Lugubrious

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

@Lugubrious

I'd love to join back in this RP, if you don't mind having me join of course.

@Eviledd1984

Hey there Ed, long time no see! I'd be happy to have you back. Do you think you'd want to rejoin as the Doom Slayer, or pick another character?

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

The Qliphoth - the Final Hollow

Lvl 14 Ms Fortune (159/140) Lvl 9 Goldlewis (100/90) Lvl 4 Grimm (23/40)
Midna, Junior, Rika & Edward’s @DracoLunaris Blazermate, Sectonia & Roland’s @Archmage MC Geralt, Zenkichi & Edelgard’s @MULTI_MEDIA_MAN Ace Cadet, Pit, Primrose & Therion’s @Yankee Juri’s @Zoey Boey Roxas, Ganondorf, & Captain Falcon’s @Double
Word Count: 2203 (+3x2)

In a show of primeval, reptilian savagery, the Nile Crocodiles seized, then pulled both Junior and Blazermate beneath the stagnant water of O’s newly-constructed swamp. While the limited number of predators spared Rika from the creatures’ deadly jaws, she was forced to immerse herself anyway in order to save her brother from a grisly fate in the muck. Confident in his killing machines’ fearsome natural abilities, and in the complete inability of Pit’s light arrows to harm him, O contented himself with watching the Seekers struggle. With the more theatrical persona that he assumed prior the start of the battle long since replaced by a more stoic, taciturn one, he allowed himself only an invisible smirk, but even that evaporated when he saw Junior bob to the dirty water’s surface. He couldn’t guess what happened down there in the murk, but if one of them could break free from his crocodilian deathtrap, their collective odds of survival might be better than O had hoped.

Worse still, Blazermate dragged herself out of the swamp at about the same time, her mangled leg by no means a death sentence. Her uncannily quick return alongside a man that O could only assume was her striker meant that she could defend her zombie hippo from the flood, at least long enough to mutate the blasted thing into a makeshift bomb and send it flying toward D’s throne. O wasn’t terribly concerned about his fellow Consul, but after a quick look over at the Observation Tower confirmed that none of his other targets had been fatally crushed or lacerated, O realized that he needed to redouble his efforts.

Growling beneath his breath, O turned his attention back to his exhibit with new schemes in mind, only to find both Koopa Kids alive and plotting against him. His disembodied eyes widened as he realized that his earlier comment had given the two a vital clue. “Oh, no you don’t!” he snarled as the two started to wreak havoc on his wetlands, only to be taken aback when the Gravemind interceded with a massive tentacle slam. He detested the damage done to his exhibit, of course, but the idea of that overgrown mass butting in his business appalled him even more. “Stay in your lane, parasite!” he barked. O was not distracted for long, but by the time he went to try and counteract the Seekers’ vandalism, he found himself beset by flashy fireflies and a very bothersome Flutter Mane. “Gah!” He spat, squinting. “Out of my way!”

His eyes took flight, rotating around his exhibit until they floated opposite the Gravemind, a good distance from that interfering Pokemon. “Right. Let’s try this again.” As quickly as he could, O began to sell his previous creations. They disappeared in quick succession, accompanied by the repeated ring of a cash register. While damaged stuff sold for a lot less, especially the felled Observation Tower, he still managed to recoup some of his losses. “Waste not, want not.” After that, O started anew. His targets had proved unexpectedly capable around water, but what about ice? A new, larger enclosure with solid concrete walls. Wetlands terrain and Qliphoth floor alike gave way to snow, gray boulders, and huge slabs of ice. Camouflaged cooling machines appeared around the enclosure, and the ambient temperature plummeted. After a moment, three polar bears popped into existence, the enormous and powerful creatures ready to make mincemeat of Pit, Junior, and Rika. If that brat thought he could rely on his paint gimmick in temperatures like these, he’d have another think coming!

O’s next course of action was less immediately obvious. With Zenkichi, Geralt, Edelgard, Primrose, and Midna all gravitating toward other fights, he could not target anyone else without endangering the Gravemind or his fellow Consuls, which he knew would have dire repercussions for himself. As he looked around, though, the sight of an unwary target allowed him to hatch a plan. He just needed to wait for the right moment…

Over at the Gravemind’s base, Consul D had his hands full. After dispatching Ms Fortune, he went toe-to-toe with several Seekers in quick succession. Even with Blazermate’s interference the Consul managed to keep Roland at bay, but Geralt stepped in the moment D pushed the Fixer back. Their furious but brief exchange proved inconclusive, since an unexpected lightning surge interrupted D’s attempt to capitalize on his fire barrage. Rather than rush back in for more, Geralt passed the baton to Roxas, covering him with arrows from Odysseus’s Bow. The cyclone of bats helped throw off the Witcher’s fire support, but between the arrows and the strange virtual cubes conjured by Roxas they wouldn’t last forever. With other Seekers on either side attacking the Gravemind and Roland about to return, things were certainly heating up. He held up his cape to mitigate Kayano’s geyser, then curled his lip. “Fools. You haven’t seen anything yet!”

His double meaning became clear as the sorcerous beam he cast upward bore its foul fruit. His Dominus Hatred descended in seven rays of dark magic, all a vivid and odious green. Two each fell from the sky atop Roland and Roxas, and three for Geralt, each one a mere split second after the last. D snapped his fingers and the rest of his bats flew forth to mob his opponents, weak but persistent, and while they dealt with those nuisances he got to work. First, he summoned two black wolves to stand guard by him and lunge for Roxas should he teleport in again. Then the Consul brought down a rain of meteors to bombard the whole area before him with the three Seekers inside. The fiery fusillade left the ground pitted and burning, each crater filled with boiling blood from his moat. This was D’s dominion, and he would not allow his challengers to forget it.

With his arsenal of pyromancy, hemomancy, summons, and shapeshifting, D quickly proved himself capable of fending off all three at once. His magic could come from just about any angle, while D himself remained frustratingly elusive, never allowing himself to be backed into a corner. He took his fair share of blows, but managed to withstand them, while it took only a couple blows from him to suppress a fighter for a few moments. After about thirty seconds of back-and-forth, though, the arrival of reinforcements prompted D to return to his throne. He scowled at Juri and Ms Fortune, putting together what must have happened to his newest thrall while he’d been otherwise engaged. His retreat gave the boys a chance to regroup, and Nadia slid to a stop between Geralt and Roland with a smile. If D had reached a stalemate with three Seekers, he might be in for a bad time against five. “Why the long face, Consul? Thought I’d be your damsel in D-stress?”

The vampire wrinkled his nose. “More lambs to the slaughter. Shall I rise to the occasion, then?” He lifted up his hand, and red infinity symbols shone in his eyes as an aura of dark magic surrounded him. “Death! Where is your sting!?” At his command, the darkness within his cape seemed to flow out, coalescing in his hand in the shape of an elaborate scythe. D rested it on his shoulder, as the blade ignited, he beckoned the five Seekers toward him. “Come then, ashes! I shall snuff you out for good!”

On the other hand, the five who’d gathered to take on A had achieved some sort of victory. Mounting stress made their heads pound, their skin crawl, and their vision swim as their bodies began to rebel against their circumstances, but with the defeat of five Imperfect Reflections total, the Consul’s replication seemed to come to an end. His amorphous remains lay in heaps on the floor before Ganondorf, Captain Falcon, Therion, Goldlewis, and Edward, long enough for the veteran to recover from his stun, but no longer. The meat abruptly knit itself together into the shape of the Consul, half again as large as before, doubled over and on his knees. ”...Great adversity has a beauty - it is the fire that tempers.” He smacked a closed fist against the ground, then rose to his feet in an instant. Red lemniscates blazed in his eyes. ”The flesh is fluid, it can be changed, reshaped, remade!”

Three concentric rings of Absolute Nothingness, each five feet in across, expanded outward from A for a total of fifteen feet. No matter how the Seekers or their minions tried, they could not enter the Nothingness to attack their target; only A could move -or be moved- into and displace Nothingness, with the ring he just left becoming Nothingness in turn. Before his opponents could quite wrap their heads around the new phenomenon, the armored overlord cast Embrace Futility. In addition to doing a little damage, shuffling his challengers’ positions, and debuffing their damage, it piled on even more stress (+18) as the darkness seemed to close in. ”The abyss returns even the boldest gaze!”

Compared to the Consuls, the colossal Gravemind was getting the worst of it. Those who shirked the struggle against O converged on the easier target instead, and the awesome Twilight Rites of Termination pulled off by Midna and Primrose was their call to arms. Narrowly missing Grimm on the way, the giant dark magic spear impaled the mountain of undead biomass and granted everyone in range extra crit rate. Ace, Grimm, and Sectonia renewed their efforts despite the extra hazards coughed up by the Gravemind. When Edelgard and Zenkichi arrived, they joined the pitched battle with gusto. Primrose and Midna ran in soon after, and together the seven piled on the damage. The alien amalgamate had a literal mountain of HP to chew through, but together the seven could put out a huge amount of damage per second, especially with the Gravemind perpetually on fire thanks to Edward’s enchantment and Grimm’s passive. With Edelgard and Primrose’s flames in the mix as well, whether or not they inflicted damage over time, the Gravemind was enough of an inferno to bathe the whole arena in firelight. A thousand voices seethed as it burned. ”YOU WILL BE SILENT IN MY GRAVE!”

The Gravemind did not suffer such transgressions idly, however. It did its utmost to crush the Seekers with its great tentacles, smashing and slamming around its base. ”STRIP THE BONES, BEGIN MY FEAST!” Floodfested continuously detached from the whole to grapple and injure its foes, while normal-sized limbs sprouted or stretched out from the body to strike back. When attacked, its body would sometimes develop jagged fangs, explosive cysts, or other such defensive measures to make the offenders hurt themselves. An easy target the Gravemind might be, but there was no such thing as a free lunch, and the Seekers would have to fight for every inch of progress carved into the gargantuan corpse. ”I WILL ASK, AND YOU WILL ANSWER”

After seeing what Primrose and Midna managed to pull off together, Sectonia would not be outdone. Leveraging the power of the Radiance, she’d already been quite the thorn in the Gravemind’s side so far, drawing its ire but staying one step ahead with elusive hit-and-run tactics. Once the others joined in, though, she decided to pull off an even bigger show-stopper to demonstrate the Queen of Floralia’s supremacy. Even after a rogue Deimos Drone blindsided her and disrupted her Chaos Shield, she darted in close enough to unleash her Reaper’s Scythe, then warped to safety. Ghostly chains surrounded the Gravemind, and a second and a half later, the scythe descended like a deathly guillotine. The Gravemind howled as one of its four tentacles was severed and fell to the floor, necrotizing much faster than normal. Desperate for catharsis after her horrid time this morning, Sectonia relished the moment.

There. While Sectonia admired her handiwork, O hastened to build off the careful foundations he’d laid. Sectonia would only hear a metallic screech, then turn to see a burgundy roller coaster track assembling itself section by section with impossible speed, the coaster itself not far behind. The track itself zoomed past her, but the coaster slammed into her the next instant, sending the big bug flying. Guided by O, the track snaked back around through the air to intercept Sectonia’s path so that the coaster would smash her once more. Again and again the coaster careened into her, knocked her away, then caught her again, until finally the track arced up in a loop and plowed downward into Sectonia from above. It carried her straight down with it until she slammed into the floor, and when the coaster descended the next moment, the impact was enough to trigger Ace’s Palico Rescue. Sectonia would reappear aboard the Avenger, restored but out of the fight.

O cackled as he sold his twisted coaster, ready to do some more damage. “Ignore me, will you?” he taunted the Seekers. “It’ll be your last mistake!”

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

The Qliphoth - Vs the Gravemind

Lvl 14 Ms Fortune (139/140) Lvl 9 Goldlewis (88/90) Lvl 4 Grimm (11/40)
Midna, Junior, Rika & Edward’s @DracoLunaris Blazermate, Sectonia & Roland’s @Archmage MC Geralt, Zenkichi & Edelgard’s @MULTI_MEDIA_MAN Ace Cadet, Pit, Primrose & Therion’s @Yankee Juri’s @Zoey Boey Roxas, Ganondorf, & Captain Falcon’s @Double
Word Count: 2993 (+3x2)

For a moment after the Gravemind’s prophetic cry reverberated through the arena, the twenty-one remaining Seekers stood by in battle-ready formation. Confronted by not one but three Consuls, with A in particular of especially ill repute, and dwarfed by the newly-assembled undead colossus that loomed at the Consuls’ back, they had precious little time to put together a strategy. Still, while some members of the team could be trusted to courageously push forward and take on these serious threats, others could be relied on to enact a speedy opening gambit.

Blazermate started out on overheal duty, of course, but keeping so many allies topped up would be a full-time job by itself, so once the action began her bonus HP would quickly decay. The same couldn’t be said for the support coming from Goldlewis, who hung back alongside Roxas, Midna, and Primrose to buff up the whole team. His buffs came out much faster than the ladies’ Sealticge-spread Dragon Dance, though. With a slam of his coffin he unleashed his Shield Burst, which enshrouded every Seeker in a thin energy barrier atop their health pools that would offer better protection to his flimsier friends than his heartier ones. Thanks to Hypereutectoid, it also gave them a short-lived damage boost. In return Goldlewis gratefully received Tailwind from Roxas. In a fight like this, speed would be everything.

Then it was off to the races. From his aerial vantage point Consul O broke the ice with a barrage of near-instant construction, enclosing and then terraforming a section of the arena with several Seekers inside. Overhead, Sectonia flew forth to unleash her magic and pent-up frustration, with Blazermate at her back to make her rampage one to remember, and Pit joined the fusillade with some light arrows. Therion and Grimm peeled off from the main group to avoid the enemies’ line of fire, while Roland and Nadia charged dead ahead, the former’s stoic frown and the latter’s upbeat smile indelible as their courage propelled them onward.

Tactical as ever, Goldlewis waited just a moment to engage. He quickly observed that Junior and Rika’s could not seem to land any attacks against O’s eyes, so given that plus the nascent hippopotamus exhibit, the veteran veered toward the right–toward Moebius A and his doppelgangers, who stood four abreast with a quietly menacing air about them. Goldlewis knew that there must be a lot more going on with A than met the eye, but the sight of Therion’s Junicorn spearing one of them reinforced his decision. His efforts would be better spent fighting someone he could actually hit. So as Sectonia’s deadly lightshow went off overhead, Goldlewis hustled toward the one-man quartet, keeping his eyes peeled for any interference on the way. Sure enough, the Gravemind took action to put a stop to Midna and Primrose’s buffs, and Goldlewis managed to dive forward just before the amalgamate’s mammoth tentacle slammed down. He landed with a roll and glanced up at the Gravemind, his breathing already heavy, but it had already shifted its focus toward Sectonia, so he set his sights on A once more.

Coffin at the ready, he rose and charged across the last hundred or so feet alongside Falcon and Ganondorf. A and his copies turned their way without acting, which made Goldlewis wary of a trap, but the big man couldn’t afford his foe too much respect just yet. Ganondorf acted first with a throw of his trident that whirled through the whole group, crackling with heavy voltage. Then the Warlord hurtled his weapon forward to impale an unlucky copy and reel him in, just in time to collide with Falcon’s fiery kick.

Goldlewis charged past the scuffle, trusting the Captain to put in the legwork while he went after the other three. Though softened up by the lightning and Moblin arrows, the other copies still weren’t counterattacking. Well, that suited Goldlewis just fine. “Hmph!” He grunted, gripping his coffin with one hand and its chain in the other. “Gimme an inch…!” He wheeled around, his strength and momentum brought to bear in a terrific Behemoth Typhoon. “And I’ll take a mile!” The massive flail smashed through the group. Goldlewis felt as much as he heard the bones breaking and the flesh yielding beneath his weapon’s weight, but even as the huge blow rearranged them, the copies did not falter. They simply stood, eyes dark, limbs bent strangely and cavities caved in, and a note of instinctive horror galvanized Goldlewis into action.

“Rrrrrrragh! Crumble!” He continued his onslaught with two more Behemoth Typhoons, his efforts focused down to just the two nearest copies. The final Typhoon was a mighty overhead, and when it slammed down onto his targets, it reduced them to a pinkish pulp of twisted flesh and armor. Revolted, Goldlewis stepped back, pulling his coffin free from the slurry. “Yuck! Well, whatever they are, at least these things go down easy!” Only then, though, did he notice that the pulp on his coffin was still quivering–still blinking.

He looked back at the last A copy as he pulsed with an uncanny green light. “Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer,” he intoned as Time Heals All knit his bubbling flesh and armor back together, almost perfectly recreating the Consul’s form. At the same time, three more copies sprouted up from the ground. One of the new bodies seemed to fluctuate, however, as if unable to hold itself together, and after a moment it split apart in horrific fashion Two half-heads crowned a mass of pink flesh and beady black eyes that could no longer sustain the illusion. Goldlewis gaped, aghast at the awful sight. “You think to strike me down?” the four chorused, the Imperfect Copy’s voice alarmingly distorted. “Foolish scion…we are the same!”

For a woeful second, the four looked different, appearing as nightmarish masses of eldritch flesh. And in that brief moment, it almost looked to the nearby Seekers as if everything -from the walls to their allies to their very own bodies- were similarly constituted, not themselves as they thought they knew, but what they’d deluded themselves into thinking they weren’t. In an instant the vision passed, but something in Goldlewis and the others had been shaken. Their lungs constricted and their skin crawled as Stress began to mount.

“What in the goddamn hell!?” Goldlewis backdashed on impulse, then dropped his coffin to pull out the Skyfish. After such a horrific vision, a cleansing by fire felt only appropriate. Three of the copies were back to normal, but the imperfect one remained as it was, and the veteran loathed the sight of it, “Shut up and DIE!” he bellowed over the roar of his gun.

In the middle of the arena, Nadia and Roland had their own problems. The feral quickly saw the truth in Midna’s words as D unleashed a barrage of flame from the comfort of his chair. While Roland tried to fend off the fire magic, Nadia focused on evasion. Even if she could suffer Vaporize reactions any more, she wasn’t going to get burned as long as she had anything to say about it. Using Fluffy Soft on her lower half, she wove through the fiery fusillade on digitigrade tiger legs. Her focus was such that she scarcely noticed Sectonia’s magic rebounding off the Gravemind overhead, Roland on the back foot for that matter, or Juri circling around. As D brought down the storm of blood that forced Roland away, Nadia leaped in over the blood moat with only a few fresh crimson streaks sliced into her clothes and skin. “Blood and fire?” she muttered, noting both D’s unusual combination of powers and the fact that she’d been separated from the others by the storm. Faced with D’s nonplussed stare, she flashed him a toothy grin. “To get that blood like that, you must really suck!”

D narrowed his eyes and thrust out his hand. Dozens of bats burst from the shadows within his cape and swarmed Nadia in an instant. For a moment she managed to hold her own with a wild flurry of claw swipes, but the second the feral started blocking it was over for her. The torrent of blockstun pushed her backward and into the blood moat with a splash. Without Massachusetts’ rigging around to buoy her up, she could do little but flounder until the bats subsided.

At that point, Juri rushed in from the side, her already-impressive speed amped way up by her allies. D turned his irate gaze her way, then cast his hand at the incoming assassin dismissively. A second salvo of bats fluttered forth, but Juri’s headlong sprint low-profiled the squeaking vermin as she darted in, her revved-up ghoulsaw practically scraping the ground. With only a second to spare, D flicked his hand upward as if beckoning, and from within his cape a black-furred, red-eyed wolf lunged at Juri. Her sawblade carved it apart in D’s place, but the martial artist followed up just as quickly with a vicious sideswipe at his legs. Edward’s Searing Weapons left the wound ablaze as blood sprayed, adding insult to injury and eliciting an annoyed grunt from D. As Juri rushed along D turned the blood of wolf and Consul alike into a dozen crimson needles that shot after her.

Just as Juri disengaged, Roxas showed up to flank D with a surprise attack. While the Consul possessed a hardy constitution and did not need to fret over every last blow, his ego compelled him to demonstrate that his challengers attacks were futile–especially those from a snot-nosed brat. What followed was a heated but inconclusive exchange as the two evaded one another repeatedly. Though D’s experience and reflexes allowed him to snatch Roxas from the air, the count thought a soak in his blood storm was letting Roxas off lightly, considering that he’d been forced to rise to his feet already..

As Roxas sailed over the blood moat, Nadia burst from it, took aim with her newly-drawn pistols, and opened fire. D summoned another black wolf to hound her, but she dodged the beast with a sideways aerial cartwheel, shooting while upside-down. “Nya ha!” On landing, she twisted around to blast D with both guns at once, then dropped them and blitzed forward with an electric Charge. “Dis-zap-pear!” She appeared right in front of him and lashed out with a Fluffy Soft kick at D’s head, only for him to block with a nonchalantly raised arm. Sparks flew, but his guard barely budged. Still, even if it did no damage, a hit was a hit. Knowing his defense must be lowered, Nadia gritted her teeth and went with plan B. “Careful, I’m armed!” Pivoting away, she hyper-extended her arm like a spear straight for D’s face. Thanks to a lucky proc of Edward’s Sundering Strikes, she pierced his helmet’s armor and left his faceplate in shambles.

D’s reaction was explosive. “You worm!” He lunged forward and seized Nadia by the throat. Only now that he stood could the Seekers see just how tall he was; Nadia’s Mantreads dangled several feet above the floor as she writhed in D’s grasp, and when he squeezed, his nails pierced into her neck. With his vision compromised, D wrenched off his helmet to reveal a face as hard and colorless as stone, with a pointy mustache and beard, and long fangs bared in a scowl. He looked every inch the quintessential Transylvanian villain, and even Nadia knew the archetype.

“You…some kinda vampire?” Nadia garbled as she kicked her legs at him. “So…I guess that’s three Consuls, not two…I forgot to Count Dracula!”

With a thrash, she managed to boot D in the groin. His face tightened. “Witless woman,” he sneered. As he cast his magic, his blood rain dwindled. “Surrender yourself to me!”

Nadia’s eyes rolled back into her head, and D threw her down. She bounced off the ground with a sound more of surprise than pain, then rolled to a stop amidst the last of D’s blood storm. When she rose, though, the feral seemed to be in some sort of trance. “Ohhh…what a dreamboat~” she proclaimed drunkenly, turning around to face her team with her claws sharpened for battle.

Indifferent to the skirmish unfolding at the base of its trunk, the Gravemind centered its attention on Sectonia toward the end of her kritz-fueled chaos. ”PALLBEARER. SHALL I RELIEVE YOU OF YOUR LOAD?” It lifted up its two middle tentacles, fresh branches sprouting near their ends like bony fingers. They swiped through the air like nets trawling the sea to swat, snare, and pierce the queen. After a few moments, it stopped to shake off handfuls of Deimos drones that took to the sky, shrieked like wild owls, and threw themselves toward various targets, prioritizing those in the air. After homing in they’d latch on, constrict, and emit a disruptive bioshock that would deactivate any ongoing abilities or buffs. As its drones filled the air, the Gravemind cackled through its countless bodies. ”MY TOMB RUNNETH OVER!”

The next moment, Grimm’s firebats exploded against it, the three projectiles punctuated by a blast from his Grimmchild. Though the Gravemind lacked eyes, the Troupe Master could feel its heavy gaze upon him, and warped away to avoid a Deimos drone divebomb. By that time Ace had been whaling on the Gravemind’s trunk for a good ten or fifteen seconds, and that kind of punishment couldn’t be sustained indefinitely. The Gravemind arched backward until its head hung over the Cadet, then belted out a torrent of stomach acid followed by a fused mass of corpses to tackle the hunter beneath its heavy weight..

O, meanwhile, was appalled at the Seekers’ reception to his latest exhibit. They not only floated above the muddy water, but shot, bit, and even poisoned his hungry hippos! As the bloat began to dwindle, his eyes widened with disbelief at the heroes biting and shooting them. “My hippos! Do you have ANY IDEA how much those cost!?” He groaned, then narrowed his eyes. “No matter. It’s not just hippos who call the wetlands home!” He did something, but it wasn’t clear what until two Nile Crocodiles burst up from the water. Their huge jaws latched down onto two of the nearest Seekers -those being Bowser Jr, Rika, Blazermate, and Pit- with a bite force of almost four thousand pounds per square inch before the crocs dragged them down into the muck for a brutal death roll.

Of course, O was already busy with his next project. At the start of the battle, some of the less hot-headed Seekers had continued to stand their ground away from the brawls with D and A, trying to figure out the best way to assail the massive Gravemind and elusive O. Edelgard, Geralt, and Zenkichi had evaded the hippo and crocodile exhibit, and were fending off the Gravemind’s Deimos drones, but the Consul planned to tie up those loose ends. He speedily walled off an area around them with thorny hedges, then created a pink-striped observation tower in the center, which also happened to be around the center of the whole battlefield. The carriage rose like a piston, then dropped. Even if those in the area inside managed to avoid getting crushed, they would still be endangered by an omnidirectional blast of shattered blue glass.

After releasing its drones, the Gravemind did not stay idle for long. ”THERE IS NO RESPITE IN MY GRAVE,” its forms chorused. Just after the hippo that Blazermate’s infected arose as a hideous undead monster to fight by the medabot’s side, the Guardian brought down its tentacles three times, one after another. The first massive limb fell across the middle of O’s wetland exhibit, separating it into halves. From its pitted flesh wriggled infection forms that scuttled toward the hippo zombie to bury themselves in its rotten hide and induct it into the Gravemind’s fold; if Blazermate wanted to keep hold of her newest minion, she would need to keep it flood-free. A second later, the next tentacle dropped down amidst Edward, Midna, Primrose, and Therion’s formation, the tremendous impact a much greater danger than the thinning mob of floodfested. Finally, the Gravemind aimed a third infested mass at the gang near the observation tower, its withering attack a surefire way to keep the three on their toes.

Before the Gravemind withdrew that third tentacle, though, Grimm leaped aboard. He scuttled down its putrid length at high speed, his fiery claws carving out handfuls of fused flesh on the way to leave a blazing trail in his wake. As the Guardian burned, so did Grimm, but the accompanying bursts of health offset his fresh wounds, and the Gravemind took notice. ”GRAVEROBBER, COME,” half-melted faces amidst the biomass groaned at the Troupe Master as he approached the Gravemind’s body, no matter how many he sliced apart. ”IN DEATH YOU WILL FIND LIFE.” The tentacle thrashed and Grimm flew through the air. A Deimos drone caught him on the fly, then zapped him. As he struggled, the Gravemind itself wheeled toward him for a massive headbutt, but Grimm escaped in a four-way blast of scarlet flame. He reappeared above the head, landed a corkscrew divekick, then leaped away to begin the game of cat and mouse anew. ”ACCEPT WHAT MUST BE.” the thousand voices rumbled.

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

The Qliphoth - Dead On Arrival

Lvl 14 Ms Fortune (139/140) Lvl 9 Goldlewis (88/90) Lvl 4 Grimm (11/40)
Midna, Junior, Rika & Edward’s @DracoLunaris Blazermate, Sectonia & Roland’s @Archmage MC Geralt, Zenkichi & Edelgard’s @MULTI_MEDIA_MAN Ace Cadet, Pit, Primrose & Therion’s @Yankee Juri’s @Zoey Boey Roxas, Ganondorf, & Falcon’s @Double
Word Count: 2394

Though Nadia helped set a casual and chipper tone at first, the Seekers’ upward journey through the Qliphoth on foot quickly became a challenge unto itself, demanding a not-insignificant amount of tension. Still, with such a large group and so many helping hands around, the team could deal with any setbacks that arose and ran into no true roadblocks. When valves contracted between the demon tree’s organic caves to block the interlopers’ way, it took only a few moments -or a few volunteers going off on their own- to locate and strike the nerve clusters that would make the fleshy doors relax again. When a passageway opened up into a hollow with tricky terrain suspended above explosive acid, toothy spikes, or explosive systems, the more agile and aerial Seekers could be trusted to find or make a way. And when parasitic monsters wriggled out of the floodfested woodwork, or gangs of demons arose to defend their territory, the threat was soon dealt with.

After a little over twenty minutes, a narrow tunnel with a treacherously steep grade opened up into what looked like a crossroads. About a half-dozen tunnels opened up into various directions, with no indicator of which route the Seekers ought to take. The impromptu race between Pit, Roxas, and Nadia -who was always up for a little fun and games- came to an end in that intersection, the three participants so neck-and-neck as they burst from the mouth of their tunnel that the winner wasn’t immediately apparent. Before any bickering over who took first place could break out, however, their sudden arrival flushed a rabbit from its hole. A carrier form lurched from the cozy ventricle where it had been resting, taking Nadia by surprise for a moment. Once she saw what it was, though, the feral relaxed. These bloated bags had been common sights around the Qliphoth so far, and not particularly threatening ones either. To Nadia, it was almost cute the way they toddled toward the heroes, their only goal in life to get as close as possible before they got killed and spilled the beans. Or popcorn, in this case. This carrier, however, seemed to be toddling away from the intruders rather than toward them. It made a beeline for one of the more unassuming tunnels as fast as its stubby little legs could carry it–which, of course, wasn’t very fast. Nadia whipped out the alien pistols she’d received from Midna like a cowboy at high noon, taking aim at the carrier as it retreated. “I got it!”

For Nadia

Item obtained:
Twin Gigerian Handgun
Bio-engineered pistols with exchangeable barrels and firing mechanisms. They’re capable of firing almost any bullet-sized pellet of hard organic matter, but doing so tends to fracture the ammunition and cause a shotgun-life spread of fragments. Holding down the trigger can charge the shot to reduce spread. Their fire rate is slow at just 1 shot per second, their stopping power is only middling, and they can only store seven shots that must be inserted into pits on the back of the gun when it’s pulled apart

Two pulls of the trigger was enough to burst the carrier like a zit and send a handful of chihuahua-sized infection forms flying all over. As the pests rained down a couple dozen feet away Nadia took potshots at them, popping them one or two at a time. To the trigger-happy catgirl it was like shooting fish in a barrel, and with help from both Pit and Roxas, the floodfested spawn would be dealt with in no time. Still, those that found their footing tried to scurry away into the tunnel, forcing Nadia to charge her last shot. With a grin, Nadia closed one eye and stuck out her tongue to line up the shot, only for a black claw to settle on her shoulder.

“Huh?” She peeked down to see the featureless white face of Grimm, rather unsettlingly close, and averted her aim. “Grimm? What’s up?”

The Troupe Master watched the infection form scurry up into the tunnel, passing by several possible hidey-holes as it went. ”It flees for the safety of its brood. We should follow it.”

Goldlewis, who’d arrived just a moment ago, narrowed his eyes at the very particular path that the parasitical nugget had taken. He could see the wisdom in Grimm’s suggestion, but the veteran didn’t trust in luck. “Could be a trap.”

With a snort, Nadia returned her new guns to her belt. “Aw, c’mon. These things are just mindless monsters. No need to be pair-annoyed!”

“I guess...” Goldlewis watched the more intrepid members of the team go after the runaway creep. Since the Dead Zone Guardian was probably the biggest and baddest monster around, the worst-case scenario here was also technically the best case. If the infection form led the Seekers to anything else, they could just squash it and be on their way. Goldlewis shrugged, then followed along with the others.

Before long, the veteran’s intuition began to be proven correct. After only a minute or so, the new tunnel opened up into a large hallway. It was very dark, illuminated only by a crimson light that shone eerily between what looked like two giant doors at the far end.

That abhorrent radiance illuminated almost rocky walls, pitted and scarred, as well as countless still, indecipherable shapes along them. It was unnervingly quiet, and the atmosphere was thick. Goldlewis almost had a heart attack when one of the nearest figures suddenly turned toward him, scarlet eyes aglow, only for him to realize it was Grimm. “Gah! For Pete’s sake, don’t ffff-!” Catching sight of Rika and Junior, he managed to control himself in the nick of time and keep both his voice and profanity down. “-fffffudgin’ do that, ya…gosh darn bug!”

”Ssh,” Grimm whispered, a claw held up to his face. ”They’re listening.”

The hairs on the back of Nadia’s neck stood up, her ears rigid, and she slowly lowered herself to the ground. As she crept through the hallway, toward what looked rather like carved stone steps at the foot of the great doorway, she became more and more sure about what her instincts told her. The shapes along the corridor’s sides weren’t outcrops, nor statues, nor even Qliphoth flora, but monsters. There were flood forms and infested freaks of all shapes and sizes pressed against the walls. Though all but motionless, they couldn’t help but move their eyes, heads, and feelers to slowly track the Seekers’ progress. A chill ran down her spine as Nadia remembered the otherworldly garden beneath Carcass Isle, a procession of abyssal supplicants and bioluminescent plants in the gloom that preceded the beach.

”They’re expecting us,” the Troupe Master rasped.

Nadia slowly rose to her feet, but the floodfested monsters didn’t react. Not even attacking them would prompt a response, she suspected, but she wasn’t too keen to put that to the test. She looked back at the others, then toward the doors at the end of the hall, and sighed. So much for 'mindless monsters', though if anything, this was even creepier. “Guess we’re doin’ this,” she muttered. “Well, I ain’t a-fur-aid. Let’s do this.”

Goldlewis shook his head and stepped forward. “God help us…”

Her cohorts had no choice but to proceed through the corridor. None of the horrors in the darkness reacted until the Seekers reached the stairs at the far end, at which point two juggernauts stepped from the shadows to lay their tentacles against the massive doors. Deep, heavy creaks echoed through the hall, the juggernauts threw open the door, and the wary Seekers stepped through.

The door opened onto a semicircular promontory, about a dozen feet high, that overlooked a wide-open semicircular hollow, its walls a purplish lattice reminiscent of the Great Bole’s and its floor mostly flat. Almost every inch of space, however, was occupied by a floodfested monster, a motionless horde that blanketed the floor. At the center, across a moat of fetid blood, at the base of a huge column that gleamed with spirals of hellish light, lay an enormous mound of undead flesh several stories high. A small portion of its front had been carved to resemble a nightmarish throne, and there sat a broad-shouldered Consul in armor of burnished red.

“They’re here,” a wizened male voice announced. When Goldlewis looked upward, he found a pair of large, disembodied eyes glaring back at him from the air. Narrowed coldly, they sported burgundy irises, and lemniscate-shaped pupils that glowed vivid red. As he watched, the eyes turned and floated back down toward the throne. They positioned themselves next to it, and as they turned another Consul popped out of the ground nearby, this one with a tall helmet. When the voice returned, though, it emanated from the eyes, which suggested to Goldlewis that three Consuls were in play. And not one of them is the Guardian.

“Welcome, esteemed guests,” the aged voice wheezed. “I must apologize for the horde’s lack of hospitality. Once we knew who it was, though, we called them off straight away. After all…” The eyes narrowed slightly, as if the rest of the entity’s face was smiling. “What kind of hero gets killed by mere fodder? Thus, we arranged to bring you here, and even allowed you to rest in our parlor, such as it is. To ensure that each and everyone one of you would reach this burial ground, and be blessed with a true and proper death, hehehehehe!”

At that point, the Consul on the throne gave a bored groan. “Enough foreplay, O. We’ve all waited long enough.” After sipping from his wine glass through his helmet, the Consul raised his hand. “Let’s show them what they came for.”

Immediately, the floodfested horde began to move, but instead of the Seekers, they made a break for the throne. They threw themselves at the fleshy heap like lemmings, and were in an instant unmade, their biomass added to the pile. Noise from the hallways behind the team alerted Nadia with a twitch of her ear, and when she turned she saw the monsters from before pouring outward. She readied herself for battle and slashed at the first wretch to come her way, but even as her claws parted a leg from its body, it did not relent. It flew past her and flopped down into the arena, where it used its arms to drag itself toward the throne. None of the floodfested attacked, in fact; they just wove around or between the Seekers in order to join the stampede of self-annihilation, heedless of any damage that befell them.

As it accumulated biomass, the mound began to grow, upward and outward. Four enormous tentacles took shape, two on either side of the throne, and the eyes watched it all with glee. “Heeheehee! You poor little heroes, thought so highly of by that fool S…I hope you've made your peace. Today, you have the honor of dying at our hands…at the glorious hands of Moebius D, O, and A!”

Just then, a horrific, guttural noise resounded through the final hollow, something between a roar, a scream, and a battle cry. From the mass of diseased flesh a trunk took shape, then a maw. A million voices cried out in terror and pain, and then, all was silent.

”...THIS IS NOT YOUR TOMB, BUT YOU ARE WELCOME IN IT. I HAVE PITY WITHIN ME, AND INFINITE TIME. BUT I ALSO HAVE IMPATIENCE - FOR I AM ALL THINGS! COME! JOIN WITH ME IN TIMELESS CHORUS, AND SING VICTORY EVERLASTING!

Warning - boss discovered!

Sufferer of Infinitude

GRAVEMIND

As it raised its tentacles, the floating eyes of Moebius O flew upward and outward toward the left side of the arena, while Moebius A paced toward the right, his hands behind his back. “I was much aggrieved to learn that the Orphan was summarily executed whilst both L and I were otherwise engaged,” he intoned in a deep, refined voice. “Here and now, I will remedy my grievous oversight.” When he came to a stop, he snapped his fingers, and three perfect duplicates arose alongside him. “You still foolishly consider yourself an entity separate from the whole. I know better. And I. Will. Show you.”

“Did he say A?” Sandalphon’s voice filtered through the sigil by her allies’ heads. “When I spoke with Dawn, she told of her parents’ encounter with this selfsame Consul, who were forced to ‘choose’ and lost half their party. Please, be wary of A. If you require my aid, please do not hesitate to call me. I will not fail you.”

Goldlewis took a deep breath in through his nose. Just like in Midgar, Moebius was upping the ante by fighting alongside their Guardian, but this time instead of one Consul alongside various local legends, three Consuls -including one from a different region, apparently- were here to snuff the Seekers out. “Got it. Thanks, Halo.” He emptied his lungs, hefted his coffin, and raised his voice. “Big talk, but you bozos are goin’ down just like the rest!” He started his stopwatch with a beep.

Beside him, Grimm stared at his own burning claws, then snuffed out the flames with a clamped fist and turned his eyes on the Gravemind.

Nadia grinned. Using Rosetta’s Roll and Gun, she reloaded her empty handguns, then trained them on the seated Consul. Out of all three Consuls, only D had yet to get a move on. “Better get that ass in gear, bud, ‘cause you’re about to be over-throne!”

The Gravemind’s tentacles slammed the ground, shaking the whole hollow. ”DO NOT BE AFRAID, LITTLE LAMBS. YOU’VE WANDERED FAR AND LONG…BUT IT IS TIME TO WELCOME YOU HOME!”

Umbra Rose Condos

@Lugubrious I love how your dude is like, they're sneaky and like to linger in the corner of your eye. While pur wonderful gm has one literally dropping down into our dear foxes food lol

@BunniesOfDoom

Theory vs reality and all that.

Umbra Rose Condos

Once Alphonse joined in, the makeshift team of three was ready to begin their search. Though amused at first by the idea that an ideal team-building exercise had fallen right into his lap, Khalid quickly realized that this veritable snipe hunt wouldn't be all fun and games. For one, while it seemed like the gremlin hunt and the Mischief Accord responsible for it were somewhat well-known and well-established within the Umbra Rose Condos, the same couldn't be said for Khalid himself. Owing to his relatively recent arrival within the complex, he'd never participated in such an event before. Whether this occurrence represented officially sanctioned collaborative activity with the gremlins or merely some sort of trumped-up ritual, the occultist was a complete novice, without any idea of where or how to begin.

Khalid knew just enough about gremlins themselves to know that this would be extremely difficult. After all, the core conceit of the little monsters was causing mayhem with such discretion that a victim would never in a million years imagine that an actual troublemaker was behind it, as opposed to technological incompetence and sheer bad luck. Still, Khalid supposed that in this case, the destination wasn't the point so much as the journey. Winning this little game would be a nice feather in his hat, and a solid start to his professional relationship with his client, but as long as they built some sort of rapport it would still be worthwhile. On a semi-related note, he couldn't help but wonder what other secrets Umbra Rose might be hiding. The name of the complex was so tantalizingly evocative, after all--if a beautiful flower could bloom in the shade, those shadows could conceal just about anything.

The three set off together, Khalid puzzling over a satisfactory answer to give to Alphonse. It would take time to concoct a solid plan of attack, but since this was a competition, time was a luxury the three didn't have. Gremlins could be lurking anywhere and everywhere, and the places most likely to hide them would probably be off-limits to residents, making them difficult to access. There was no end to the amount of chaos the gremlins could cause if they went for the condos' electrical or plumbing utilities. Conversely, Khalid didn't know why a gremlin would hide in a vent, as opposed to the air conditioning units themselves, but he didn't want to rain on Alphonse's parade. As the taciturn therapist-to-be continued to workshop a plan in his head, Iris detected something, but after a moment's investigation it turned out to be a false start.

"Two days?" Khalid repeated, his brow furrowed. Considering the gremlins running rampant in Umbra Rose right this instant, could she really find nothing more recent? Or perhaps, as with dogs, she was simply more attuned to certain kinds of smells. With that in mind, the trace she found could even be a red herring, left purposefully to mess with condo residents like her. "If any perishable is left unrefrigerated for two hours, it should be considered as spoiled," he replied to her absent-mindedly, his lips pursed in a frown. "Hmm. Rather than chase our own tails, we should compose a strategy. Gremlins are extremely quick, stealthy, and perceptive. I'm reasonably sure that I can snatch one if I see one, but a good gremlin never allows itself to be seen. They lurk in our peripheral vision, so subtle that we can never be sure they're truly there at all." He pinched the end of his mustache as he thought. "We can, however, use their impulsive natures against them. If we can make them underestimate us, we can lure them into a trap." A serpentine smile spread across his features. "Let's go somewhere where they're sure to be. The electric room. Of course, we'll need help from a janitor or technician. Or...someone small enough to squeeze beneath the door and unlock it from the inside. Once we're in, we must make a scene of calling them out and bumbling around uselessly. Demonstrating that we're nothing to be afraid of will entice them to make sport of us, like children poking a tiger through the bars of the cage. Their confidence will be their undoing." He looked around at the others, curious to see if they'd agree.

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

The Qliphoth - Scarlet Swamp

Lvl 14 Ms Fortune (132/140) Lvl 9 Goldlewis (82/90) Lvl 7 Sandalphon (67/70) Lvl 4 Grimm (8/40)
Midna Junior, Rika & Edward’s @DracoLunaris Blazermate, Sectonia & Roland’s @Archmage MC Geralt, Zenkichi & Edelgard’s @MULTI_MEDIA_MAN Ace Cadet, Pit, Primrose & Therion’s @Yankee Juri’s @Zoey Boey Roxas, Ganondorf, & Captain Falcon’s @Double
Word Count: 2218

Though pleased with herself for yet another great idea at first, Nadia quickly found her commitment to the bit wearing thin when her scheme to get clean did not work as well as she hoped. After all, the copycats created by her Oceanid striker weren’t technically water, but pure Hydro elemental energy. They couldn’t wash her so much as repeatedly smack her to inflict the Wet status, which gradually washed the xylem off but left her soaked instead. Given the humidity in here, the poor feral wasn’t going to dry off anytime soon, either. With a deep sigh she set off across the blood-red bog to scale the terraced falls and face the aperture in the Qliphoth’s trunk, where she shivered beneath the bluster of frigid high-altitude winds.

While up there, Nadia looked around to see how the others were doing. Now by herself, Emily had spurned the site of golden grace in favor of a softly shining bone-white plant she spotted near some of the other strange plants. It didn’t look like anything special to the catgirl, but its serene glow seemed to offer Emily some sort of comfort, so she was grateful. There was no telling how many more survivors like her might be trapped in here, and Nadia knew she couldn’t save everyone, but as long as she could rescue one person, maybe there was some hope for her as a heroine after all.

It took her longer to figure out what Midna was doing, but eventually Nadia realized that Midna must be using her weird powers to fish in the crimson mire. Calling any of the verminous critters she pulled from the muck ‘fish’ was something of a stretch, but if it helped the Twilight Princess de-stress, the feral was all for it. Too many back-to-back battles would take a toll on even the most energetic Seekers. And who knew how many more dangers still lay between them and their goal?

Naturally, Midna ran into trouble, and a skirmish erupted at the shoreline when some monsters popped up from below. Nadia stood up to get a better look, wondering if she’d need to help, but she could see only a couple critters and not a whole horde. Midna and her summons quickly wiped them out with a localized lightning storm and a little dark magic. Though intense in the moment, the scuffle was small compared to the Qliphoth hollow, so it didn’t end up concerning anyone else, and Nadia turned her attention elsewhere.

Finally, after what seemed like ages, more Seekers began to arrive. Roxas, Zenkichi, Primrose, and Grimm bubbled up from an unseen vein beneath the swamp’s surface. “Heya!” Nadia called, her distant voice echoing across the hollow as she waved. She pushed off the terrace where she’d taken a seat by the opening, landed, and began to jog over. Not wanting to disturb any lurking horrors like Midna had, she skirted around each pool of murky, ruddy xylem until she’d reached the newcomers. While all of them received her cheerful smile, only Primrose got a hug. They were a mess, but they were alive. “Ya made it! You guys alright?” She quickly let go, then jabbed a finger over her shoulder. “I was just lookin’ out the window there. Couldn’t even see the ground! This swamp’s so high up, it really bog-gles the mind. Nyaha.” She wiggled her eyebrows, then turned and threw her hand in the vague direction of the Site of Grace. “Anyway, since nunna the big shots’re here to give us our marsh-ing orders, mire-ecommendation is to take it easy and relax ‘til the others catch up.” She pulled a pitcher of lemonade from her pouch and offered it to the others. “Wanna drink? It’s ‘sour’ little secret~”

After shaking the xylem from his cloak with remarkable ease, Grimm offered her a polite bow of greeting, then heeded her advice in silence and took refuge in the warmth of the golden grace.

Not even a minute later, another squad of Seekers arrived. Ganondorf, Pit, Goldlewis, and Sectonia all washed up in quick succession, and while none of them looked especially happy, Sectonia seemed downright livid. While she fumed and raved about the unclean, ugly innards of the demon tree, Nadia was impressed she’d managed -or agreed- to fit inside a bloodstream at all. “Sheesh, just one soak and you’re seeing red, Toni? All-red-y? Shame you can’t just fly outside and wash off in the rain ‘cause it ages you, but that’s old news, I guess~” Nadia then turned her attention to Goldlewis and put on an egregious southern accent. “Howdy, partner! That color really ‘suits’ you!”

“Ugh,” Goldlewis groaned as he pulled off his suit jacket. He tried once to squeeze the xylem from it, then gave up and tossed it aside. “No salvagin’ that one, I s’pose.” When he saw Primrose, he tried to flag her down. “‘Scuse me miss Primrose, but could I possibly persuade ya to cast one o’ yer healin’ spells? We got ourselves into a real pickle down there without any doggone medics to patch us up.” As he made his request he reflected that if not for the shielding abilities he’d gained from Hank in Arahabaki, the showdown against the Corruptor might have gone a whole lot worse. Goldlewis knew he was lucky to be standing here, and he made sure to count his blessings.

Next to bob up from the swamp were Blazermate, Geralt, and Ace. Nadia was happy to see all three, having been by their side through thick and thin, but her heart especially soared to see Ace alive and well. “There you are!’ She ran over to hug them one by one. When she reached the hunter, she jumped into his arms, both as a sign of affection as a prank given her effective weight. As the others greeted one another, Goldlewis narrowed down his count of Seekers who had yet to return. Sandalphon, the kids, Roland, that li’l fella, Juri, and both newcomers. The veteran pursed his lips as he scratched at his beard. With the Qliphoth’s convoluted circulatory system somehow bringing everyone to the same place, there could be little ambiguity about what happened if anyone failed to show. He worried about the soldier and the witch especially–this was one hell of a first assignment. “Shoulda known better than to bring ‘em along,” he mumbled.

Before long, Goldlewis had his answer. A sudden fountain of xylem heralded the arrival of Roland, Rika, Bowser Jr, and finally, Sandalphon. Though all appeared to be healthy at first glance despite their inundation in the demon tree’s blood, Sandalphon’s body language implied otherwise. Only with difficulty, and the aid of her summoned gunstaff as a walking stick, could she rise and begin to make her way to the edge. It was clear that she could use some help, and once he saw her in distress, Zenkichi was all too quick to rush in and lend a hand.

‘...Thank you.” Sandalphon suppressed her impulse to thoroughly scan her surroundings and focused on not being too much of a burden until Zenkichi saw her safely to the site of grace that several others were treating like a bonfire. Its golden luster briefly captivated her, but before seating herself she planted her gunstaff to expand a healing field for the others. Then she eased down onto the ground.

“Repetitious exposure to severe injury and healing has rapidly accumulated fatigue in my body,” she explained. “While I could have more effectively avoided injury in the previous battle, the primary reason is my lack of athleticism.” Though everyone had encountered opposition throughout the Qliphoth so far, nobody seemed as depleted by the ordeal as she. It frustrated her, but so did her teammates’ reactions after the fight with Lilith concluded. They owed their survival to her and her experience, but only two had even acknowledged her. Still, she knew that she couldn’t succumb to arrogance. Upon reflection, she was simply grateful for her good fortune in running into Lilith–not because any part of that experience appealed to her whatsoever, but because her challengers would have likely perished otherwise.

The real -and much more galling- problem was her current condition. Even if Sandalphon was the only Seeker to show such weakness, she could not allow pride to silence her. “I don’t believe I can continue in this state,” she admitted. “I should return to the ship. I may be able to return later if properly treated.” After a moment, Sandalphon lowered her voice, her next words for Zenkichi only. “I have one other task aboard the Avenger in mind. De-fusion with at least two of my human spirits.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, but her pupils were stress marks. “Human weakness is compromising my physical and mental state. I almost got everyone killed back in that canyon. Reversion is the logical option. And yet…I know it’s this humanity that…allows me to express how I feel. I am conflicted.” Sandalphon couldn’t say much more than that.

After another moment, Emily tentatively approached. “Excuse me, ma’am. My name is Emily, Nadia found me in here. Did you say that you have a way to get out?”

The archangel straightened up, her usual air of stiff formality restored. “My method would not work for you, but now that I see that hole in the Qliphoth exterior, I could guide the shuttle back to this spot. The Lost Numbers should be able to extract any number of us in such a manner.” She looked around the assembled Seekers. “Does anyone else wish to return to the ship?”

“I will,” Snake spoke up suddenly. He’d faded into the background since arriving with Juri, Therion, and Edward, but now the mercenary took center stage. “I’ve managed to keep a low profile so far, but I can tell when I’m out of my element. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll back you up some other day.

Goldlewis nodded, unexpectedly supportive. “Fine by me. We got plenty o’ manpower, don’t need any o’ y’all dyin’ needlessly.”

A minute or so after everything was sorted out, Grimm returned to the group. The Troupe Master had gone with his Grimmchild to scout ahead, and both seemed to be in good spirits. ”I have discovered a means of ascendance. The going will not be easy, but I can feel our grand finale close at hand. A showman’s intuition.” His scarlet eyes seemed to scour the Seekers around him. He then rasped, ”If you are rested, we must away.”

Grimm’s words helped get the team moving. As everyone who would be proceeding got ready to set out, Goldlewis took his final tally. Everyone was here…except the Witch. Nobody willing to say anything about it had seen the Witch since the standoff against the horde. The revelation aggrieved Goldlewis, but it did not stop him. During his military career he’d lost more men than he cared to admit, and newbies were always the quickest to go. He could not let it bother him, lest all the weight he’d been forced to carry come crashing down. He simply caught his breath, accepted some lemonade from Ms. Fortune, and joined the convoy of heroes on the climb to the Qliphoth’s canopy.

♫

Once the team took to the upward path through the tunnels, the going quickly got rough. Right away the infestation began to thicken. Though as unmistakably -and disgustingly- fleshy as the cancerous Flood growths down below, this infestation seemed to be of a slightly different strain, more fungal than anything. It grew into and melded with the Qliphoth itself in strange ways, creating structures that blurred the line between plant and animal. Sinuous ganglions and fibrous nerve clusters gleamed an unnatural orange above pools of still, stagnant rainwater leaked in from outside, and undead horrors reared their ugly heads around every turn. With almost two dozen Seekers present no Floodfested persisted long enough to pose a threat or call for reinforcements, but the tunnels’ twisted denizens kept their intruders on their toes. Several times they needed to deal with peculiar growths, such as passages blocked by hardy organic valves that would only open once certain nerve clusters were stimulated, sometimes in sequence.

Between the odd puzzles, enemies, and the terrain itself, it was a difficult hike. Still, there were plenty of opportunities while traveling to strike up a little conversation. Nadia, in a good mood thanks to Emily’s impending rescue, took the first opportunity to blabber away to Ace about her encounters with the Successor of the Claw, Something Unto Death, and the mysterious bartender Gallagher. The feral did not hesitate to embellish a little, and her motor mouth seldom skipped a beat, even when a handful of Floodfested monsters showed up to crash the party. Before long she was hearkening back to their shared misery on the Maw as well, only too happy to fill other listeners in on all the gory details. Her energetic chatter -and nonstop puns- helped keep the mood light as the team climbed closer and closer to the final showdown.

Umbra Rose Condos

If she were to ever look for a job, given how tech-savvy this drider is, I bet she'd make for a great web developer.

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

Lilith’s Encroaching Shadow III

Lvl 7 Sandalphon (59/70), Bowser Junior, Rika, Roland
Word Count: 4523 (+5)

Jr added to Sandalphon’s healing with a cast of ”Medica!” after the laser barrage to top them up even more, although between attacking and healing with magic, he was now running low on mana again.

Rika meanwhile agreed that ”She is super annoying” in something close to a growl, before bullet jumping and dashing towards the foe with the intent to get her to ”shut up!” by way of raising her Grizzco blaster up and unloading a stream of rapid-fire flak cannon shots that burst into showers of explosive goop, all aimed specifically at Lilith’s face.

”Try and talk with a mouthful of slime you peon!”

Roland joined in with the ‘silencing’ of Lilith by throwing his ink spirit at her again, granted at this point it only did damage thanks to Lilith’s raid boss resistances to debuffs like Silence. The screeching ghost did make her words fairly intelligible though. He then moved behind Sandalphon to break line of sight from Lilith and as she focused on the koopa kids, Roland moved around the battlefield to get behind Lilith and attack her with his swords.

“Gah!” Momentarily blinded by Roland’s ink spectre, Lilith fell prey to the volatile fusillade from Rika, pounded again and again by the non-stop bombardment until all the slime went off in one giant blast. “AAAGH!” As the smoke cleared it revealed Lilith bruised, seared, and very pissed off, too mad to do much more than send flecks of spittle flying in all directions. When she felt the bite of Roland’s blades, though, the demon seemed to regain her senses. She fended him off with a quick, solid kick -her first physical attack so far- then crossed her arms over her head. “Okay, change of plans. I wanna hear you suckers sizzle!” A moment later the dark magic around her detonated in a spurt of flame, and from her hands a column of sparks streamed upward. Three more orbs appeared over each Seeker, fiery this time instead of tenebrous, and after a brief delay they plummeted down, one after another. “Burn to death!”

Sandalphon paused her fire support for a moment as Lilith switched modes, then gave an affirmative nod as tongues of flame surrounded her. “She’s now vulnerable to water. If only I actually wielded water-aligned miracles.” Her healing skills couldn’t take advantage of her elemental advantage, and with its purpose being crowd control rather than damage, even her Frost Lock wouldn’t be much use. Instead she began to move as the new Candy Shower took form, skirting around the edge of the arena so that the napalm puddles would trouble the team as little as possible. Toward the end of her strafing run she spotted a blue tile she made earlier and headed that way. Her side had made good progress, but only by taking advantage of every little opportunity would the Seekers get through this.

”We can do water” Jr said as he put paintbrush to the ground and proceeded to sail after Sandalphon, painting a path as he went, with Rika riding along on his coattails. Step one of that was plucking a pokeball from his bandolier and chucking it behind him with a call of ”Sis, catch!”

It wasn’t the pokeball she was meant to catch however, but instead the mon inside: Dazzle the Brionne

”Bubblebeam her!” Jr then instructed the pair, prompting Rika to pivot as they sailed, holding the sealion pokemon in one hand almost like a pistol, and for the mon in question to then shoot forth a high pressure beam of water surrounded by cutsier bubbles from his mouth at their target.

The prince himself then set about preparing the other half of their attack strategy, namely by rummaging around in his duffle bag in search of a specific cassette tape.

Elemental attacks weren’t something Roland had, not really. All he could do was make himself into a nuisance by keeping up his melee assault on Lilith, countering her retaliatory melee strike. Although going into a fire phase gave Roland some flashbacks to a certain fire EGO user he had to fight, and he really didn’t feel like burning today. As she summoned fireballs over everyone, Roland pulled out his hammer and managed to knock 2 out of 3 of the fireballs away with it, meaning there was still a napalm puddle near Lilith, but that just meant Roland had to come from a different angle. He’d also have to step out of the way of the water attacks coming from the koopa kids, but that wasn’t too difficult as keeping Lilith distracted with his own weapon attacks was more beneficial to the fight, as Roland hit her with a couple combos from his daggers, mace, and one with his sword. Low damaging attacks, but then the point was to help the others hit their water attacks.

If the sizzling sound was anything to go by, Dazzle’s Bubblebeam was doing good work, and even if they didn’t get any bonus damage Roland’s own efforts helped. Since Candy Shower wasn’t that dangerous, though, they wouldn’t have much of a chance to pile on damage afterward. For the most part the team had managed to space the fire patches out, but they would have to be extra careful either way given what came next. Sandalphon watched at rapt attention as Lilith summoned three staves that floated in the air through magical means. At her direction, one of them flew forward toward Junior and Rika, laid out and spinning horizontally like an enormous boomerang. As it began to slow down the next one began to whirl toward Roland. They weren’t too difficult to avoid–deceptively easy, in fact, given what Sandalphon remembered about this little trick.

As Junior and Rika sailed away from the first staff, the archangel jogged toward it. She tried to call out the answer, but after all her shouting, all she could manage was a hoarse croak. Instead she pinged the first staff with her powers as its spin petered out, indicating that the others should go there. Once she reached that spot herself, Sandalphon looked over toward the second staff to ping it as well, just as a cyclone of flame consumed the entire arena except for a small circular area around the first staff.

”Ohhhh- that’s a tricky, uh, trick” Jr commented with a hint of respect for the dragon’s ploy, the kids having headed back to the staff spot following the ping with confused looks on their faces after easily avoiding the attack via jumping over it, but now getting the deal after the explosion went off.

”Just annoying” was Rika’s much more derisive comment on the deal, before she blinked in confusion at being handed Jr’s paintbrush.

”Found the tape, now onto the next” Jr said, prompting rika to nod and press paintbrush to ground and lead the way for them to sail over to the next staff, while Jr focused on putting on a pair of headphones plugged into a tape player. Into said player went the cassette he’d found that had Undye written on it, and as they arrived at the next stop he hit play and promptly transformed into the ritual fish monster knight

”Yeahhhhh, now we’re talking! Let’s bring the rain!” the prince bellowed in the bombastic woman’s voice, before of all things thrusting her hand out into the fiery blast that erupted around the second safe zone. Rather than suffer greatly for this however, the fish woman came alive with a burning passion that was then channeled into a torrent of watery spears that erupted beneath Lilith, tips forming harmlessly on the ground before shooting up in a peppering watery barrage.

Rika, naturally, joined in, bringing up the sea-lion beam cannon and having him shoot another watery blast at the foe, while she herself deployed an electro swarm from her gauntlet hangers to try and combo with all the water damage they were blasting their foe with.

This whole “dance” thing was getting kinda old. But he knew he had to follow it and as such, once Sandalphon started to rush for the first swirling staff, Roland ran his way over there as well as she seemed to know exactly what to do. Same with the second and third. As he did the dance, he saw Jr. turn into a different creature. ”Oh, you have EGO too?” Roland said, although what Jr. did was a bit different, since his whole body changed. It didn’t look like he distorted either, since this was something on command. That’d be something for after this fight. Being unable to get into melee range until this staff attack was over, Roland fired his gun at Lilith.

Already aggravated that Sandalphon was guiding her teammates on how to deal with her various spells, Lilith had hoped that special spell would finally spell her enemies’ ends, but it was not to be. When the wall of flames from the final blast died down, the demon was greeted not by the sight of her challengers’ charred corpses, but by a torrent of water spears, pistol rounds, and shotgun shells. Even Sandalphon joined in as she made for a cerulean tile to shoot from, lobbing a Frost Lock at Lilith as she ran. To some the usage of ice against a fire-type foe might seem suspect, but Sandalphon knew better than most that in her world, ice counted as water. The frigid cluster burst against Lilith in a cloud of diamond dust that riddled her pale skin with goosebumps, but it would take another to freeze her. Twelve second to go.

The Frost Lock also got Lilith’s attention. She wanted everyone dead very badly, but nobody more so than the angel. Thanks to her, this was going poorly, and as much as she hated to admit it, targeted attack wasn’t her forte. In order to win, the demon would need to turn Sandalphon’s prior knowledge against her. “Ugh!” she spat, whipping up vivid red flames. A devilish look appeared on her face as she summoned three more staves for another round of Sugary Spinners. ”I’m gonna wipe you out!”

She threw the first one not at one of the Seekers, but at the arena’s 2 o’clock position. The second she threw toward six o’clock, and the third to ten o’clock. As soon as she realized what was happening, Sandalphon’s eyes widened, her pupils turned to stress marks. Given how fast the fireblasts went off in succession, the sequential safe zones were impossibly far apart. “That’s not…”

”Heehee! Let’s see you weasel outta this one, Sandy!”

By that point, though, Sandalphon’s pupils had turned to spinning gears. As the first staff began to slow down, she took off toward the second staff, doing calculations in her head. Then she dropped three pings, two on the first staff, and one not near any staff, but exactly halfway between the first and third. If Lilith was going to cheat, so would Sandalphon. But she couldn’t do this alone; the others needed to trust her, even though it looked like she was sending one of them to their death. This was it: the final test, and this one was for all the marbles.

”Are we really gonna try and run through that or… what?” Jr began to ask, not quite getting the pings' intent and assuming they were intending to run from staff 1 to three. Rika however, got the gist of the plan, calling to her brother to ”Catch” before she tossed him Dazzle and then proceeded to legged it for the third ping, out in the middle of the death zone, ping.

Like a good soldier following orders.

She did not do so entirely blindly however, nor without preparation. As she ran she pulled a leed from a cassette player strapped to her rigging to a port on her helmet and then pressed play on it, transforming herself into the Beast giving herself a hefty health buffer, plus plenty of legs for running wherever she needed to be next.

Just then, Sandalphon reached the second staff, right as it planted itself in the floor. With no time to hesitate, the archangel seized the demonic polearm, then used her teleportation miracle to warp to Rika -now halfway between the other two staves- with the staff in hand. The two had only a moment to share a knowing glance as Sandalphon’s plan dawned on the abyssal soldier-turned-centipede; this was a desperate gambit, and neither would emerge unscathed, but it was the team’s only option.

Sandalphon closed her eyes, braced for impact, and began to cast Angelic Wings just as the first eruption went off. Junior and Roland were safely sequestered in the first safe zone, but Sandalphon and Rika disappeared in the hellish inferno. When the intense but short-lived firestorm faded, however, both remained, charred and smoking but alive. Maybe they just barely survived the blast and then healed back up, or maybe they’d been blown past the brink and restored before their bodies knew they died, but either way, there they were. Junior and Roland just needed to run to the second staff for the second blast, then help the two to the third, and the Seekers were home free.

”Wait, we can just move them?!” Jr cried out in amazement at this bit of lateral thinking, even as he jogged forwards to the second staff. Roland was just as surprised, but more exasperated, only letting out a sigh and saying ”Of course now she tells us.” in a mumble as he moved with Jr. While the explosion went off he moved Undayne’s spear to his mouth to free up his hand, grabbed Sandalphon in the now free hand and hauled her over his shoulder. If they’d had to haul Rika in Beast form as well, that would have been a problem, but fortunately the said form was an absolute pile of vitality and so as soon as it was time to run for staff three, she was able to do so on her own two-dozen feet alongside her person and pokemon hauling brother.

The sight of her enemies alive and well after her Sugary Spinners left Lilith agape. ”How? HOW!? You must have cheated! You’re supposed to be DEAD! Dead, dead-!”

Even on the ground, Sandalphon could calculate a standard trajectory without issue. Her Frost Lock struck Lilith in the middle of her furious rant, and in an instant the demon was frozen solid. A laser pointer appeared in the archangel’s hand, and she took aim to call in a Headquarter Support Request. A cluster bomb descended and shattered Lilith in a withering chain explosion, leaving her defense, elemental, and status resistance crippled for the next twenty seconds. “Dispense…justice.” With that Sandalphon slumped down, too exhausted to move. The rest was in her allies’ hands.

Rika responded first by charging in to add to the debuffs, her Beast form ramming horns first into Lilith and delivering a melee defence lowering Mountain Smash strike. SHe then pulled back a bit, using sharpen to raise her own melee attack, and then finally delivering a flurry of bites to one of the dragon’s legs, restoring her own hp in the process for half the damage dealt.

Jr, still in the form of Undyne and still carrying both Sandaphon and Dazzle around initially looked to have a bit of an issue engaging, at least until Dazzle wiggled free and used Twisting Dive to launch himself at Lilith, a wave of water carrying him forwards to crash into the dragon. Then he flopped his way onto Rika’s centipede back for transportation, using it as a firing platform to shoot more bubble beams and leaving Jr free to get into the fight.

The prince grabbed undyne’s spear from his mouth, rushed forwards, skirted around the chomping Rika to get his own angle of attack, before he thrust the spear upwards to launch an Undertow strike, creating a massive spear of water beneath Lilith that then after a notable delay that a more evasive foe could have taken advantage of, lanced up into her. The kept the spear aloft to Raised Arms and buff his melee attack, before delivering swift double slices to the foe, joining in on Rika’s melee pummeling.

Roland joined in on the melee attacks, having most of his weapons being melee. A few seconds gave him quite a bit of time to stack up enough weapons for a Furioso and recharge some of his EGO. And with how free these hits were, he could use Nether Blade on many of the heavier hitter attacks like his massive sword or swordplay, and get some free damage in with his phantom that Lilith couldn’t shake off in time. He could also prepare an Ink Swell, but he doubted she’d be stunned by such an attack.

With Lilith frozen for an extra few seconds due to Sandalphon’s new blessing from Demeter, the team had every advantage when it came to piling on the punishment. Though the demon pitched a desperate attempt to fight back once she thawed out, the damage to her mental state had already been done. The Seekers had downloaded her attack patterns and eroded her defensive buffs, so Lilith knew better than anyone that her defeat was only a matter of time. She belted out boulders of molten sugar, beams of concentrated flame, and enough foul language to make a sailor blush, but it all came to naught. By the end of Roland’s onslaught she was on her last legs, and as Sandalphon watched, the detonation of the Fixer’s Ink Swell dealt the final blow.

”Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh, damn it! Damn you!” Though she’d spent the whole fight levitating smugly, Lilith now lay in the ground, her white scales scarred and her crimson horns broken. Blood trickled across her lips as she scowled at her hated foe who she’d gotten so tantalizingly close to death. ”Sandy…you know…they’ll never love you. I’ll be back…and when I am…I’ll take…everything…!”

The archangel said nothing. Though still exhausted, she’d mustered the energy to prop herself up in a Healing Circle generated by her gunstaff, but she had no more energy to offer Lilith. Maybe some small part of her would be happy to kill Lilith, but she did not want to indulge that part of herself. She simply stared, her pupils in the shape of skulls, until the demon crumbled away and a book was left behind.

For Sandalphon

Arctic Ring - your healing skills now also deal repeated ice damage to enemies in range
Perfect Experience: Fuli - when attacking frozen enemies, there is a 100% base chance to inflict Dissociation for 10 seconds, which will cause severe damage upon thaw
Block Charm - you negate the first hit landed on you, once per battle

For Bowser Jr

Bling Charm - once pinned to someone, every last hit creates 3 gold
Stygian Turtle Shell - after taking damage 3 times in quick succession, become invulnerable for 3 seconds. 26 second cooldown
Bolt Marrow - physical projectiles that deal piercing damage home on their targets, with the amount of homing inversely proportional to projectile speed

For Rika

Typhoon’s Fury - you deal more damage slamming your foes into solid objects
H3AD-5T v2 - when hitting the ground, create a 1 meter diameter ground blast that gains 10% extra damage and 1 more meter of diameter per meter fallen beforehand, up to 100m and 1000% damage
Kill Rhythm - switching weapons will increase your attack speed by 15% for 2 seconds

For Roland

Dead Inside - maximum HP increases by 50%, but all healing is halved
Sentinel Satellite - once per battle, when your life falls below half, you get a shield that can absorb 20% of your max HP for 20 seconds
Connected Mind - when wielding the same weapon type as a nearby ally, you deal 10% more damage. Doubles if you’re wielding the same weapon

Rika had to examine the fine print of the H3AD-5T v2, but once she did, and found the willing activation needed to cause the explosion and always on fall damage negation features it became rather a no brainer. No more worrying about how to get down after she’d launched herself up was worth it on its own in her opinion.

Jr meanwhile once again got faced with a choice between what he was meant to be focusing on in fights, but, given the one they’d just been in, it was very hard to argue with the Stygian Turtle Shell’s life saving capabilities, and so he ended up going with that. Plus, you know, the time pictured was rather on brand.

Neither received a vision as a result of their boon acquisitions.

When presented with possible rewards, Sandalphon chose quickly. One option only applied if she made a mistake, and even then the benefit was not reliable. Weaponizing her healing skills could muddle her role and endanger the whole team if the incidental ice damage diverted her foes; enmity away from the frontliners. Perfect Experience, however, would make any application of Freeze much more dangerous, even without allies at her side to take advantage, and it wouldn’t interfere with her support abilities. She picked Perfect Experience, and for a moment beheld a vision of a frozen emperor, as resplendent as a perfectly preserved memory. Then it faded, and Sandalphon looked over at the others. “Well done, everyone. Are any of you injured? If so, please allow me to tend to your wounds.”

Roland looked at his rewards, and while one power said what he felt, from the looks of them, there were only two choices. And knowing how his fights tended to go, anything that’d help him get going could be a great help. So he chose Sentinel Satellite. He was debating Connected Minds, but from what he knew a lot of his allies used magic or non weapon based attacks so he doubted how often such a thing would happen. Much like when he gained an abnormality page, a bit of a flash of something entered his mind, but he was extremely desensitized to such things at this point so it didn’t leave much of an impression. Roland went over to grab the Book of Lilith before he made his way over to Sandalphon, having taken a lot of damage during the fight even with his deflections. ”Yeah I could use some. It's better than going into another fight bloody. Although with how we’ll need to get up, I think the ‘bloody’ part will still happen in a different way.”

“Understood.” Sandalphon took another brief moment to breathe, but for her ally’s sake she pushed through her own fatigue. Her body rattled under the duress of taking lethal punishment several times over, sustained only through repeated restoration. By using up her last store of Rapid Analysis, Sandalphon managed to work one more miracle in the form of Angelic Praise. Once finished, she planted the butt of her gunstaff once more and used it to prop herself up.

”Oh, and if this girl’s death got to you, you could use the words I go by. ‘That's that and this is this.’ We still have to move forward and finish the job.” Roland said, giving Sandalphon the words he gives himself. Sitting down to wait for when they’d move on to take a bit of a rest, he continued. ”Not the first crazy woman I’ve had to take out. At least this one didn’t try making spaghetti out of people’s blood vessels…” Roland said.

The Fixer’s words turned Sandalphon’s pupils into question marks, then dashes. “I care nothing for that beast’s demise. I am only grateful that this world will see a little less suffering, for a time.” Her eyes drifted to the book left behind by Lilith. “That should be destroyed immediately. A demon’s corruptive influence cannot be tolerated.” Roland was right that the team needed to move on, though. Despite her current state, the archangel knew that the Seekers only had a couple dedicated healers overall, and any teams that went without would need her help as soon as possible. She quickly pinpointed the location of another Qliphoth vein and wordlessly marked it with a screen.

By virtue of having not been putting their own actual bodies on the line for the latter part of the fight, not to mention their supernatural durability and own source of healing, Rika and Jr were in better shape than the other two after the fight. The same could not be said for the prince’s flying machine, which had been reduced to even more of a wreck since it had been abandoned.

”Urrrgh, stupid hammer stealing hat kid” Jr complained (regarding the loss of a mallet that he’d once used to rapidly repair devices that had since been stolen by a hat wearing kid) giving the machine a kick that caused it to crumple even more.

”Guess we’ll just send it back? Tora can have another go at it” Rika suggested, which got a little laugh out of Jr as he thought about how mad the guy’d be that all his hard work had been undone in less than an hour.

A few hand gestures later and the circle was charging up, preparing to send the clown car back to the armory, while the little royals headed over to the others, back in their actual shapes once more and with Dazzle stored away in his pokeball.

”Over there then?” Jr said as his eyes followed the ping Sandalphon had made, before adding that ”Those are real handy huh, and you’re pretty good with them too,” in an off handed compliment.

”Staff trick was smart too. That lady really was a big cheating sh-” Rika stopped herself with an annoyed grunt, taking the whole risk of corruption trick rather literally, and went for ”jerk huh?” instead.

Sandalphon’s pupils turned from targeting reticles back to normal as Rika amended her word choice. “Thank you. I am pleased to have been of use.” With nothing else to say, the team proceeded toward the exit.

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

Lewa

Silence lingered in the air after Lewa voiced his question, making the Spirit of Air wonder if they didn't have any answers, either. Then Remilia turned away from him with a scornful snort, which left him puzzled as he wondered if he'd done something to offend her. After treating the others to a condescending reply, the vampire performed an about face and marched off. Wait, what did he do? He just didn't understand. Return? Return where? Lewa still didn't know why everyone decided to pay that particular shop a visit anyway, beyond vague conjecture about some sort of trivial errand for an unknown party. He'd just listlessly followed along, without anything better to do than hope the more powerful members of his party knew what they were doing, and it looked like Remilia expected him to blindly follow the leader again.

This time, though, Lewa did not move. His lime-green gaze rested on the boundless sky, its ephemeral clouds, and the distant horizon. Only the city's ambiance stirred the momentous silence: the barking of dogs, the clatter of hooves and wagon-wheels on cobblestones, both casual conversations and heated bargaining. Over it all, the wind whispered in his ears. It brushed against his biomechanical body, that familiar and welcome touch his only companionship in a vast and alien world where he could understand, achieve, and amount to nothing. Though stifled as it filtered through the confines of this strange city, it picked up speed as it blew toward the countryside, and Lewa could feel it at his back. Urging him onward.

After another moment, Fran went after Remilia. Lewa didn't know what 'princess' she might be referring to, and he didn't care. After all, Fran didn't care that she'd almost killed him -and squashed whatever faint hope his undefended homeland had- as collateral damage in the cave-in she caused down there in the tunnels. To people like her, Remilia, Anne, and and all the others, he was as inconsequential as a gnat. They wielded such incredible power that nothing could threaten them, and most not only came from the same world, but also could apparently still communicate with acquaintances worlds apart. They did not share Lewa's hopeless isolation, nor his urgent need to return from whence he came. This situation might be a crisis for Lewa, but to them it was an amusing diversion. He'd been saddled with the unsolvable problem of the fae child, forced to put aside his own mission, while the others ran off to pursue their own ends. Lewa had to accept that he would not make any progress as long as he trailed behind these people, bereft of purpose and agency. It was just a matter of time until he got caught in the crossfire of their extravagant powers, or accidentally ran afoul of their inexplicable moods. And time was something that his people didn't have.

Lewa took a deep breath. A few moments after Remilia and Fran got moving, the toa took his first steps in the opposite direction, and he did not look back. He could not afford to waste one more second as an accessory to these otherworlders' sideshows. His brothers and sister were out there. They needed him, and he them. So he would go and find them. So long as he followed the Great Spirit, and the whispers of the wind, Lewa knew he was never truly lost. With the wind at his back, he would not rest until he finally found his way home.