[center][h3]The Under - The Hive[/h3]
Level 11 Nadia (144/110)
The Koopa Troop’s [@DracoLunaris], Primrose and Therion’s [@Yankee], Sectonia’s [@Archmage MC], Jesse’s [@Zoey Boey], Ganondorf’s [@Double], Rubick’s [@Scarifar], Artorias’ [@Dark Cloud], Barnabee
[b]Word Count:[/b] 3352[/center]

For a few moments the team lingered around the mouth of the tunnel they’d entered through, quietly assessing the situation. Though the beauty of this scintillating space, this palatial gallery of gold and amber, wasn’t lost on them, they needed to focus their concern on the invaders who’d set up shop throughout the fallen queendom. The Seekers briefly discussed how to tackle this challenge, but they knew this calm before the storm couldn’t last long, not with their infuriated Hive Knight itching to tear through the wasps’ ill-gotten domain like a fox in a henhouse. Sectonia pointed out that stealth wasn’t really this group’s forte anyway, which Rubick quickly echoed. Between Sectonia, Bowser, Ganondorf, and Artorias, the team had quite a few big, high-profile warriors, and apart from Nadia, Therion, and perhaps Primrose, the rest weren’t exactly well-versed in the art of subtlety.

Of course, that wasn’t necessarily a problem for Nadia. “Well, if [i]I[/i] don’t get caught, I don’t need to do any fightin’.” she replied with a sly grin. Off-handedly she wondered if Sectonia might have any second thoughts about killing other wasps.

“Off with thee, then,” Barnabee snapped. “And any others of like mind too. While I welcome thy aid, I will fight, with thee or without! Now that I have returned to reclaim my motherland, nothing will stand between me and my long-awaited vengeance! So make up thy minds with haste, friends. I will not stay my hand for much longer!”

Primrose proposed the idea of a diversion, which sat well with many of the others. With the Hive Knight (and Bowser too it looked like) spoiling for a bloodbath and a fight more or less inevitable, that sounded like a good way to make the most of it. While she honestly didn’t want to fight against a massive swarm of wasps if she could help it, Nadia hadn’t actually been planning to abandon Barnabee at the eleventh hour; she wanted to help. “Sure, yeah. If a couple of ya help keep the wasps busy, the rest of us can honey-comb the place for the boss, and if we find any workers we can turn ‘em loose.”

“Fine.” As a wasp patrol drew close to the Seekers’ position, Barnabee gripped his saw-toothed swordblade. “Then let us begin.”

The team split apart in a hurry, with Nadia darting off behind some buildings to sneak around the Hive’s perimeter while Barnabee stepped out into the open. Almost immediately the wasp patrol spotted him. The sight of an armed bee on the loose would have been enough cause for concern, but the strangers at his back put the insects on high alert instantly. “Intruders! Intruders!” they chorused, their strange voices harsh and buzzy. As they fanned out the five of them brandished their weapons, and at a nod from the squad leader the first wasp dashed at the Hive Knight to skewer him with her halberd. Barnabee waited for a crucial moment, then swung Yato with both hands to knock the poleaxe aside. The next second he slashed upward with the blade, sawing the halberd’s head off fast enough to send it flying upward, then lashed out to carve straight through the wasp’s narrow waist. As it fell apart, neatly bisected, Barnabee grabbed the halberd’s head and hurled it at the squad leader like a throwing axe, which she narrowly blocked with her own polesaw.

Her mandibles ground together in annoyance as she lowered her weapon. “Get him!” she rasped, and the others attacked. The second wasp attacked with dual swords, and the two bugs met in a clanging flurry of blows. As they fought the shieldbearer wasps surrounded the Hive Knight on either side, and his blade got caught on his opponent’s they charged in to crush him between their shields, but instead they smashed together hard enough to throw both off balance–Barnabee had disappeared. Before they could collect themselves, their foe appeared behind one shieldbearer and chopped her into pieces with a single stroke. He warped behind the second, his fiery blade singing, and cleaved through her middle as well. The sword-wielder panicked, turning and looking around in a panic to spot the Hive Knight before his next warp-strike could connect, but she didn’t look up. Her enemy fell upon her from above and mercilessly sawed her in half vertically, leaving her blades to clatter against the ground.

By that time the squad leader reached him, and chainsaw met buzzsaw in a vicious, sparking clash. As the big wasp threatened to push him back, Barnabee let out both a roar and a hiveling, which headbutted his opponent to throw her off. He flashed behind her as her polesaw swung side, and the next second the insect’s decapitated head fell from her shoulders. Barnabee landed and turned to see more squads heading his direction to start the fight for real. He took a deep breath, steeling himself for the fight of his lift, then at the top of his lungs let loose his mighty battle cry that filled the air with a dozen hivelings. “HUZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

Meanwhile, Nadia skirted around the Hive’s perimeter near the wall. The fighting had already started back near the entrance, but it looked like the somewhat selfish, inattentive, and uncoordinated wasps weren’t inclined to descend upon the intruders all at once. Instead, they’d be engaging them a couple squads at a time as the Seekers moved through the Hive to threaten their papery domiciles or their food supplies. That meant things would be manageable for the others, but it meant enough wasps loitering around to ensure that Nadia’s stealth mission wouldn’t be a walk in the park. She moved quickly and quietly. The floors here were naturally uneven, and the different levels plus honeycomb outcroppings and pillars meant plenty of hiding places she could move between to avoid the wasps’ sightlines. Sprinting on all fours worked well enough, but when things got hairy she found she could resort to a Charge to near-instantly travel between two spots in a straight line. At one point though, near a wasp nest where a couple of the bugs were feasting on ill-gotten honey, she used Charge close enough that both could hear its electric zapping sound.

“Huh? Who’s there?”

“What’s that sound?”

Nadia ducked down, holding her breath. For a tense moment both wasps stared at the hexagonal honey-barrel she’d hidden behind, and she couldn’t risk peeking out. After a couple seconds, though, they turned away again to go back to their meal.

“Eh, probably nothing.”

“Must’ve been my imagination.”

Unfortunately, Nadia moved just a touch too soon, and both wasps caught a glimpse of her head out of the corner of her eyes and whirled back toward her. [b]”Huh?! Who’s there?!”[/b] they exclaimed at the exact same time, their voices so perfectly synced -and doubly loud- that Nadia froze in momentary terror, her ears flattened against her hair just out of sight. Wondering what the heck that was, she waited another couple seconds until both wasps’ alert level bottomed out again, prompting them to turn away saying, “I swear I saw something” and “Must’ve been my imagination” at the same time. Then she waited another second to be sure, and once the wasps resumed their chat exactly where they left off the cat burglar took off running.

She made her way toward a section of the Hive that didn’t look anything like the rest. While most of the underground queendom appeared to be hexagonal and immaculate save for the wasp infestation, one part off to the left side seemed weirdly overgrown. The hexes gave way to moist, dark earth covered with murky, dark-green ferns and thickets, and rusty orange water pooled around the trunks of big, knobby cypress and willow trees draped with curtains of hanging moss. Maybe some hardy specimens from the Arboretum had somehow grown downward into the golden glow of the Hive as well as upward toward the luminous lightroot? Either way, she couldn’t spot many wasps around there, and all that foliage meant low visibility–in short, a perfect short cut to reach the far side of the cavern. Nadia darted over and into the trees. Rather than get her footpaws soaked with dubious liquid, she latched onto the trees themselves with her claws, jumping and airdashing between them. In this manner she made good progress until she happened to cross the edge of a clearing amidst the fetid grove.

In it stood a set of stone ruins, the remains of a temple from some ancient civilization, complete with a quartet of [url=https://i.imgur.com/bG7QEHW.png]monoliths[/url]. Toward the back, on a dias at the top of a set of stairs, lay an intricately-carved throne. There, trapped in place by constructing roots, sat a strange man. At first glance he appeared to be human, albeit decked out in a set of strange, ceremonial armor, but as Nadia paused to get a better look she realized that wasn’t the case. He might have a human head and silhouette, but four gossamer wings and an extra set of limbs extended from his honey-yellow carapace, and beneath the elbows and knees his arms and legs looked positively insectoid. At Nadia’s arrival, he stirred in his chair, his fetters clinking softly, and though his sunken eyes lacked any light of hope he jerked awake in surprise when his half-lidded gaze settled upon her. “A human? Here?” Moving his arms what little he could, he urgently beckoned her over. “Quickly my child, come here!”

For a moment Nadia didn’t move as she contemplated the situation. While her first instinct was to leave well enough alone, she’d already failed to get out of here undetected, but the stranger didn’t seem inclined to raise the alarm. Those bindings marked him as a captive, same as the poor worker bees forced to toil away for the wasps in their own queendom. [i]Enemy of my enemy and all that.[/i] Making her decision, she jumped down from her tree and jogged across the stone bricks toward the throne. “Not human, but purr-etty darn close,” she piped up as she approached. “What’s goin' on here? You with the wasps?”

“Heavens, no!” The [url=https://i.imgur.com/giz45qO.png]bizarre being[/url] looked affronted. “You stand before Ah Muzen Cab, god of bees! It was the wasps that trapped me here. Any day now they’re going to burn me alive as sacrifice! You must free me, please! Free me and I’ll grant you my boon!”

That sounded pretty good to Nadia. As she went to respond, however, a shrill voice rang out from behind her. “The intruder! There she is!” The feral whirled around to see a squad of four wasps, two with cleavers, one with a shield, and one  -worryingly- with a torch. “She’s trying to free the bee god!” the leader yelled. “Change of plan! Burn him now, and kill her!”

Nadia’s ears and face fell. “Uh oh.”

As Ah Muzen Cab wailed about not wanting to be burned, all four wasps surged forward together. In a flash Nadia pulled out her Bait Launcher and fired a steak into their midst, but the leader knocked it aside with her shield. It plopped down by one of the choppers and a tiger promptly poofed into existence to tear the big bug limb from limb, but the shieldbearer moved a lot faster than Nadia expected. She flew into the feral with a powerful shield bash that knocked her down onto the steps before the bee god’s throne, her Bait Launcher flying from her grip to skitter across the stone and into the orange muck. The shieldbearer turned away, distracted by the surprise tiger attack that had befallen her underling, but the other chopper descended on Nadia as she tried to rise. With a hiss, Nadia detached her right arm to avoid the cleaver, which clanged against the stone steps, then grabbed that arm by the wrist with her other hand. Wielding it like a bludgeon, she smacked the wasp across the mouth. “Careful, I’m armed!” To her surprise the hit let off a blast of blood to give to blow extra explosive oomph, courtesy of the Multitarget buff conferred by the impact from the wasp leader’s shield. More than happy to roll with it, she chained into [url=https://i.imgur.com/59CpXUW.png]Flip Flop[/url], then a [url=https://i.imgur.com/gBIvZGc.png]One[/url]-[url=https://i.imgur.com/ytlg36H.png]two[/url] Pun-isher before whirling around to knock the wasp away with a triple tail lash. 

Before she could follow up, a shrill yell from behind her grabbed her attention, and she turned to see the last wasp about to thrust her torch into the root mass that held the squirming, panicked Ah Muzen Cab in place. “Nyat gonna happen!” Gritting her teeth, Nadia hurled her detached arm at the firebrand, and on contact she wrapped her arm around its neck in a tight headlock. The wasp stumbled, her torch forgotten as she scrabbled at the choking arm, but that was all Nadia could do for now. The shieldbearer charged her again, forcing her to dodge roll out of the way. As she stood, Nadia shot blood from the stump of her right arm to form a Copycat limb replacement, then grabbed her head and rolled it across the ground. When the shieldbearer turned her way, the feral charged toward her, and she raised her block. That’s when Nadia sneezed, launching her head up behind the wasp to hit her unprotected back. Successfully opened up, the wasp took three explosive slashes from El Gato before Nadia spun up her left forearm and drilled into her abdomen. A final explosive burst finished the bug off.

Before the cat burglar could so much as catch her breath, a painful burning sensation erupted on her arm. She turned to see the firebrand trying to dislodge her chokehold by pressing her torch against the offending arm, and at the same time the other chopper was back for more. “Ugh. You guys are startin’ to bug me!” Turning her back to the chopper, she hardened her tails and then fired them off with bursts of blood, turning them into pointed javelins. They speared the chopper through the middle, and she dropped like a sack of flour, her blade lodging point-down between the stone bricks. Nadia released her headlock on the last wasp only to dash towards and sweep its legs out from under it. “I hope you bugs like vegetables,” she said, grabbing the fallen leader’s shield and lifting it up over her head. “‘Cause here’s some SQUASH!” [i]Splat![/i]

She let out a sigh of relief, her Multitarget fading away, but yet again Ah Muzen Cab yelled out from behind her. “Watch out! There’s more!”

When she turned she found not just four more wasps, two of which wielded torches, but a hulking [url=https://i.imgur.com/9f6WLdn.jpg]Temple Guardian[/url]. Instantly Nadia realized she might have bitten off more than she could chew, but she couldn’t back down now. With a deep breath she snapped her head and right arm back on, then sharpened her claws. “Come on, then! I’ll bee here all day!”

The Temple Guardian charged, and Nadia blocked, but she didn’t think to block low. Before the juggernaut reached her, it threw itself on the ground hard enough to cause a tremor. Nadia hit the ground, and as both of them rose, the torch-wasps made a beeline for Ah Muzen Cab. “No fair!” Nadia hissed. Thinking on her feet, she ran for one of them, and as she did she created a Copycat to send after the other. While it went to tackle the wasp out of the air, she used Charge to blitz through her target, then used Athame to strike twice with Battery, leading to two defense-reducing crits. She twisted around and hurled the wasp at the Temple Guardian as it charged at her, and when the monster swatted the projectile aside, the defense cut caused the bug to burst like a rotten pumpkin. It then came down with a tremendous slam, forcing Nadia to jump backward only for her to bounce off a tree trunk. The wasps were nothing if not relentless, and both halberdiers came at her with huge swings. She popped off her head, then separated at the midriff to dodge both axeblades, but by the time she came together the Temple Guardian had arrived to punish her for her tomfoolery. Its gigantic uppercut launched her up into the tree branches with a series of loud cracks, where she hung for a moment, dazed.

From up there, she could blearily see the other firebrand blow up her Copycat by causing a Vaporize reaction with its torch, then turn to go for Ah Muzen Cab. “Ughhhhh.” The two halberdiers flew up to meet her, their pointy ends held at her throat. “Just my luck.” Then a terrific crack rang out from below as the Temple Guardian struck the tree, and it began to fall backward. Nadia took advantage of the distraction to leap forward and catch both wasps with [url=https://i.imgur.com/r18YdeF.png]X-scrape Claws[/url], then flip upside down to batter them with [url=https://i.imgur.com/R5flmeI.png]Wheel of Fortune[/url] like a feline helicopter. The next second she rocketed downward with her super [url=https://i.imgur.com/hgNvdAS.png]Feral Edge[/url], piercing both wasps with Athame as she sped toward the ground. When she hit the ground, tearing the knife free finished both defense-compromised bugs off. Not wasting any time looking over her shoulder for the Temple Guardian, she rose and ran for the startled firebrand, only for that same monstrosity to erupt from ground in front of her in a blast of rusty water and stone brick.

This was it, the final moment. The torch-wasp was about to burn the bee god. Nadia leaped into the air, lifting her leg as if to stomp on the Temple Guardian’s head. Instead she revved up her lower leg and launched her clawed paw like a drill, straight toward the monster’s exposed brain. “Buzz OFF!” Her makeshift torpedo struck–but the next second, the horror’s enormous arm loomed in front of her, and its hand closed around her head. “Mmmmmf!” As it went to slam her down into the muck, Nadia detached her head, allowing the rest of her to stay free. That was when her luck ran out, however. Once plunged into the opaque, stinging water, she couldn’t see nor hear nor breathe. Her body had no direction save the sense of touch. Her only hope was that her parting shot would kill the monster fast enough to relinquish her head in time. The seconds passed; she held her breath, her eyes and her mouth squeezed shut. She forced her body to attack, swinging and slashing blindly. Her claws hit wood, plants, and masonry, and she could alternatively feel dirt, stone, and water beneath her footpaw. But she never connected with an insect body or limbs. All she could feel until her body finally tripped and fell was the ambient heat on her skin.

By the time the Temple Guardian slumped over and Nadia’s head bobbed to the surface, only the sound of roaring flame remained. The bee god was history, and the swampy copse was starting to burn too. No sign of the firebrand. Nadia grimaced, watching in miserable silence for a moment, then began to puppet her body to put herself back together. Already almost fully regenerated, she gathered up her fallen parts and weapons in silence. She crushed the spirits that now laid around the clearing (keeping the [url=https://i.imgur.com/nvpnQDW.png]Hivestone[/url] from Ah Muzen Cab, the [url=https://i.imgur.com/tbcbUFK.png]Lumenite Crystal[/url] from the Temple Guardian, and the Geo) then hurried off. This ‘shortcut’ had turned into quite the costly detour, and it was past time she made her way to the Hive’s royal palace.