lay the illimitable sea, and beyond the southern mountains one could take in a landscape cloaked in chemical miasma. No matter where one looked, tiny places of interest and other landmarks could be found, even if they were too far away to be identified. Nadia even scanned the eastern horizon to see if she could see anything beyond the waters, but the curvature of the earth hid any other continents from her sight even here.
It was so incredible that it took even the gregarious chatterbox Nadia Fortune a while to find her words. “Wow,” she said at length. “So this is the World of Light. Or…not even, just a small part of it. Can’t even see the Dead Zone, or what became of it, anyway. I mean, I’m sure my world was just as big, but I never got the chance to see it. Not like this...” She took a deep breath, leaning on the railing, and fell silent to enjoy the view.
After a couple minutes, a sudden flash off to the left caught her eyes, and the rumble of thunder soon followed. Cold, fat droplets began to fall across Alcamoth’s pinnacle, as well as the people atop it. The clouds had gotten thicker and darker, and rain fell in curtains across the land to the west. One drop splashed on Nadia’s cheek, followed shortly by a couple to her arms. In just a few moments, the rain would be here.
Alcamoth
Great Hall
“Double DOWN!”
Fueled by the furious flame of his Red Queen’s Exceed, Nero blazed down toward the cracked surface of Isabelle’s reception area in a wedge of blazing sparks and gleaming steel. Though his through was already raw from all his yelling, his hotblooded shout rang off the walls of the Great Hall that lay in the exact center of the dividing wall between the two halves of Alcamoth’s grand atrium–the hub of the whole building, where Isabelle worked as a receptionist and the last line of defense between the dome’s indoor park and the mission-critical Ark Mall. The Devil Hunter drove his blade toward his foe with everything he had, but at the last moment his target canceled himself out of the way in a purple wave of slowness, then launched upward in a riotous uppercut of explosive retribution. The burning fist slid past the Red Queen’s deadly point and into Nero’s jaw, bringing the one-sided fight to a definitive end in an explosive fashion.
“Kyrieeeeeeee!” Nero howled as he went flying, half-conscious, until with a final breathless grunt he crashed into Isabelle’s reception desk, breaking it in half. The little dog cowering beneath it barely escaped in time to avoid getting crushed herself, after which she hid behind the wreckage, her breathing erratic, unable to take her eyes off the newcomer that had just demolished his second helping of Door Bosses.
Chest heaving from exertion, Sol Badguy lowered his weapon and sighed in annoyance. “Ugh. Looks like we took out all of ‘em.”
“Yaaay!” Jack-O sang, jumping up to wrap her arms around Sol’s broad shoulders despite all her new cuts, burns, and bruises. “Nice of you to say ‘we’, but let’s be honest babe, it was mostly you! How many’s that now, ten?”
“Five and then four, so that’s nine, not countin' the rodent,” Sol grunted as he suppressed a begrudging smile. He reached up to push lightly at Jack-O to stop her nuzzling him. “And you helped, at least. Just get off me for a minute, will ya? You’re embarrassin’ the both of us.”
The bright-eyed woman just laughed. “If lovin’ you is cringe, then I don’t wanna be based!”
“...Gimme a break…”
The two fell silent as they heard the sound of clapping over from the far door. They turned to see a stylish woman in a red suit and jacket advancing toward them, an easy smile on her face and a demonic greatsword slung over her back. Her eyes roved between Chrom, Knuckles, Joe Higashi, Luigi, Wii Fit Trainer, Ghalt, Ashley, Din, and Jak & Daxter, all strewn around or out in front of the Great Hall. “Not bad!” she complimented the new arrivals. “Two whole teams weren’t enough, huh? Yeah, not bad at all. Still…” She came to a stop by the reception desk and raised her sunglasses to give a sidelong glance to Nero, who she proceeded to poke in the ribs with her forked tail. “Now the dead weight’s out of the way, we can get this party started for real.” In a flash she pulled two handguns from holsters on her back beneath the coat, which she spun in her hands. “Whatcha say?”
“Hmph.” Sol scowled at her, his breathing suddenly normal again, as Jack-O dropped down. When she circled around to stand beside him, her mask was back on. He hefted the Outrage Mk II onto his shoulder. “What a bore. If I ever see that camera girl again, we’re gonna have a nice long chat. If I wanted to bust some heads, I coulda gone anywhere.”
Dante flashed him a cocky smile. “Hey now, don’t kill the vibe before you’ve had a chance to mingle. How about a party trick?” In a snap she switched between her four main styles, ending up in Swordmaster with her huge claymore in just one hand.
“Heehee, you’re in for a treat~” When Jack-O grinned, the metal of her mask contorted to mirror her expression. She stepped forward, only for Sol to step in front of her, holding his hand out protectively. After a brief moment she nodded, and as she stepped back the round metal hobble attached to her leg grew in size. When she sat on it, it began to float, lifting Jack-O up and out of harm’s way.
“Enough talk,” Sol said, cracking his knuckles.
Behind the legendary demon hunter, Euden and Mym suddenly burst in through the door, but Dante held her own hand out to stop them. “Hold it! This dance is all mine.” She extended the Devil Sword point-first toward Sol. “Now…let’s rock!”
Radlandia
Level 10 Tora (50/110) Level 10 Poppi (50/110)
Bede’s @Crimson Flame, Tora, Poppi, Vandham
Word Count: 673
Vandham, Poppi, and Bede made their way around Radlandia keeping their eyes peeled for the artificial blade’s missing Masterpon. This turned out to be yet another task easier said than done, though, since while the town wasn’t that large all told, it offered visual clutter in spades. They passed a little koi pond for instance, in front of which a trio of four-armed, fishlike Mist Nobles played their flutes for donations from generous pedestrians. There was a little playground in a gravel lot between two houses, where a ring of dark shadows danced and jumped in an unsettling synchronized manner, as if jerked around in unison by some unseen force. In an alley full of trash cans stuffed with odd, sometimes alien gunk, some local pests made a nuisance of themselves as they scavenged for something to eat. Through the windows of one building the visitors could see an office overgrown with teeth, and various eye plants grew all over, from windowsill gardens to cracks in the sidewalk. Of Tora, however, they found no sign. Poppi asked a couple locals, including the one-footed Hearthian miner Tektite and King Onion out on a walk, but only Trowzer the snake could point them in the right direction.
Not all the oddities contented themselves with a background role, either. At one point Bede seemed to trigger a little floating critter, which turned aggro and went after him. He ran off with the beast right behind him, forcing Poppi and Vandham to give chase, but before they could catch up and dispatch the thing it blew up of its own accord. After that they ended up on a boardwalk by the sea, where they found themselves approached by the noodly black garbage worms that arose from the rocky surf in clumps in order to snatch flies and little fish. Poppi readied herself for a fight, but just in case she allowed the wiggly creatures to make the first move, and in the end they just nudged her a little, although one nearly swiped Vandham’s sickle and forced him to snatch it back. And of course, no matter where the trio went, the skateboarders tended to shoot by without warning on their bright blue tracks, which demanded an extra dose of vigilance.
The boardwalk path took the three around the edge of town, where the uncanny but still sensible rows of oddly-shaped houses with their oddly-shaped denizens gave way to a psychedelic countryside of color. Here, the sky itself seemed to become striped, singular hues dominated entire swaths of forest, bizarre creatures followed certain patterns and the pools and rivers that ran between them took on the black, starlit abyss of the night.
Despite the visual chaos, Poppi spotted Tora right away. He was being led, as if in a trance, toward the edge of a lake by an Elgyem, which beckoned him closer to a rainbow bridge that ran across the cosmic water using a series of flashing lights. What it had in mind for Tora Poppi could only guess, but she wasn’t about to let the little creep have its way. Only the interjection of a Pokemon Trainer, and the assurance that he could handle the situation, could stop her in her tracks.
When Jesse approached their picnic, Agitha, Leby, and Dib looked up in sync. While the girl mostly cared about her insect companions, it was difficult for the two siblings to hide their curiosity. While their trip to the Metro marked only their most recent interaction with the outside world, maybe the arrival of new strangers here made for something of a rare occurrence. It wasn’t too tough to tell, after all, that as a crossroads the Queen’s station was an unpopular one, seldom admitting visitors to disturb the wibbly atmosphere of Fog Canyon, the musk of the Fungal Wastes, or the crystalline quietude of the Salt Pits. The ladybugs, therefore, did not hesitate to wave hello to Jesse with their little segmented limbs.
“Hi! Welcome to the underground!” Leby greeted the parautilitarian. She assumed that by ‘reception’, Jesse meant someone to receive her, and while the station offered no personnel for such a task, Leby figured she could help. Unfortunately, Jesse’s question left her at a loss. “The…surface?”
“She means the world above!” Dib said excitedly. “That’s where people like her are from! She must mean Dirtmouth!”
Leby thought about that as rubbed her thorax, which was a little sore from sitting in the weird way that a picnic demanded. “Oh, really? Well, it should be possible, I guess. But that’s way, waaay out there, right? Hours and hours away. And even if you did get there, you’d have to climb up the Chasm somehow…”
“Never been, only heard about it,” Dib told the newcomers. “It’s really tough though. Even with all the mining equipment down there, we’ve never heard of anyone that got up. Just got word from people who stopped at Dirtmouth before coming down. Course, they might just never have wanted to come back down afterward.” He shrugged his nonexistent shoulders.
“What about you, Miss Agitha? Do you know a way up top?” Leby asked her gracious host
“I am afraid not,” the girl responded in a soft, whimsical tone. “I but wander the safer trails, making acquaintances of all the fine bugs and beasts I chance upon…”
“Well, there you have it,” Dib remarked. “Sorry that’s all we got, we mostly just stick around Bugaria, and travel sometimes. It can be dangerous around here.”
Leby offered a supportive smile. “Good luck finding your way up, though!”
True to Red’s callout, an offensive push out from the encampment couldn’t be sustained. Rather than try to push through the persistent gunfire of the entrenched Shrikes, the survivors of the initial ambush and the first responders fled back inside the compound, thanks to the rangers’ suppressive fire and the shieldbearers’ defenses. Once the defenders got inside and locked up tight, the attackers’ vicious ambush would become a far more disadvantageous siege, turning the tides in favor of the fortified defenders. Sensing their prey’s imminent escape into the safety of their base the Root pushed forward toward the main gate in force. The Shrikes vaulted over their cover to chase down the men and women on the run, their arcane weapons ablaze with crimson gunfire. Under the barrage Ren Si and Brigitte found themselves locked down, unable to do anything except back toward the door. An allied archer, one of the last fighters still outside, leaped up from her foxhole to make a mad dash for safety, but four Shrikes turned their sights on her and lit her up in a volley of three-round bursts.
“Thorn!” Brigitte exclaimed, breaking formation to hurl an armor pack the archer’s way. It went slightly wide, but Thorn dove for it, which meant more shots that wiped out the extra protection a mere moment after she gained it. Brigitte, meanwhile, only lowered her shield for a moment, but it was enough to lose about a third of her life from the other Shrikes still closing in. When she popped it back out, it took only another couple seconds for it to turn red and cracked. “Gragh!” she snarled, gritting her teeth. “We have to help her!”
“That barrier won’t take much more!” came a sharp, nasally voice. The would-be captain of the doomed expeditionary force, Tinker stepped out from behind her to burn through the chest of the closest Shrike with his arsenal’s laser, then launched a trio of heat-seeking missile to dissuade two others. “We need to get inside, and close the doors, before they overwhelm us!”
“Then move!” Ren Si grunted. “Both of you, now! My shield will hold!”
“But…!” As she watched Thorn succumb to the onslaught, Brigitte’s heart filled with rage. “Damn it, fine!”
Tinker turned tail to run through the doors along with three other survivors (Blackpaw, Deadeye, Dobbin) while the shieldbearers backed up as fast as they could. Before they could get through, however, the Shaman set off another concussive explosion of lung-withering, wine-colored vapor right in the middle of the gateway. In one stroke the monster finished off Blackpaw, blew Dobbin into the defenders’ backs, blasted the others inside, and blocked the defenders from entering with a guarantee of a crippling Root Rot infection. “We’re cut off!” Ren Si roared, girding himself as the Shrikes swarmed closer.
On the inside, Wonder Red’s unite morph put one hell of a dampener on the Root Hulk’s rampage, hurling it back the way it came with a couple Rippers pinned behind it. Still, that left a squad of five Rippers inside, and they spread out to take on the five outlaws that moved in to cover the priest August while he healed the Lawbringer. The Ripper that scored a headshot on the blonde-haired gunslinger, dropping her instantly, quickly proved that they weren’t to be taken lightly. But with the Scout, Sander, Wonder Red, and the electric artillery of the antlions backing the remaining outlaws up, the Root went down without confirming another kill, even if they did land a couple painful parting shots.
By then the Hulk burst back through the wall once more, this time practically demolishing the whole section of it. With the Ripper shock troops out of the way, a dozen dual-wielding Ash Devils pushed in after it, hurling their hardwood axes and cleavers as they rushed into melee range on tentacle roots.
The Scout looked between the wave of fresh enemies and the train station, wondering if he could make a run for it, but Red’s outcry steadied him. “Bloody hell, you all’d better thank me for this!” He switched to his jury-rigged boomstick, then pulled out his grappling hook. “I’ll flank the buggers!”
While the others dealt with the Root head on, he zipped toward the breach in the wall, where he dropped his last slowdown grenade before he began a bold strafing run. He sprinted behind the monsters’ ranks, unleashing blast after blast into the Ash Devil’s unguarded backs, which staggered and in some cases even killed them in a spray of shrieking splinters. Finally, he slid his treasured pickaxe from its strap and jumped to land a cracking Power Attack on the Hulk’s back. The monster turned to strike at the annoyance, only for the intrepid dwarf to grapple away, giving Red, Sander, and the two remaining outlaws -that being the pink-eyed robot and the glass-jawed adventurer- the chance to finish off the monster for good.
Back at the front, the dramatic entrance of Queen Sectonia turned the disaster there on its head. The sudden advent of a giant time-space rift in front of the main gate wiped out the six or seven Shrikes clustered around the defenders in one devastating stroke, leaving the stunned shieldbearers and poor Dobbin totally unharmed. That left another six spread out around the gatefront along with the Shaman, all of which immediately rushed back toward cover to resume the gunfight, shooting up at Sectonia as they did. The Shaman readied its staff to blast the insect queen out of the sky with another burst of Root Rot, but as it did a grenade landed at its feet. It turned toward the source to see the sniper it blew up earlier, afflicted and coughing but very much alive. “...Gotcha,” she sneered, and the grenade went off in a vortex of void energy that ripped the Shaman apart.
Not too long after, the battle was decided, furious but brief as it was. Though eleven casualties occurred on the part of the defenders (three in the initial ambush and the rest in the fight) and for a few desperate moments it looked as if they would be deprived of their tanks and overrun on two fronts, the quick thinking and cooperation of the ‘good guys’ plus the help of the newest arrivals turned the tides on the Root. The worst-injured and rot-infected went to the medical tent for treatment, while the others gathered in the middle of the compound, licking their wounds. “That went a lot worse than usual,” Sander bemoaned, wincing as a healer applied a potion-soaked poultice to his axe wound. “Grr. These ones weren’t just clever, they were organized. We’ll need to get that breach fixed ASAP, and shore up our defenses. More patrols, more firepower. This clearly isn’t some casual staging ground for looters and levelers any longer…”
Sectonia, Red, and the Scout did not get any particular recognition for the efforts other than some praise -and a couple complaints- from those they fought alongside, since they were just random adventurers off the train like anyone else, but they did get access to the outpost’s supply of munitions and remedies to restock with. Once things seemed to have settled down, they could return to the train station at their leisure.
