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Greetings or my name is Richard Phoenix

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World of Light

Primrose, Therion, & Pit

Level: 10 - Total EXP: 234/100 ------ Level: 7 - Total EXP: 284/70
𝙱𝙿 ●●●●● ---------------------------- 𝙱𝙿 ●●●●●
Level: 5 - Total EXP: 254/50
Word Count: 1921 (+3 exp)

Taking second place was a surprise for Primrose, especially because she didn’t particularly feel she contributed much. Therion had at least been “eaten” on camera. Still, she wasn’t going to argue the result. Figuring much of it had to do with Roland’s know-how, Primrose glanced at the Fixer and gave him a small nod. She accepted the prize, now at a total of five tokens. Beside her, Therion was sitting at nine - which officially made him the most token-rich player at the moment. He could have been smug about it, but instead he drew no attention to that fact.

And then there was Pit, who snapped up his consolation token with a petulant frown. It wouldn’t last long, because he really had been having fun so far, but while the results were being tallied he couldn’t help but feel that this was so unfair! Rushing through levels (though it had been some years since he could call himself a true platformer), bypassing obstacles, dealing with creepy monsters… it was all stuff he regularly dealt with! So how was he doing so poorly? It was easy enough to blame his teammates and partners, especially since he preferred to work alone, but a true captain could compensate for his squad. So Pit sighed, wallowed for a second, and then tried to psyche himself up for the next game.

He missed something that Ballyhoo said, which did not go unnoticed by the two Orsterrans. A new name among the victorious players: Juri. She had a very distinctive look, so it was easy to spot her with a quick scan of the area. There was no fuss over her - she’d just been added to their group for the games like Capt. Falcon technically had been, it was just an interesting development. Especially after poor Sectonia had been partnered with a rock in the first game.

And speaking of games, the next one was swiftly announced. The most popular event in the big top, although the explanation made little sense… at first. Once she parsed through the words, context clues led Primrose to believe they would be transporting people akin to a rented carriage… although she did raise a brow at one word. Non-lethally…?

Without further ado, they were transported once more.

---

While he may have lost the first two minigames there was no way that Pit, Angel Land’s strongest soldier, captain of Lady Palutena’s royal bodyguards, and all-around super cool heroic guy, was going to lose three in a row! Not if he had anything to say about it! And though he hadn’t really grasped Ballyhoo’s explanation, once they were in the minigame for real and he saw the taxi cab everything sort of fell into place. The goal of this game was to drive around town really fast while getting passengers from point A to point B. That sounded easy enough!

"Alright," the angel said to himself as he hopped over the side of the cab into the driver’s seat. "This can’t be any harder than using an Aether Ring! So this time, I'm definitely placing!"

Throughout his life (as short as it was compared to the gods’), Pit had seen a lot of different vehicles. From the primitive horse-drawn buggy, to the modern day car, to the futuristic spacecrafts of mortals, as well as all sorts of divine vehicles ranging from chariots to mechas. Theoretically, a taxi cab should not be beyond him. Once behind the wheel, he immediately realized that he was right: this would not be as hard as using an Aether Ring. Its controls seemed to be more like an Exo Tank’s, which he could definitely handle. It was fortunate too that the taxis were sized for their drivers, so he didn’t have any issues reaching the pedals. The rest of the intricacies of driving the car… he’d just figure those out as he went.

With newfound determination, Pit started the engine and grabbed the wheel. For good measure, he imagined what Lady Palutena might say to further encourage him. ”Start with the green fares to get used to the taxi’s handling, but remember this is a race against everyone else too. So once you’re comfortable go right for the red! Okay Pit, show them why we deserve to be invited to the next Mario Kart!”

"Yes ma’am!" Pit replied to the vision his brain conjured up, then stepped hard on the gas pedal towards his first client - and very nearly ran them over. "Hop in!"

"Thanks! Get me to the courts!"

"Okay! That's... where is that?" Pit squinted at the mini-map in the form of a GPS. It was all lines, colors, and squiggles. He had never needed to read a map before... but thankfully a big yellow arrow appeared in the air that let him know where to go. "Oh! Alright, hold on!"

His destination wasn't that far away. The next passenger wanted to go back to where the first had been. The start of the game saw Pit driving back and forth between easy green fares while he got used to the car. When he eventually felt good enough to start taking jumps and crashing into stuff on purpose for once to make shortcuts, he blasted onto the freeway with his sights set on the red fares.

---

When Therion had practiced driving back in Twilight Town, it had only been a way to pass time. Sure, he figured it might come in useful in a pinch, but he didn’t expect to be using the knowledge so soon. Once everyone was transported to the island (separated, he noted, so no teammates this time) and he inspected the taxi, he realized it wasn’t entirely different from the vehicle he’d practiced with. It looked much more put together, so it was probably sturdier, and there were a few more handles and levers, but otherwise for a medieval guy like him? Practically the same. The taxi also featured two displays on the dashboard, one being a map and the other showing zeroes.

The total fare I’m guessing, Therion thought. Though it took him slightly longer, he came to the same conclusion as Primrose. The concept of a “taxi” was not foreign to either of them, the word itself was just unfamiliar. Well, and the car they’d be expected to use. So in this case, Therion actually had a leg up on the dancer. I could give her some pointers through the pearl, but… nah.

This was only a game after all, so he left his friend to fend for herself. She would hardly be the only one struggling with this anyway. With half a shrug Therion entered the car, turned the key, and felt the engine rumble to life. He wondered for a moment how well he would realistically do; of the Seekers he knew best, he couldn’t imagine any of them doing that well save for the Koopa family who seemed versed in a wide variety of random things. Then of course there were those that they had split up from, who mostly seemed more familiar with this kind of thing. Lastly, the professional racer they’d immediately found and the dark horse that was dropped into their group last game. Therion’s odds weren’t terribly great, but at least he wouldn’t be the worst.

"Let’s see…" he fiddled with the map, coming up with his strategy in a few moments: rather than fight for fares in the larger, more populated city area with more experienced drivers, he would first go across the bridge connecting the two islands and collect some passengers where there was less competition.

He set off, stopping at a few people to see if they were going the same direction and turning them down until he found a yellow fare with a destination on the volcanic island. Unfortunately he ran into trouble almost right away. As expected the city was full of of Seekers making the most of the game, whether they were playing the right way or not. Therion had started off near some junction, and had to dodge not only the maniac drivers actually trying to ferry passengers but the rogue elements of Blazermate and Ms. Fortune who seemed to have decided that ramming others off the road was the goal. He passed plenty of scenes of destruction until finally making it across the highway's bridge.

To his chagrin, the passenger he'd picked up was long gone - driven away either by the long drive time or the hasty, jerky movements he'd needed to take in order to avoid obstacles and other players. Oh well, whatever, he thought. At least now he could drive in relative peace.

---

The game’s precious starting minutes, the time when everyone that was vying for first would set out to get as much of a headstart as possible. Though for Primrose, she spent that time in the cab’s driver’s seat. She had one leg crossed over the other, a manual she’d found in the glovebox spread open in her hands. She had been deposited near the heart of the city on the edge of Mixed Martial Park where she could see a few others getting their start or driving by, but she paid them little mind. She'd seen some crashing already and figured out that the players, their vehicles, and their passengers were immune to damage, so there wasn't much need to pay attention to what everyone else was doing just yet.

Like with the first game, Primrose discarded any notion of placing first, second or third. Even the previous one she wrote off as more or less a fluke. And since she wasn't playing to win, she could take her time and figure out how the car worked. She flipped through each page of the instructions, appreciating the "dumbed down" language used in them. It served its purpose: making it so almost anyone, from any walk of life, could understand how to play. Putting the knowledge into practice was a different thing entirely, but the dancer made progress incrementally. She figured out how to turn the car on, how much pressure to put on the pedal to convince the two tons of steel to move, and on the other pedal to get it to stop. Her time limit was really running down since she wasn't picking up any passengers, but it really didn't bother her much. It wasn't until Nadia drove back around her way and rear ended Primrose's taxi (causing a major lurch that pushed the dancer's car into the side of a fountain) that she decided to actually try and play. "Alright, I get it," she said, flipping her ponytail out of her face.

Unfortunately the cat burglar had already driven away by the time Primrose pulled her car around, so she couldn't return the favor. Instead, she slowly drove toward the first green fare she could see. It was a nondescript man who was only headed around the block, though when he hopped into the back of the cab he smiled brightly. "Yowza, I lucked out with my driver!"

Glancing into the man's eyes, she could see that he wasn't exactly all there. The people in this city were basically props, designed to play a human-like role. How deep did it go, Primrose wondered. How well could they emulate a person? An idea came to her mind, one she'd test as soon as she dropped her fare off. If she didn't plan on winning, anything she did could hardly be counted as cheating, right?

Howdy!

Welcome! If you have any questions feel free to ask!

Otreas is my OC. A Drow, fallen paladin of Lolth.

Welcome! Hopefully you can find a home here for your character!

My name says it all. Hello there 👋🤠

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World of Light

Troop-tube, ft. Pit II

Word count: 3941 (+4) (+1 rapport with all)
Level: 5 - Total EXP: 247/50
Bowser: Level 14 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (216/140) (+1 bonus pending)
Kamek: Level 13 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (92/130) (+1 bonus pending)
Rika: Level 9 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(111/90) (+1 bonus pending)

The Troop (and Pit) headed into the factory right through the front doors. The inside of the free standing building wasn't any less dismal looking than the outside of it, but it was a little brighter. Light sources were haphazardly hung, making pockets of light here and there. That remained true once the group descended a spiral staircase into an underground industrial complex, the only way forward they could see.

They could hear the sounds of machinery whirring a couple rooms away. Besides that there was some ambient creaking and shifting, something very unusual for what was supposedly an old abandoned building.

"I wonder why all the lights are still on? Who's running the factory?" Pit questioned as they continued through a set of large, automatic sliding doors. Power was obviously still being supplied to this place.

”The monsters, whatever they are? Maybe they are making more of themselves down here” Rika suggested as she scanned the touch she was holding between two fingers around the room

”Well, our host, technically” Kamek replied, before he pointed out that ”this is more of a stage than a real place after all”

”It’s good for the atmosphere, so don’t ruin that by pointing it out” Bowser grumped, giving Kamek a light poke for his immersion breaking ways

They continued a little deeper in, passing metal grates, broken equipment, and random junk. The chug of whatever machines the factory featured masked the approach of the first monster drawn in by the group's loud introduction. It was a little thing, shorter than most of them with a bulbous body and dopey face, but it toddled directly toward them from the direction they'd just come from.
Rika spotted it first thanks to the little toy sized scout plane she’d set to hover above her, spinning around and pointing her palm mounted rifle at it while calling ”Something behind us”

Bowser went ”Huh?” before stomping around to take a look, and then when he did, giving a snort of a laugh at its appearance. ”Where’d this goofball come from?”

”Not sure, but should we record it? We only have so much time to use the footage and get out” Kamek asked

"It's not really that scary," Pit pointed out as he got closer and squinted at it. "We should look for something bigger! With sharp teeth or something."

The monster did not stop its advance while the team talked, nor did it even seem to notice Rika's weapon trained on it. It continued to plod along until it was right in front of the minigame players, all grouped together to look at it. And then suddenly, violently, its body filled with air. It ballooned in size like a pufferfish, its abdomen punching out with more force than a car's airbag and sending most of its observers flying. It turned out that damage actually was turned on for this game, and though the blowfish monster's attack was unlikely to get through some of their actual defenses, it did take a chunk of their "HP" for the game away.

”Gah, like a fart filled bob-omb” Bowser complained, entirely unaffected due to mass and durability, before glancing to and fro at where his team mates had been with another ”Huh?” Failing to find them out as he turned back around, to find Kamek face down on the floor, while Rika had merely been knocked back and Pit getting to his feet halfway across the room.

”You all good? The camera good?” he asked his face down mage, receiving a groan from Kamek as he picked himself and the recorder up off the ground, and dusted both off.

The monster deflated, stayed put, and prepared to expand again. It wasn't intimidated by the king's immovable stature - it didn't really feel much at all, just going about its thing, which was rapid expansion. And with its low speed it had nothing else going for it.

"See? Not scary," Pit reiterated. Surprising, sure. Spooky? Not so much. Although neither he nor his team noticed at this point that they'd technically been injured "in game."

”Yeah that thing was a real joke. Only reason it got to do anything was because it was so puny looking” Bowser agreed with a nod, only to ”Huh?” and started turning for a thrift time when Rika called out ”It’s getting back up papa!”

Rather than let it do whatever it was doing this time, RIka just shot it. To no effect. Undeterred, she reeled back a punch and promptly vaultbreaker smashed into it, knocking the foe into the air. The gas bag rose, fell, and then was promptly slammed in the face by a kinetic strike module empowered punch from Bowser right before it hit the ground, launching it out the door and back the way it had come from.

”And that’s what you get for messing with the Koopa troop” Bowser declared, only to groan as it promptly came stumbling back out the door again.

”Damage is indeed disabled once again it seems” Kamek noted as he remounted his broom and floated back up into the air.

It plodded forward single-mindedly, one slow step at a time. At this point the group could tell it ran on a simple pattern of approach, inflate, and repeat; and since their retaliation hadn't put a stop to it, it was likely to just keep coming... but unlikely to catch up with them if they moved on.

On that point, Pit piped up. "I just thought of something! We're playing a game, right? So this must be like a first level monster. And there's probably a lot of them around the entrance. I bet if we run really far in, we can find a higher level one!"

”Know what, that checks out. You can't just pop all the good stuff at the start of a level after all” Bowser agreed, nodding with unearned sagelyness as he did so.

”Running time then?” Rika asked as she shot the floor with some sticky goop to slow the pufferfish like foe down as they talked.

"Yeah! Let's go!"

The goop worked like a charm, sticking the monster nearly in place as it wiggled, but by then the troop was long gone. They ran into the dark depths of the factory, passing huge revolving wheels connected by belts, vents placed randomly along the walls, and pipes that ran from floor to ceiling. They knew they were heading deeper in when they found a ramp leading down, and they followed it to a dark, wide open room dotted with parallel pillars. On either side of that room were large doorways that opened up to show a series of maze-like metal catwalks lined with iron bars, and an even lower area beneath them.

It was there that the group was heading, traipsing through the catwalks until they found another ramp. Here, the sounds of the machinery had all but faded away - but the sound of skittering took its place, along with the echoes of their footsteps.

Initially leading the group, Pit pulled back so that he was closer to the others. This part of the factory definitely had a spookier feel to it, especially combined with the knowledge that their diving bell was now much farther away.

”We did keep track of the way we came, yes?” Kamek asked, putting words to that concern

”Yeah yeah yeah, left, right, stairs, easy peasy” Bowser replied, and then commanding ”Now bring out some minions and lets flush out those freaks from wherever they are hiding”

”Of course sire” the mage replied, not particularly put at ease, before giving a command of his own: ”Up and at them, dry bones!” With an a wave of his wand that summoned a small horde of undead koopas that began to fan out around the area, click clacking about like gormless fools while Rika had her scout plane do some actual proper reconnaissance to try and spot whatever might be down here with them.

"The skeletons really fit right in," Pit commented. He drummed his fingers on one of the bars while the undead koopas scoped out the area. He did his own searching too, though only with his eyes.

If there was one thing that the monsters of this minigame had in common, it was that they seemed to prefer a direct approach rather than a stealthy one. So it didn't take very long for the first of the drybones to run into something. The minion turned a corner, a whoosh and a crunch sounded from where it had gone, and it didn't return. When Rika's plane flew over to see what happened, it could just make out a shadowed, multi-legged creature trying to consume it.

And it wasn't alone. Drawn by the general nosiness of the group, shapes moved in the dark and began to pick off the drybones on the outskirts of the room.

”I believe we have company. A lot of company” Kamek said as the taken down dry bones started to draw a bit more mana from him in order to reform, a fact Rika very much confirmed with her scouting plane’s more concrete sighting of a spook.

”Then hit record and let's get some juicy footage already!” Bowser commanded, which received an affirmation from Kamek and then the little green light on the camera lit up as he declared ”and action!”

It was perfect timing, as the monsters crawled out from behind their various cover to chase after anything and everything around them. Two creatures, with body shapes that brought arachnids to the mind, bore down on the drybones - though when Pit shined his flashlight on them to get a better look and illuminate them for the camera, they saw something much more monstrous than a typical spider.

"That's more like it!" The angel said. Spiders were creepy, that was just a fact of life - and these things were even creepier. They were almost as tall as Pit and Rika, and both longer and wider than they were tall. When the light fell upon their many eyes, the arachnids turned in the troop's direction. Their movement was part scuttling, part lurching, and their wide heads split apart vertically down the middle to show off two rows of flat teeth for grinding their prey. "Whoa... freaky!"

Pit was still physically among the troop, so he didn't feel all that threatened. Even if he wasn't, he had a plethora of weaponry to call on; which he did when the arachnids began to shoot thick strands of webs from their mouths. The Guardian Orbitars poofed into existence, flying around Pit and his team (so long as they were close enough) to block the sticky projectiles. Naturally the shields started to slow down the more hits they took, making Pit grimaced. "Ew..."

”You try and sticky slow us, I’ll sticky slow you” Rika declared as she pointed a palm at the floor between them and the spiders, and started splattering it with shocking goop to ward them off ”I mean I was gonna do anyway but still”

Not the brightest of creatures, one of the spiders walked right into the slime. It didn't appear to even notice that it was getting stuck, just continuing to crawl towards them at a much slower pace with its jaw snapping open and closed. The other used the trapped one as a bridge and trampled right over it (which the first also didn't seem to notice) to get nearer to its prey.

While all this was going on, the catwalks behind them rattled with the sound of something moving along them. It was loud enough that Pit turned around, brandishing his light like it was a sword. "Another one!"

He expected a third spider to join the first two, but this was a different beast. About the same size, with multiple limbs, but a much rounder shape. In contrast with the arachnids, this thing had no eyes to speak of. Yet it sensed the group of four amateur film makers somehow, and waddled toward them. It came to a stop at the catwalks' exit, blocking the ramp back up.

”That might be inconvenient, we do need to get back to the diving bell again after all” Kamek noted

”Yeah, move it you squiggly thing, or I’ll make you move!” Bowser demanded, stomping towards it while punching his palm with his fist.

It moved, but not out of the way. With Bowser's approach the barnacle ball-looking creature reared up on two of its tentacles and coughed out a plume of some powder-like substance at him.

The king made no move to avoid this, gawfing ”Dust! Ha!” at the mere thought that it could hurt him, only to get an eyeful of the stuff and go ”Gah, It stings!” before roaring ”you're gonna pay for that!”, dropping to all fours charging half blind towards the pest, tusks bared and prepared to give it a goaring.

It had no self-preservation instinct, simply meeting Bowser's charge with its lashing arms. None of the monsters tried avoiding danger or protecting themselves at all, because as the group had already discovered with the pufferfish earlier, they didn't need to. Unable to truly be harmed, their singular purpose was to down the game's players in increasingly frightening ways.

The king's tusk drove into the barnacle but failed to penetrate the tough outer shell. In return he was whipped by its tentacles before his King’s charge launched it up into the air. It crashed down behind him a moment later, unharmed, and immediately started to walk towards the rest of the troop, prompting an ”Uh, woops” from Bowser who had successfully moved it out of his way, but not out of everyone else's.

Meanwhile one of the two spiders was still struggling in the goop, retaliating by shooting its webbing, while the other accosted the team from the opposite of the barnacle. Pit fired upon it by habit with the Orbitars, but the shots did nothing. Oh, right! he thought. They weren't actually meant to be beating these things, just making a scary home movie. He hoped backwards once to avoid the monster's teeth, and once more as the Orbitars swiveled around and blocked another web strand headed his way. By now the two shields were stuck together, limiting their defensiveness.

The spider turned on Rika, and Pit glanced up at Kamek who was getting a bird's eye view of the situation. Did it look good from up there? Pit's torchlight had been a little erratic, but surely the small glow from Rika and Bowser was helping with the lighting. Could the camera pick up the weird, gurgling noise these things were making? "How's it looking!"

”Most concerning, I do believe you are surrounded” Kamek said, drawing attention to the barnacle now closing in behind them. In a similar move to Bowser, Rika proceeded to pull back her gauntlet, and then charge forward with it, the vault breaker punch bumping the spider up in the air and letting her pass under it, leaving only Pit surrounded by the strange beasts, and Kamek hovering just a bit above him.

That lined up with Pit's typical luck. He looked between the two monsters, wondering what he should do here. Escaping would be pretty simple, but maybe he could pretend to be in actual danger for the video? "Oh nooooo," he cried, though he wasn't the most convincing actor. He leaned away from the arachnid, not wanting to even pretend to get bit by it, and so was greeted with a tentacle slap.

"I'm in trouble~ !! Ow, wait, I really am in trouble!" Pit yanked himself away from the barnacle, almost tripping over the spider as he flapped his wings and bounded backwards and out of immediate harm's way. He hadn't really noticed what was being subtly displayed on the inside of the helmet until he saw the bar on one side going down. He was savvy enough to quickly come to the correct conclusion: it was a health bar, and his was already halfway gone. "I took damage! Kind of!"

At that point the second spider had wiggled itself free and scurried forward to hunt, while the one evaded by Rika and Pit turned to spit up at Kamek.

”Ack, well now, that’s disgusting” Kamek complained as he wiggled free of the web, before saying ”Still, these foolish creatures can’t harm me, so keep on your toes you three” before being proven wrong.

The barnacle, rather displeased with the way the troop and Pit were spreading out and escaping it, hunkered down and acted to bring them back together. It raised its tendrils up, swirling them around so fast it created a vortex that began to drag them all in.

Bower was frankly much too heavy, and Rika used her grappling hook to get away, but the unanchored arial Kamek could do little to nothing but get sucked into that blender of spinning tentacles.

When he was pulled close he was met with a lashing of its multiple limbs, putting a stop to the tentacle tornado but dropping the poor koopa's hit points all the way to zero. The screen of his helmet went completely dark and his body was flung away, along with the camera.

Pit had nearly been sucked in too, but managed to grab hold of Bowser's shell and cling on until the pull stopped. He landed on his feet when he fell to the ground, noting that the few leftover drybones had disappeared. Their cameraman was officially out of the game, and this area was littered with webs.

Rika leapt to catch the ejected koopa with one hand as the camera bounced away with an ”I got you” before landing in a power slide. She then dodged out of the way of a web as she held up the unresponsive mage and asked”Kamek?” before shaking him in alarm ”Kamek! Wake up!”

”Grab the camera and we’ll get him to that medical tent” Bowser called out, not believing the elder Koopa was dead more on blind faith than any logical deduction about how that wasn’t what death in the WoL looked like.

”Got it!” Rika called out, glancing around and then grapple-hooking the camera into her other massive hand. Then she ran, but all the monsters were in the way. Unable to vault breaker with her hands full, all she could do was duck, dodge and weave. Burdened by kamek, she was unable to do so perfectly, getting nipped and webbed but looking like she would make it, only to be clipped by a tendril right before she was home free.

She fell, helmet dark, payload tumbling to the floor. Bowser cried out in alarm, lunging forwards and grabbing both his kin in his claws, leaving the camera to bounce on behind him once more.

Since the camera and its film was their win condition, Pit chanced grabbing it while the monsters swarmed. He dove towards it, snapping it up and rolling to his feet. The health bar they were given for the game really wasn't all that big, since he was now down to about a fifth and Rika had been downed by several small attacks. At some point even the slow pufferfish they'd left behind seemed to have found them, as it toddled into the chaos. "Let's go before they take us out too!"

They ran back the way they'd come, onto the metal catwalks. In their haste (and not quite recalling which direction they'd entered from), they picked a random direction and sprinted down it. While moving, Pit grabbed the Orbitars out of the air and yanked them apart. The now separated shields whirled around quickly, back to near-automatically blocking projectiles. They hustled out of the room, avoiding the worst of the webbing as they fled. Luckily the creatures were pretty slow, and with some distance put between the monsters and them, it looked like they'd successfully escaped. From the whooshing sounds behind them it seemed like the barnacle might have tried its tornado again, but at that point it too had been left in the dust.

Which brought Bowser and Pit immediately to their next dilemma: how were they going to get out of the factory and back to the bell?

"Umm..." Pit tilted his head, shining the dim flashlight down the three routes available to them. They were just exiting the catwalks into a wide, featureless square room. On all sides were open doorways leading to dark halls, with no marks of any kind to differentiate them. Far behind them the sound of footsteps on metal echoed around the maze, though they already knew it was too 'dangerous' to go back the way they'd come.

For all of the previous times the angel had raided the Underworld, or navigated criss-crossing interiors in alien ships, or generally traversed Overworld, he still wasn't exactly confident in his sense of direction. Almost every time he was on a mission, he had the Goddess of Light's guiding voice in his head. Even if it came as a whisper such as when she was taken prisoner by Medusa, it was still there nudging him in the right direction. Without it, he wasn't sure which way to go. Well, except for the obvious.

"We just have to find a way that takes us up!" he said.

”Right.. Uh. ” the king replied, peering up at the ceiling at first as he took this quite literally.

They moved on quickly, with the camera tucked sort of safely under Pit's arm. With both of their hands full, the Orbitars remained rather than being replaced by a stronger weapon. If they were ambushed, they could still do their thing. The second, often forgotten consequence of delving too deep too fast was rearing its head now. With both Rika and Kamek gone, there was no way the two remaining boneheads would be able to retrace their steps or otherwise find a way back out without a minor miracle.

And there was one other thing too.

"Hey Bowser," Pit said, glancing up at the king. He'd been sticking pretty close, not wanting to get separated or taken by surprise if another monster showed up. "Did you see this other bar-thing on our helmets? It's smaller than the health bar. I just noticed it's been going down this whole time."

He tried to tap the area it was displayed on the helmet's face screen, but just bonked the front of his helmet with the torch. "What is it?"

”Uhhh. Wait. Didn’t that guy say something about air?” Bowser replied, right as the bar hit zero.

---

The two veteran Smashers had run out of time, ending up in a heap inside the medical shed back on the island they started the game on. The shed was small and narrow, so when Bowser spawned in his bulk pretty much obliterated it, smashing the wooden walls out so that the whole thing collapsed. Unharmed by the wreckage, Pit crawled out from under the wood and hopped to his feet, dusting himself off and then, realizing he was no longer holding anything, patting himself down.

"Aw man! Did we lose?" He turned back to the remains of the shed, shoving wooden planks aside and peeking around the king's large frame, but there was no camera to be found. "Nooooo, come on!"

His frantic failure to find the camera was accompanied by a pair of groans from the Koopas, and also Rika asking the question that was probably on a few minds, namely ”People do that for fun?”